Eight Journeyman Mech Designers fell into thought after Ves had spoken.
Many of them grew tempted at the prospect of gaining access to high technology.
The opportunity to study and master a small but powerful component of advanced human technology was precious!
While they were more accessible to first-raters, the secrets of high technology were still out of reach to the vast majority of the citizens of second-rate states.
There were three major barriers why this was the case.
First, high technology took far too much time to learn. They were often derived from the signature technological accumulation of powerful alien civilizations. After humanity's researchers spent an untold amount of effort to reverse engineer all of the weird and powerful alien technologies, humanity was able to convert them into its own use, if only reluctantly.