(Sorry I'm late to the party. Work has had me quite busy this past week) (I'll likely edit this post some more if I get to write some more info about the ships this weekend)

The Ka

The Ka is one, the Ka are many but all work towards the common goal: survival.
The Ka are a synthetic race that roam the galaxy in search of resources to fuel their ever expanding collective. Unlike other species, Ka do not have any sense of individuality or even a concept of death. Ka are essentially billions upon billions of computer programs, all working together as one. Their ships, resource gatherers and soldiers are all mobile platforms within which these programs operate.
As a consequence of this, the Ka have no leaders or single decision makers. This means that any political decision that needs to be made is done by running the problem through the Ka’s programs in order to collectively achieve results. This often leads to responses and actions that most organics do not understand, then again the Ka do not understand the chaos of most organics either.
While the processing power of the Ka collective mind is almost unfathomable, they are sadly extremely uncreative. All their ships, stations and other designs have been based off of others. Sometimes different designs are combined or improved upon after new data has been gathered but the Ka have never created even a single original design themselves. 

Aside from one single permanently occupied system known as ‘the shrine’, the Ka are a mobile civilisation. Their so called ‘collectors’ travel around the galaxy in search of resources to further the expansion of the entire collective. This can be minerals to build new ships but also new technologies they can use. To this end, no holds are barred. Advanced organic civilisations, great or small are all targets to mine for resources and like everything else, to be discarded when depleted. They only make exceptions for pre space age civilisations, having learned that such creatures are better left undisturbed and uninformed until they can come up with enough ideas to steal. Strangely enough, the ‘mining’ of organics’ ideas does not necessarily involve a straight up war. More powerful civilisations especially will often see the Ka discretely purchasing ideas from the black market or hijacking isolated ships and kidnapping scientists before any ‘military’ hostilities re engaged.

Being very reliant on mobility, their ships are the Ka’s greatest resource. They have the single largest fleet in the known galaxy though most ships, while still armed and armoured, are not dedicated combat vessels. They are mining vessels who strip asteroids of their valuable minerals, refinery ships who create useful materials from said minerals, transports to bring goods to and from the various Ka ships and manufactory vessels that can vary in size from a small drone assembler to a massive multi kilometre long mobile shipyard. 

The history of the Ka is long but sadly, not much is remembered. They were created at one point in time, likely many centuries or even millennia ago by an unknown and long since vanished creator. The Ka do commemorate their creator by having a world spanning shrine in his, her, or their honour. This shrine can be considered the Ka’s homeworld and is likely the site of their creation. The planet itself is mostly covered by immense projects of Ka made artificial landscapes to mimic the world as it once was in the times of the creator. In order to maintain these artificial ecosystems, the Ka have built thousands of monitoring and maintenance stations on the planet as well as in orbit.