Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-7232811-20130518221156/@comment-3580035-20130520024505

Imperial tech is mainly developing new things though variants of current things e.g. new makes of power armour and such. Actual new things (e.g. Plasma storm battery) and technologies  that are too rare to reproduce are being lost though over time; thus making the overall Imperial tech level in terms of higher order science regress. STCs are valued as they represent uncorrupted forms of advanced tech that the Admech can actually use on a large scale; due to their ease of manufacture and robustness in design. Very few tech-priests really understand scientific principles behind their technologies. They simply know how to fix it and make it work.

I doubt that Eldar really understand the scientific principles involved in their tech (mostly because they sing to wraithbone to make it grow into tech), but it is certainly advanced and can be shaped into new tech if necessary.

Standard Necrons know nothing of tech. On the other end of the scale, Crypteks are geniuses and know everything there is to know (except for warp related tech). Likewise, Canoptek constructs also utilise supremely advanced technologies to build/fix things and could be considered 'knowledgable' in that their databases contain virtually all known Necron science data

Orks actually better understand their technologies then the Imperium. I can even go as far to say that their technology base if actually higher overall, simply because meks are born with the innate knowledge of ork tech, and can easily generate new things through experimentation. The only real things stopping orks making stupidly powerful technologies is that they don't really care about neatness/quality of materials and their construction designs (stick armour plates randomly on tanks for example), don't care about safety in general, don't come with ideas too often due to fighting most of the time, and aren't bothered to grasp obscure things such as pocket dimensions because it simply isn't worth their time when they can krump more people.

The Tau Earth Caste are actually one of the only few races to actually fully understand their technologies and scientific principles. For example, no other race actually properly knows (or bother themselves for Crypteks) with anti-grav principles, whilst Tau fully understand how it works and how to improve it. The fact that they could match Tyranid biological evolutions with technological evolution is a testimony to their technological understanding and abilities. Heck, The Earth Caste have even managed to download Puretide's brain into datachips, and made a repulsor impact field out of salvaged Ork tech. The XV9 and XV104 battlesuits are both also new forms of Tau tech recently deployed in battles, whilst Ion weapon tech has only recently being fully exploited with the discovery of a new power source. The only technologies that the Tau have yet to truly advance are space travel tech (although they have attained better speeds with non-warp tech)  and warp technology for obvious reasons.

On a side note, Jokaero are also tech geniuses who know their stuff works (what with the ability to make finger lascannon-multimelta-heavy flamer-allinone-weapons on the fly)

Btw, this from the Tau codex shows just how backwards Imperial tech is

In the aftermath (of the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the Ethereals demanded a full study of captives and recovered equipment. The Earth caste declared much of the technology to be inferior, and some was simply too unstable to contemplate using, such as Imperial plasma devices. There were some eye-opening discoveries, however, and the Earth caste was in absolute wonder over a Warp engine they obtained. With no knowledge or understanding of the realm known as the Warp, they found the strange apparatus utterly unfathomable. To their further frustration, the captured humans that had operated it seemed to possess no actual understanding of its mechani ms either, running the equipment solely through the application of superstitious rituals and chanting.