Im trying to write a story about a scientist who is working on something in the era of the New Republic. He does not believe in the Force. I just need something for him to be researching. It really isn’t that important to the story; it just has to sound cool and scientific. Also it can’t have already been done in Legends or Canon. I want a fresh idea. It cannot be A time machine A teleporter A matter replicator A singularity Weapon Any type of droid Anything to do with holograms A food synthesizer Anything to do with the Force or Midi-chlorians A shrink ray A freeze ray pico and femtotechnology A Dyson sphere or any type of megastructure. Liquid metal armor or a nano morph Any improvements on the hyperdrive Limb regeneration Hyperspace nullifier Holodeck Knowledge Transfer (Instant learning like in the Matrix) Philosophers Stone Kinetic weapons Solar sail Anything to do with kyber crystals Gene editing Improvements on deflector shields Mech suit Exosuit Gender change In canon, during the Empire, scientists were researching methods to control droids, lasers that can punch through deflector shields and ship scale disintigrators. These ideas are therefore taken.
Developing a more resistant form of Hafa vine so they can start plantations off of Garqi and provide an economical variety of Cassandran Choholl.
You take a kind of Winston Smith approach and insert our scientist in the branch known as Human Resources. 'And what attracted you to stormtrooping..? The last question, we will let you know...Bye bye, bye bye, bye.' Jake Scientist interviewed 5000 potential troopers that week in May... ...closing the loop on the way...
Wheels are so inefficient. They're slowed down by [haughty scoff] terrain, such ancient technology. Clearly, repulsorlift ion technology is superior because it's not bothered by a bit of [gestures vaguely] terrain. Wheels get stuck in mud. Do you know what repulsorlifts get stuck in? Gravity wells. That's it. /s
Genetic engineering/vivisection/Pavlovian conditioning on Tauntauns (or any other Star Wars creatures) Balancing technology to allow AT-ST's to break into a running stride A means to trace and follow ships that have entered hyperspace within the last 24 hours.
How about guard rails? I've noticed Imperial installations don't have guard rails, maybe they haven't been invented yet.
Off the top of my head: A gravitational device that accelerates the accretion of debris in a local area of space to speed the formation of planetary bodies. Like, if somebody wanted to go back to the Alderaan system and make a new planet out of the remains of Alderaan. This might fall under "improvements to hyperdrive" but in Rebels the Empire used a thing called an interdiction field to simulate the gravity well of a planet in order to yank hostile ships out of hyperspace. So maybe the New Republic would want to work on a way to defeat/nullify interdiction fields. A plot point in Solo involves the need to get an amount of stolen coaxium to a refinery before it degrades and explodes. Maybe a scientist would want to create a solution to that problem, like a means of refining it on-site, or a way to stop it from degrading, or slow that process. But coaxium is hyperfuel so, again, that might be considered an improvement to hyperdrive. These are a bit boring but it could be something as simple as an improved repulsorlift tech that that allows a gas mining facility (like cloud city) to sit much lower in the planet's gas shelf and mine more gas. Or, like, a synthetic alternative to Tibanna gas that is easier to come by. (Tibanna is what Lando was mining, apparently it's used as a coolant.)
Advanced methods fro extracting and refining Doonium? Charting the Unknown Regions and finding commercially viable hyperdrive lanes through Wild Space? Literally anything to do with surveying and documenting anything on the thousands of uncharted planets in the Galaxy.
Yeah charting Wild Space was done with the Graf family in those canon Adventures in Wild Space books. Also the Empire started charting the Unknown Regions at the end. Does anybody have any other ideas? I’m trying to look for something that was never researched until the era of the New Republic like kyber crystals weren’t until the Empire used them for a superlaser and even then, they had been used in weapons formation in the past. I’m looking for something that presumably hasn’t been thought of in the 25,000 years of time where almost everything has already been done.
I don't know anything outside of what's been on the big screen, but most of the things that have been mentioned here fall on the engineering side of science. How about "pure" research? Life cycles of stars. Panspermia. Biological contagion jumping species (Jabba getting a cold from Leia or vice versa).
In which field of science do you want the character to specialize, weapons, xeno-biology, virology, chemistry, physics/engineering, space travel, communications, energy, something else? Is he working independently, for a corporation, the Repubilic, a crime syndicate? What is his moral or ethical alignment? Do you want him working to correct a problem or invent something new? Do you want a small invention or a paradigm changing new technology? Do you know his species or where he grew up? Most importantly, which canon do you want this to fit? I'm less familiar with the Disney canon. I've only read three of the new books, but I've read sixty eight from the original canon so far. If I know the answers to a few of these questions, I can probably come up with an idea or two.
I would think it's something fairly mundane. I noticed a while ago when I was randomly watching Youtube one night that the Star Wars universe actually spans hundreds of thousands of years, but their technology doesn't really seem to advance at all. It seems that the galactic empire has hit a period of technological stagnation.
He can specialize in any type of science and he is a good guy working for the New Republic and yes something new. Leaning towards Paradigm changing invention but nothing that I said can’t be done in my list. He is a brilliant human male.
I was down to 3 ideas. A Guided recirprocating deflector shield from someone on abovetopsecret forums, Synthetic coaxium from FFG forums and The Dynamics of an Asteroid Field on Sjgames. I decided against the shield because it was too wordy and could be a game changer. The coaxium I felt ruined the rarity of hyperfuel and the asteroid belt analyzation was good but their are likely billions of asteroid fields in the galaxy. Who the hell cares about plotting one.
Midi-Chlorians? Something to do with blackholes? (besides weaponizing them) Terraforming? The cure for cancer? Immortality, inspired by Plagueis? Anything to do with plasma? The heat death of the universe? Alternate universes / timelines?
Sounds like I'm too late. But in the Empire Strikes Back there is the line "No ship that small has a cloaking device." So that would presumably be an open avenue for study by scientists. It has the added advantage of being militarily useful if your scientist makes a breakthrough, which should help add plot points.
In The Clone Wars there's an episode where Anakin is tasked with captaining a prototype stealth ship in order to break an embargo on some planet or other. At 99 meters, the prototype ship would have been longer than The Millenium Falcon's 35 meters, but considering the prototype ship was basically a long pointy cylinder, The Falcon would likely have a larger displacement. So, you know, depending, it's probably already been done.
