How much would Starfleet ships sell for in the SW universe?

[Eternal_Freedom]

One thought comes to mind on the medtech issue. It's based on EU stuff but I haven't seen it contradicted int he films as of yet.

Namely, a dunk in a bacta tank will heal a vast amount of injuries and dieseases, but it seems to work on just about any species. From the X Wing books we have Corran getting dunked in a bacta tank to repair a blaster shot tot he gut, a broken spine and a broken pelvis. He expected that to take a week (actually two days because it was a stronger batch). Later in Solo Command we have Piggy, a Gammorrean, being healed from another blaster gut-shot in a bacta tank. Sure we see ST stuff heal a lot of things, but do they have a medical system that will reliably heal such massive injuries, in such a simple way, on thousands of different species? It also makes planning treatment real easy. Injured? Apply Bacta. Only question is for how long.

[Treknobabble]

Let's say that some smaller starship manufacturer in the SW universe got full schematics and necessary tech info/know-how to build the full range of Starfleet craft, (only full production-run craft - no experimental or prototype stuff). Even with their limitations when compared to Star Wars ships, do you think there would be a market for such vessels, and would they go for significantly less than similarly sized SW craft? Let's assume, for the sake of this scenario, that you can't just tack on a hyperdrive, without essentially making very costly redesigns to any such vessels.

You say that you can't tack on a hyperdrive to a ST ship. Can you tack a pair of nacelles to a SW ship, or are such crossovers banned entirely?

Because I happen to be of the opinion that tactical FTL would be a major advantage. Most Star Wars fighter craft already have nacelle-like structures on them, and in theory it shouldn't be too difficult for the empire to start constructing hybrid fighters fairly quickly given its massive industrial base. I can see the empire buying a couple of representative ships (one Sovereign, one Defiant, and one Runabout, say), then arranging for the remainder of this manufacturer's schematics, tech, and inventory to be destroyed. That way, this new stuff with potential tactical value stays out of rebel hands.

Imagine, if you will, a TIE fighter scaled up to about the size of a runabout. Powered by a miniature hypermatter reactor connected to a single pair of plasma conduits, both made from SW durability materials (aka, no exploding pannels anywhere on the vessel when the ship gets hit). The thing can travel at about warp 5 (same as a runabout), and since energy weapons are definitely useful for warp strafing (we see it employed against the Enterprise in TOS episodes "Elaan of Troyius" with disruptor fire and in "Journey to Babel" with phasers), it can fire whatever turbolasers it has without having to drop out of warp.

We know the Empire is good at keeping secrets, the second death star (which was substantially larger than the first one) was only discovered when Emperor Palpatine wanted it to be. This entire "hybrid fighter" project can be kept a secret.

Now imagine a Star Destroyer with a hanger bay full of these TIE runabouts. It now has the capability to project force even more effectively than it did before. Its fighters will get to their targets 214 times faster than information about their launch does. They can strike with complete impunity. We have no reason to believe that the SW universe prior to the introduction of warp drive technology has any experience with realspace FTL, and thus have no reason to believe that even the empire (prior to the OP, more on that in a moment) would be ready to respond to a squadron of FTL fighters, let alone the far less well equipped Rebel Alliance. The rebels will literally not see these things coming.

Now imagine that the Star Destroyer itself has been upgraded with Star Trek sensor technology. Barring interference from the plot, it is now capable of detecting just about every reasonably large starship for several light years in any direction, long before lightspeed information gets to it. Get it within about 10,000 km of the battlefield, and it will be able to detect every lifesign. Barring interference from the plot, it is now capable of giving near perfect intel on the positions of enemy forces to Storm Troopers on the ground.

The use of ST sensors also significantly improves the Star Destroyer's range. The Star Destroyer no longer suffers from lightspeed lag. It can fire at long range with impunity. It knows where its target is, and knows how the target is currently moving, and unless it is commanded by someone completely inept, it has a darn good idea of how the target is going to move in the future. Put all that together, and you open up the possibility of bolts from heavy turbolasers hitting targets light minutes away from the Star Destroyer.

Don't sell ST technology short. ST ships may not have firepower comparable to SW ships, but they have better eyes and ears, and are not limited by the speed of light when traveling in realspace. I, for one, am confident that an Empire with access to this technology would be more than capable of putting it to devastatingly effective use.

[SilverDragonRed]

Where are you getting this idea that SW doesn't have FTL sensors? There a couple of Clone Wars episodes that disprove that assertion; Jedi Crash and A Sunny Day in the Void.

[Treknobabble]

Where are you getting this idea that SW doesn't have FTL sensors? There a couple of Clone Wars episodes that disprove that assertion; Jedi Crash and A Sunny Day in the Void.

What exactly happens in those episodes? Are we dealing with detection of things light years away, or are we dealing with the detection of things in hyperspace?

Having only watched the movies, I haven't seen any evidence that any party would have access to FTL sensors. If there is evidence I am unaware of, I am open to correction.

[SilverDragonRed]

Jedi Crash: Clone trooper reports to Ahsoka and some blue Jedi that the hyperspace coordinates that were input into the system were incorrect, so they were heading straight for a star. One minute later, they return to realspace and cut power as they are getting closer to the sun in question.

A Sunny Day in the Void: Droid pilot detects a comet storm ahead of their position while they're in hyperspace. He walks to the back of the ship to inform the others. Again, a minute after the comets were detected, they exit hyperspace in the middle of the cluster of comets.

[Lord Revan]

That "blue Jedi" is Aalya (or how ever you spelled her first name) Secura, a Twilek jedi from the lengendaries that got added to AOTC cause Lucas liked her.

[Q99]

I think specific technologies ON the ships would sell for a lot more than the ships themselves. From the point of view of the average Star Wars commercial buyer, a Starfleet-type ship is a heap of scrap iron wrapped around a shiny interesting bundle of transporters, replicators, and possibly holodecks.

Note: this is not to say that there isn't ANY place in Star Wars where we see teleportation, replicator-level production equipment, or VR systems as immersive as the holodeck... although I can't think of any that weren't decanonized with the old EU. But the point is, these technologies are not ubiquitous in the Star Wars universe and all of them would be extremely marketable.

I'm very much agreed. A replicator allows anyone with even a small one to sell niche and luxury goods without having to ship them across systems- stuff that's rare and expensive in the outer rim now costs just the energy to make it. That'd reshape the galactic economy and change what type of stuff gets shipped around.

Transporters, well, tons of uses there.

Oh yes, another tech- structural integrity fields. Not as obvious, but they're why a shuttle can survive a crashlanding from orbit. While they don't provide overly much combat protection, there is a lot of use of small craft so much physically tougher.


You'd be able to make obscene amounts of money from the technology in a starship, assuming the computer's databanks and the sample provids enough information to produce them.

Federation medical technology ranges from preposterous magic to worse than our own depending on the circumstances. But on the whole, I'd say that its better than Star Wars medical technology (although Star Wars is very good with prosthetics, as shown by Luke's new hand in The Empire Strikes Back).

"The doctor gave me a pill and I grew a new kidney!" -Star Trek IV

[Eternal_Freedom]

I think specific technologies ON the ships would sell for a lot more than the ships themselves. From the point of view of the average Star Wars commercial buyer, a Starfleet-type ship is a heap of scrap iron wrapped around a shiny interesting bundle of transporters, replicators, and possibly holodecks.

Note: this is not to say that there isn't ANY place in Star Wars where we see teleportation, replicator-level production equipment, or VR systems as immersive as the holodeck... although I can't think of any that weren't decanonized with the old EU. But the point is, these technologies are not ubiquitous in the Star Wars universe and all of them would be extremely marketable.

I'm very much agreed. A replicator allows anyone with even a small one to sell niche and luxury goods without having to ship them across systems- stuff that's rare and expensive in the outer rim now costs just the energy to make it. That'd reshape the galactic economy and change what type of stuff gets shipped around.

Transporters, well, tons of uses there.

Oh yes, another tech- structural integrity fields. Not as obvious, but they're why a shuttle can survive a crashlanding from orbit. While they don't provide overly much combat protection, there is a lot of use of small craft so much physically tougher.


You'd be able to make obscene amounts of money from the technology in a starship, assuming the computer's databanks and the sample provids enough information to produce them.

Um, you do remember that replicators don't just create stuff from energy, they re-arrange the molecules etc in feed stock? You'd still need supplies and logistics (which is why the starships have cargo bays, and there are freighters, amongst other things).

Transporters I can see being used for cargo. Given that SW demonstrably has some form of non-physical component to a being's life (their Force presence, even if not Force-sensitive) and an afterlife that depends on said non-physical component, I can quite easily see people in SW object to transporters on philosophical grounds. It certainly has it's uses, but I doubt it would become as prevalent in SW as it is in ST (which doesn't have anything akin to a "soul" (for want of a better term) or an afterlife, at least in the Federation regions).

SW already has something akin to structural integrity fields, at least in the old EU. The ICS for Phantom Menace describes "tensor field generators" on the droid landing ships that exert force to hold the ship together during flight and during landings, so such technology would hardly be revolutionary. Even discounting the EU, the SW universe either has something equivalent or construction and engineering skills that render such things irrelevant. For instance, the huge buildings on Coruscant and elsewhere. Or, to use your example of ships crashing, in the trailer for Ep VII, we see a crashed ISD that looks remarkably intact. So, again, either they already have such technology or they have something else that means they don't need it.

[Q99]

I'm very much agreed. A replicator all
Um, you do remember that replicators don't just create stuff from energy, they re-arrange the molecules etc in feed stock? You'd still need supplies and logistics (which is why the starships have cargo bays, and there are freighters, amongst other things).

Yes... but all you need for that is a molecular mix, which is easy to get.

It eliminates a ton of logistical demands by making 98% of stuff interchangeable, with only a small amount of items that have to actually be procured.

Once you replicate something, you need a place to put it, so cargo bays and all, and some stuff is by *preference* non-replicated (a lot of people seem to like original art, non-replicated food, etc.), but if, say, they're shipping 500 crates of medicine? Then they almost certainly either replicated the medicine or the components needed to make the medicine.

It doesn't eliminate supply and logistics, but it does cut out some parts of the chain from a complex process to a one-stop-shop with the same fuel providing a mind-boggling array of goods.

Transporters I can see being used for cargo. Given that SW demonstrably has some form of non-physical component to a being's life (their Force presence, even if not Force-sensitive) and an afterlife that depends on said non-physical component, I can quite easily see people in SW object to transporters on philosophical grounds. It certainly has it's uses, but I doubt it would become as prevalent in SW as it is in ST (which doesn't have anything akin to a "soul" (for want of a better term) or an afterlife, at least in the Federation regions).

Eh, people turn into energy beings and such ^^

But the force being real makes it easy- transport a volunteer, do they sense the same in the force? Then that solves the 'do transporters transport your force self' question in one go.

SW already has something akin to structural integrity fields, at least in the old EU. The ICS for Phantom Menace describes "tensor field generators" on the droid landing ships that exert force to hold the ship together during flight and during landings, so such technology would hardly be revolutionary. Even discounting the EU, the SW universe either has something equivalent or construction and engineering skills that render such things irrelevant. For instance, the huge buildings on Coruscant and elsewhere. Or, to use your example of ships crashing, in the trailer for Ep VII, we see a crashed ISD that looks remarkably intact. So, again, either they already have such technology or they have something else that means they don't need it.

Maybe something similar, but a much higher efficiency- or perhaps just smaller scale- version would be great. Because shuttles crashing from orbit intact happened multiple times. That'd be quite useful in making every small-craft in the galaxy safer.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'm very much agreed. A replicator all
Um, you do remember that replicators don't just create stuff from energy, they re-arrange the molecules etc in feed stock? You'd still need supplies and logistics (which is why the starships have cargo bays, and there are freighters, amongst other things).

Yes... but all you need for that is a molecular mix, which is easy to get.

It eliminates a ton of logistical demands by making 98% of stuff interchangeable, with only a small amount of items that have to actually be procured.

Once you replicate something, you need a place to put it, so cargo bays and all, and some stuff is by *preference* non-replicated (a lot of people seem to like original art, non-replicated food, etc.), but if, say, they're shipping 500 crates of medicine? Then they almost certainly either replicated the medicine or the components needed to make the medicine.

It doesn't eliminate supply and logistics, but it does cut out some parts of the chain from a complex process to a one-stop-shop with the same fuel providing a mind-boggling array of goods.

Yeah, except it doesn't make everything interchangeable, since you still need the right elements, the replicator is not (as far as I know) doing atomic transmutation to turn, say, Nickel into Copper. Otherwise there would be no point using Latinum as a currency.

AS for replicating stuff for medicines, basic ingredients, perhaps. But how many times have we seen the Enterprise divert from missions to take vital medicines/vaccines to colonies? Many times. Hell, even as far back as TOS "Requiem for Methuselah" the E-Nil had to go searching for a specific chemical/compound/material in order to process it into a treatment, rather than just replicating the stuff.

What it might, or would, do is remove the processing and refining steps between raw materials and finished goods, although that is by no means certain. Consider, the E-D had to get a new component for their warp core fabricated, not replicated. Ships are assembled from parts, not replicated. There are clearly limits. It is even possible that SW has something with similar capabilities. Logically they should do to be able to support a galaxy-spanning civilisation. I don't think it would be quite the game-changer you imagine it to be.

Transporters I can see being used for cargo. Given that SW demonstrably has some form of non-physical component to a being's life (their Force presence, even if not Force-sensitive) and an afterlife that depends on said non-physical component, I can quite easily see people in SW object to transporters on philosophical grounds. It certainly has it's uses, but I doubt it would become as prevalent in SW as it is in ST (which doesn't have anything akin to a "soul" (for want of a better term) or an afterlife, at least in the Federation regions).

Eh, people turn into energy beings and such ^^

But the force being real makes it easy- transport a volunteer, do they sense the same in the force? Then that solves the 'do transporters transport your force self' question in one go.

It would answer the question, but do you really think everyone would believe that immediately? Hell, look at the problems we have today with anti-vaxxers, despite all the evidence being against them they still persist. I could easily see such a movement emerging on SW worlds if transporters are introduced for anything but cargo.

SW already has something akin to structural integrity fields, at least in the old EU. The ICS for Phantom Menace describes "tensor field generators" on the droid landing ships that exert force to hold the ship together during flight and during landings, so such technology would hardly be revolutionary. Even discounting the EU, the SW universe either has something equivalent or construction and engineering skills that render such things irrelevant. For instance, the huge buildings on Coruscant and elsewhere. Or, to use your example of ships crashing, in the trailer for Ep VII, we see a crashed ISD that looks remarkably intact. So, again, either they already have such technology or they have something else that means they don't need it.

Maybe something similar, but a much higher efficiency- or perhaps just smaller scale- version would be great. Because shuttles crashing from orbit intact happened multiple times. That'd be quite useful in making every small-craft in the galaxy safer.

And you know it to be smaller or more efficient how exactly? The shuttle crashes are a bit of a red herring, the times we see them crash reasonably intact they are still damaged, many times tot he point of being irreperable. Not to mention that their actual impact speeds are quite slow, certainly they can't be doing anything beyond, I dunno, Mach 2 or more, since they rarely do anything beyond clear some vegetation in their path. No impact crater, no widespread defoliation. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most shuttle crashes we see are not much more severe than an emergency landing from modern-day aircraft.

And before you say it, the shuttles surviving re-entry intact doesn't really change this, since we know they have shields and are, in fact, designed for re-entry flights.

[Napoleon the Clown]

What's the largest thing we've ever seen a replicator produce? If it's no bigger than what you can fit into a typical home oven, it wouldn't exactly be a game changer.

[Borgholio]

The largest thing I think we've ever seen produced by a replicator was a large roast turkey. But they did mention industrial replicators so I would assume they could produce larger items like construction materials, support beams, etc...

[Q99]

What's the largest thing we've ever seen a replicator produce? If it's no bigger than what you can fit into a typical home oven, it wouldn't exactly be a game changer.

Voyager did make the Delta Flier on it's own, it replicated the parts, then put them together.


Borgholio mentions Industrial replicators, and 11 were supposed to make a difference to the whole of Cardassia's economy. A few is enough to build a planetary infrastructure.


Mind you, if you're on Tatooine and you have so much as a shuttle's replicator, if you can't become super-rich, you aren't trying. Goods that others have to travel to entire other worlds to get to, you can make with a simple command.

Yeah, except it doesn't make everything interchangeable, since you still need the right elements, the replicator is not (as far as I know) doing atomic transmutation to turn, say, Nickel into Copper. Otherwise there would be no point using Latinum as a currency.

There's specifically only a few materials that aren't replicable (latinum being one, while gold can be replicated, and 'gold pressed latinum' is the process of putting latinum into 'worthless' gold for ease of handling. Voyager's reason for limiting replication was named as power requirements), and most raw elements are easy to come by en mass anyway.

The ability to make 98% of processed goods on a whim is economically awe-inspiring, even if raw elements are required.

AS for replicating stuff for medicines, basic ingredients, perhaps. But how many times have we seen the Enterprise divert from missions to take vital medicines/vaccines to colonies? Many times. Hell, even as far back as TOS "Requiem for Methuselah" the E-Nil had to go searching for a specific chemical/compound/material in order to process it into a treatment, rather than just replicating the stuff.

TOS only has very basic replicator technology, it's not even used for food yet. The E-Nil doesn't have one.

Genitronic replicators can do full transplantable organs.

Keep in mind for medicines, if there's a rare disease your local replicator won't have the pattern for the cure. The E-D gets word, heads on the way, figures out the cure, then replicates up as much as need be, or produces huge quantities on the way.

Consider, the E-D had to get a new component for their warp core fabricated, not replicated. Ships are assembled from parts, not replicated. There are clearly limits.

Sure, though you can still replicate the parts fairly often, and fairly complex devices can be replicated if they're small (like DS9 had a whole bunch of shielded phaser-firing balls in all of it's replicators, and those're just crappy Cardassian ones. So, say, making droid brains is easy).

We have seen Voy make a shuttle-sized warp core for the Delta Flier, so it seems like size is the bottleneck for something like the E-D's core, it's too big to make from it's own replicator and may need to be made as a single part for structural reasons. If it can't fit in the replicator's slot, then you can't make it in one piece.

It is even possible that SW has something with similar capabilities. Logically they should do to be able to support a galaxy-spanning civilisation. I don't think it would be quite the game-changer you imagine it to be.

'Industrial duplicators' exist in the EU and there's the World Devastators, but neither have remotely the flexibility (they make *single* things en mass), and neither are present in places like Tatooine or most rim worlds anyway.

This is mind-boggling game-changing. It throws supply routes and trade networks on it's heels, allowing most things to be made locally *whereever* locally is, with only power and raw fuel needed for the replicator, including precision made high tech goods that'd almost certainly have to be imported to most worlds before. Not to mention, since they're ship mounted, they drastically extend the range of ships. You know the Millennium Falcon's breakdown in ESB? Well, if it had a small replicator, it could almost certainly make the parts needed to fix the main hyperdrive and never have to go to Cloud City.

The presence of large-scale industrial tech doesn't eliminate what an economic game-changer having replicators on an entirely different scale is. It'd change what is traded on trade routes, it'd change the local supply and demand situation on almost every world, it'd make worlds more independent and shorted up supply chains.... not only is it a game changer, but it's probably a bigger changer than I think it is, because it's just such a flexible tool someone's going to come up with all kinds of uses for it.

And you know it to be smaller or more efficient how exactly? The shuttle crashes are a bit of a red herring, the times we see them crash reasonably intact they are still damaged, many times tot he point of being irreperable.

Because they survived at all when nothing that size in SW would without being a tangled wreck. As a safety device, that's top-notch!

Not to mention that their actual impact speeds are quite slow, certainly they can't be doing anything beyond, I dunno, Mach 2 or more, since they rarely do anything beyond clear some vegetation in their path. No impact crater, no widespread defoliation

We are talking unpowered falls, so terminal velocity most likely.

We've seen TIEs and the like blow up when crashing into stuff at fairly low velocity. The durability boost is no game-changer, but it's nice.

It would answer the question, but do you really think everyone would believe that immediately? Hell, look at the problems we have today with anti-vaxxers, despite all the evidence being against them they still persist. I could easily see such a movement emerging on SW worlds if transporters are introduced for anything but cargo.

Who cares? You don't need to sell the service to those who don't want to. You sell it to those who do want to use it and are willing to, and who then gain an advantage.

Imagine a band of Mandalorian mercenaries who uses them for insertions, and begins cleaning up high bounty after high bounty.

Imagine the Jedi doing the same and putting an end to, say, a civil war by getting to a governor holded up behind a buncha droid guards (but who doesn't have shields up). That'd be great PR, and if the Jedi don't mind, nor will most force adherents.


People as a whole aren't going to just not-use a gamechanger for vague religious reasons when their religion is a confirmable testable thing.


Oh yea, and even on the cargo front: Droids. In Star Wars, 'cargo' can include intelligent artificial lifeforms who perform complex tasks.

[Treknobabble]

Jedi Crash: Clone trooper reports to Ahsoka and some blue Jedi that the hyperspace coordinates that were input into the system were incorrect, so they were heading straight for a star. One minute later, they return to realspace and cut power as they are getting closer to the sun in question.

A Sunny Day in the Void: Droid pilot detects a comet storm ahead of their position while they're in hyperspace. He walks to the back of the ship to inform the others. Again, a minute after the comets were detected, they exit hyperspace in the middle of the cluster of comets.

So in both cases we have a ship in hyperspace using FTL detection gear to detect STL items in realspace?

[Treknobabble]

Eh, people turn into energy beings and such ^^

But the force being real makes it easy- transport a volunteer, do they sense the same in the force? Then that solves the 'do transporters transport your force self' question in one go.

Seeing as the force is supposed to flow through all living things, it might be a better idea to use a potted plant or an animal of some kind, as opposed to a human.

As for the replicator, depending on how it works, it might be able to turn poop into blaster gas. Useful on an ISD? I think so!

[Batman]

Assuming blaster gas still exists at any rate.

[Q99]

Seeing as the force is supposed to flow through all living things, it might be a better idea to use a potted plant or an animal of some kind, as opposed to a human.

Oh yes, good thinking.

As for the replicator, depending on how it works, it might be able to turn poop into blaster gas. Useful on an ISD? I think so!

Exactly!

Heck, consider how much trash an ISD drops. They could re-process that into spar parts, or even extra AT-STs for their troops.

[Treknobabble]

As for the replicator, depending on how it works, it might be able to turn poop into blaster gas. Useful on an ISD? I think so!

Exactly!

Heck, consider how much trash an ISD drops. They could re-process that into spar parts, or even extra AT-STs for their troops.

Of course, the "poop into blaster gas" idea only works if a) blaster gas is an organic molecule, or b) the replicator works on a subatomic level.

The "trash into tanks" idea works a heck of a lot better, especially if they install an industrial-scale replicator in the ISD (the ship's a mile long, I guarantee there's room). Some assembly may be required, but when the ship's in hyperspace, the storm troopers have nothing better to do.

Given the potential strategic utility of a replicator, the speed of transportation in the empire, and the sheer size of the empire's population, I'd imagine that it wouldn't take longer than a couple of weeks for the empire to assemble a task force to reverse-engineer the replicator on a federation starship. A few months after that, the task force could have succeeded. Within the year, hundreds to thousands of imperial ships could be equipped with replicators appropriate to their needs. Several years after that, every warship in the empire is turning trash into materiel.

[Q99]

Of course, the "poop into blaster gas" idea only works if a) blaster gas is an organic molecule, or b) the replicator works on a subatomic level.

The "trash into tanks" idea works a heck of a lot better, especially if they install an industrial-scale replicator in the ISD (the ship's a mile long, I guarantee there's room). Some assembly may be required, but when the ship's in hyperspace, the storm troopers have nothing better to do.

Given the potential strategic utility of a replicator, the speed of transportation in the empire, and the sheer size of the empire's population, I'd imagine that it wouldn't take longer than a couple of weeks for the empire to assemble a task force to reverse-engineer the replicator on a federation starship. A few months after that, the task force could have succeeded. Within the year, hundreds to thousands of imperial ships could be equipped with replicators appropriate to their needs. Several years after that, every warship in the empire is turning trash into materiel.

Right. You'd have a huge team of scientists with a huge budget working on it. By the time you're done, your warfleet logistics just got super-simplified...


... of course, assuming the rebels don't snag it away from them before it can get to a lab ^^

It'd be an even bigger godsend for the rebellion, what with their limited production abilities. We already know that A-Wings are assembled from a variety of components depending on what's available in a particular system, so even if one lacks one particular replicator sludge, there's alternatives.