How strong or versatile is Zepp's army, weapons, and technology compared to Illyrian Knights or Holy Order?
While there isn’t any exact accurate comparison, based on what we know so far, Zepp’s technology has kept pace with the advances of Magical Science.
Prior to 2181, most of society was unaware of how advanced Zepp’s technology actually was, and because of how isolated Zepp was as a Garrison state, there was a large knowledge gap between Zepp and other nations.
During events prior to GGX (2181 or so), many people were chasing after a Golden Disc which contained a Database record of “lost history” between 1999 to the 2100s or so.
Potemkin suggested that while this technology WAS something Zepp was fully capable of reproducing, it was still too dangerous at that time for the outside world (i.e. the rest of society) to gain access to, simply because of the dangerous lost information it contained after his “very brief” analysis of the disc.
Fortunately, Ky later destroyed the disc and pursued the corruption within his own organization after Potemkin spoke with him.
It wasn’t until around 2183 or so that most of society began to rebuild and recover from the Crusades (this was also the year Illyria as a Kingdom was established across most of Europe and Russia), so the technology that Magic had developed by the time of the 2180s had actually fallen behind what Zepp was capable of.
While Zepp still kept most of their “secrets” to themselves after becoming a Republic, they started to open diplomatic relations with other countries once more. (The Assassins under Venom tried to take advantage of this, though Chipp Zanuff intervened to prevent a war between America and Zepp.)
It was around 2186-87 or so that Bounty Hunters could be seen working and headquartering themselves within Zepp’s borders again, benefitting from Zepp’s advanced technology, so long as it wasn’t distributed to other countries.
But as we now know, the Conclave were working on their own Blacktech projects in secret (despite the ban), like the Cyprus Project and the Collider Cannon Airship Fleets that King Daryl later gained access to. These were all “Magic-based Technology” that Pope Ariels had been creating in secret to improve her advantages over the rest of Humanity (though some ideas were scrapped, based on what Crow Kuruwaba states from the Postwar Administration Bureau’s side of the deal).
At any rate, most of the military-technology developed around that time was kept an International secret, even the secret behind the Opus Gears as an Anti-Valentine deterrent (despite them being distributed to most of society as a security system).
Based on what Leo Whitefang and President Colin Vernon said in their talks to one another (between Illyria and America at least), Magic technology has slowly caught up to the level of convenience Zepp has had for many years now.
So, as of 2187, while Zepp still uses old-world tech, the advancements they’ve made are fairly equal in footing with Magic technology right now.
It’s only a matter of time before the two are combined at some point.
