This is what technology is known in the empire.

Interstellar travel uses hyperspace,another dimension where distances are shorter, for travel.

• Hyperspace is a hostile place with high energies and a viscosity that the ships need to push against to travel. Any object that is not within an active field of hyperspace will drop to normal space very fast(normally halving speed every second) as they will decelerate fast and nothing can exists in hyperspace and travel at speed of less than 1% light speed in normal universe. They will arrive in normal space traveling at about 1% of light speed(hyperspace threshold).
• Hyperspace ship passing by is detectable very close by with gravity sensors, but for practical purposes at normal ranges is undetectable.
• Entry and exit from hyperspace are easily detectable as high energy events, the pulse is +12+ship SM to detect.
• To enter hyperspace a ship needs to travel at a minimum speed of about 1% light speed. In most cases this means a significant travel time due to the fairly long boost time to reach the 1% hyper threshold speed.
• To exit they will need to be at that the same distance or higher. They will emerge from hyper at about 1% light speed.
• Available starting late TL 9: 1 parsec/day
• TL 10: 1-2 parsec/day
• TL 1-4 parsec/day
• Typical starship accelerations,time to reach the 1% light speed and approximate distance from starting point
  • 1g=84.9hr(1527 lysec)
  • 2g=42.4hr(763 lysec)
  • 3g=28.3hr(509 lysec)
  • 4g=21.2hr(381 lysec)
  • 5g=17hr(305 lysec)
  • 6g=14.1hr(254 lysec)
  • 7g=12.1hr(218 lysec)
  • 8g=10.6hr(190 lysec)
  • 9g=9.4hr(169 lysec)
  • 10g=8.5hr(152 lysec)
  • 20g=4.2hr(76 lysec)
  • 30g=2.8hr(50 lysec)

• Stargates: fold space temporarily to make two places be the same for an instant.
  • Available TL 11
  • They are limited by the total tonnage and the tonnage/hour they can transit though them.
  • The only current implementation is based on mini black holes and The imperial versions have maximum transit capacity and capacity/hour of 300 000 tons. The Dasi and Taxysi gates can only transit 100 000 ton weights, but have a total capacity of 600 000 tons/hour.
  • They work between any two such gates at a distance of slightly over 300 parsecs.
  • They must be located far from significant gravity sources and cannot send things though such, thus they tend to be built at about 2 times the hyperspace threshold to minimize the blocking effect of the star.
  • The gates of the different species are linked and it is thus possible to travel though their spheres of influence.
  • There are also apparently quite many automatic gates built by unknown civilizations that are usable by anyone scattered around the galaxy. These gates are under intense scrutiny currently as they seem to be able to transit things much further than current gates and have much higher mass limits, but so far there are no answers. There is also a big search to find their makers. Some ruins have been found that might have been left by atleast some of them, but the search continues.

• Artificial intelligence and Expert systems:
  • The research into AI is forbidden by all civilized races due to the problems it creates.
  • All current computer hardware has locks in place making both deliberate and spontaneous AI creation very hard.
  • The lack of AI limits the roles that computers can take

Contragravity: Available TL 10. Allows increasing/decreasing the felt gravity

• By 1g for a light generator 2g for a heavy(*5 cost) at TL 10
• By 5g(*5 cost) and 10g(*25 cost) at TL 11.

Reactionless drives come in three main types: They are limited in the total % of light speed they work at, most start to lose efficiency at about 3-4% of light speed and reach zero acceleration at approximately 5-6%. Some specially designed drives can reach up to 10%.

• Cold reactionless drives; Late TL 9:Have acceleration of 10g*their mass(0.5g in the standard 5% of ship mass base). They are fairly efficient and do not create significant signature.
• Hot reactionless drives; Late TL 9:Have acceleration of 20g*their mass(1g in the standard 5% of ship mass base). They are fairly inefficient and create a significant heat signature.
• Improved reactionless drives: Available TL 11: Have acceleration of 200g*their mass(10g in the standard 5% of ship mass base). They are fairly efficient and do not create significant signature. Normally limited to 10g due to the limited gravity compensation available, some fighter craft have up to 30g acceleration, causing 20g felt gravity(causing HT rolls at base -6, but normally +9 from the advanced g-suit and position.).

• Genetic engineering is possible in limited way, but not very common and slightly frowned upon, though some nobles and few planets take pride in flaunting their genetically engineered bodies.
• Cybernetics are very common, with almost everyone having at least a implant communicator and a bio monitor implant.
• Anti aging treatments are available, but they are risky limiting total possible lifespans. Approximately 5% or treatments have some serious issues such as cancer or natural healing problems and similar with close to 1.5% of total treatments having catastrophic issues like totally scrambled genetic code, untreatable very rapid cancer, a too serious system shock killing immediately and similar.

• Spherical force screens and force wards are available at TL 11. They are semi ablative and cannot regenerate while taking continuing damage. They are also limited in that they cannot cross solid objects so are problematic for ground use, but for stationary objects they can be tuned to be only part of a sphere, allowing full above ground coverage on flat ground (and in case of buildings and similar, digging a trench at correct place allows for coverage to extend “underground”)
• Conformal force screens are prototype TL 11 technology. They cannot be standalone, instead they must be built into the suit surface.
• Cloaking devices are available at TL 11, but are of limited utility except in space
  • They work by making no radiation(including visible light) escape out, thus the area will always be “black” in all frequencies so if the background is not the darkness of space they are very visible.
  • They have a limited use time until the collected heat/radiation must be dumped out. Though the dump can be done in a smaller arc still providing protection from other angles.
  • These limitation cause most scout ships, warships and similar to also have chameleon surfaces, radar stealth and similar things.
• Due to construction all electronics are considered hardened for purposes of resisting surges getting +3 HT for such purposes and you cannot select the separate hardened option.

• Faster than light communications exist in the form of Gravity ripple comms, but they are fairly short range(maximum of about 5 light seconds), expensive and very slow transmission speed.