The Longbow class is the extremely thin ship with the large double cannon seen in the Reaver battle at the end of the Serenity movie. It is a perfect example of the flawed designs in the Six Shooters & Spaceships book. Since it is an important vessel in the movie, I have decided to try to redesign it, using the published design as a start point.
Longbow Class Patrol Cruiser
500,000 tons
Agi d4 Str d10 Vit d8 Ale d6 Int d8 Wil d10 Lifepoints: 20
Speed Class: 4 Hard Burn: 6
Fuel: 1200 hours at SC4
Armor: 4W
Crew: 750
Flight crew: 112
ALST crew: 240
Troops: 3200
Gear: 36 Warhammer Interceptors, 12 Foxbat Bombers, 8 short range Shuttles, 40 ALSTs
Armament: 2 d12+d4 Plasma Packets*, 10 1 ton missile launchers, 20 1/4 ton Decoy launchers, 12 defensive autocannons (d6 vehicle)
Ammunition: 208 long range (d6) missiles, 160 medium range (d8)missiles, 280 Decoys (d6), 6,400 autocannon rounds
Cargo: 25,513 tons
Complexity: 44
Assets
Overgunned (m)
Complications
Born to the Black (M)
Cost: 24.224 million cr plus vehicles
Maintenance: 1.6 million cr/yr
The Longbow is the Alliance's primary warship. She carries a heavy ship to ship armament, but her true value is in her troop capacity. Her 40 ALST landing ships allow her to drop all of her troops and some supplies in a single wave and her large cargo capacity allows for substantial amounts of ammunition, supplies and armored vehicles. The fighter craft carried aboard can provide escort and ground attack support for the troop transports. The ship is actually a modification of an earlier design, a colonial transport used to ferry terraforming supplies. One of those ships was present in the reaver fleet at the Battle of Dante.
The Alliance has no external enemies, so why were these ships built? For use against the people of the Alliance itself. While these ships do make excellent patrol ships, their primary function is the intimidation of Border and Rim world populations to prevent any ideas of armed uprising.
*-Normally, this ship could only carry a single d12+d4 Plasma Packet weapon. However, the ship clearly has two in the movie, and I feel they are too massive to be anything else. The ship has the Overgunned(m) Asset, but that is still not enough. So, for game balance, the Longbow's plasma guns may only fire every other turn or only 1 gun per turn. Note that these plasma guns are my modified stats ship weapons. They are base damage d10, but have a 3 step bonus as x10 Newtech weapons
