Sith Empire, not the Galactic Empire. Two different things =P

Glad someone asked cause I'm not nearly the Star Wars nerd that my brother is.

I believe it's 3000 years before the trilogy. The armor is inspired by stormtroopers/clonetroopers for two reasons. 1. It makes them easily identifiable with the Star Wars 2. This armor is well before the stormtroopers so they kind of reverse engineered it to make it similar and yet make it appear that TOR armor inspired the storm/clone trooper armor.

Also it isn't that hard to believe that 3000 years later they are still using similar designs since we are still doing the same thing. Instead of chainmail its kevlar. Knife/sword design has really havn't changed at all except the alloys we use. It's even more believable if you think they hit a technology barrier that stops them from progressing at quicker rates. We kind of hit that with the 1 atom transistor. How do you make it smaller than 1 atom!?!?