A Question on Star Wars General Tech

[JediAthos]

I didn't see anything on this...so here goes

 

Are there any resources for general tech in the Star wars universe? For example has anyone seen any references to food or clothing dispensers or for lack of a better word replicators? I would think the large armies would have to have some way of mass producing uniforms and standard issue weapons.

 

I suppose factories would work but say a Jedi's robe gets torn up in a battle. Would they mend it themselves, have a spare set, or could a starship's computer simply generate a new set for them?

 

Any thoughts in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

[vanir]

A good source for this sort of thing is the Star Wars (tabletop) RPG publications. The main handbook discusses the nature of the Star Wars galaxy and its primary canon being the movies, but also that necessarily therefore most mundane daily tasks happen "off screen" like preparing meals, going to the toilet, personal hygiene, etc.

Gamemasters are encouraged with extrapolated starship and cityscape floorplans to use typical lingo like "turbolifts, sonic showers, food dispensers," etc. when populating an area in order to maintain the feel of the environment for the players.

 

So essentially it is good advice in general for storytellers. We saw Aunt Beru preparing cooked food in Episode IV, so the stove was obviously...a thermal exchanger. Industry will be undoubtedly full of terms like replicator, and feature droid and slave labour predominantly.

 

Starships are very well stocked with general supplies. The space travel system was particularly well developed in Star Wars RPG through various sourcebooks as it forms the majority of PC time, travelling from place to place in a starship of one kind or another. Most of it happens "off screen" but die must still be rolled for creature encounters, navigation must be performed, consumables must be crossed off.

 

Essentially the kind of services available on a given starship depend on two factors, its starship class and the grade of its build. For example you have snubfighters and interceptors, which are small vessels with no cabin accommodation designed for limited use military grade applications. A snubfighter like an X-Wing actually has a week worth of stocked consumables, which means a pilot can travel from one end of the galaxy to the other in it, albeit very uncomfortably and he'll have to stick to the major trade routes, but it can carry enough water (which is both molecular fuel and air) and freeze-dried meals to do it. You won't be repairing any clothing in it though unless you packed a sewing kit (cargo compartment is below/behind the pilot and can be accessed in flight or externally).

 

Then you have transport class, civilian or military grade. Military grade is of course better stocked with engineering stations, a dedicated computer mainframe, a medical lab and vehicle workshop all mandatory. Civilian grade may have any or none as individual modifications. Civilian transports also tend to lack hyperdrive backups and essentially if caught in deepspace with engine trouble are stranded and require a rescue mission. Civilian transports are however typically well equipped for replicating basic equipment used frequently by the owner. A Jedi Courier Ship for example (Jedi Starships in the Old Republic period) will undoubtedly have training and meditation chambers, and some degree of engineering workshop for things like lightsabre construction, clothing and personal equipment replication (like atmospheric-rebreathers and such), and a military grade weapons bank and defence platform. They are not however, full military grade starships. A military transport will have an engineering workshop capable of producing speeders from scratch or rebuilding a damaged starfighter.

 

Capital vessels, whether civilian or military grade tend to have the typical features of a space station, compacted into a mobile starship. A military one will be like a base, with starfighter and transport hangars, docking stations and full port facilities as well as enough industry embarked to start a droid factory or begin building small starships. They'll produce not only their own weapons, but their own modifications and specialised equipment on board, and consumables for the full crew compliment plus passengers will be in the range of years of deepspace travel. They port only when dry docked.

Civilian grade capital class vessels will be equipped to suit their specific purpose, whether passenger liner or deepspace scout ship.

[JediAthos]

Wow...that was a very nice answer to my somewhat ambiguous question. Thanks vanir, I appreciate it and I might very well pick up that handbook at some point if for nothing else than to augment my writing resources.

[machievelli]

You should also remember that you can extrapolate from modern times and history to work it out. As an example, using military uniforms, the US actually has a wool subsidy where sheep farmers were given tax breaks and cash for raising them because until Korea, all unifomrs were made from it.

 

Oddly enough, the one thing I liked about John Kerry was that he got the subsidy removed (Albeit briefly) because wool has not been used as the primary fabric in military uniforms in almost 50 years.

 

As for food, I figure that (human) nature would continue to have people preparing natural food (As you have seen in my own works) even in that future. Military rations would probably be of the sort used by modern astronauts being high calorie and low waste. Emergency rations as I explained in my KOTOR work would have to be nutitious enough to keep someone alive, but would have to be usable by a wide variety of species, which is why I described them as nutritious, but totally lacking in taste.