Steamrunner, Norway, and Saber Class.......what's the point?

[Lazar]

Perhaps the Vulcans, with their long head-start on humanity, had already reached this technological terminal velocity?

I think that makes sense. They were already capable of interstellar flight about two millennia earlier.

[Vic]

A scientists dream world, incremental advances, baby steps, no leaps of logic, no grand strides forward.

[Mark]

Likely staying that way until the great breakthrough into "Temporal Warp Drive"

[Deepcrush]

Very similar to SW. Nothing there has really changed in 28,000 years.

[Tyyr]

Yeah, SW has hit a technological plateau, and apparently a pretty big one if the combined efforts of a galaxy with tens of thousands of sapient species, millions of inhabited worlds, and hundreds of trillions of beings can't get it to budge in nearly thirty millenia.

Makes the Imperium in WH40K seem downright progressive.

[Sionnach Glic]

I think I'd be wary of saying nothing's changed. No new technologies have been created. That doesn't mean that the tech we see in the films isn't vastly superior to the tech they were using 25,000 years ago.

[Lighthawk]

Yeah, SW has hit a technological plateau, and apparently a pretty big one if the combined efforts of a galaxy with tens of thousands of sapient species, millions of inhabited worlds, and hundreds of trillions of beings can't get it to budge in nearly thirty millenia.

Makes the Imperium in WH40K seem downright progressive.

The Imperium at least has something of an excuse in how unreliable communication between planets is. The spread of ideas through that empire is going to take centuries at best. Sw though, we have a galactic spanning holo-network, virtually instant communication from one side of the galaxy to the other. That they have stagnated for new ideas is mind boggling.

I think I'd be wary of saying nothing's changed. No new technologies have been created. That doesn't mean that the tech we see in the films isn't vastly superior to the tech they were using 25,000 years ago.

I'd agree with this. We can see upgrades happening throughout the EU. On screen though, I can't think of any obvious progression that was shown though. I'd like to think the ships and tech of the new trilogy are inferior to those of the old, but there's really no proof of it in the canon.

[Tyyr]

It is a bit mind boggling that the SW galaxy has stagnated, but I don't think it's that implausible. With any technology there are limits to what you can do with it. Eventually you'll hit them. Now you can refine and alter and polish that cannon ball all you want but you're not going farther until you get to a new technology. In the SW case whatever the next big tech is hasn't come along yet.

I like it though. If technology keeps spiraling upwards you get the problem that most contact between races inevitably winds up with one group walking all over the other one due to technological disparity. In the SW universe that doesn't happen though. Due to the stagnation pretty much everyone is on the same level. In the ST universe the stagnation isn't horrible. If it didn't happen the Federation would quickly outpace everyone else (though they already have) and make people like the Romulans, Klingons, and Dominion irrelevant.

[Sionnach Glic]

I'd agree with this. We can see upgrades happening throughout the EU. On screen though, I can't think of any obvious progression that was shown though. I'd like to think the ships and tech of the new trilogy are inferior to those of the old, but there's really no proof of it in the canon.

Well, one instance that comes to mind is how battledroid blasters in TPM didn't do much damage to stone and marble in the Queen's palace, but Stormtrooper rifles blow chunks out of steel walls.

Then there's the Death Star, which seems to work on the same principle as the weapons we saw in AOTC, just beefed up.

[Lighthawk]

I'd agree with this. We can see upgrades happening throughout the EU. On screen though, I can't think of any obvious progression that was shown though. I'd like to think the ships and tech of the new trilogy are inferior to those of the old, but there's really no proof of it in the canon.

Well, one instance that comes to mind is how battledroid blasters in TPM didn't do much damage to stone and marble in the Queen's palace, but Stormtrooper rifles blow chunks out of steel walls.

Then there's the Death Star, which seems to work on the same principle as the weapons we saw in AOTC, just beefed up.

Good call on the rifles, though I don't know about the DS. One could argue it was just bigger with more power, that's not neccessarily more advanced.

[Mikey]

The point is that all of these are examples of refinement of existing technologies, not of new fields. In other words, an AK-47 represents huge advances in gunpowder weaponry over an arquebus - but it's still gunpowder technology.

[steamrunner]

Like the nacelles on a Sovereign...they basically do the same thing as the Daedalus' "light-bulb-stuck-in-a-culvert" nacelles...

[Sionnach Glic]

Exactly. Tech doesn't have to become completely different to become more advanced. Modern day jet engines work on the same principle as the engines in the 50's, but no one would ever say that jet technology has never advanced.

[Tsukiyumi]

Exactly. Tech doesn't have to become completely different to become more advanced. Modern day jet engines work on the same principle as the engines in the 50's, but no one would ever say that jet technology has never advanced.

Advanced in some ways, but stagnated or literally regressed in other ways.

What supersonic airline travels out of your country?

Over here, it's called "we don't have one".

[Captain Seafort]

Over there it's called "we never had one".