So, lets talk fuel (Solo Spoilers within!)

By Desslok, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

14 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Keep in mind that it might be slowly consumed in the process as well, making it fuel again, but still a requirement in the build process and expensive to replace.

I think it's a matter of quantity and (possible) rate of consumption.

I mean, if you only need a few hundred credits to build a hypercore and it takes decades to burn off it's no biggy...

Is that possible that Correlian crédits are not the equivalent of Imperial crédits? maybe the 800 crédits is just Correlian crédits..

According Wookieepedia, the Corellian credit is a real and different Currency : http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_credit

Edited by Rosco74

Okay, a couple of addendums from when I found myself with a few minuets between Film Festival movies and could stick my nose in for the last 15 min of Solo:

The off the cuff number Han threw out was 60 million for both suitcases of The Stuff. The vial that Han used to buy into Lando's game was an offhanded 10 thousand.

(Will get back into the conversation after the hoilday. . . .)

45 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Okay, a couple of addendums from when I found myself with a few minuets between Film Festival movies and could stick my nose in for the last 15 min of Solo:

The off the cuff number Han threw out was 60 million for both suitcases of The Stuff. The vial that Han used to buy into Lando's game was an offhanded 10 thousand.

(Will get back into the conversation after the hoilday. . . .)

And a similar vial was 800 credits or so on correllia. Now there are a couple of possible wrinkles. How much inflation was caused buy the massive imperial build ups? What is the exchange rate? How does black market effect those prices?

Edited by Daeglan

Jesus... We really are nerds, aren't we? ?

1 hour ago, OddballE8 said:

Jesus... We really are nerds, aren't we? ?

I dont know what you are talking about.....

Now at the Beginning of the movie it was 800cr for a vial. Would it be that the loss of a train car of the stuff jacked the prices up for the second half of the movie?

Re: Han's remark earlier in the film about that vial's cost.

At that point in the film, he's a street kid, and may not really know just how much a vial of coaxium is worth. So his 800 credits is a really lowball estimate, and probably on the assumption that they wouldn't be getting top price for it, given they'd have to move it in a hurry and wouldn't be selling it to someone that routinely trades in coaxium.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Re: Han's remark earlier in the film about that vial's cost.

At that point in the film, he's a street kid, and may not really know just how much a vial of coaxium is worth. So his 800 credits is a really lowball estimate, and probably on the assumption that they wouldn't be getting top price for it, given they'd have to move it in a hurry and wouldn't be selling it to someone that routinely trades in coaxium.

Yeah. What it is worth to a street kid is not what it is actually worth.

Also what he thinks a ship will cost my not be what a ship would actually cost

Edited by Daeglan

Let's put it this way, if a street kid found a bit of refined plutonium, they could maybe sell it for a decent amount, but to an actual criminal with connections could sell it for a lot of money.

I didn't get them impression that the vial on Corellia would be enough for a ship, just to get them off planet where they then were confident that they could earn enough money to buy a ship, once Proxima didn't take most of the profit.

I don't really remember what the contents of the corellian vial looked like, but the one at the end was a very small crystal, just a fraction of the size of the canister. It might have been that it was a much "purer" sample than whatever was available on the streets of Corellia, explaining the difference in value. Or maybe the crystal in the corellian vial was simply smaller.

Which brings up another point. Volume-wise it's stored pretty damned ineffciently, meaning that the train car could've contained a lot less coaxium than estimated above (and most likely would've, given that they were after "100k".

By the way, I thought it was interesting that after establishing that they needed "100 K-grams" and promising Lando 20%, they proceeded to get exactly 12 canisters (which all seemed to weigh a lot more than 10 kilograms each).

Presumably it is a small quantity of coaxium plus a large volume of equipment to stabilise it.

27 minutes ago, Darzil said:

Presumably it is a small quantity of coaxium plus a large volume of equipment to stabilise it.

Indeed. It might take a full cargo car to transport a mere 100 kg fairly safely.

The freshly refined stuff at the end is fairly compact though. More stable if it's pure? Or maybe Han and Chewie don't care so much about OSHA?

Edited by penpenpen

Some more info....

The Guide has a "flowchart" on the coaxium page--

  • Discovery - Using their knowledge of Clouzon-36 gas and purrgil, early explorers were able to figure out the kinds of conditions that would create natural deposits of coaxium, and where to find them.
  • Mining - Worlds located near turbulent areas of space often have natural veins of coaxium ore, thanks to the local stellar stresses. An example is Kessel, adjacent to the Maw anomaly.
  • Refinement - Unrefined coaxium is very volatile, and must be kept as stable as possible. There are limited coaxium refineries, because they require staff with specific technical knowledge.
  • Control - Refined coaxium is more stable, but it is still shipped under special conditions to prevent theft. The Empire aims to control as many sources of coaxium as possible.
  • Distribution - The Empire uses specialized cargo containers to move large loads of coaxium, but even in such cases it limits the amount kept within a single hold. The Empire uses the fuel across the galaxy, to power its growing flee.

The large containers each hold a total of 192 vials, and are made of reinforced carbonite.

Another interesting note that I just caught--"A coaxium explosion is spectacularly violent, tearing at the dimensional barriers that divide the sublight world and hyperspace. " So, yeah...that explains the scale of that cargo container explosion. (Interesting side note...apparently the cargo containers on the train are the same standardized containers that attach to a Zeta-class transport, attached to the conveyex cradle instead.)

On ‎5‎/‎27‎/‎2018 at 9:17 PM, SEApocalypse said:

Unrefined coaxium is mined on worlds such as Kessel, but is dangerous to transport. Highly volatile, it explodes if jostled or allowed to get too hot.

  • Note that it's worlds 'such as Kessel' which by default admits to the existence of other such worlds
  • For some reason I thought it was the other way around - that it was starting hot in the vault and becoming volatile as it cooled.
17 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

There are limited coaxium refineries, because they require staff with specific technical knowledge.

Ah. I was wondering why they didn't just refine it on Kessel. Weak, but better than nothing.

4 hours ago, Vorzakk said:

Ah. I was wondering why they didn't just refine it on Kessel. Weak, but better than nothing.

Technically under normal circumstances they probably do.

It's a fast made point, but they do mention in the film they took the raw material where they did for processing because it was a refinery close enough, able to process the stuff, and not under imperial control.

So likely trying to rip off refined coaxium would have been too dangerous, where unrefined coaxium would be so unstable, just getting out of the Kessel system seemed dangerous enough the Pike's assumed no one would be stupid enough to try it, so their existing security was enough.

My impression is that Coaxium isn't really fuel so much as a "chemical" that is used inside of Hyperdrives in order to enable whatever the magic process is that lets a ship slip between real space and hyperspace. As such, it doesn't get "used up' per se. It might wear out over time and need to be replaced (think transmission or brake fluid), but it's not something you have to constantly worry about unless you have an old ship that hasn't been serviced in a long time or the ship's engines took some damage and lost enough Coaxium (or whatever hypermatter is loaded) that it needs to be replaced before another hyperspace jump can be initiated.

Also, Coaxium does not appear to be the only form of hypermatter that is available in the galaxy. It just happens to be the most common. Also Kessel is not the only place it is found. The new Canon says that Coaxium is produced by those "space whale" creatures and can be found pretty much anywhere that they are concentrated (which is typically near place with high gravitational fields....Kessel being obvious because it is surrounded by them).

I look at engine fuel in Star Wars RPG the same way you look at blaster packs. We know that all forms of energy get "used up" over time and have to be replenished. But under normal circumstances, this process is so slow and mundane, that you don't need to account for it mechanically unless there are unusual circumstances (such as those mentioned above).

Also, ships in Star Wars are still powered by a separate, dedicated power source, usually some type of fusion based reactor. Eventually these reactors will burn out and need have their fuel source replenished. So this is not a new concept.

Edited by Otakuon
23 minutes ago, Otakuon said:

My impression is that Coaxium isn't really fuel so much as a "chemical" that is used inside of Hyperdrives in order to enable whatever the magic process is that lets a ship slip between real space and hyperspace. As such, it doesn't get "used up' per se. It might wear out over time and need to be replaced (think transmission or brake fluid), but it's not something you have to constantly worry about unless you have an old ship that hasn't been serviced in a long time or the ship's engines took some damage and lost enough Coaxium (or whatever hypermatter is loaded) that it needs to be replaced before another hyperspace jump can be initiated.

Also, Coaxium does not appear to be the only form of hypermatter that is available in the galaxy. It just happens to be the most common. Also Kessel is not the only place it is found. The new Canon says that Coaxium is produced by those "space whale" creatures and can be found pretty much anywhere that they are concentrated (which is typically near place with high gravitational fields....Kessel being obvious because it is surrounded by them).

I look at engine fuel in Star Wars RPG the same way you look at blaster packs. We know that all forms of energy get "used up" over time and have to be replenished. But under normal circumstances, this process is so slow and mundane, that you don't need to account for it mechanically unless there are unusual circumstances (such as those mentioned above).

Also, ships in Star Wars are still powered by a separate, dedicated power source, usually some type of fusion based reactor. Eventually these reactors will burn out and need have their fuel source replenished. So this is not a new concept.

Basically my Hyperdrive needs an oil change.

13 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Basically my Hyperdrive needs an oil change.

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2 hours ago, Otakuon said:

My impression is that Coaxium isn't really fuel so much as a "chemical" that is used inside of Hyperdrives in order to enable whatever the magic process is that lets a ship slip between real space and hyperspace. As such, it doesn't get "used up' per se. It might wear out over time and need to be replaced (think transmission or brake fluid), but it's not something you have to constantly worry about unless you have an old ship that hasn't been serviced in a long time or the ship's engines took some damage and lost enough Coaxium (or whatever hypermatter is loaded) that it needs to be replaced before another hyperspace jump can be initiated.

Another possible angle is that Coaxium IS hyperfuel, but you need to reach a critical mass of it to achieve a dimensional breach, while consuming only a rather low amount of it, because the actual energy from it required is rather low compared to its potential output. Having a chamber that is coated in can mean that you need first start the reaction by adding energy from your fusion reactor to the hyper drive chamber, before the thing starts to producing energy on its down.

Ships like the death star seem to use hypermatter as general energy source as well iirc. Ships like that would consume Coaxium or other forms of hypermatter at a much higher pace.

Edited by SEApocalypse
5 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

So likely trying to rip off refined coaxium would have been too dangerous, where unrefined coaxium would be so unstable, just getting out of the Kessel system seemed dangerous enough the Pike's assumed no one would be stupid enough to try it, so their existing security was enough.

"That's the bad guys' problem. They keep thinking we're not stupid enough to do the things we do."
- Lando Calrissian, Shadows of the Empire

5 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Another possible angle is that Coaxium IS hyperfuel, but you need to reach a critical mass of it to achieve a dimensional breach, while consuming only a rather low amount of it, because the actual energy from it required is rather low compared to its potential output. Having a chamber that is coated in can mean that you need first start the reaction by adding energy from your fusion reactor to the hyper drive chamber, before the thing starts to producing energy on its down.

Ships like the death star seem to use hypermatter as general energy source as well iirc. Ships like that would consume Coaxium or other forms of hypermatter at a much higher pace.

Coaxium is clearly cash money. Untraceable, in demand, portable.

Edited by Eoen

Hello all !
I'm pretty new french native speaker user to this forum.

Several months ago I started writing an adventure for EOTE running around the Rhydonium exploitation of Abafar (https://www.starwars.com/databank/rhydonium).
I'm glad having seen Solo last Sunday ! So many infos about fuel ! And still so many mysteries about how it works...
I'm very interested about any canon information about fuels in general, but having read all this topic, It's still a bit light...
For my own purpose, I have assumed that Rhydonium is used only for subspace travels.