Why was my ship on fire?

The definition that you were looking at is, narrowly, chemical burning in air. Fire, more formally, is the phenomenon of atomic (molecular) recombination that is manifest by a new product and electromagnetic radiation. Chemical combustion just rearranges the atoms from parent material(s) to product material(s). The radiation given off is often light or infra-red (heat). Note that this does not require oxygen. Oxidation reactions are remarkably common, but by no means the only way to do this.

In nuclear burning, the atoms themselves are combined to create new and different atoms. Nuclear burning does not require oxygen. The main nuclear burning that is happening on the sun is a hydrogen-hydrogen process, forming helium. There are other processes, too, but this is the main one.

Some good sources:

A good conceptual physics source that is easy to read and will help you is: Paul Hewitt "Conceptual Physics" Addison-Wesley

George Abell "Exploration of the Universe"

In layman's terms the sun is indeed on "fire".

If you start thinking about spaceship physics in this game, flames in space is the least of your worries. Have you noticed how the ships behave in the vacuum of space much like an airplane would in an atmosphere? How you can steer the ship without any auxiliary thrusters? How destroyed enemy fighters do a funny spiral before finally exploding? Many of the missions happen near a planet on a low orbit but there's no visible rotation from orbital motion. What keeps the ships up there? Or in the launch sequence from a planet, when the ship just starts hovering and rotates in place before launching out of the hangar? I could go on and on. You'll just have to accept that it's a game, not a physics simulation, and move on.

Oxygen burning as it escapes through the hole in your ship's hull!

Generally in sci-fi the fire/smoke is from oxygen being vented. It would eventually run out of air when your ship does. But that is what is fueling it, not space's O2, but your ship's supply.

Same reason your "speeder" trips over and gets hung up on 1" high curbs. The engine was designed for games with horses, bows, and swords, and it shows. They just slapped the skin on, and never bothered reworking any of the actual physics to make some semblance of sense.

For the insurance money?

Science fiction and fiction in general do this all the time. It's the same as a car randomly exploding after a fall. It makes things more exiciting.

My understanding is that there could be a fire inside the ship where it's pressurized and oxygenated but outside it should not burn. Also there shouldn't be any sound from laser blasts either from my understanding.

As far as the sun having no oxygen this is not true. Oxygen is the 3rd most abundant element in the sun, but it true that the glow is a fusion reaction that doesn't require oxygen and isn't really 'burning'

As opposed to being able to shoot lighting from your fingertips? If you have to seek a reason to bring this into a more logical realm think in terms of the oxygen inside the ship feeding the fire, or the use of such compounds as magnesium, that release their own oxygen when they burn.

Yup, the engine was originally designed so that when your horse took damage it would catch fire. That's why your ship catches fire when it takes damage. Simple as that.

The Sun isn't on fire, it is a massive nuclear fusion generator, which is very, very different thing.



But yes, Star Wars space isn't like real space, for a start SW space uses "hollywood physics" rather than real physics for space flight ("hollywood physics" is basically atmospheric flight in space, real space physics is more like an ice rink in 3 dimensions).

So, when you watch the movies do you sit there annoying everyone asking:
how do the ships explode and burn with no oxygen?
how come the ships and the lazers make sound in a vacuum?
how do they make the light from the light saber stop when it gets out 1 meter?
how do ships with no aerodynamics and no flight control surfaces fly in atmosphere?
how come the ships don't burn up when they enter a planets atmosphere?
how come every planet in their galaxy has breathable atomsphere and hospitable climates and only one in our galaxy does?
how come when they walked out of the millenium falcon on that asteroid the didn't need environment suits?
what keeps cloud city from crashing to the planet's surface?"
if lazers move at the speed of light, how come we can see them when they shoot their blasters?

Are you that guy? 'cause if you are, stay out of movie theaters.

Seriously, it's a fantasy game based on a fantasy film series. Who gives a crap about physics?