The Banu Defender is a Banu ship, but it's got shields from the Tevarin and engines from the Xi'an. How does that affect it, and why does that make this ship unique amongst other ships?
TL;DRThe mixed Xi'an engines, Tevarin shields and Banu hull show the Banu adopting whatever tech works best, an alien blend not done with other ships, which illustrates their personality.
Well, I mean, part of it was illustrating this idea that the Banu, they like stuff that works best for whatever they're trying to build. So for whatever reason, the Xi'an thrusters were better than the previous thrusters that they had on there, so they were like, oh, that's great. Thank you. And took it and absorbed it into their tech. And the same with the Tevarin. I mean, we've always hinted at the fact that part of the Tevarin arsenal was their impressive defensive capabilities. So they saw that, they were like, ah, perfect. Thank you. And took that and absorbed it into their thing. So a lot of it was just, we hadn't really done that with a lot of other ships, this sort of amorphous blend of alien technology, and so it just seemed like a cool thing that illustrated an aspect of their personality in their technology.
So yeah, if you go aboard an all-Banu ship, maybe you'll see that they're still running a human cooler or something, because that's a really good product and they're happy to use it. They don't need to stick to Banu tech just because they're Banu.