Forum:Hapan Turbolaser Technology

For some reason, the idea of Hapes having slow-recharging turbolaser technology is bothersome. I can understand them somehow falling behind sometime after the closed the borders, but after the Empire rose to power? How the heck does that work? I mean, in Courtship of Princess Leia, the Hapan fleet that rolled into Coruscant was described as having "dozens" of Star Destroyers commandeered from whenever the Imperials decided to get to close to the cluster. They had so many that they gave Leia twelve of them for the hell of it (because these were gifts from the poorer worlds).

So... with dozens of intact Star Destroyers each packing dozens of turbolasers, how is it that they didn't manage to find one turbolaser? I mean, the Aqualish were able to unlock the secrets of spaceflight from a couple of exploration vessels that landed on their world, and they're a bunch of idiots. How is it that Hapan scientists couldn't manage to reverse engineer just one turbolaser in order to unlock the secret voodoo of men?

In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't have any sort of problem... as described in the book.

''Though the Imperial Star Destroyers were three times the size and more heavily armed than a Hapan Battle Dragon, the Imperials had designed their ships using old-fashioned stationary gun emplacements. After a blaster cannon or ion cannon fired, it took several milliseconds for the cannon's giant capacitors to recharge. The net effect was that the gun was stuck idle 80 percent of the time.

Not so with the Hapan Battle Dragon. Because the Battle Dragons were designed as huge saucers and the gun emplacements rotated rapidly around the rim of the saucer, idle guns moved on to recharge while fresh guns swung into place.''

So, why is there this "we have to use rotational guns because we suck" motif that persists up until Agents of Chaos where the New Republic hands over the recharge technology as a way of saying "oops" after Sal-Solo nukes 75% of the Hapan fleet? Isn't there already some sort of balance owing to the fact that Hapans generally have fewer/lighter weaponary?