What could a scientist in my Star Wars RPG be researching or working on?

[Eltab]

Go with the 'hyperdrive improvements'. Do you IRL drive a Model T?

If you decide the scientist comes up with something, the prototype gadget is somehow installed in a smuggler's ship. The captain challenges Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon to a race. (The pilot/owner treats it a 'black box') The ship has really good speed, beyond its previous reputation. The gadget is NOT ready for mass production, though - the crew has to spend a lot of time tweaking and fine-tuning and replacing burned-out parts because of the gadget and its unpredictable side-effects.

If you decide the scientist comes up with nothing, then he is working slowly alone through a series of experiments (that a team of researchers sponsored by a big Corp has already completed in an off-the-beaten-path lab) promising stepwise refinements in existing technology and performance.

Edit: had to change the tenses of all verbs because I originally thought the desired era was OLD Republic.

 

[Eltab]

Scent chemicals with an eye to making new perfumes.
The scientist thinks that studying alien noses and their ranges of sensitivity might grant him insight to create a scent molecule irresistible to humans. He wants something like Chanel No. 5, but he might produce a batch of Troglodyte Stench instead. For fun and giggles, one experimental batch gives him the scent of a juicy hamburger (or whatever the alien PCs in your group like to eat).

 

[Michael Silverbane]

New flavors for the nutrient goop served as meal aboard many spaceships. The spaceship nutrient goop market has long been controlled by a small number of trade clans, and this situation is entirely untenable. A (or several) new and exciting flavors of spaceship nutrient goop could really shake up the spaceship nutrient goop market and and improve the lives of trillions of spacegoing sophonts across the galaxy!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Too bad megastructures are out - I always thought that one of the possibl explanations for the seeming lack of tech advancement in the Star Wars universe might be that the logistics of uncovering new knowledge has become too complex to manage. To find out new stuff about the nature of matter you might need particle accelerators larger than planets, but who is going to start building them in uncertain times or when they won't see their labor come to fruition in their lifetime / election cycle.


Research
A study for finding/describing "pre-historic" hyperdrive routes (e.g. there are no cultures that would have records of that time, but there might have been lost civilizations.)

Studying the Hawking Radiation on the smallest known black hole in the galaxy.

Extra-Galactic Planet Hunting / Spectral Analysis

Studying Migration Patterns of "Space Whales" or similar cosmological lifeforms.

Tracing invasive species that were transported via colonization or interstellar trade/traffic. (Okay, the Bantha is found on X planets, but where did they really come from?)

Tracing the origins of an ancient and formerly common disease that died out due to a succesful vaccine development centuries ago.

Coruscanti Mating Rituals predating the Old Republic

Cataloguing Alderaan Debris (Origins, changes due the destruction of the planet, any surprises on the nature of the planet's core now that it's laid bare?)

Archeology on an industrial world whose population died out before the planet could join the galactic civlization. (They won't have force secrets, revolutionary tech or anything. But you can certainly get some papers and cautionary tales on how you can ruin your planet and not make it.)

Engineering
Better particle filters for industrial applications

A disposable light-weight Chemical Scanner that can eschew with a rare earth in construction that make existing ones hard to recycle

 

[Eltab]

Sociological / historical research:
He wants to study the earlier cultures that combined to form the original Republic, and how the resulting culture / government expanded to fill most of the Galaxy. He is working from a base hypothesis involving 'cultural drift' and cross-pollination. Some still-distinct modern cultural regions (ex: Hutt Space) are getting their hackles up because the researcher is a jerk who interacts poorly with other people.

 

[Maximum7]

Anything else?

 

[Zardnaar]

Something small scale. Kyber crystal weapons for TIE fighters, shield equipped TIE interceptors, A scaled down Death Star or World Devastator that is ultra efficient at asteroid mining and cranking out more TIE.

Even something like an affordable mass produced ship for the New Republic/Rebels.

 

[Maximum7]

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.

 

[Zardnaar]

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.

Everything has been more or less down though unless you look outside Star Wars with things like nano tech, megastructures, sentient AI, Gauss weapons or rail guns, wormholes etc.

If you want to make it more sci fi than sci fantasy that's an obvious one.

 

[Maximum7]

Everything has been more or less down though unless you look outside Star Wars with things like nano tech, megastructures, sentient AI, Gauss weapons or rail guns, wormholes etc.

If you want to make it more sci fi than sci fantasy that's an obvious one.

Nanotechnology has appeared many times. Nano droids were in Clone Wars. Megastructures like Centerpoint Station, AI is sentient, the Dugs had a rail gun in Clone Wars and wormholes appeared in old Legends EU and in canon in the Han Solo mini-series. Trust me I’ve done my research.