DOTLAN EveMaps

u'[ Invitation Only ]

Technological advancements occur throughout the history of Mektek INC, which extends from the late 20th to mid-32nd centuries. The earliest published technical readout dates from the year 2750, but the majority of such publications describe technologies as they exist in the 31st century. It\'s largely around this latter period that BattleTech centers.

One of the earliest and most significant events in Mektec technology was the advent of faster-than-light travel, the principles of which were first described by Stanford University physicists Thomas Kearny and Takayoshi Fuchida in 2018. Scientists first successfully tested an FTL engine based on Kearny and Fuchida\'s work on 3 September 2107, and late the following year mounted the first long-range manned voyage, a 12-light year jump to the Tau Ceti star system. Though based on similar principles, faster-than-light communication in the form of Hyperpulse Generators wouldn\'t be developed until 2630.

Technological advancements continued slowly but steadily through the third millennium, notably including the development of the first BattleMech by Terran Hegemony engineers in 2439.
This advancement reached its zenith during the latter years of the Star League with computing, communications, sensors, power and motor systems, medical sciences and other technologies reaching high levels of refinement.

Following the collapse of the Star League in 2781, the league\'s constituent states fell into a protracted struggle for supremacy known as the Succession Wars. The conflict saw the wide-spread destruction of factories, ship yards and research facilities, resulting in a slow but steady degradation of scientific and technological expertise. By the dawn of the fourth millennium, few sites in the Inner Sphere retained the ability to construct or even repair the more sophisticated Star League-era devices, and lost or hidden caches of such technology became highly sought after. A mercenary unit discovered one such cache, including a Star League memory core, on the planet Helm in 3026, a discovery that sparked a minor technological renaissance.

The exodus of much of the Star League Defense Force after the league\u2019s collapse was also a significant blow to technological development in the Inner Sphere since it included many of the most advanced vessels and pieces of hardware. Later to become known as the Clans, these forces, unlike those in the Inner Sphere, generally retained a Star League level of technology, and though not advancing considerably beyond it over the following centuries, did make many refinements and enhancements that set them ahead of their Successor States counterparts. The return of the Clans to the Inner Sphere in 3048 prompted a flurry of technological development on both sides of the front, with numerous weapons and military systems quickly developed and deployed.

In August 3132, a mysterious calamity collapsed the Hyperpulse Generator Network, inhibiting interstellar communication and heralding a slow-down of technological development.'