I'm playing my first campaign with multiple player controlled races (on earth), and twice now I've had a situation where one race completes research into a technology, and then another race is given a less advanced version of the technology by the first race. I've never heard of this happening, either on the wiki or the forum. Can someone explain this to me? Is there a way to make it stop?
Technology moves by osmosis where races share the same home world or have treaties (on the assumption that less advanced tech moves into the civilian sectors and elsewhere). Often this is a couple of levels below the new technology but in cases where a good relationship exists, it may be just one level below.
In real world terms, there are a lot of countries using technology that they didn't invent but it is usually lower tech than the originating country.