Intelligence Report: Ciadan
The home world of the Ciadan (called Kaseidron) had been shifted to subspace (a kind of reverse dimension filled with energy) by a very unique anomaly (a subspace shockwave) caused by the collapse of its sun. It was originally in the Delta Quadrant of our galaxy, what is today Borg space. This special shockwave--unique to the whole Universe—caused the nearly completely water covered planet Kaseidron to break out of its orbit and shift into subspace. This was how Kaseidron began its lonely travel through subspace. This happened before the Ciadan evolved on Kaseidron, so the Ciadan have always lived with subspace radiation and subspace particles filling their atmosphere. The Ciadan society lived peacefully in their… very special way (also looking very similar to humans, their behavior is quite strange.. some call it naive, some crazy, some ...) until they found out that Kaseidron will end its travel in some time and drop out of subspace. This was the time when they realized that their true home system was very far away indeed. Kaseidron ended its travel in the Andromeda galaxy.
The Ciadan, only being a 1000 year old race, had impressive technological capabilities. They developed a special medicament which allows them to survive in 'normal' space. After 300 years of development, exploration and expansion (Andromeda itself is quite empty) the Ciadan began an incredible project. They constructed a giant spaceship to travel to our galaxy and discover their true home system. Because of their subspace warp drives they reached our galaxy 400 years later...However, they were unable to locate the location of their true home system, therefore they settled on a planet in the deep Alpha Quadrant, which they call Herdantron. They constructed a giant Dyson Sphere around it, using the Mothership as a basic platform.
The Ciadan are scientists. They have their own very special reason to research: simply trying, like a child playing with bricks. They are similar to kids somehow, playing with the small ant until killing it, but basically they are innocent: they don’t plot evil plans to decimate populations-it just happens accidentally! It wasn’t their fault! This technique was very successful untill now, so the Ciadan can access a large field of very highly advanced technology and have a very complex research hierarchy. For instance, no Ciadan vessel has its own single energy source. All vessels are linked through subspace with a special “battery”, which provides the necessary power to operate it. The Ciadan computer network, called a "database" is a similar construction, but the Ciadan use organic processors, as they would call them, to process all the information. These "organic processors" are simply humans, Vulcans, Romulans or even Borg, whatever sentient beings they find in the Universe. Scientists are planned as a special resource for the Ciadan faction, because they assign them to their research projects.
The Ciadan can survive in subspace and most of their technologies are based on subspace particles. For example they use a "subspace warp drive" which allows them to travel extremely fast and unseen, because the existence of material objects in subspace disprove what the federation and most other races know about subspace. The Ciadan can't survive in "normal space" for a long time and have to take a special medicine to stop the subspace particles in their cellular structure from decomposing).
The area their home planet was in during its journey—subspace--does not follow the same physical rules. Of course the Ciadan have a strong link to subspace. They, for example, were for a long time the only ones who managed to transfer mater to subspace (something the Vulcans proved to be impossible) and relocate mater within subspace. This in turn gives them a really fast method of traveling. And something to keep the Vulcans busy. The Ciadan can access the ability to shift to subspace and travel there. This will be a special ability of one or more Ciadan Vessels. All Ciadan vessels are relatively fast. You should also have to know that, besides the giant generation ship which won't be a buildable unit, all Ciadan ships are relatively small. Most battleships are smaller than 400 or 500 meters. The Ciadan also have a quite unique hull construction method. They build - or better said--replicate their ships with dilithium hull plating, which renders their ships immune to most sensors and also makes them damn expensive and rare. But well, the Ciadan never had a real sense of economy. The only resource this species will use will be dilithium.
The Ciadan themselves follow the same rules of physics as we humans do. In fact they don't look that different from us. A bit smaller, physically much weaker with an alcohol based body and a bit too much silicon in their "organic" material. They also have no hair--something they really like on mammalian-based species. The Ciadan don't have much crew for their vessels or stations, and because they lack any type of sexual instinct their population is very low (one child born in a month or something of the sort). Their physical strength is also quite low. In Fleet Operations their vessels will have less crew and their fighting abilities are low. There won't be a steady crew loss, because of the medicine which allows them to survive in normal space. As their body strength is very weak they can easily be boarded. To avoid this, the Ciadan have developed several starships which are run without crew, but through a database uplink, so they cannot be boarded.
Only the Ciadan can build "Dyson Spheres" (they don't call them Dyson Spheres though). These facilities are automated, so they don't have crew. However, if you assimilate or board the necessary Ciadan ships you can build up one yourself. If there is a “Dyson Sphere” around a resource moon, no other player can mine from this moon. Of course the sphere can be destroyed like every mining station.
The Ciadan will be able to upgrade their stations (all Ciadan Stations are armed: they do not have a defense turret). They will be able to even equip their stations with special weapons (it is advised to set the stations to maximum special weapon autonomy then, or you will have to trigger the weapons yourself). The Ciadan will also probably get a greater variety of mine fields.
The Ciadan are a highly advanced race, specialized in developing artificial and cybernetic intelligence, with a very unique character and point of view. The Ciadan hacking capabilities are thus very impressive and they can override most starships for a short time or, under usage of special techniques, even permanently. The Ciadan make use of Holo Emitter technology as well (as do the Iconians).
The Ciadan wont harvest “people” in Fleet Operations, as a database complex is usually built in subspace or in a far corner of the galaxy where they clone, breed or “salvage” their CPUs, but it is no common military strategy. They don't attack planets because they need new brains, as they don't have a steady need for them. However, they have been seen to connect prisoners to the database, in the attempt to gain information from them via virtual simulations, or direct “brain-hacking” (which is not that successful, due to the large variance of neuro-structures). This method is similar to the Romulan neuro-probes.
Essentially the Ciadan are not brutal. They don’t “kill off” whole populations--like the Borg would do. They just don't think of all the consequences their actions might have, especially if it’s not them who have to live with the consequences. There are even some Ciadan serving as CPUs in the Database...
The Developers changed their design plan for the future a bit, so the Ciadan will probably have their first appearance as a non playable faction, just to get them a bit early to the public, so more info on them will follow.