No doubt this sort of thing has been mentioned several times in the past.

So, SWTOR is set 3500 years before any of the movies. And in that time NOTHING has improved ? Or even changed really. Ship designs yes, slightly (in general), but no significant changes.

That'd mean that for around 4000-ish years, that galaxy has been pretty much at the pinnacle of it's technology.

Even if you include Gree and Rakata tech.

 

This is NOT a complaint, it's purely an observation and a bit of a "head shake" at the galaxy in this universe.

 

I suggest that the game's time period didn't really need to be that far back, maybe 1000 years ? Since Kenobi's line to Luke about Jedis being the guardians of peace in the galaxy for over a thousand years.

No doubt this sort of thing has been mentioned several times in the past.

So, SWTOR is set 3500 years before any of the movies. And in that time NOTHING has improved ? Or even changed really. Ship designs yes, slightly (in general), but no significant changes.

That'd mean that for around 4000-ish years, that galaxy has been pretty much at the pinnacle of it's technology.

Even if you include Gree and Rakata tech.

This comes up from time to time, and the usual suggestion in response is related to repeated Dark Ages along the way, partial collapse of civilisation, all that (inaccurate) jazz. In our world, the period *called* the Dark Ages (Europe in roughly the first half of the Mediaeval period, think of about 450 AD to maybe as late as 1000 AD) was in fact a time of substantial technological advance, although there were significant technological losses at the beginning.

I suggest that the game's time period didn't really need to be that far back, maybe 1000 years ? Since Kenobi's line to Luke about Jedis being the guardians of peace in the galaxy for over a thousand years.

Tsk. He didn't say "over a thousand years". He said, "For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic." (Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076759/quotes/?tab=qt&ref_=tt_trv_qu)

Good points all. And yes, I did get the quote wrong. So In that case it'd be roughly 2500 years. Which is also a very long time too.

There is also the argument that the galaxy is a pretty huge place.

 

For a technology to diffuse throughout the galaxy takes a looooooooong time.

 

Just look at Earth for once, technology diffusion across Earth is pretty slow, things don't go mainstream just because they're invented. Then imagine technological diffusion across star systems, best of luck

True, although that doesn't stop tech in one place from developing, whether or not it then diffuses rapidly. (And the hyperdrive would of course mitigate a lot of the interstellar-distance braking on tech diffusion.)

We don't know for sure if various techs are so similar level.

We don't know if lightsabre's in old republic have as much power as those in E1-9.

I mostly watch movies and take knowledge from RPG games but when I saw Jedi and Sith in armour I assumed that in old republic lightsabres were weaker so armour could actually resist some contact with them while in E1-9 times Jedi/Sith abandoned them because they wouldn't provide significant protection and it would impair dodges, attacks while also being tiresome.

When it comes to ships I'm not 100% sure they are as fast as in E1-9.

When it comes to their weapons not being more damaging in E1-9 keep in mind that they need to rival stronger armour and shields.

I'm more of the opinion that, not having actual combat experience vs. the Sith for 1,000 generations (roughly 2500 years or so), the Jedi abandoned the use of armor for that reason.

 

The Sith didn't use it because - the rule of two- they were being inconspicuous. Maybe Maul wouldn't have been cut in half if he had been wearing armor.

 

One of the reasons order 66 was so effective is that the Jedi leading the troops were Not wearing armor.

 

I believe that lightsabers have the same degree of "cutting edge" as the Mandalorians are still able to use beskar armor to somewhat mitigate the force weapons.

I mostly watch movies and take knowledge from RPG games but when I saw Jedi and Sith in armour I assumed that in old republic lightsabres were weaker so armour could actually resist some contact with them while in E1-9 times Jedi/Sith abandoned them because they wouldn't provide significant protection and it would impair dodges, attacks while also being tiresome.

As I Understand It, although I'm not a deep lore nerd, somewhere between the Old Republic period of the KOTORs and SWTOR on the one hand, and the Ep1-9 movies on the other, the Sith mostly disappeared from the galaxy, and the Jedi were, somewhat later, I believe, banned by law from wearing armour.

The Jedi were not banned by law from wearing armor. The lore involved is the Ruusan reformation which saw the Jedi having to give up their military ranks, however. Additionally they could only have a temple on one world : Coruscant, and they were put under the control of the Republic government (specifically the Chancellor). It was thought that the Sith had disappeared (due to Darth Bane's manipulation and use of the "thought bomb").

The Star Wars universe is by intention from the writers, Stagnant by nature. technological improvements are regularly lost and re discovered to keep a general level of tech over tens of thousands of years.

 

It doesn't make the most sense but it allows the same kind of story to be told in many different eras, from different perspectives.

 

to compare with another sci fi franchise, with a completely different way of storytelling, Star Trek, in ST, things change quickly and all the time, and the stories tend to reflect those changes and how they affect people and their moral struggles.

 

With Star Wars, the times dont really change a lot, but the perspective of similar stories shifts, its just another method of storytelling.

Relative tech levels are hard to determine. We know they have the same kinds of technology, but we don't know how effective it is, since we never see a direct comparison. I mean, a imagine a TOR era ship going up against a Star Destroyer. We really don't know how it would fair (probably badly)

 

We also can't assume just because technological growth is rapid IRL right now, that it is always that way in every setting. Even nowadays, many fields of study are only making slow incremental advancements. Others are arguably barking up the wrong tree and may not be making any advancements at all (the history of science, especially physics, is loaded with examples of scientists chasing red herrings for decades/centuries (aether anyone?)).

As advancement continues, the cost of further advances continues to increase. Often times this cost can be offset by other related advancements (ex. increased complexity of vehicles is offset by increased sophistication of manufacturing processes). This every increasing sophistication we see requires ever increasing quantities of resources. So it is not illogical that in a society far more advanced than our own, they may very well have been held back by scarcity, be it of material, personnel etc.

Throw in wars, industrial sabotage, plagues and good old fashioned corruption and bureaucratic ineptitude and I don't think it's all that far fetched.

Edited June 30, 2020 by MadDutchman

1) 1000 generations is not 2500 years. It is around 20,000 years. Yeah. That is why it's set back so far and this corresponds to Wookieepedia too. - they date the republic's birth to 25,000 years Before the Battle of Yavin. It's a little mind-boggling, in-universe, to think about all the empty space there is to fill up in the timeline. Out-of-universe, well lol this is a great example of crazy fans thinking every silly thing George Lucas wrote is incontrovertible scripture. "Hey maybe Obi-Wan was just exagger--" "NO! Obi-Wan always tells the truth! If he said 1000 generations then that's how long it is!"

 

2) To me what's strange isn't that the technology stays the same up into OT era, because lots of fantasy settings have technological stagnation. No, what's strange is looking at the technology circa the Great Hyperspace War, about 1400 years before the events of this game, and a fleet looked like this, to now. Like, most Jedi and Sith had to PLUG IN their lightsabers back then. Then like 1000 years go by and by the time of the Mandalorian Wars everything looks pretty familiar. More swords, disposable energy shields and spikes but otherwise same tech.

 

So in 4000 years, there's very little technological change overall; if anything the Republic has better tech now than they do in the prequels. But in the 1000 years between the first Sith invasion and the mandalorian wars 400 years before this game, there was MASSIVE change.

 

I was thinking of writing a fanfic to try to explain this, but the short answer is the military-industrial complex is responsible for a lot of change relatively quickly. My headcanon is that when the military is no longer needed to field massive armies against space wizards, everything slows down and people in the Republic misplace the records that explain Chiss, Rakata, Zakuul [a notable upside], Silencers, Planet Prisons and insta-heal kolto. Out-of-universe, of course, the explanation is that BW wanted a familiar setting so KOTOR looked similar to the prequels and TOR looks similar to KOTOR.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Ardrossan

This will always be an issue since when you look at the chronology of SW we have started with the newest movies and all other "stuff" mostly dealth with how it was before (not taking into account the newest trilogy, which was about moving forward). This means that the developers face the challenge of making up technology, which is actually out of date when comparing to the newest movies.

 

For example in case of ship design I have to say that the devs did a good job as they made decent looking ships, but also they look crap compared to the "modern" ships. An X-wing is far better than anything we have in GSF. Mainly the imperial fighters are terrible so that definitely improved. The Star Destroyers are also OK, since they are just following this type of model from like eternity.

 

A different thing is the technology used. For example we have the lighsabers, which are the same for eons, since its again tradition. However, I liked the one comment which was in this thread:

 

The Star Wars universe is by intention from the writers, Stagnant by nature. technological improvements are regularly lost and re discovered to keep a general level of tech over tens of thousands of years.

 

Here its well said since we have for example the Rakata, who had advanced technology, but it was lost. There are many such cases where a technology was developed but then it was for example destroyed, banned or what ever and therefore lost. They seem to be trying to keep a certain level of technology overall, but there are sometimes breakthroughs that actually stay, like in the new trilogy the tracking of ships in hyperspace.

 

There are was also one more good post:

 

True, although that doesn't stop tech in one place from developing, whether or not it then diffuses rapidly.

 

Here the clones are a good example. Cloning was a technology, but there were not many who actually mastered it. On Kamino we know that they mastered it quite well and therefore cloned the whole army. This was just one place, one planet, so you would have many such place in the universe where they developed a specific technology, which was nowhere else. But then came the point above that it was either banned, lost, etc.

 

So overall I am fine with this game as part of SW since they are doing a good job of not jumping ahead, but still providing reasonable additions to the SW universe.

I guess. I'm not very happy with this idea of naturally forgetting tech. The jedi had holographs going back 20,000 years still in use on Tython, but we're to believe that between now and the prequels, virtually every discovery in this era gets forgotten. I think there needs to be something more to justify that. You'll note that in the comparison to the Rakata, their species went extinct/regressed to a more primitive form/went underground. For this level of civilizational forgetting, there needs to be something equivalent happening to the Republic in the near future.

I guess. I'm not very happy with this idea of naturally forgetting tech. The jedi had holographs going back 20,000 years still in use on Tython, but we're to believe that between now and the prequels, virtually every discovery in this era gets forgotten. I think there needs to be something more to justify that. You'll note that in the comparison to the Rakata, their species went extinct/regressed to a more primitive form/went underground. For this level of civilizational forgetting, there needs to be something equivalent happening to the Republic in the near future.

 

A good example is also the Gravestone. Such a powerful ship and it was just lying there in the swamp and then again it was forgotten as we didnt see something like that in the current movies. Imagine how it would decimate imperial fleets of star destroyers lined up next to eachother.

A good example is also the Gravestone. Such a powerful ship and it was just lying there in the swamp and then again it was forgotten as we didnt see something like that in the current movies. Imagine how it would decimate imperial fleets of star destroyers lined up next to eachother.

 

We don't know exactly how the Gravestone ended up there, but the story suggests that the species who designed the gravestone all went extinct. Again, there's a common theme: if you want to forget something BIG like a fleet-destroying semi-divine supership, then something BIG and BAD needs to happen to the civilization that created the tech.

There is a fleet tactic that counters the gravestone. its called dont fly your ships close enough to each other for the omnicannon to chain!

 

but apparently no one thought of that. lucky us.