The Shykara design project was a marked departure from standard Abbai fair and was quite ambitious in its aims. Using state of the art gravitic technologies, Abbai scientists hoped to design a new ship which could have abnormally strong gravitic shields. The requirements of the project forced the Abbai to adopt similarly unique ship design schematics in order to accomodate the implementation of the advanced shielding arrays.

The end result was the Shykara Defense Frigate. The frigate uses a distributed network of shield generators to reinforce the gravitic shielding. The ship was only able to mount two of the improved shield generators, and they took up most of the ship's internal volume, and entire sections of the ship's hull are filled with shield related equipment only

Armed almost entirely for its own defense, the Shykara was planned to be used for general police duties in the fleet, and most were implemented in that form. The Shykaras that remained after the Dilgar Invasion were all scrapped, as that conflict proved that the lack of offensive weaponry on the Shykara was a detriment to its service and the price of the improved shielding was simply too high in terms of production costs.