I agree that it's logical for standard designs to be time-tested to a fare-the-well. I further posit that - given the time scales involved in canon - there probably aren't very many design requirements for starships which haven't already been addressed a few centuries ago.

But this does not make for very exciting adventure possibilities and it's also extremely hard for players (and even myself) to grasp intuitively.

So the solution I have adopted in my games is to drastically alter the length of the canon timeline. Prior to Terran contact, it is as given. But subsequent to Terran contact, I divide all dates by roughly a factor of five (5). This adjustment gives me a tech progression that feels reasonable (to my players and myself), while retaining deep, Dune-like depths of history for the successive Imperia.

On the particular subject of starship design, the effect of my timeline adjustment goes something like this:

The Vilani have been building Jump-1 starships for ~7000 years and Jump-2 starships for ~3000 years (they don't build enough Jump-3 or higher ships to matter statistically). But they are a cautious race, who stick to well-proven designs, with little interest in limited-market, specialty one-offs. They are also fanatically protective of intellectual property rights; when you buy from a Vilani, you only get the operating manual. You have to research/compile the engineering documentation for yourself (and you'd better not let them know you're doing it).

Other races are much more adventurous in the area of starship design. But these races have generally been building ships for a much shorter period - much less than a millennium for most - and with interruptions in their accumulated knowledge bases from such events as the Long Night and the Maghiz. These other races (particularly Solomani and Syleans) also tend to take economizing shortcuts, by including components salvaged from other ships, of wildly varying design and provenance. This often leads to *interesting* issues of compatibility.

Finally, I postulate that the *designs* of most starship machinery - including both gravitic and jump drives - are simple enough that crude versions can be built at Tech Levels as low as 5 (steampunk!). Of course, most of these can only *function* if powered by at least a moderately-compact fission power plant (Tech Level 7+). It's perhaps needless to say that this last bit gives non-VIlani "cheater" races a very rich source of (in)compatible parts to scavenge. :)

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