First Kroll War

## Factions

Kroll Alliance

vs

Human coalition (Alliance of Independent Settlements, Asgardian Alliance, Bandorian Protectorate, United Nations, League of Asteroid Belt Settlements, Union of Human Workers)

## Timeframe

15 March 3870- 1 March 3878

Result: human coalition victory, Kroll Alliance defeat

## Background

The First Kroll War was a war between humanity and the forces of the Kroll Alliance, started by an incident involving an AIS scoutship which entered the Yrd Pasar star system, a Kroll colony, on 20 February 3870. The scoutship was destroyed by Kroll fighters after both the human ship and the Kroll ships had made several attempts to communicate; the scoutship activated its long-range transmitter to send the news of its discovery back to AIS space, which the Kroll pilots mistakenly interpreted as powering up a weapons system. After the war, the Kroll released the logs from the fighters involved in the original incidents, which revealed that the whole war had been the result of misinterpretation, although the Kroll pilots had been quite friendly and even humorous in their communications before the AIS scoutship powered up its long-range comms transmitter. The Kroll pilots had tried communicating with the AIS ship, but the comm systems' transmitters and receivers were incompatible. The AISN sent a force of several battlecruisers (the largest ships in the AISN at the time) with full escort wings into the system in an attempt to find out what happened to the scoutship; these ships arrived in the system on 15 March 3870, and provided confirmation of the Kroll presence there. While they failed to confirm the fate of the scoutship, they were also attacked by Kroll ships, and inflicted severe losses on the Kroll forces before retreating. The AIS initially tried to cover up the incident, but transmissions from the AISN ships in the battle had been intercepted by Bandorian bounty hunters. The Bandorian central government discreetly approached the AIS central government with an offer of naval assistance, promising to keep the affair a secret from the other major human factions. The leaders of the AIS agreed to the offer of help, but decided to make their discovery and the records of the subsequent battles public. All the other human factions at once offered military assistance, and the human coalition was officially formed on 27 March 3870. While the leaders of the factions were still working out the details of the coalition agreement, the Kroll sent several strike forces into human space. The Kroll forces operated with great precision, but were not very efficient; one example of their inefficiency (although a unique concept) was their mini-shipyards. Each subcapital ship manufactured by the Kroll was assigned to a single mini-shipyard; each automated mini-shipyard facility produced, equipped, and maintained one subcapital ship throughout its whole service career. While this reduced the workload of the main Kroll shipyards slightly, it introduced many issues, chiefly with efficiency, but also with damaged ships not being able to use other shipyards than their assigned one. This resulted in many additional casualties, though as the human coalition found out in the war, casualties were merely an inconvenience for the Kroll; as long as their overall mission was successful, personnel were considered expendable, and the Kroll regularly lost over 90% of their forces before retreating. The Kroll primarily deployed swarms of fighters in a field called a "warp wake" behind a massive capital ship. The Kroll capital ships that were used in this tactic were roughly diamond-shaped, and had a charged nanite shield that made up the entire frontal plane of the ship (the most notable design of this type was the Dredzek-class super dreadnought, used in the Second Kroll War). The charged nanite shield, which was two meters thick and reinforced by a layer of metal armor 30 centimeters thick, allowed the vanguard ship to ram enemy ships. The nanites would absorb any metals that came into contact with them, and used them to create more nanites. The nanites were also electrically charged, creating an effect similar to a combination of shields and armor, but much more resilient if it had a constant supply of metals. The Kroll used thermolaser weaponry which was difficult but not impossible for human ships to counter. Most of the battles in the war took place in interstellar space, with only a few battles actually taking place in star systems. No ground battles occurred during the war. EMP weaponry was used extensively by human warships to disable the swarms of fighters which would emerge from behind the Kroll super dreadnoughts.