(Here's hoping this doesn't count as going against the promise I made in my last post...)
The space-faring history of the Concordium up to the early 2570s kinda goes as follows:
*The first non-tactical warp ('sublight') ships are built and flown by five neighbouring species, namely the humanoid
Veltressai (one in 20 births result in mind-linked quadruplicates - their home world is now the ISC capital) the felinoid
Korlivilar, the humanoid ammonia-breathing
Q'naabians, the reptilian
Pronhoulites and the psionic turtle-dolphin
Rovillians. This starts around the year 2225.
*The five powers run ships which are not very long-ranged - they can only go a couple of hundred parsecs reliably. This basically keeps them stuck in what is now their capital province on the
Fed and Empire map (Q'naabia is in 5810, the other four home worlds in 5910).
*Once it becomes clear that there is only a limited range of worlds they can reach (which become known as the Resource Worlds, all within the same modern-day province) the five powers fight a series of colonial wars to try and capture them. This goes on for quite a while.
*The Veltressai discover Tactical Warp in 2410 - soon copied by the others - and eventually all five build ships armed with new weapons, such as phasers and various plasma-based heavy weapons. However, they soon realise they can reach thousands of 'New Worlds' away from their home space, and more slowly realise that fighting each other over colony worlds is pointless. Eventually, a treaty is signed, and peace breaks out.
*The ISC is founded in 2449, but initially as an organisation tasked with co-ordinating responses to monster outbreaks - less-than-eco-friendly corporations from the five home planets were ransacking worlds as they found them, leading to a bad reaction from the Space Boars whose chambers were being dug into.
*Gradually, from 2480-2500 and onwards, the Concordium makes a shift from an alliance into a government - running unified bases, a police service, and eventually a unified Navy (the latter two using a set of two-pronged ships which replaced the
racial ships built in an older era, and which were the forerunners to the three-pronged ones seen in the modern day).
*The ISC develop weapons and new designs they
could build to upgrade or supersede their Y-era ships, but don't bother with the expense required to do so. There is no perceived need, as by and large the issues with monsters and pirates they face are not life-threatening. (Also, by 2560 the ISC has not yet claimed the outermost range of provinces shown on the
Fed and Empire map.)
*Cue contact in 2560, and the shock of detecting the sight of Gorns and Romulans
fighting - which awakes a sleeping giant. The ISC spend the next eight years building new ships, upgrading their two-prong fleet, introducing new weapons, and preparing for an effort geared at protecting their exposed frontiers.
*2568-2572 - the ISC launch a
campaign to occupy and fortify the outer range of provinces, and set up the 12 outermost battle stations you see on the map. In this time, they reveal themselves to the Gorns, fight (and defeat) a Romulan squadron, have a clash between a DNE and a Vulture, and otherwise make their presence known.
(In this period, the kind of refits and weapon systems which are more common by the end of the General War - like rear-firing plasmas, extra phasers and PPDs - are either yet to be introduced, or are less commonplace.)
I hope that helps.
