After the First Interstellar War, the Camino Star Empire evaluated the effectiveness of their ships for any possible improvements that could be made to them. While the Taranis-Class Destroyer and the Deimos-Class Cruiser upgraded their weaponry to include missile launchers originally supplied by the United Vitam State and the Empire introduced the Keres-Class Frigates six months after the war, the Kronos-Class Battleship never received such upgrades in its design. While the vessel was optimally armed to fight against larger ships, it was becoming increasing clear in the advent of the Holy Lykan Republic’s new larger line of ships that the Kronos may not be able to fight on equal terms with larger vessels in terms of offensive and defensive capabilities. After holding a conference call with the United Vitam State who had similar feelings involving their own Golem-Class Battleship, both nations decided to redesign their battleships in secret from the Novus Initium Republic, the Holy Lykan Republic, and the Liberigi Mandate.

 

Sticking to the same design elements found among their ships, the Empire wanted a vessel that was large if not larger than all known battleships, with thicker armor and more weapons. The Imperial Ship Engineering Group looked over all possible design plans before settling on a design that met all of those requirement. The “Mark II” Kronos was larger than the NIR’s Paladin Battleship and the HLR’s Harbinger Battleship. The vessel’s armor was increased to be 3200mm thick, double the thickness of the Paladin’s armor, and is coupled with the same nanocell armor repair system as other Imperial ships. The ship’s armament has also been increased among its anti-battleship and anti-cruiser weaponry at the expense of losing its anti-frigate/destroyer weapons. Its anti-battleship weapons now number 16 dual heavy railguns and 8 heavy blaster turrets. Among its anti-cruiser weapons, the Kronos II is equipped with 32 medium dual railguns and 32 medium blaster turrets. A new weapon was installed on the Kronos II that was inspired by the Paladin Battleship’s Dual Giga Beam Laser Cannon. The Kronos II’s is equipped with 2 Dual Large Caliber Railguns that are designed to be one-shot ship killers. The rounds are fired at one-quarter the speed of light and all four barrels can be fired at once. However, much like the Paladin’s Dual Giga Beam Laser Cannon, it takes a great deal of power to fire the rounds as well as reloading them. The Dual Large Caliber Railguns are fixed forward and cannot be turned, so the ship has to turn to aim and fire the weapons.

 

One downside to the size increase of the Kronos II was the maneuverability being sacrificed due to the additional mass of the vessel. This also resulted in issues using the cloaking device found on other Imperial vessels. While the Kronos can use the device, the plasma output from the engines and the gravitation displacement would be highly noticeable on scanners that would allow it to be easily detected. This made the cloaking device impractical to use. The last downside was one that was corrected but initially the vessel could not fit in any existing star gates due to the fins that are pointed vertically and diagonally on the sides. The fins were later remodeled and are now able to be lowered to allow the vessel to fit inside the gates, but it must do so each time it uses a star gate.

 

The Camino Star Empire has ordered that all Kronos Battleships return to the nearest dock to be torn down and rebuilt as quickly as possible as of two weeks after the Yintaka Incident. By the time the existence of the Tenebris Dominion and Draco Federation were made public, more than 80 percent of Kronos Battleships have been converted to Mark II’s.