The Bortas

The Bortas model goes back to season one of the Original Series. In Star Trek Fleet Command, it’s the second Klingon warship available. It’s a powerful battleship with a strong hull and armor.

BortaS is the Klingon word for revenge, and with this ship, you’ll be able to get a lot of revenge… if you’re into that sort of thing.

What the Bortas Is Good At

Like the other level 28 faction ships, the Saladin and the Centurion, it’s Ship Ability is defensive. The Bortas gives a damage bonus to all ships and defense platforms when defending a station. This isn’t as good as the Saladin’s defensive bonus, which works everywhere.

The Bortas makes up for this flaw with two big kinetic cannons that fire every other round, starting in round one.

It’s a good base cracker, pretty good for PvP, in armadas and it’ll help you clear a lot of missions – and it does all of these without having a particularly useful Ship Ability.

It’s not as strong at hunting hostiles as the Intrepid or the B’Rel, but it’ll still do the job.

How Much Does It Cost to Upgrade

As with most battleships, you’re going to want to start saving that ore. The bright side is that the game seems to be much less stingy with ore than it is with the other resources.

The secondary material you’re going to need is crystal. You’ll be able to scrap it starting at level 42, and you’ll get 4-star materials back, depending on your ship’s level.

How You Get the Bortas

You’ll need a level 28 shipyard to build the Bortas. You’ll need a Klingon reputation of Consort to purchase the Blueprints, which cost 200 Klingon Credits each. You can get them by grinding level 31+ Klingon ships, and you can also obtain them in rare armada chests.

Higher-level Klingon systems like Gya’han or Ty’Gokor drop these prints fairly often, though this is a bit of a catch-22. You’ll need to have a pretty strong ship in order to grind there, so this probably won’t be an option for you if you’re single-faction Klingon hunting with a D3.

The Bortas packs available in the game store give you 50 blueprints.

The closest thing you’ll get to Raktajino

Background

The Bortas has roots going back to the TOS episode, Errand of Mercy. That was the 26th episode of Star Trek, and the first episode to feature Klingons. It seems odd to think that it took 26 episodes of Star Trek for us to get to the Klingons, and it boggles the mind that the Klingons only appeared in

The D7, the ship on which the Bortas is based, was first seen as Kor’s ship in that episode

The model was also used by the Romulans in The Enterprise Incident.

It also showed up during The Animated Series.

The Klingon battle from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Serious Trekkies will notice Mark Lenard as the Klingon commander, on the K’Tinga class – a variant of the Klingon Battle Cruiser. D7s would show up again in episodes of The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager.

And it showed up as the prototype for a new Klingon battle cruiser under L’Rell in Star Trek: Discovery in a scene that was maybe just a little bit too reminiscent of the Death Star reveal from Attack of the Clones.

Trivia

The name Bortas does have origins, and it is a Klingon ship… it’s just a different Klingon ship than the one shown in the game. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gowron’s flagship is called the Bortas. It’s a Vor’cha class ship.

There was also an IKS Bortas on Star Trek: Enterprise. This time it was a D5 class ship. It resembled a primitive Klingon Bird-of-Prey (or B’Rel.)

I can’t confirm it, but it seems a safe bet that “Bortus” from The Orville, the most Klingon character on that show, draws his name from these ships.

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Subscribers to Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection will receive this special edition as part of their subscription

The formidable Klingon Battle Cruiser was designed by veteran concept illustrator and designer John Eaves and featured in a deleted scene in which the Narada was encircled by battle cruisers. It measures approximately 8.3 inches long and has been painstakingly recreated in die-cast and high-quality ABS materials.

The accompanying magazine explores the detailed design and specifications of the ship, as well as the ship’s history.

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