Just a quick fluff consideration for you, Tagan, concerning the rate of change in the Imperium.  The Imperium is in a state of medieval stasis in the 41st millenium, though a space-medieval stage, and therefore, technology doesn't advance, and things aboard ships change very little over the years, so a new naval training course would be unneccisary, since life extension techniques combat loss of memory with age.<br/><br/>Although I'm not a<em>big</em>stickler on it, in the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, technology in the Imperium gets worse instead of better as the years go on.  There are exceptions, like the Falchion frigate, and newly recovered STC designs, but mostly, the Imperium gets weaker with every passing year as more and more of their best technology either gets its STC template destroyed or simply fails from poor maintenence.  (which is quite possible, even with the religious devotion of the techpriests, because the priesthood of mars don't even realize the basic principles that half their stuff functions on.)<br/><br/>In general, when playing the darkness of the 41st millenium, older things should be assumed to be better, and newer things to be a cheap knockoff.  Tank technology is an excellent way to demonstrate this:<br/><br/>Baneblade (old):<br/><br/>(http://www.ifelix.co.uk/images994/IMG_0033.jpg)<br/><br/><br/>Macharius (new):<br/><br/>(http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2009/11/9/63293_md-Apocalypse,%20Dakka%20Painting%20Challenge,%20Forge%20World,%20Imperial%20Guard,%20Macharius%20Vanquisher.jpg)<br/><br/><br/>Yes, a macharius is just two Leman Russ tanks crudely stapled together, and then stickered as a "Super-Heavy Tank"  The continuous technological decline of humanity is one of its biggest weaknesses, and also the greatest threats posed by the Tau.  While humanity would go through fits to develop anything new, or even adapt and exploit their own technology, the Tau easily produce new things, often in great numbers.  The clearest example of this is the fact that the standard Tau weapon is a vastly superior version of Imperial plasma weaponry, but with the risk to the user completely negated.<br/><br/>It's worth noting that the Eldar are in a similar technological stasis to Humanity, because they advanced to a technological level where developing new things was pointless because their existing devices were already too powerful to really make sense.  The craftworld Eldar simply use their considerable technology through their decaying industrial base, while the Dark Eldar easily produce gigantic numbers of apocolyptic weapons, but don't have the unity or political structure to accomplish it.  (notably, they could be insanely dangerous if they simply equipped thier raiding parties with dark matter weapons as standard issue, which they could do easily, but they don't trust their subordinates with the ability to vaporize them and prevent their ressurection.)<br/><br/>Orks, of course, are in inescapable technological stasis, since their technology is coded into their genes.  Like the tyranids, they can evolve and adapt, but they can never deploy a newly developed technology in an organized way throughout their civilization.  Chaos is slightly better than the Imperium, technologically speaking, because they have actively working scientists trying to advance their weaponry, and started out with older equipment in the first place.  Luckily for the Imperium, the chaos gods are fickle, and don't let technology advance too much in Chaos, usually making it backslide, so that their slaves are forced to rely on them.