The Cydonians use a wide variety of starships to travel and conduct war. While these machines contain a wide variety of mission specific technology, modules and crew they also have a number of commonalities across all ship types.
The exact composition of the hull and primary structural materials of a Cydonian starship are unknown. Many internal components are made of common plastics, metals, ceramics and other materials that can be retrieved and studied. However, the hull of the ship is made of an exotic material, very light but also possessing incredible strength that cannot be captured.
The hull material is of unknown composition and has never been successfully captured for study. The material violently self-destructs, completely self-annihilating and often causing extensive damage to the surroundings. No means of suppressing this self-destruct mechanism have been discovered, the material continuing to self-destruct even within a null-time stasis field.
The exact trigger of the self-destruct has not been determined. The ships are known to self-destruct due to extensive damage, but also when no damage has been taken after the crew has been killed or captured. This indicates there is some sort of intelligence guiding the self-destruct trigger.
Since the Cydonians have never permitted study of intact starships, the properties of their hull material have only been studied under battlefield conditions. It has so far demonstrated no significant weaknesses, possesses a high resistance to armor piecing weapons and prevents all known forms of teleportation through its bulk. The only known strategy for penetrating the hull material is direct, overwhelming firepower.
Game stats:
Cydonian Hull Material (CHM) ignores Armor Divisors, blocks teleportation and is immune to corrosion. In GURPS Spaceships it is a TL12^ Armor, Structural Field system
When a ship takes so much damage that it is considered destroyed, the hull material explodes or burns at a rate of 10% of its mass per minute. To calculate damage, find the weight of the hull material fragment in pounds. Damage per second is equal to 1d x √(Weight)/10 divided by three times the distance from the hull in yards.
Example: A small Cydonian ship is destroyed and a one ton fragment lands in a green forest. The fragment self-destructs, causing 1d x √(2000)/10 = 4.47d or 4d+2 burning damage to anything touching it. This is enough to start a forest fire!
Like their hull material, the exact nature of the Cydonian power system is unknown due to the inability to capture it. The system is always well protected deep within the ship, and is often among the last components to be destroyed. When destroyed the system explodes, emitting intense radiation and tearing the ship to pieces.
The power plant is a large, orange cylinder extending from the floor to ceiling in the engine room. Small ships have a single cylinder, with larger ships simply adding more rather than increasing the size of the cylinders. The cylinders are extremely durable, and are apparently even tougher than the hull.
Sensor readings during a cylinder breach indicate that their systems might be some sort of caged universe system, the readings are very similar to what scientists believe the environment of a universe in the pre-Big Bang stage would be.
Game Stats:
Cydonian power plants are a TL12^ Total Conversion power plant system. When the power plants are destroyed, they explode with the damage equal to the mass of the starship with a REF of 2.0 with the Radiation and Surge modifies. This explosion also scatters fragments of the ship across a wide area, see Hull Material for what these fragments will do.
Example: A 10,000 ton starship has its power plan explode. The explosion is equal to 6d x √(10,000 *2000*4*2) = 6d*12,500 burn ex rad sur. This is the equivalent of a small nuclear bomb.
Every Cydonian starship possesses a gestalt hub. The gestalt hub is well protected and kept near the center of the ship. The gestalt hub is a superb example of the psionic technology employed by the Cydonians.
The gestalt hub psionic links all members of the ship’s crew into a constant psionic gestalt (GURPS Psionic Powers p.9). This connection is telepathic and will reestablish any time the crew member is in range and the telepathic connection is not being jammed.
The gestalt hub is heavily armored both physically and psionically. The gestalt has demonstrated to mentally attack and disconnect non-Cydonians who attempt to connect to it. No means of shutting down the gestalt hub short of physical destruction has yet to be determined. The range of the gestalt hub is estimated to be several light seconds, possibly as much as light minute.
Game Stats:
The gestalt hub provides the entire ship’s crew with a constant, automatic gestalt as per GURPS Psionic Powers p.9. All members of the gestalt are aware of and can communicate with each other at will. How any Cydonian uses the gestalt is noted on their individual entries.
Any non-Cydonian attempting to establish contact with the gestalt hub or anyone connected to the gestalt is subject to Horrifying Wide Window as per GURPS Horror p.13 before being ejected from the gestalt. No information can be gathered this way, nor can being ejected from the gestalt be resisted or prevented. Serious mental trauma is the most likely result of such actions.
The exact principles of the Cydonian stardrive are unknown. What is known is that the same engine operates at both sub-light and supra-light speeds. The drive is a pseudo-velocity drive, increasing displacement without gaining velocity. No matter what it’s apparent speed, a Cydonian Starship suffers no relativistic effects.
Game Stats:
The Cydonian stardrive is a reactionless engine with the subwarp feature.
The primary weapon of Cydonian ships is a peculiar form of particle beam. The beam consists of a stream of unstable, energetic exotic particles in a field-jacket. The particles explode on contact with anything that disrupts that field-jacket. Even with the field jacket, they eventually decay and explode at the weapon’s maximum range.
The weapon can fire from any point on the ship’s hull, at any angle. The beam generating apparatus within the hull possesses no barrel or other projector, simply attaching directly to the hull. The weapon is also remarkably resilient, able to take significant damage but continue to operate, albeit at a reduced capacity.
A limiting factor of this weapon is how it interacts with the stardrive. While the stardrive is active, the weapon cannot be fired at any target with significant relative velocity. This results in Cydonian ships matching apparent velocities with the ships they are attacking before opening fire. Grounded ships with their stardrive deactivated or emplaced base defenses do not suffer from this drawback.
Game Stats:
The Cydonian Beam Weapon is a TL12^ weapon. It uses the dDam1 and Range0 tables, sAcc 0 and Rcl 1. The damage type is burn rad sur (5) with followup cr exp rad sur.