We are about to be overrun with a herd of scared cattle, I mean people, and we need to herd them along as deep into the ship, and divert the injured to Willow.

Seems to me that anyone not steering the ship or shoveling coal into the firebox (sorry, we watch a lot of Thomas, here) should be in the cargo bay helping to direct traffic.

FWIW, Willow was told 40 casualties, not 40 able bodied passengers. She's kind of expecting people to be limping in or being carried in, so this will be...interesting, to say the least.

I can understand the position of the captain, but I honestly can't see how the Roc can take on that many passengers. Hard choices have to be made.

Anyway, a ship full of angry rich people, crew from the liner, and a thief... things are going to be entertaining. Particularly as John has Ped off Captain Edward by planning for the worst. Sometimes you need to leave people behind, and hope and prey that they'll be OK until more help comes.

Once John has helped Willow set up the medical bay he'll go and help her in the cargo bay.

...40 panicky somebodies plus the existing crew and passenger compliment of Rocinante will definitely make for some cozy conditions, to say the least.

As Vanadia said, with that many bound up bungers coming aboard, traffic control is critical so, it's my thought that Fu Sheng will stay very near the "entry point" for the evacuees and perform triage - direct those with minor bumps and bruises to an "out of the way" location and help move those in worse shape and in need of more immediate attention to Willow - once we have them all aboard (or before if necessary), the little monk will switch to a more 'active role' in administering first aid or whatever to help Willow.

As Willow and Fu, and everybody else will soon find out the Roc will be taking on significantly more then 40 people. John will make it clear, by complaining about the captain of the other ship, that we are to expect closer to the greater then 100 people mark.

Loki,

May I ask where you are getting your figures? Just curious if the Gm is giving you information in private. The communications said 40 passengers roughly, but you keep stating more.

Do you anticipate that the Crew of the Starliner will be coming? Cause I havent seen anything stated to that effect. I could be wrong.

Curious as you seem adamant in your assertions.

The cargo bay is about 35x55 feet (it is early and I could not find precise measurements). The average person requires 2 sq feet. So if my high school math is correct, that would be 1925 sq feet or room for 962 people. Now there are stairs, you do have cargo and a hovermule but I think it is safe to say that you can put a large number of people in a mid-bulk transport.

The challenges will come to your life support. It is not set to deal with that many people so the carbon dioxide scrubbers will need adjusting, the algae tanks that produce oxygen will need adjusting and air flow will need adjusting. If you say, have 100 people, then the inner temp will go up fast so you need to turn up the AC as well. These are all complex actions and will take time.

But if Wolf and Asher are in engineering, then they have no idea how many people are coming abroad so they can not make the adjustments.

I meant 'packed in like sardines'.

40 already exceeds a series 3 Firefly's official passenger capacity of 18 by more than 100%... crank it up to 100+ souls coming aboard and we're chock full o' nuts!

Of course, "passenger capacity" as used above infers that that's the max for available sleeping areas, life support/air scrubbers not becoming overwhelmed, etc... short term, I'm sure that there's space for us to 'spread them out' a bit but.... wow.... just... WOW!!!

For the record, all posted numbers of passengers you are about to receive are conjecture. I have not said to anyone how many people ae coming. Smith said he had 40 casualities reported so far but some or all of them could be in escape pods.

Really, until that door drops, you have no idea what you are facing. Could be a brass band for all you know.

...but the conjecture/not knowing for sure certainly helps build the suspense, doesn't it?

I'm all atingle!

Tension is great but I don't want y'all to plan on forty, get the cots out and then be hit with 300 Twilight moms coming rushing in looking for Robert Patterson.

Bad scene.

That would test the limits of even Fu Sheng's patience, I'm sure.

"Scrape on elbow and Team Edward t-shirt? Please, miss, if you would just follow me to the airlock, we can fix what ails you with the push of a button."

Yes Aryn, Alacrity did give me some numbers in secret. I assumed that he'd given you the same numbers but never mind. As I am normally one of the later people to post I wanted to make sure that everybody knows the numbers we may be talking about because, in my next post, John is going to be mumbling something along the lines of the cruise liner carrying hundreds of people and only half of them getting into escape pods. Mentioning in his mumblings: 17 ten-man escape pods, a crew of 100, a passenger capacity of over 200, and an idiot captain not even willing to plan for the possibility of the imminent death of himself and many of his crew.

EDIT: I agree with Eol about the capacity of the Roc. The book puts an standard firefly's capacity at about 10, possibly 20 if you double up the rooms or 36 if you include the passenger capacity of the two short-range shuttles. Even the personnel carrier variant's capacity is only 50, or 100 if hot bunking, but the Roc isn't a personnel carrier.

It is off those numbers that I have based John's reaction and his apparent willingness to accept that they won't be able to save everybody.

I'll also note that John mentioned the Roc sending out a distress signal for the Star because of a couple of reasons 1) The Roc is fully operation and John could probably boost the signal range to great distances, 2) we only picked up the distress signal from the Star when we were in visual range (Tess had already seen the explosion) about 15-20 minutes away, and 3) the distress signal from the Star is probably highly distorted by the radiation from the presumably leaking reactor core and the pings from the escape pods are also interfering with communications. I'm not saying that the Captain of the Star would know all this, but John is assuming that any Captain worth his salt would be aware of these things as possibilities.

EDIT 2: Nowhere have I been told the Star could have a leaky reactor core, that is just an assumption I and John have made on our own accord to go along with the "barely have a hull and no guarantee that something else won't go up like a roman candle" thing.

Got it. Thanks, I was just curious and no offense was intended to you Loki. I hope you were offended by my question.

I didn't take offense at your question, and sorry I came across as defensive. I'm just putting up John's thought pattern that lead him to his conclusions.

I can understand "John's" concern as you have him being played as the doom and gloom character right now. However when you put a theory in the Q&A and the GM says no, the ship can take it - don't keep arguing the point. Unless you really want me to put into the game the decision to let people die. Not part of my plan but if it is really what you want you may wish to find another GM.

Otherwise, as I have said, you have no idea what you are facing, the ship can handle what I send to you and things will not go smoothly. Communication will be key and player skills will be tested. The big damn hero of the next few hours of the game could easily be Wolf as scrubbers and algae tanks are mechanical challenges.