Hello all, let me start out by saying first post on this forum, and looking forward to being involved. I had a few questions about the Star Wars universe that I was hoping somebody more knowledgeable than I could answer.

1. Coming from WH40k, I'm used to ships being thousands, even tens of thousands of years old. My question is...what is the average life of a star ship in Star Wars? Also, as an extension of that, just how easy are ships to build in star wars? How long would it take, for example, for the empire to have built a Star Destroyer? Personally, I find it hard to believe that such massive ships would be treated almost as cars, in that they are simply churned out and you could get a new one every few years, but perhaps I am wrong. Hopefully somebody can clear all this up for me.

2. My other question is somewhat related to the above. At any point, were we given specifics as to how the clones received all of their equipment? The cloning makes sense but where did all of the equipment come from? All of them are outfitted with seemingly high quality arms and armor, as well as accompanying artillery, ships, vehicles, and other support equipment. Just curious as to whether this was ever explained. I can't imagine that it came cheap.

Thanks for any help in advance!

I believe it was all paid for by Dooku as proxy. As far as how they got the money, they were Sith. They could have just as easily used connections and, for lack of a better term, mind control, in order to fund their enterprise.

All I know for sure is that it appears that the Clone Troopers had EVERYTHING they needed to begin the war as soon as they came out the gate. They had their troop transports, their star fighters, and their Cruisers. Building those in secret would have been quite a feat.

I would probably say to chalk it up to loose ends and gaping holes. Quite a bit of it could have been hush hush, but there's a lot that may never be adequately explained.

I doubt that they are like car companies, putting out a new model every year, but look at how quickly a car can be assembled with machinery. Using a layout schematic to build one car over and over and over, they can pump out a ****-ton of cars.

Why couldn't they do the same with ships?

Definitely not in the same amount of time, for sure, but it stands to reason that it can happen rather quickly.

As for age, I suppose they could last for awhile if well taken care of (you know, like an old truck) but eventually there is no helping it anymore. I suppose if you want to invest the money to revamp all the old systems to work with new technologies, you could extend its lifespan, but I think 100 years is pushing that border. Probably pushing it hard, too. Another thing to keep in mind is that the book lists the YT-1300 (Millennium Falcon) at 120,000 Credits. If you consider that a days worth of food is 5 credits, you are looking at a pretty 1:1 ratio of Dollar to Credit. Credits might even be worth a bit more.

Joe Blow likely will never be able to afford a Starship.

So, it's not like these are vehicles being advertised to everyone. It's a specialty product.

If you run a game and your Players want to build their own vehicle, it would depend on how big, how many hard points, how much storage, general layout, who is building it, where is it being built at, what kind of supplies....

Figure out the cost of the vehicle and its silhouette.

Then you can figure out the time span. I might recommend something like....

1 Week x Silhouette x (Price/1,000). A YT-1300 would take 36 weeks to build, at that ratio. If it were done by a professional, you could easily halve that time. If it were done on a properly equipped assembly line, halve it again.

Dont forget the immense scale of the Starwars universe. There are thousands of planets digging up resources, assembling parts and so on needed to run the Galactic economy. Entire systems are dedicated to orbiting space docks for the construction of ships. Plus there is a magnitude of work done by mindless droids and also intelligent droids, that do not require rest or sleep, just regular maintenance. Many of the ships in Starwars are also modular in design, meaning that those modules could be constructed on hundreds of worlds and shipped to any number of final construction areas.

There large well known Shipship corporations in Starwars span the GALAXY, looking for talent and resources. They often times have entire SECTORS under their control or influence.

I'd venture to say a Imperial Class Star Destroyer would take 3 months to build and would easily last for 100+ years if maintained.

When a newer model or improvement comes out, these ships arent scrapped, they're often sold/acquired in more remote areas of the galaxy. You see models that are sometimes 25-100 years old in less 'busy' parts, very similar to what happens on Earth.

To give you some ideas as to the age of ships:
1) most Imperial ships are models from the very end of the Clone Wars.
2) the Millenium Falcon is an old ship--it has a cameo in Episode III. YT-1300s date from before Episode I. They continued in use well after Return of the Jedi.

3) the newest ships in A New Hope were the X-Wing and the Tie Advancedx1. The X-Wing continued in use even after it had been slated to be replaced.

4) The dreadnaught class cruiser was in use from well before Episode I to the time of Admiral Thrawn.

I believe the Clone army was financed by Damask Holdings, which was an investment company controlled by the Sith.

2) the Millenium Falcon is an old ship--it has a cameo in Episode III. YT-1300s date from before Episode I. They continued in use well after Return of the Jedi.

EU sources peg the Millennium Falcon as having been manufactured 60 years before Episode IV. I'm not sure that tells us whether she's an "old" ship by in-universe standards or not, but I have a hunch that CEC wasn't making its credits by building its ships with planned obsolescence in mind.

2) the Millenium Falcon is an old ship--it has a cameo in Episode III. YT-1300s date from before Episode I. They continued in use well after Return of the Jedi.

EU sources peg the Millennium Falcon as having been manufactured 60 years before Episode IV. I'm not sure that tells us whether she's an "old" ship by in-universe standards or not, but I have a hunch that CEC wasn't making its credits by building its ships with planned obsolescence in mind.

Never said it was obsolete, just that it was an older design. Remember the line though, "What a piece of Junk!"

Point was that ships in Star Wars are not like aircraft in the real world that need to be replaced every 30 years or so (We do have some older aircraft still flying, but they have 0 original parts).

Thanks for all the responses, these definitely helped. I assumed a lot of the information, but I definitely wanted to check everything. Just having some trouble adjusting to the differences in ships from WH40k to SW. These responses definitely help though, thanks again

Keep in mind Jedi Master Syfo-Dyas commissioned the clone army 10 years before the Clone Wars began. Dooku/Palpatine eventually had him killed and took over the financing. Kamino was effectively erased from the records of galactic society to protect its existence and the army being trained there. The galaxy was a big enough place, the contract lucrative enough, and the NDAs enforceable enough to allow all the GAR's supporting equipment to be created and sourced at absolute secrecy.

Star Wars construction tech is also much better understood, not long-forgotten, not approached as arcane mysticism or monopolized by a single entity, unlike 40k ship tech with the Adeptus Mechanicus.

I read somewhere that Syfo-Dyas WAS Dooku/Darth Tyrannus. Is that no longer the story?

I read somewhere that Syfo-Dyas WAS Dooku/Darth Tyrannus. Is that no longer the story?

Definitely not. Master Syfo-Dyas was actually killed by Dooku and Palpatine, iirc.

I don't know all the details, but I do know that much. :3

Syfo-Dyas shows up in a comic book set a decade or so before the battle of Naboo, and apparently in one of the upcoming TCW bonus episodes they will discover his old ship and lightsaber, and perhaps learn something of his fate.

Point was that ships in Star Wars are not like aircraft in the real world that need to be replaced every 30 years or so (We do have some older aircraft still flying, but they have 0 original parts).

Yeah, pretty much this. As a testament to how long things can keep flying when you maintain them properly, the youngest B-52 Stratofortress flying in the US Air Force turned 50 this year. There are bombers flying combat missions that qualify for AARP cards. Sure they have had their engines and avionics replaces multiple times over the years, but I'm looking forward to new hips, knees and, in a few years, organs for myself. Starships in the SW universe can last decades or even centuries if properly cared for.

I imagine starship production as being somewhat similar to ship construction today, but scaled up a few orders of magnitude. It took three to four years to construct a Nimitz class aircraft carrier much in the same way it took several years to construct the Executor class. Exact comparisons are kinda silly, but it gives you the idea that things still take time for construction and just aren't spit out of a replicator.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that such massive ships would be treated almost as cars, in that they are simply churned out and you could get a new one every few years, but perhaps I am wrong.

Well, its probably a case of Your Millage May Vary - bureaucracy, corruption, politics, equipment delays hardware failures, accidents and design changes will all affect production time and trump actual balls-to-the-wall all out mixmimum constuction speed.

The first production run of Star Destroyers might have taken years to build (back in the early days of the Empire) to weeks (once KDY became proficient with construction, had plenty of experience under their belt and after some of the early design bugs were worked out) to a handful of days (as a publicity stunt that couldn't be repeated easily, with a ship that needed a lot of extra work done even after it left the shipyard). Of course assembling a ship goes a lot faster if you have the parts ready at hand and if you don't mind having to do a lot of the fitting and systems integration work after the ship gets moving.

The average time needed to assemble a ship might well be several months, but with thousands under construction, all in parallel and at varying stages of completion, at any one time.

And then of course there's the matter of scale. Assuming 18 Star Destroyers a week, is that a result of eighteen building slips producing one ship per week, or eighteen hundred building slips producing one ship per two years?

Personally, I find it hard to believe that such massive ships would be treated almost as cars, in that they are simply churned out and you could get a new one every few years, but perhaps I am wrong.

Well, its probably a case of Your Millage May Vary - bureaucracy, corruption, politics, equipment delays hardware failures, accidents and design changes will all affect production time and trump actual balls-to-the-wall all out mixmimum constuction speed.

The first production run of Star Destroyers might have taken years to build (back in the early days of the Empire) to weeks (once KDY became proficient with construction, had plenty of experience under their belt and after some of the early design bugs were worked out) to a handful of days (as a publicity stunt that couldn't be repeated easily, with a ship that needed a lot of extra work done even after it left the shipyard). Of course assembling a ship goes a lot faster if you have the parts ready at hand and if you don't mind having to do a lot of the fitting and systems integration work after the ship gets moving.

The average time needed to assemble a ship might well be several months, but with thousands under construction, all in parallel and at varying stages of completion, at any one time.

And then of course there's the matter of scale. Assuming 18 Star Destroyers a week, is that a result of eighteen building slips producing one ship per week, or eighteen hundred building slips producing one ship per two years?

Considering the size of KDY and Fondor Shipyards, I I think it is closer to the latter than the former.

I would probably say to chalk it up to loose ends and gaping holes. Quite a bit of it could have been hush hush, but there's a lot that may never be adequately explained.

Agree. The Prequiles are so full of plot holes, continuity errors, and canon mudding cr*p I'd be very careful about falling on your sword arguing anything that is drawn from them...

Thanks for all the answers again. I had a few more questions though and instead of making another thread I figured it would be more simple to add them here. Here goes...

1.) Do they ever give numbers as far as how many people are on a ship? In 40k I'm used to literally hundreds of thousands of people being on a single ship. Space combat in that game is literally mass genocide.However in Star Wars, it seems like there are quite a bit less personnel on board. A good estimation I supposed would be how many would it take to crew an Imperial Star Destroyer?

2.) My other question is a matter of scale. Just how many soldiers at any time are battling in a war? The 501st are a famous clone division, but how many divisions are there? How many droids were the Separatists fielding? The Republic is, I believe, supposed to contain thousands of inhabited worlds, so just how large of a military are we talking? In 40k, losing a million guardsmen is really not a big loss in the grand scheme of things, so what is the scale of destruction in Star Wars?

Sorry if these questions seem foolish, I'm just trying to get a firm and full grasp on some of the things that I'm not quite sure on. Thanks in advance for any help.

Here is the knowledge that you seek.

Here is the knowledge that you seek.

Thanks for the help. I did try wookiepedia already...but neither the star destroyer nor Imperial star destroyer nor any of the others I looked at mentioned crew size, only physical size. Also, I wasn't able to find scale of warfare in there either, though of course, I easily could have missed it, as wookiepedia is quite a large database and could have the information I seek but simply under a topic I didn't think to look under. Perhaps you saw something I didn't that prompted you to provide the link?

Quite a few do list crew sizes, for example, the right side of the http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_I-class_Star_Destroyer page lists the typical crew and starship compliment of the classic Imperial Star Destroyer. Just one of those things was capable of landing almost 10,000 infantry, including supporting armor and even an entire firebase garrison.

There are some similarities between the 40k universe and Star Wars. The individual ships may be smaller, but the population scale is similar. Star Wars has its own hive worlds and agro worlds.The Empire has trillions of troops, but the Rebel Alliance is tiny in comparison and able to keep themselves relatively hidden. The movies show some of the most important moments of the Rebellion, but you don't get a grasp of how large everything was. Take a look at http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Endor The Battle of Endor involved millions. The entirety of the Rebel fleet took on a portion of the Imperial fleet and managed to do a lot of damage before Death Star II was taken down. After the Rebels won at Endor, large chunks of the galaxy rose up in open revolt.

For the Clone Wars, the combined droid army had numbers somewhere in the quintillions. The number of clones is a mess, the number described in-setting (something like 5 million total) is far less than the number of soldiers fighting for the US in WWII. Most people think it was an error of scale.

By contrast the death toll in the Yuuzhan Vong War was something like 365 trillion sentients (possibly just on the non-Vong side, I'm unsure)

From wookieepedia, an imperial 1 carries:

Officers (9,235)

Infantry (9,700)

Enlisted (27,850)

Gunners (275)

The scale of war in star wars is highly variable depending on the era and source. Some show it looking pretty sizable and rather nasty looking, others not so much. Generally though its not as horrific as 40k, for many many reasons, ranging from simple differences in tactics and doctrine, to larger political and dogmatic motivations, to better more reliable technology, logistics, and organization.

The imperium can go for a century without noticing a planet got ate by a daemon space goat. By the time they assemble a reaction force, convince the astartes to support it, argue with the Inquisition if it heresy to try and rescue people or not, and then get a force there that doesn't show up after 200 years lost in the warp, it'll take a million soldiers to win the planet back. Such is the nature of grimdark.

If an alliance strike force hits a depot on elrood, half the galaxy knows by the end of the day a star destroyer can be there by the next day, and a division of troops can be conducting cordon and search operations dirtside by the end of the week.

The empire isn't a model of efficiency, but compared to the imperium they get poop done.

Part of that is the very different nature of FTL between the settings. Hyperspace can be dangerous if you didn't calculate your route correctly, but it's a million times safer and more stable than the Warp.

Quite a few do list crew sizes, for example, the right side of the http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_I-class_Star_Destroyer page lists the typical crew and starship compliment of the classic Imperial Star Destroyer. Just one of those things was capable of landing almost 10,000 infantry, including supporting armor and even an entire firebase garrison.

There are some similarities between the 40k universe and Star Wars. The individual ships may be smaller, but the population scale is similar. Star Wars has its own hive worlds and agro worlds.The Empire has trillions of troops, but the Rebel Alliance is tiny in comparison and able to keep themselves relatively hidden. The movies show some of the most important moments of the Rebellion, but you don't get a grasp of how large everything was. Take a look at http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Endor The Battle of Endor involved millions. The entirety of the Rebel fleet took on a portion of the Imperial fleet and managed to do a lot of damage before Death Star II was taken down. After the Rebels won at Endor, large chunks of the galaxy rose up in open revolt.

Wow I can't believe I missed that sidebar. Read the entire article looking for it but somehow didn't check the sidebar. I now feel quite dumb but thanks very much for pointing that out to me!

Thanks for the other answers as well, I'm always grateful to receive helpful answers and these were definitely spot on, so again thank you all very much.

"You've just taken your first step into a much larger world" -Ben Kenobi