Fuel and the Star Wars Universe

Fuel and the Star Wars Universe

Generally, fuel is not a big issue in the Star Trek universe, but we have used it as a plot problem from time to time. I have put the fuel used by a Federation starship up before. simply put the Federation Starship was low on deuterium and needed to get to a starbase or somewhere to refuel. In doing this I thought out the issue of how much fuel a starship needs for a three-year cruise. I even went as far as to plot out the fuel usage of a starship and figure what it needs for the three years.

Right from the start of STAR WARS fuel has been present. The first sight of fuel was Han Solo fueling the Millennium Falcon before they head off for Alderaan. Other than that, the occasional remarks about fuel here and there till STAR WARS REBELS and SOLO, oh and cannot forget about STAR WARS RESISTANCE where they talk about fuel shipments and hyper-fuel.

So, the other day my co-gm Dave came up with an idea for a STAR WARS scenario where the rebels must go steal a shipment of Rhydonium fuel to supply the fleet. Everyone was low on fuel in the fleet, and we needed to get there, steal the fuel, destroy the imperial facility, and get out alive.

First the issue was... how were they going to transport the fuel back to the fleet. I modified my Cylon fuel tanker from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA to work as a fuel transport. The Cylon tanker turned from being a Cylon tanker to an Imperial Fuel Transport with two dozen crew plus three times that in droids. Gave the ship a class 4 Hyperdrive as well.

Then came the problem of fuel, how much each ship needs. In the STAR TREK Universe, I had 1 point of fuel equaling 100 points of power. This was not going to work well for the smaller ships of STAR WARS ships. I took the Millennium Falcon and looked at it needs and use age.

The Falcon takes 58 points of power a round just cruising around and 192 points a round running all out with shield maxed. Then if they are firing the quad turbolasers at least 24 more in power giving the need of 215 power. I could have left the fuel at 100 per fuel point carried but changed it to 10 power per 1 fuel point.

So, the Falcon carries six months’ worth of fuel as a standard so the Falcon just flying from point A to point B with no combat would need 18,662,400 points of fuel. I gave the Falcon 20,000,000 points, just a little extra in the tank or Han Solo’s modifications.

While I was at it, I looked at the other fuel that has come up recently... Hyper-fuel. The fuel that is used to allow the ships to jump from one star system to another light years away. That came out easier. One point of Hyper fuel equals one hyperspace jump. I gave the Falcon one hundred points of Hyper Fuel. A ship in hyperspace uses fuel to run systems as well as hyperdrive with combination of hyper-fuel.

A standard TIE Fighter would have 1,400,000 for two days of travel around using 39 points power in battle with 56 points allowing a little over 34 hours of flight if in battle all the time.

If you use this scenario, these are the details. To determine the ship’s fuel amount is generated by the amount of energy used traveling around the consumables that it carries. 12 rounds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour and 24 hours to a day = 17,280 rounds per day is what I use to generate the single days cruising fuel usage. I used that same with STAR TREK and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA as well as the other RPG’s i have converted to Spacedock.

What do you think.