If you want to play around with these techs there is a way to do it. First start a new game with no npr's and no precursors. Then use the sm functions to reasearch all techs below 20m reasearch points. This should be all of the techs in the game normally available. Then make sure you have lots of ruins in your home system (use sm function on the F9 screen) As you recover labs there is a chance for a new tech. Normally this would be a random tech from everything that is available to reasearch, as well as special advanced weapons systems. As you already have all of the standard tech, it will be one of the new techs. Once you get the first tech for a system use the reasearch all button for 20m again so you won't get the next tech in that field when you get another tech from a ruins lab being recovered. It will proabably take 20-30 years to get all of the techs you are going to need, but if you set up your game right there should not be any interrupts aside from what you recover and the game will go pretty quick.
When you are ready to actually use the new tech you can either go in and take the higher levels away, or just build lower tech systems and then create a npr in a neighboring system to fight with and see what works.
Brian
