What is the standard of living in Star Wars?

[Adam Reynolds]

Yes, but not with stupidly expensive fuel. Basically, it wouldn't even be possible for light freighters like the Falcon to smuggle goods if there weren't a reasonable selection of legitimate goods and cargoes that such freighters could profitably carry. Otherwise, all such ships would be pulled over and searched constantly. Sort of like how everyone gets suspicious when they see a "freighter" that is essentially just a speedboat, because what could they make any money carrying besides drugs and other contraband?

Fuel may be a significant fraction of ongoing upkeep for a spaceship, but it can't be so ridiculous that it isn't economical to use ships to move relatively mundane cargos.

Given the distances involved with FTL travel, any cargo worth transporting has to be valuable, legal or not. Things like exotic ores might just pay for the cost of fuel on something like the Falcon, especially if it were used as something of a cargo tug. Which would also nicely explain why the Falcon has both an offset cockpit and such excess engine power for a freighter.

Even without the cargo tug option, if light freighters are proportionally cheaper to operate than large ones, it would still be justified.

This.

If fuel is so ridiculously expensive, nobody would be flying smaller craft. You'd have a situation like Dune, with ridiculously huge transports carrying massive quantities of cargo and passengers.

I'm okay with fuel being expensive, that's fair enough, but not stupid-expensive. It's just part of operating costs, and arguably one could improve performance with higher qualities of fuel that would cost more.

If you assume that resistance to entering hyperspace works like air resistance but to mass rather than velocity, in which it is based on the square or cube of the mass, smaller freighters make a great deal of sense. Again, especially if the main things being traded are rare and expensive goods, which would be the only thing it would make sense to trade in an interstellar civilization anyway. I suspect even Coruscant has vertical farming to minimize food imports and recycling for most other functions.

Expensive fuel is the only reasonable way to justify the low fleet numbers we see in canon.

An important question is, do you mean under the Republic/Hutts or the Empire? There's ample evidence that the Empire was deliberately impoverishing people and enslaving whole species; Biggs says that even Owen and Beru's farm was under threat of being taken off them by the Empire in the Deleted Scenes of ANH, and we see in Rebels that the farm nationalization programmes under Tarkin did not recompense the farmers, instead condemning them to starvation. What we see of the Empire indicates they're deliberately pursuing policies that enhance the power of the state over personal prosperity. At the extreme end we see the Empire deliberately engaged in starving colonies via blockade, though for unstated reasons.

Is the blockade element also in Rebels? It also fits Vader's comments about Leia and mercy missions.

Even in the Republic era things in the outer rim were pretty bad, as you had to deal with things like the Trade Federation dominating smaller worlds. Which would have logically led to a degree of self-sufficency, which we do largely seem to see in most cases. Though this begs the question of why a blockade caused economic problems for a world like Naboo.

It makes sense, I suppose, if you look at the Clone Wars as an WWI analogue... just with more spaceships and special effects. Widespread economic devastation across the higher end of the galactic power spectrum leading to a severe recession/depression afterwards. It's not until the post-OT era that the Republic starts recovering by sharing the burden with the Imperial Remnant, and the First Order could be considered a parallel to the Nazi Party (as though the parallel wasn't obvious enough anyway).

The economic consequences of the Clone Wars could well have been part of Palpatine's grand scheme, if you look at some of the old EU anyway and buy into the whole "he's an EEEEEEEVIL SITH who wants to eat EVERYBODY's SOULS" bollocks. More likely it was simply easier to rule over an economically subjugated society by extending the promise of future prosperity and wealth if 'everybody does their part' for the Empire.

How do you get the First Order as Nazis without also getting the Empire as Nazis in this analogy? The economic destruction wrought by the Empire is also similar to that of the Nazi regime.

Not a sausage. Could that be from a clone wars episode or something?

It was in a Clone Wars episode in which Padme was against expanding the Clone Army(Pursuit of Peace). This episode also had a plot point in which Padme's aide had little running water or electricity in her district as a result of the war. Which rather hurts my idea about the standard of living in SW being higher than reality. While wartime always tends to have this effect to some degree, that seems extreme for an aide to a prominent senator during wartime.

[Elheru Aran]

It makes sense, I suppose, if you look at the Clone Wars as an WWI analogue... just with more spaceships and special effects. Widespread economic devastation across the higher end of the galactic power spectrum leading to a severe recession/depression afterwards. It's not until the post-OT era that the Republic starts recovering by sharing the burden with the Imperial Remnant, and the First Order could be considered a parallel to the Nazi Party (as though the parallel wasn't obvious enough anyway).

The economic consequences of the Clone Wars could well have been part of Palpatine's grand scheme, if you look at some of the old EU anyway and buy into the whole "he's an EEEEEEEVIL SITH who wants to eat EVERYBODY's SOULS" bollocks. More likely it was simply easier to rule over an economically subjugated society by extending the promise of future prosperity and wealth if 'everybody does their part' for the Empire.

How do you get the First Order as Nazis without also getting the Empire as Nazis in this analogy? The economic destruction wrought by the Empire is also similar to that of the Nazi regime.

Well, it's obviously not a perfect comparison. You could look at it as two sets of Nazis. The Empire being the 'waging war and actually fighting people' Nazis, the First Order being the 'let's get all fancy and militarized in this period of peace to beat down our treacherous enemy' Nazis...

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but not with stupidly expensive fuel. Basically, it wouldn't even be possible for light freighters like the Falcon to smuggle goods if there weren't a reasonable selection of legitimate goods and cargoes that such freighters could profitably carry. Otherwise, all such ships would be pulled over and searched constantly. Sort of like how everyone gets suspicious when they see a "freighter" that is essentially just a speedboat, because what could they make any money carrying besides drugs and other contraband?

Fuel may be a significant fraction of ongoing upkeep for a spaceship, but it can't be so ridiculous that it isn't economical to use ships to move relatively mundane cargos.

Given the distances involved with FTL travel, any cargo worth transporting has to be valuable, legal or not.

Not necessarily. I mean, in real life we routinely ship random stuff like cheap plastic toys and T-shirts literally to the opposite side of the planet, because the cost of making them in countries with expensive labor is higher than the cost of manufacturing them with cheap foreign labor and shipping them ten thousand miles.

No one used to do that- but even in the old days merchants would routinely transport things like wool and coal and lumber which are bulky. Space travel may change the rules, but it doesn't have to. Just because commodities would have to be shipped vast distances doesn't mean it's uneconomical to do so.

There are plenty of references in Star Wars to bulk freighters carrying relatively large cargoes, often of mundane materials and such. There are planets that more or less cannot feed themselves and would appear to be reliant on imported food. Conversely, there are "agri-worlds" that grow far more food than their own needs could require, which implies an interstellar trade in food. And both the old and new EU canon supports the idea that planets can suffer intensely when "blockaded" by a hostile fleet- as though the supplies they were receiving from interstellar traffic were vital to short term survival and not produced locally. And that includes worlds that sure look like they are capable of growing their own food and manufacturing basic goods.

But if planets are not economically self-sufficient, this increases the likelihood that they routinely import bulk goods from other star systems.

Things like exotic ores might just pay for the cost of fuel on something like the Falcon, especially if it were used as something of a cargo tug. Which would also nicely explain why the Falcon has both an offset cockpit and such excess engine power for a freighter.

Even without the cargo tug option, if light freighters are proportionally cheaper to operate than large ones, it would still be justified.

If fuel is merely expensive, a large fraction of overall costs, yes- but not if it is massively expensive (I recently heard someone, maybe you, suggest that the fuel might cost more than the ship!)

Basically, there has to be some reasonable limit. Fuel could be expensive but only within reason. We routinely see people in Star Wars acting as though fuel is simply not a serious problem, jumping around the galaxy quite casually and not worrying very much about finding the most economical way to solve their problems in terms of travel time. They don't behave as though fuel were precious.

Which suggests that fuel expenses just aren't that big a deal.

This.

If fuel is so ridiculously expensive, nobody would be flying smaller craft. You'd have a situation like Dune, with ridiculously huge transports carrying massive quantities of cargo and passengers.

I'm okay with fuel being expensive, that's fair enough, but not stupid-expensive. It's just part of operating costs, and arguably one could improve performance with higher qualities of fuel that would cost more.

If you assume that resistance to entering hyperspace works like air resistance but to mass rather than velocity, in which it is based on the square or cube of the mass, smaller freighters make a great deal of sense. Again, especially if the main things being traded are rare and expensive goods, which would be the only thing it would make sense to trade in an interstellar civilization anyway. I suspect even Coruscant has vertical farming to minimize food imports and recycling for most other functions.

Expensive fuel is the only reasonable way to justify the low fleet numbers we see in canon.

Not necessarily.

It could be something else that is expensive, something military ships have but civilian ships don't. Say, shield generators or heavy turbolasers, things civilians don't have.

Or it could be that construction of warships is fairly tightly restricted because each warship has world-wrecking bombardment capability, and no government wants to allow control of such potent warships to go into the hands of just anyone. The Empire may only have a relatively small number of star destroyers because each captain has to be vetted so carefully. And it may try to control the galaxy through destroying old weapons and preventing the creation of new ones, rather than just trying to outbuild all its potential rivals.

[Elheru Aran]

Basically, there has to be some reasonable limit. Fuel could be expensive but only within reason. We routinely see people in Star Wars acting as though fuel is simply not a serious problem, jumping around the galaxy quite casually and not worrying very much about finding the most economical way to solve their problems in terms of travel time. They don't behave as though fuel were precious.

Which suggests that fuel expenses just aren't that big a deal.

Mind you:

--In the Prequel Trilogy, all the space travel is done by either Jedi, Sith, the Republic or the Separatists. The only exception is the Naboo craft in Episode 1, which we can safely assume was bankrolled by the Naboo government, and we already know Naboo is considered a fairly wealthy world. Well, I suppose there's also the Tantive IV in Sith... But, effectively, we don't see any 'private citizens' travelling by themselves. We can fairly safely assume that the government was bankrolling all the travel that we actually saw for ourselves, with the exception of the passenger freighter that Anakin and Padme travel to Naboo aboard in AOTC, another example of the 'large bulk freighter' that could be a consideration in a situation where fuel is expensive.

--In the Original Trilogy... we do have Han Solo and the Falcon. AFAIK, he never really says anything about fuel, despite several times being in situations where it could be a valid concern. In ANH, he appears to have just fueled up before they leave Mos Eisley, and somehow I doubt the Empire would have kindly gassed up the Falcon aboard the Death Star for its trip to Yavin. I can see the Rebels giving Solo a free fill-up as part of his reward for rescuing the Princess, though. In Empire, Han has apparently been involved with the Rebellion for some time, and presumably they would have allowed him to partake of their fuel supplies if he was helping them out. Lando Calrissian seems to think that the Falcon is ready to fly from Bespin, so if it needed fuelling, one can assume he had his men top it up. Return of the Jedi, the Falcon is unquestionably being used on Rebellion duties, the independent mission to rescue Han notwithstanding.

So in the OT, we can rationalize the Rebellion providing much of the fuel for the Falcon. Their military craft and the Empire's go without saying, of course.

--Finally, the Sequel Trilogy. I'm honestly not sure how the hell the Falcon had gas. Maybe Unkar decided to keep it fuelled in case he had to make a swift getaway sometime. There's Solo's bulk freighter, which he probably paid for as he had the money for it (and occasionally with loans)-- it seemed like something of a black-market arrangement, though, given that he managed to piss off at least two gangs in the process. Again, as military forces, the Resistance and the First Order have their own resources, the Resistance in particular being funded under the table by the Republic.

So really, the only rationalization for 'fuel is ridiculously expensive' is the Falcon in the films. Most of the situations where we see space travel *in the films*, it's almost entirely bankrolled by one government or another. There's a decent bit of civilian space travel in Clone Wars, including pirate groups, renegades (the Death Watch, namely), the crime consortiums, bounty hunters, politicians from one world or another, etc... which would suggest that these groups, some of them being rather fringe, can swing it in that regard.

You can rationalize 'fuel is expensive' well enough-- that wouldn't be terribly unusual-- but it's more likely that if it's expensive, people find ways to economize, and the governments don't bother economizing. Luke doesn't say anything about 'well I might have to stretch my credits to fuel up for a trip to Alderaan if I buy a ship' in the cantina in ANH. The Rebels never say 'we have a fuel shortage'. Neither do the Republic or the Separatists in Clone Wars. Nothing like that anywhere.

[Simon_Jester]

--In the Original Trilogy... we do have Han Solo and the Falcon. AFAIK, he never really says anything about fuel, despite several times being in situations where it could be a valid concern. In ANH, he appears to have just fueled up before they leave Mos Eisley, and somehow I doubt the Empire would have kindly gassed up the Falcon aboard the Death Star for its trip to Yavin. I can see the Rebels giving Solo a free fill-up as part of his reward for rescuing the Princess, though. In Empire, Han has apparently been involved with the Rebellion for some time, and presumably they would have allowed him to partake of their fuel supplies if he was helping them out. Lando Calrissian seems to think that the Falcon is ready to fly from Bespin, so if it needed fuelling, one can assume he had his men top it up. Return of the Jedi, the Falcon is unquestionably being used on Rebellion duties, the independent mission to rescue Han notwithstanding.

So in the OT, we can rationalize the Rebellion providing much of the fuel for the Falcon. Their military craft and the Empire's go without saying, of course.

Right, but if fuel were highly expensive you'd think the rebels would at least have considered fuel considerations, it would have at least merited mention at some point in the entire trilogy that fuel might be a factor.

You can rationalize 'fuel is expensive' well enough-- that wouldn't be terribly unusual-- but it's more likely that if it's expensive, people find ways to economize, and the governments don't bother economizing. Luke doesn't say anything about 'well I might have to stretch my credits to fuel up for a trip to Alderaan if I buy a ship' in the cantina in ANH. The Rebels never say 'we have a fuel shortage'. Neither do the Republic or the Separatists in Clone Wars. Nothing like that anywhere.

Exactly. NOBODY ever seems to have a fuel shortage. There may be a few plots in the EU TV shows that feature fuel shortages or the spectre of same, but I'm betting those are based on the threat of critical infrastructure being taken out and disrupting the ability to make or supply fuel. Not on the fuel itself being just plain too expensive.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Doesn't the ROTS opening crawl say something like "The Republic spends it's waning wealth on grand fleets and armies to defend the Core?" That certainly sounds like money is running out.

Nope.

War! The Republic is crumbling
under attacks by the ruthless
Sith Lord, Count Dooku.
There are heroes on both sides.
Evil is everywhere.

In a stunning move, the
fiendish droid leader, General
Grievous, has swept into the
Republic capital and kidnapped
Chancellor Palpatine, leader of
the Galactic Senate.

As the Separatist Droid Army
attempts to flee the besieged
capital with their valuable
hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a
desperate mission to rescue the
captive Chancellor....

Not a sausage. Could that be from a clone wars episode or something?

Huh, I thought it was in there. Maybe it was the novelisation. Still, "the Republic is crumbling" isn't exactly a good sign for economic stability.

[Adam Reynolds]

For the short version, my theory is that fuel is expensive and gets proportionally more expensive the larger one goes. It explains why we never see Executor sized freighters and only a handful of warships that size as well as the low fleet numbers overall.

Though another possibility comes to mind. Perhaps the biggest limiting factor is actually something about reactor construction rather than fuel itself.

There are plenty of references in Star Wars to bulk freighters carrying relatively large cargoes, often of mundane materials and such. There are planets that more or less cannot feed themselves and would appear to be reliant on imported food. Conversely, there are "agri-worlds" that grow far more food than their own needs could require, which implies an interstellar trade in food. And both the old and new EU canon supports the idea that planets can suffer intensely when "blockaded" by a hostile fleet- as though the supplies they were receiving from interstellar traffic were vital to short term survival and not produced locally. And that includes worlds that sure look like they are capable of growing their own food and manufacturing basic goods.

But if planets are not economically self-sufficient, this increases the likelihood that they routinely import bulk goods from other star systems.

Are there any cases of a blockade being a notable serious threat on its own? There were several cases in Clone Wars of blockades, but they were cases in which the blockade was protecting an invasion army. Ryloth was a notable example, as was Christophsis. Naboo, the film example, gave no evidence that the blockade on its own was doing any real damage to the planet. It was more of a political statement, that the Republic cannot protect its worlds from something like this. And like the Clone Wars examples, it was also followed by a invasion, as the blockade alone was ineffective.

As for agri-worlds, that could be something like a delicacy rather than a primary foodstuff. The fact that Kamino was able to grow an entire army in secret in that fashion, indicates that agri-imports aren't exactly common, even on a world like Kamino. If they were to suddenly step up food imports someone would know. Coruscant and a few others might import food to some degree, but the overwhelming majority is still likely grown on planet.

Not necessarily.

It could be something else that is expensive, something military ships have but civilian ships don't. Say, shield generators or heavy turbolasers, things civilians don't have.

Or it could be that construction of warships is fairly tightly restricted because each warship has world-wrecking bombardment capability, and no government wants to allow control of such potent warships to go into the hands of just anyone. The Empire may only have a relatively small number of star destroyers because each captain has to be vetted so carefully. And it may try to control the galaxy through destroying old weapons and preventing the creation of new ones, rather than just trying to outbuild all its potential rivals.

While that justifies the Empire, it doesn't justify the low numbers seen during the Clone Wars. The Republic had both Jedi, who would never fire upon a populated world, and extremely loyal clones that were bred for obedience. The CIS on the other hand, wanted to destroy words. As well as having droid crews programmed for obedience, who would never fire in such a situation without orders.

Though I will admit that something like Tibanna gas could also be an element of the high cost. While civilian small arms are somewhat common, they are not as common on smaller starships. The handful that are armed are among the more espensive designs.

--In the Prequel Trilogy, all the space travel is done by either Jedi, Sith, the Republic or the Separatists. The only exception is the Naboo craft in Episode 1, which we can safely assume was bankrolled by the Naboo government, and we already know Naboo is considered a fairly wealthy world. Well, I suppose there's also the Tantive IV in Sith... But, effectively, we don't see any 'private citizens' travelling by themselves. We can fairly safely assume that the government was bankrolling all the travel that we actually saw for ourselves, with the exception of the passenger freighter that Anakin and Padme travel to Naboo aboard in AOTC, another example of the 'large bulk freighter' that could be a consideration in a situation where fuel is expensive.

The majority of those ships were in the proportionally small category. Even Anakin and Padme's freightor was on the small side in relative terms. My point is generally that as one gets bigger, economies of scale work against you.

So really, the only rationalization for 'fuel is ridiculously expensive' is the Falcon in the films. Most of the situations where we see space travel *in the films*, it's almost entirely bankrolled by one government or another. There's a decent bit of civilian space travel in Clone Wars, including pirate groups, renegades (the Death Watch, namely), the crime consortiums, bounty hunters, politicians from one world or another, etc... which would suggest that these groups, some of them being rather fringe, can swing it in that regard.

If the goods transported are rare and expensive, it would justify piracy, regardless of the costs involved. Wasn't Death Watch partially funded by the CIS, at least part of the time?

Ships like Slave 1 also aren't exactly roomy, nor are bounty hunters like Fett or Sugi cheap.

You can rationalize 'fuel is expensive' well enough-- that wouldn't be terribly unusual-- but it's more likely that if it's expensive, people find ways to economize, and the governments don't bother economizing. Luke doesn't say anything about 'well I might have to stretch my credits to fuel up for a trip to Alderaan if I buy a ship' in the cantina in ANH. The Rebels never say 'we have a fuel shortage'. Neither do the Republic or the Separatists in Clone Wars. Nothing like that anywhere.

While it is true that no one has fuel shortages, the low ship numbers seen to explain that. Without enough ships to drain your reserves, it solves the problem in that sense. No one is willing to waste the resources to build ships they can't fuel.

Right, but if fuel were highly expensive you'd think the rebels would at least have considered fuel considerations, it would have at least merited mention at some point in the entire trilogy that fuel might be a factor.

For a resistance movement, the Rebel Alliance is phenomenally well funded and well equipped. Given that we see no mention of their funding source throughout the films, the fact that we also don't see logistics discussion in that light is hardly surprising.

Expensive fuel does justify why they were throwing away pilots as freely as they were at Hoth in snowspeeders. It was too expensive to waste their starfighters, but repulsorlift snowspeeders presumably have cheaper fuel. They were willing to throw away two pilots per speeder, likely indicating that they had more pilot than starfighters.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Huh, I thought it was in there. Maybe it was the novelisation. Still, "the Republic is crumbling" isn't exactly a good sign for economic stability.

I don't think it was in the novelization either. I'll have to re-read it to be sure.

The Republic's crumbling, because the edifice has been allowed to rot for so long, and the Separatists were just exposing that. As for economic stability, it ultimately doesn't matter, if the Republic remains economically stable, because the Empire ended up imposing order, and got the trains running on time. Just ignore those slagged planets, piles of dead bodies, and Wookies in chains, you've got to crank out 3,000 blaster rifles before the end of your shift.

And, by special order of the Emperor, you have been selected to work overtime....

[NecronLord]

if the Republic remains economically stable, because the Empire ended up imposing order, and got the trains running on time.

The great thing about Rebels is that it drives a truck through the '(space) fascists make the trains run on time' notion.

[Simon_Jester]

For the short version, my theory is that fuel is expensive and gets proportionally more expensive the larger one goes. It explains why we never see Executor sized freighters and only a handful of warships that size as well as the low fleet numbers overall.

About the only movies that would ever give us any occasion to see such freighters would be Episodes I and II over Coruscant, and then only on the scenes specifically showing spacecraft approaching Coruscant. And even a city-world's commercial needs could be supplied by a ten kilometer freighter for a very long time, and realistically it would make more sense to build a huge fleet of one kilometer freighters that can visit more destinations and land for unloading in many different parts of the planet. So there are good reasons not to build ten-kilometer hyperfreighters even if you have the option of doing so. They're just too big compared to any place they might go, they'd be useful only for very strange specialist applications.

And we DO see freighters that utterly dwarf anything we use in real life; the Trade Federation's Lucrehulks are converted freighters.

So I don't think expensive fuel is necessary to explain either small fleets or lack of hyperfreighters.

Though another possibility comes to mind. Perhaps the biggest limiting factor is actually something about reactor construction rather than fuel itself.

Frankly this makes more sense, because the effect is to make ships themselves expensive, not the fuel for a ship. It also helps to explain why there are 'used ships' that can be within the means of private individuals on poor planets- because at some point the reactor is a sunk cost and whoever is reselling the ship isn't looking to recoup the cost of the reactor.

Are there any cases of a blockade being a notable serious threat on its own? There were several cases in Clone Wars of blockades, but they were cases in which the blockade was protecting an invasion army. Ryloth was a notable example, as was Christophsis. Naboo, the film example, gave no evidence that the blockade on its own was doing any real damage to the planet. It was more of a political statement, that the Republic cannot protect its worlds from something like this. And like the Clone Wars examples, it was also followed by a invasion, as the blockade alone was ineffective.

As for agri-worlds, that could be something like a delicacy rather than a primary foodstuff. The fact that Kamino was able to grow an entire army in secret in that fashion, indicates that agri-imports aren't exactly common, even on a world like Kamino. If they were to suddenly step up food imports someone would know. Coruscant and a few others might import food to some degree, but the overwhelming majority is still likely grown on planet.

In reverse order- while only 'a few' ecumenopoli may be importing food, each one potentially has a population in the trillions. It doesn't take many such worlds to drive a LOT of commerce with the outside galaxy.

Kamino grew an army in secret, but if that army was big enough to have a meaningful impact on a galactic war, feeding it would be very difficult. Now, the Kaminoans are masters of bioscience. For all we know, they have the means to cultivate enormous amounts of food on their planet (by aquaculture?). But otherwise... honestly they need a quantity of food that exceeds the natural ecological carrying capacity of their planet. It's got to come from somewhere. And sure, if they were importing huge amounts of food it would be noticed... except of course that this is already a galaxy where huge freighters carrying potentially millions upon millions of tons of food move around. And where you really can't tell where a ship has gone once it enters hyperspace. Since the very existence of Kamino is apparently a well kept secret or at least highly obscure, it wouldn't be too hard for them to hire agents to shovel produce from an agri-world or two onto Lucrehulks or similar ships and bring them to Kamino, without more than a few people involved actually knowing where the food is going. And we already know such ships exist in large numbers, because the Trade Federation has enough of them to use them as warship conversions by the dozen to resolve a trade dispute with a single planet.

While that justifies the Empire, it doesn't justify the low numbers seen during the Clone Wars. The Republic had both Jedi, who would never fire upon a populated world, and extremely loyal clones that were bred for obedience. The CIS on the other hand, wanted to destroy words. As well as having droid crews programmed for obedience, who would never fire in such a situation without orders.

Though I will admit that something like Tibanna gas could also be an element of the high cost. While civilian small arms are somewhat common, they are not as common on smaller starships. The handful that are armed are among the more espensive designs.

This is, to me, more credible- as noted earlier it increases the likelihood that it is ships which are expensive, not fuel. Ships being expensive is broadly consistent with the plot in Star Wars; fuel being expensive kind of isn't.

Note that in the clone wars, small fleet numbers can be easily explained by-
1) High military casualties. Both sides are grinding each other up by attrition. Unless one side decisively outproduces the other, this may result in low total military strength at any one time.

2) Both sides raiding each other's production infrastructure. Any planet that is a known source of enemy war materiel can and will be attacked, and there is no 'rear area' in a war fought with Star Wars hyperdrive. That's different from real 'total war' mobilization, which is based on the assumption that there is a secure "home front" or "rear area" well behind your army, and which is at least temporarily safe from attack. If you don't have that, places that build ships may be destroyed early on. Which means that total production of ships is decreased. It also means that both sides have an incentive to build in secret locations, which will generally have less industrial capacity than high-end worlds known for high production before the war. And it further means that much of the available resources of any given industrial world will need to go into building defenses for that world, to repel a raid against the facilities. All this has a depressing effect on the total strength of armed mobile forces either side can support.

3) Neither side was mobilized before the war. The Republic was comically unready for war, and the CIS was dominated by a coalition of corporations which presumably had only a little more than the military forces it would take to secure the worlds they personally own... in a demilitarized galaxy. Think about, oh, a war between Microsoft and the nation of Costa Rica (silly, but bear with me). Neither side really has a military, they at most employ a modest number of relatively lightly armed security personnel- Microsoft even more so than Costa Rica. They would both have to buy, recruit, and train armed forces... and neither really has access to the facilities to do so very quickly. So the war might be decided by comparatively small forces, although you'd expect considerable growth over time.

--In the Prequel Trilogy, all the space travel is done by either Jedi, Sith, the Republic or the Separatists. The only exception is the Naboo craft in Episode 1, which we can safely assume was bankrolled by the Naboo government, and we already know Naboo is considered a fairly wealthy world. Well, I suppose there's also the Tantive IV in Sith... But, effectively, we don't see any 'private citizens' travelling by themselves. We can fairly safely assume that the government was bankrolling all the travel that we actually saw for ourselves, with the exception of the passenger freighter that Anakin and Padme travel to Naboo aboard in AOTC, another example of the 'large bulk freighter' that could be a consideration in a situation where fuel is expensive.

The majority of those ships were in the proportionally small category. Even Anakin and Padme's freightor was on the small side in relative terms. My point is generally that as one gets bigger, economies of scale work against you.

Which is great... except that the Trade Federation has a fleet of Lucrehulks. Not just one or two "you idiot this will break our bank accounts" white elephants that could be explained as somebody in corporate headquarters making a bad decision. They have a fleet of the things. Surely at some point, some Neimoidian sat down with their accountants and worked out whether a freighter the size of a Lucrehulk could actually make a profit... and concluded that it could.

You can rationalize 'fuel is expensive' well enough-- that wouldn't be terribly unusual-- but it's more likely that if it's expensive, people find ways to economize, and the governments don't bother economizing. Luke doesn't say anything about 'well I might have to stretch my credits to fuel up for a trip to Alderaan if I buy a ship' in the cantina in ANH. The Rebels never say 'we have a fuel shortage'. Neither do the Republic or the Separatists in Clone Wars. Nothing like that anywhere.

While it is true that no one has fuel shortages, the low ship numbers seen to explain that. Without enough ships to drain your reserves, it solves the problem in that sense. No one is willing to waste the resources to build ships they can't fuel.

Thing is, if fuel is the limiting factor on overall ship logistics, in wartime you would build as many ships as you can fuel- you wouldn't deliberately create a situation where you have half the numbeer of ships you COULD support, because then you'd be at risk of losing the war. While you wouldn't intentionally place yourself in a fuel shortage either, you'd still end up with a situation where fuel supplies are tight and making sure fuel is available becomes a major concern... in which case it ought to come up now and then, at least in the EU.

Right, but if fuel were highly expensive you'd think the rebels would at least have considered fuel considerations, it would have at least merited mention at some point in the entire trilogy that fuel might be a factor.

For a resistance movement, the Rebel Alliance is phenomenally well funded and well equipped. Given that we see no mention of their funding source throughout the films, the fact that we also don't see logistics discussion in that light is hardly surprising.

Fair point, but we also have little reference to fuel shortages in the EU. It just doesn't seem like fuel is dominating the Rebels' (or the Empire's) decisions about what to do strategically.

Expensive fuel does justify why they were throwing away pilots as freely as they were at Hoth in snowspeeders. It was too expensive to waste their starfighters, but repulsorlift snowspeeders presumably have cheaper fuel. They were willing to throw away two pilots per speeder, likely indicating that they had more pilot than starfighters.

Having more pilots than fighters is actually not an unusual thing. The Rebellion in particular would have little trouble attracting recruits, so there are a lot of explanations for "more pilots than fighters." Also, most of the people we see on Hoth (aside from Wedge and Luke) are never seen again in the movies. For all we know, they weren't pilots at all until they were recruited as gunners for the snowspeeders.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Having more pilots than fighters is actually not an unusual thing. The Rebellion in particular would have little trouble attracting recruits, so there are a lot of explanations for "more pilots than fighters." Also, most of the people we see on Hoth (aside from Wedge and Luke) are never seen again in the movies. For all we know, they weren't pilots at all until they were recruited as gunners for the snowspeeders.

Or that the Rebellion was short-handed enough in terms of pilots and personnel/facilities to train more pilots at the time of the Battle Of Hoth, that the pilots they did have had to be able to fly multiple craft.

Which could backfire disastrously, if your pilots are out flying skyhoppers, when TIE fighters/bombers come rolling in, but you do what you can, if you're a Reb, I guess.

[MKSheppard]

Drugs are expensive indeed, but in reality, losing cargo every once in a while is the price of doing business. Drug smugglers aren't threatened with death for dropping a single shipment, especially when they are about to be jumped by the US Coast Guard(or equivalent). It is seen as prudent behavior. The fact that it is a problem in Star Wars indicates that there must be another factor. Expensive fuel would justify this.

The reasonable conclusion as far as starships is that it is a question of size. If it scales exponentially, it would explain why fighters can have their own hyperdrives but there are so few capital ships. The Rebel fleet's jump also can't have been all that far. The endurance of pilots to remain in their fighters is a limiting factor, especially considering that this would be the fight of their lives. It also explains why small freighters are profitable.

WEG explained this by:

Starfighters are extremely expensive to fuel and keep in operating condition. A starfighter requires expensive fuel cells for power. The most efficient fighters drain their power after a few short weeks of standard flying - and the same amount of energy is exerted in just under an hour of combat flight. Starfighter fuel cells consist of refined radioactive metals mixes; these cells must be roughly twice as pure as standard starship-grade cells. Few civilian manufacturing facilities are capable of producing them. If you have knowledge of facilities which could be converted to manufacture starfighter fuel cells, please contact your Sector Supply Secretary immediately.

[Adam Reynolds]

So I am now agreeing that fuel likely isn't the primary cost, at least not for civilian ships. It would make the most sense if it were something that affects warships almost exclusively, as that is where we see the lowest numbers. I though about going into a point by point again, but it isn't worth it given that I don't really disagree anymore.

Anyway, if it is not fuel in general, what is it? There are five possibilities that come to mind.

Option one is valuable resources used in warship construction, likely in something like the reactor. This has the advantage of fitting with low ship numbers as well as the fact that ships seem to get used fully once built. It also fits with ships all being built at roughly the same size, as that is optimal and nothing larger would be worth the price tag. Though that could also be true in general. It also fits Rey's existance on Jakku. There are parts on an ISD valuable enough to salvage even 25 years after it was destroyed.

The largest problem with this theory is that we never see older ships remaining in service. The Rebel Alliance fleet in particular would logically have a few Clone Wars era designs if new construction was the largest cost. It also doesn't fit converted designs like the TF battleship or Mon Cal cruisers being very effective, even though by all accounts they appear to be. Though it is possible Mon Cal cruisers were overengineered to be convertible into warships if the need arose. It would also explain what the TF battleship cores were doing on Geonosis, they were being converted to a warship standard.

Option two is tibanna gas used in weapons of all scales, which has the advantage of explaining most of the same traits as fuel, but is specific to warships. There are two downsides that come to mind. The first is that small arms are cheap as dirt. While it is possibly that the requirements scale up nonlineraly, if there was a gunpowder shortange for artillery, how cheap would handgun ammo be?

The second problem is that we don't see any evidence of weapons being more expensive than warships. If weapons themselves were the stumbling block, we might see things like fireships used with more frequency. While this could be explained by the fact that ships are manuverable enough to avoid collisions, given that we occasionally see ramming used as a desperation tactic, it doesn't fit either.

Military grade fuel being more expensive is a possibility, as mentioned by Shep. While this certainly fits the issue of numbers, as well as the lack of outdated designs, there are two problems. The first is that of the Millenium Falcon performing on roughly the same level as much smaller starfighters. How is it able to hot rod with fighters while using civilian grade fuel? I suppose the argument could be made that this is why it is so unreliable, as well as why it performs so much better in ROTJ, as it had higher quality fuel for a change.

Military grade fuel also has the problems Simon previously mentioned in that we don't see militaries acting as if fuel is a problem. It would make sense to build ships without fuel, especially over valuable targets like Kamino or Coruscant. In the same way it would make sense to build massive vessels like the Mandator class and idle them over such worlds. Especially assuming that hyperspace jumps are the thing that is expensive.

One would also expect the Rebel Alliance to use civilian grade fuels to some degree. One could argue that this is possibly the case, and why TIE fighters are so much more agile, but given that TIEs already have a lower mass that explains this trait, more expensive fuel is unnecessary.

A fourth possibility is that of crew numbers. It is possible that the manpower to sustain serious fleets are not available, regardless of the avalibility of resources. This could also explain the Death Star, as well as the Clone and droid armies of the Clone Wars.

Though even if the average populace for a Star Wars planet is as low as a few hundred million, the observed fleet numbers are still vastly too low. As a back of the envelope calculation, based on the total number of naval vessels on Earth and estimating rough crew sizes, Earth has enough sailors to crew 6.8 star destroyers(274,000). Converting this over to a ratio based on the population of Earth one can use it to estimate the numbers for SW(27000 people per sailor).

While the estimate of the population of the Star Wars galaxy is unknown, as an estimate, if one assumes that there are 300 million people on each world and that there are only 100,000 worlds in the Empire, that still gives enough crewmembers for almost 30,000 star destroyers. While it is likely that the representative proportion would be lower in SW, it seems unlikely that it would be that much lower. Even after accounting for the possibility that many of those potential recruits serve in local sector militaries, it still leaves plenty of crews for star destroyers.

The final possibility(perhaps most plausible of all) is that none of this is especially a factor and there simply isn't a strong demand for heavy warships in the galaxy at any point. The bottleneck of lack of initial numbers at the time of the Clone Wars cannot be overstated. Especially considering the fact that the relatively tiny CIS is able to match the much larger Republic militarily throughout the war. Though their droid forces presumably had less of a bottleneck than the clones of the Republic.

In the case of the Empire, there quite simply isn't a threat worth having a large military to go after. At least not until Endor, by which point it is too late. Given the general inefficiencies we see in the Empire, there is no reason to assume they are a paradigm of efficiency here.

[Lord Revan]

People have nasty habit of assuming that the potential logistical abilities are always used to their full, often forgetting that demand is part of that logistical capability, there's no point in building more warships then you need, we know that even during the time of the rebellion the galaxy is mostly peaceful so it would make sense that there isn't a demand for large and powerful fleets. After all in the new EU there isn't a known external threat that would make larger fleet nessecery.

[Simon_Jester]

WEG explained this by:

Starfighters are extremely expensive to fuel and keep in operating condition. A starfighter requires expensive fuel cells for power. The most efficient fighters drain their power after a few short weeks of standard flying - and the same amount of energy is exerted in just under an hour of combat flight. Starfighter fuel cells consist of refined radioactive metals mixes; these cells must be roughly twice as pure as standard starship-grade cells. Few civilian manufacturing facilities are capable of producing them. If you have knowledge of facilities which could be converted to manufacture starfighter fuel cells, please contact your Sector Supply Secretary immediately.

That tells us starfighters are "very expensive" and require a higher grade of fuel than civilian (or apparently military) grade ships. It does not support hypotheses like "the fuel is more expensive than the ship" or "fuel is expensive enough to make large freighters uneconomical even though we see large freighters run by for-profit corporations."

Anyway, if it is not fuel in general, what is it? There are five possibilities that come to mind.

Option one is valuable resources used in warship construction, likely in something like the reactor...

The largest problem with this theory is that we never see older ships remaining in service. The Rebel Alliance fleet in particular would logically have a few Clone Wars era designs if new construction was the largest cost. It also doesn't fit converted designs like the TF battleship or Mon Cal cruisers being very effective, even though by all accounts they appear to be. Though it is possible Mon Cal cruisers were overengineered to be convertible into warships if the need arose. It would also explain what the TF battleship cores were doing on Geonosis, they were being converted to a warship standard.

By the time of the Rebel-era movies, it's been fifteen to twenty years since the end of the Clone Wars. This is enough time for Clone Wars era warships to have been scrapped and replaced with more advanced designs, or simply new ships that hadn't been physically abused and battered by wartime operations. While in principle I'd expect the Rebels to use Clone War relics extensively, in practice this isn't that big a problem.

As to the civilian conversion issue, it may well be that converted merchantman designs are as you say designed for having a military-grade reactor and weapon systems installed quickly. For that matter, we don't even know that Phantom Menace-era Lucrehulks were fully effective as warships- they might have NOT had military-grade reactors or shielding, and still been so massive that Naboo's weak defenses could not threaten them.

Option two is tibanna gas used in weapons of all scales, which has the advantage of explaining most of the same traits as fuel, but is specific to warships. There are two downsides that come to mind. The first is that small arms are cheap as dirt. While it is possibly that the requirements scale up nonlineraly, if there was a gunpowder shortange for artillery, how cheap would handgun ammo be?

If the cost of the ammunition scales linearly with the energy released by firing the weapon, ANY starship weapon should be orders of magnitude more expensive to provide ammunition for than ANY man-portable weapon in Star Wars. This is a convenient little side effect of our concluding that Star Wars ship weapon firepower starts in the kiloton range for fighterweight lasers and runs up into the teraton range for star destroyers.

The second problem is that we don't see any evidence of weapons being more expensive than warships. If weapons themselves were the stumbling block, we might see things like fireships used with more frequency. While this could be explained by the fact that ships are manuverable enough to avoid collisions, given that we occasionally see ramming used as a desperation tactic, it doesn't fit either.

Eh, it comes close. Remember that fireships would require, effectively, explosives- you can't literally just set a ship on fire as you could in real life and have it be a threat to enemy shipping. So it may well not be cheaper to destroy an enemy ship by packing your own vessel with umpty zillion megatons of explosives than to deliver a targeted bombardment to destroy the same ship with beam weapons.

While the estimate of the population of the Star Wars galaxy is unknown, as an estimate, if one assumes that there are 300 million people on each world and that there are only 100,000 worlds in the Empire, that still gives enough crewmembers for almost 30,000 star destroyers. While it is likely that the representative proportion would be lower in SW, it seems unlikely that it would be that much lower. Even after accounting for the possibility that many of those potential recruits serve in local sector militaries, it still leaves plenty of crews for star destroyers.

The Empire has many worlds from which it probably will not recruit for political reasons, and sectors of the population it does not trust. Even if we drop the gratuitous sexism attributed to the Imperial military by the old EU, there is clearly still anti-alien bias among the Empire and they tend to treat nonhumans as slaves and tools rather than trustworthy crew members of a starship.

All these effects may combine to greatly reduce the actual population pool available to operate star destroyers and other heavy ships of the Imperial fleet.

The final possibility(perhaps most plausible of all) is that none of this is especially a factor and there simply isn't a strong demand for heavy warships in the galaxy at any point. The bottleneck of lack of initial numbers at the time of the Clone Wars cannot be overstated. Especially considering the fact that the relatively tiny CIS is able to match the much larger Republic militarily throughout the war. Though their droid forces presumably had less of a bottleneck than the clones of the Republic.

It is also likely that Palpatine spent the years prior to the Clone Wars carefully ensuring a balance of military power and production capacity between the CIS and the Republic. Thus we have Dooku approaching groups like the Techno Union and the Geonosians, whose industrial capability helps offset the weaknesses of the small CIS population. There may also have been subtle efforts to prevent any heavy armament programs on worlds likely to remain loyal to the Republic... but at the same time, Palpatine would have tried to ensure that the CIS did not have the capacity to overwhelm the Republic militarily either. He wanted a long, drawn out war that could be used to cement his power and lure the Jedi into an exposed political and tactical position, after all, not a lightning campaign resolved by either side.

[Eternal_Freedom]

As to the civilian conversion issue, it may well be that converted merchantman designs are as you say designed for having a military-grade reactor and weapon systems installed quickly. For that matter, we don't even know that Phantom Menace-era Lucrehulks were fully effective as warships- they might have NOT had military-grade reactors or shielding, and still been so massive that Naboo's weak defenses could not threaten them.

TPM era Lucrehulks probably don't have warship-grade shields/weapons. We know their strong enough to fend off attacks by a squadron of fighters but that makes sense, you'd want freighters to at least have some chance of resisting pirates. By the Clone Wars they've had time for full combat refits (that may even have been ships just starting construction that were re-designed as warships part way through, we don't know that the ROTS Lucrehulks we see are the same TPM vintage vessels).

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, the Trade Federation very well might have a number of militarized Lucrehulks (call them 'Warhulks,' maybe?)

It would be a reasonable precaution. This can't be the first time they've gotten into a war against a planetary power, and since we know that surface-to-space turbolaser batteries and proton torpedoes are a thing, you can't really fight even a lightly armed planet reliably unless you have at least some ships significantly more powerful than the average pirate.

Now, the 'Warhulks' might not be able to match the power of first-class battleships of equal volume, but they'd still be using some military-grade equipment.

[Abacus]

As far as fuel goes, I get the feeling that a lot of them tend to be something like this:



Space ships have been around for tens of thousands of years in the SW universe, so it makes sense that fuel would eventually get so cheap that anyone well enough off to buy a space ship would also be able to keep it running.

[Abacus]

I'm trying to remember, but there was an EU book where someone was trying to capture Leia or something and Han Solo was paid a large sum of money within a briefcase for helping return a servant to a queen or something -- the money inside was worth like 40,000 credits and the briefcase itself was suppose to be worth something. Or maybe it was given to Lando? My memory is hazy. Anyone else have an idea?

Also, according to Wookiepedia, 1 gram of gold in the SW universe is worth 10 to 15 credits. IRL 1 gram of gold is worth $40+-; so I'd say that the cost of living might be found by finding as many items that have a cost attached to them and then correlating outwards.

[Adam Reynolds]

Space ships have been around for tens of thousands of years in the SW universe, so it makes sense that fuel would eventually get so cheap that anyone well enough off to buy a space ship would also be able to keep it running.

Not necessarily with the energy levels that get thrown around in SW. Ships in Star Wars have greater energy production than possible under E=MC^2, most notably with the Death Star, but also with things like pulling thousands of Gs of acceleration or shooting weapons in the gigaton range on capital ships. Which also requires a way to cheat the second law of thermodynamics(thus leading to the concept of neutrino generators that convert waste heat into an utterly nonreactive form).

Fuel that uses complex mass* to store the fuel in hyperspace, as has been suggested as a solution to this problem, is likely far more expensive than something like simple fusion power. Simply fusion might be used for places like Coruscant, leading to dirt cheap electricity on a planet, but that doesn't mean it would be cheap to fly the Millennium Falcon. If it is synthesized, it could be expensive indeed. Consider something like producing antimatter today. While something like this would undoubtedly get better with technology, there is a limit to how efficient it could become.

* In case you are unfamiliar with the idea, it is loosely similar to that of a tachyon, a hypothetical object in physics that only travels faster than light. It has also been suggested that jumping to hyperspace involves being converted into a tachyonic state. Based on the equations of relativity, it would require an imaginary mass. Thus it is suggested that fuel in SW has a complex mass, that a large quantity of a ships fuel is stored in hyperspace within the ship. Thus allowing Star Wars to defeat the tyranny of the rocket equation.

Also, according to Wookiepedia, 1 gram of gold in the SW universe is worth 10 to 15 credits. IRL 1 gram of gold is worth $40+-; so I'd say that the cost of living might be found by finding as many items that have a cost attached to them and then correlating outwards.

That would merely tell you the nominal value of goods. A yen is worth 1/110th that of US dollars, this doesn't mean the standard of living in Japan is 1/110th that of the US.

[Adam Reynolds]

People have nasty habit of assuming that the potential logistical abilities are always used to their full, often forgetting that demand is part of that logistical capability, there's no point in building more warships then you need, we know that even during the time of the rebellion the galaxy is mostly peaceful so it would make sense that there isn't a demand for large and powerful fleets. After all in the new EU there isn't a known external threat that would make larger fleet nessecery.

That is one thing I am glad to see gone. Without the Yuuzhan Vong, the Imperial wank argument that they were necessary is gone.

By the time of the Rebel-era movies, it's been fifteen to twenty years since the end of the Clone Wars. This is enough time for Clone Wars era warships to have been scrapped and replaced with more advanced designs, or simply new ships that hadn't been physically abused and battered by wartime operations. While in principle I'd expect the Rebels to use Clone War relics extensively, in practice this isn't that big a problem.

The biggest problem for the Alliance using Clone Wars designs would be political. Given that their primary victories are political rather than military, it makes sense that that they would focus on a political victory at the expense of tactical weakness.

Another possibility is that many wartime designs were fundamentally flawed. Notably the Venator class has an extremely vulnerable hanger bay, with openings on both sides of the ship. CIS designs were not fully intended for organic crews and this likely have less effective life support systems that might be a low priority in combat. Converting them to house organic crews might be more trouble than it is worth in certain cases.

If the cost of the ammunition scales linearly with the energy released by firing the weapon, ANY starship weapon should be orders of magnitude more expensive to provide ammunition for than ANY man-portable weapon in Star Wars. This is a convenient little side effect of our concluding that Star Wars ship weapon firepower starts in the kiloton range for fighterweight lasers and runs up into the teraton range for star destroyers.

Are we still going with teraton range for cap ships? I though the current consensus was somewhat lower. Though this is otherwise true.

Eh, it comes close. Remember that fireships would require, effectively, explosives- you can't literally just set a ship on fire as you could in real life and have it be a threat to enemy shipping. So it may well not be cheaper to destroy an enemy ship by packing your own vessel with umpty zillion megatons of explosives than to deliver a targeted bombardment to destroy the same ship with beam weapons.

I was thinking about something like a shielded vessel being used in this sense rather than it being filled with explosives. Anakin does something like this with one of his Venators in Clone Wars(Storm Over Ryloth). Though that ship was of course fully loaded with combustibles like tibanna gas, so there is that.

Though it is also possible that shields are equally expensive on the level needed survive capital ship fire enough to allow such a collision. And even if tibanna gas is relatively expensive, it might still be cheaper than suicide tactics with ships durable enough to survive. For a modern in many ways horribly inaccurate comparison, the SM-6 missile costs something in the range of $4 million, but even firing a few dozen are still cheaper than throwing away a $2 billion destroyer.

The Empire has many worlds from which it probably will not recruit for political reasons, and sectors of the population it does not trust. Even if we drop the gratuitous sexism attributed to the Imperial military by the old EU, there is clearly still anti-alien bias among the Empire and they tend to treat nonhumans as slaves and tools rather than trustworthy crew members of a starship.

All these effects may combine to greatly reduce the actual population pool available to operate star destroyers and other heavy ships of the Imperial fleet.

True, though I believe the sexism is fully gone with the new canon. According to the recent novel Lost Stars, the captain of the star destroyer embedded in Jakku was a woman. It was actually a rather tragic love story, involving a pair of kids on an outer rim planet who both had dreams of seeing the stars. She ended up remaining with the Empire, feeling that her oath was valuable. He defected and joined the Rebellion after Alderaan, and ended up storming her star destroyer.

It is also likely that Palpatine spent the years prior to the Clone Wars carefully ensuring a balance of military power and production capacity between the CIS and the Republic. Thus we have Dooku approaching groups like the Techno Union and the Geonosians, whose industrial capability helps offset the weaknesses of the small CIS population. There may also have been subtle efforts to prevent any heavy armament programs on worlds likely to remain loyal to the Republic... but at the same time, Palpatine would have tried to ensure that the CIS did not have the capacity to overwhelm the Republic militarily either. He wanted a long, drawn out war that could be used to cement his power and lure the Jedi into an exposed political and tactical position, after all, not a lightning campaign resolved by either side.

True. The stronger the CIS was, the more the Jedi would be spread out fighting them and the more they would be eliminated by the war itself. The longer it went on, the easier Order 66 would have been. As well, the longer it went on and the more the galaxy suffered, the more citizens of the future Empire would be willing to tolerate in the name of preventing the next Clone Wars.

There was a line of dialog in ROTS between Anakin and Padme that was extremely significant. After she suggested that a diplomatic solution be offered, he stated that she was started to sound like a Seperatist. Just like how in the US at one time, being accused of being a Red meant political death. Even today, Sanders is accused of being a communist to some degree.

One irony with this situation is that the Jedi in this case did the exact opposite of what they had in KOTOR, and in both cases they were wrong. In the Mandalorian wars, they ignored the direct threat, knowing that the pull of the Dark Side was a serious threat. This led to a large number of Jedi going off on their own and falling to the Dark Side. In the Clone Wars, they responded to the direct threat and ignored the less obvious one. Which allowed Palpatine to manipulate his way into power and wipe them out.

To be fair, the Trade Federation very well might have a number of militarized Lucrehulks (call them 'Warhulks,' maybe?)

I believe that was mentioned in the AOTC ICS book. That the TF cores were common and adaptable to different designs, including proper warships.

[Abacus]

That would merely tell you the nominal value of goods. A yen is worth 1/110th that of US dollars, this doesn't mean the standard of living in Japan is 1/110th that of the US.

It's an indicator, not the actual fact. The value of home goods can help you to determine what the standard of living is for people. If food is cheap and of high quality, then their standard of living might be high; etc, et al.

You can come off as really...well, just not a nice way to describe it, but please don't assume that I'm making sweeping statements when I'm only trying to contribute.

[Simon_Jester]

Fuel that uses complex mass* to store the fuel in hyperspace, as has been suggested as a solution to this problem, is likely far more expensive than something like simple fusion power. Simply fusion might be used for places like Coruscant, leading to dirt cheap electricity on a planet, but that doesn't mean it would be cheap to fly the Millennium Falcon. If it is synthesized, it could be expensive indeed. Consider something like producing antimatter today. While something like this would undoubtedly get better with technology, there is a limit to how efficient it could become.

Thing is, civilization in Star Wars has existed (and been actively, aggressively, extensively starfaring) for so long, and their technology is so borderline godlike by modern standards in some ways, that there is really no reasonable upper limit on how industrialized their own galaxy could be. They could have billions of Dyson spheres gathering energy to convert into fuel- not that they must, but they could without contradicting canon in any way that I know of. They could have exotic, unknown power sources that tap zero point energy or whatever to create starship fuel. We don't know.

So we can't say for sure that fuel is rare... and we CAN reasonably argue that a civilization as old as that of the Republic in Star Wars will long since have established a stable industrial base to supply whatever commodities it needs (like starship fuel) to function on the level it is accustomed to (extensive, cheap, relatively casual interstellar travel).

If the cost of the ammunition scales linearly with the energy released by firing the weapon, ANY starship weapon should be orders of magnitude more expensive to provide ammunition for than ANY man-portable weapon in Star Wars. This is a convenient little side effect of our concluding that Star Wars ship weapon firepower starts in the kiloton range for fighterweight lasers and runs up into the teraton range for star destroyers.

Are we still going with teraton range for cap ships? I though the current consensus was somewhat lower. Though this is otherwise true.

Doesn't matter. Teraton-range shots are a necessity for fast Base Delta Zero bombardments, which may be out of canon for now (I'm sure they'll come back though). But even if you dial back a few orders of magnitude the point remains. I could have a Star Wars blaster in my hand my entire life, holding the trigger down the whole time, and never come close to matching the energy output an ISD could deliver with a single well placed turbolaser bolt.

So if the cost of firing weapons is related to the raw cost of energy, then frankly the cost of hand weapon ammunition would be negligible. Or at least, the cost of the energy that goes into firing the shots is negligible; the cost of the handgun clip or its equivalent need not be.

It is also likely that Palpatine spent the years prior to the Clone Wars carefully ensuring a balance of military power and production capacity between the CIS and the Republic. Thus we have Dooku approaching groups like the Techno Union and the Geonosians, whose industrial capability helps offset the weaknesses of the small CIS population. There may also have been subtle efforts to prevent any heavy armament programs on worlds likely to remain loyal to the Republic... but at the same time, Palpatine would have tried to ensure that the CIS did not have the capacity to overwhelm the Republic militarily either. He wanted a long, drawn out war that could be used to cement his power and lure the Jedi into an exposed political and tactical position, after all, not a lightning campaign resolved by either side.

True. The stronger the CIS was, the more the Jedi would be spread out fighting them and the more they would be eliminated by the war itself. The longer it went on, the easier Order 66 would have been. As well, the longer it went on and the more the galaxy suffered, the more citizens of the future Empire would be willing to tolerate in the name of preventing the next Clone Wars.

Up to a point- the point at which the CIS would simply win the war, because even with Dooku secretly being on Palpatine's side, he could not reasonably prevent the CIS war effort from overpowering the Republic.

A quick CIS victory might well leave more Jedi alive (surrendered or imprisoned) than a long war that makes sure literally every able-bodied Jedi is deployed on the front lines leading clones who are ideally placed to shoot them in the back.

To be fair, the Trade Federation very well might have a number of militarized Lucrehulks (call them 'Warhulks,' maybe?)

I believe that was mentioned in the AOTC ICS book. That the TF cores were common and adaptable to different designs, including proper warships.

Exactly. Point being, ships like that just wouldn't exist if it weren't profitable to operate them. In which case it can't be more expensive to move them through hyperspace than is justified by the cost of the cargo that gets loaded into them. And since there is no conceivable high-value low-bulk cargo that you could even come close to filling a Lucrehulk with...

...That suggests that the Lucrehulks can profitably operate as bulk freighters (the equivalent of superfreighters carrying cargo containers full of T-shirts and iPods and whatnot from factories in China), despite being so big. Which in turn suggests fuel costs just aren't that high.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

A quick CIS victory might well leave more Jedi alive (surrendered or imprisoned) than a long war that makes sure literally every able-bodied Jedi is deployed on the front lines leading clones who are ideally placed to shoot them in the back.

Not to mention a longer, more destructive war would more readily encourage the growth of the dark side's hold throughout the galaxy.

[MKSheppard]

Military grade fuel being more expensive is a possibility, as mentioned by Shep. While this certainly fits the issue of numbers, as well as the lack of outdated designs, there are two problems. The first is that of the Millenium Falcon performing on roughly the same level as much smaller starfighters. How is it able to hot rod with fighters while using civilian grade fuel? I suppose the argument could be made that this is why it is so unreliable, as well as why it performs so much better in ROTJ, as it had higher quality fuel for a change.

Military grade fuel also has the problems Simon previously mentioned in that we don't see militaries acting as if fuel is a problem. It would make sense to build ships without fuel, especially over valuable targets like Kamino or Coruscant. In the same way it would make sense to build massive vessels like the Mandator class and idle them over such worlds. Especially assuming that hyperspace jumps are the thing that is expensive.

One would also expect the Rebel Alliance to use civilian grade fuels to some degree. One could argue that this is possibly the case, and why TIE fighters are so much more agile, but given that TIEs already have a lower mass that explains this trait, more expensive fuel is unnecessary.

Wait what. You're making no sense.

Starfighter Grade Fuel is like:

1.) 100+ octane aviation gasoline in WWII

2.) 85 to 90% enriched U235 used in US naval reactors vs the 3-5% enrichment used in commercial civilian reactors

One key to the Falcon's astounding performance could be that due to all the mods, it needs starfighter grade fuel (another reason it keeps breaking down).