How do smaller factions fair technologically?

[Strangelove]

I've been reading through the various ship models, and most of them seem incredibly advanced in terms of technology. Quantum cores (I'm assuming some sort of entropy-based concept, it doesn't go into detail), pocket-sized singularities, time-space shifting, and so forth. Which made some questions come to mind:

How do pirates, criminals, and other smaller factions fair technologically? The majority of these components sound as if they'd require a science team the size of a small nation to build, and an army of engineers in order to maintain.

Which brings me to my other question, do 'crude' starship technologies exist? Things like simpler forms of power and sub-space propulsion, such as plasma (fusion) reactors, anti-matter, nuclear reactors and rockets, or solar sails. Or starship weapons, such as railguns, artillery that uses chemical propellant, nuclear or chemical (acid, perhaps?) tipped missiles. I'd imagine such things would be more along the lines of criminal-sized budgets.

Or are all these silly questions? It could be that technology may be so widespread and mass produced that it's dirt cheap, and said technology is so advanced it practically maintains itself, allowing small factions without armies of engineers to maintain it. Or perhaps 'crude' technologies are just so vastly inferior that criminals would rather use one modern starship than a douzen simple ones.

 

[Fred]

It's pretty much a mixed bag.

Factions like the Star Army of Yamatai, the Nerimian Defense Initiative and the Mishhuvurthyar indeed have extremely powerful technology in their grasp. The Nepleslian come second-rate to them, but they seem to be getting help from the NDI, so, whom knows?

The technology pirates get access to would probably be around what Nepleslian usually have, or civilian-grade for Star Army of Yamatai vessels.

There are other races that are more limited in technology, such as the Lorath, for example, whom struggle to get their recent pre-FTL drive society to quickly match up to be able to defend against predations of evil races like the Mishhuvurthyar.

 

[Edto Xar'Sivaree]

How is the technological growth of a new faction monitored? Are there any rules to how fast they can grow? Are these rules set in allowance for larger factions giving assistance to the smaller factions? Can people run threads to steal technology from other factions that may be classified? Who would you talk to for such a thing, as I feel FMs would be biased towards the idea of having anything stolen from them.

 

[Navian]

The technological growth rate of any faction, new or old, is limited by how active the faction is in RP, inactive factions (or those with low player counts to begin with) can't submit advanced tech, and will should have fewer tech submissions in general (since otherwise one person would have to be spamming them.)

I'd think stealing or trading technology and uplift activities are things that can happen though the RP, though with the usual restrictions for interacting with another faction. You do have to discuss plots involving a faction with that faction's FM, if the faction has one. I'm not sure how it works when it doesn't have one.