Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Sorthak! Doesn't the very (code) name strike terror into your hearts? That's a tradition that goes all the way back to Wing Commander III's manual, Victory Streak, which terrified players with a vague report about a large fighter that had wiped out eighteen Confederation ships in a single attack.
In an average playthrough of Wing Commander III you will encounter between thirteen and eighteen Sorthak, making it one of the least encountered enemy fighter types. You can encounter Sorthak as early as Blackmane 3 where there are two waves of two each. A single appears in Delius 2. Your first guaranteed encounter is in Alcor 1 where you again face two waves of two each. The other appearances are all in the Kilrah series: two are protecting the jump to Kilrah (joined by three more if you don't dispatch them quickly enough) and then there's a wave of three (followed by one more) at the end of Kilrah 2. There's also a chance to shoot down unlimited Sorthak in Kilrah 3 if you don't cloak as intended before arriving at the last nav point! There, a group of four will be constantly replaced… forever!
Our first big question today is: what exactly is the Sorthak's armament in Wing Commander III? Because it has only just been discovered and isn't yet understood, the Sorthak is not included in Victory Streak's ship guide. As a result, fans didn't get a set of specifications for it until it was included in Origin's Official Guide to Wing Commander III. Here we learn that it is classed as a "superheavy fighter" and that its weapons are, supposedly, all meson turrets: "Meson guns (turreted) (4), Meson Gun (rear turreted) (2)
The Sorthak doesn't appear in the 3DO version but it is covered in the followup 3DO-including guide, the Authorized Combat Guide to Wing Commander III. We don't get specific stats but there is a mention that it has "twin independent turrets". The 1996 PlayStation-focused Wing Commander III Navi-Book mostly repeats the specifications from Origin's Official Guide.
In 1996, the Kilrathi Saga manual included the Sorthak in its ship section finally giving us a complete set of specifications including stats for its size… and for its armament, we have a repeat of the unwieldy turreted meson gun listing seen in the official guide.
So what's the truth? As is often the case, everyone is wrong. A quick look at the Sorthak in-game reveals that it has two different color guns: purple ones that fire forward and green ones that are turreted. Let's extract the in-game specifications to learn more:
So the ACTUAL in-game weaponry is four fixed-forward ion cannons and then four separate meson turrets. Looking at the ship in flight we can see that these turrets are mounted two facing forward and two facing rear. The other turreted Kilrathi ships, the Vaktoth and the Paktahn, both have rear turrets located to the rear of the pilot that have visible windows for a gunner. Windows aren't visible on the Sorthak, suggesting that it has a remote turret crew working from inside that fuselage section. While it looks like the intent was to have both forward and rear turret coverage, Wing Commander III's fighter turrets all fire to the rear with a field of fire defined by the ship's statistics. For the Sorthak that's 45 degrees (45 degrees on the Paktahn and 50 on the Vaktoth; interestingly the ace versions get the FOV upgraded to 60 degrees!) In total there seem to be EIGHT physical meson guns on the Sorthak, two per turret. The game always generates two barrels on the fighter turrets. (Though Victory Streak says the Vaktoth has two meson guns (or two reapers in the unused ace model) the Paktahn supposedly has only one mass driver.) In terms of functionality in game, the practical effect is that you have two groups of four guns each, suggesting that the Authorized Combat Guide's mention of there being two independent batteries is correct.
The rest of the Sorthak's printed specifications are mostly correct, with the exception of the shield data. The correct value is 400 units for the front and both sides and 180 units for the rear. Origin's Official Guide incorrectly lists 250 for the front shield and 400 for the rear while the Kilrathi Saga gets the rear correct but lists 180 for the front. The Japanese guide's "650cm" listing is simply because the shield value there is being presented as the total of both the front and rear numbers from the official guide. (It's worth noting that manuals often don't list the side shield values or the lower rear ones; these may be more of a game mechanic to make dogfighting work better rather than a suggestion that all ships have lower rear shields.) It's also interesting now to come back around to the original 'rumor' in Victory Streak. Two aspects are completely wrong outright: it doesn't have visible torpedo hardpoints or a plasma gun! Only the mention of meson guns and the fact that it has both front and rear weapons is correct. Of course, it's likely that's the practical reason why the Sorthak got the vague treatment in the manual in the first place… it hadn't been finished when the booklet had to go to print!
Question Two: what IS a Sorthak? The official guide calls it a "Superheavy Fighter" while Kilrathi Saga uses the very similar "Super-Heavy Fighter". This is an interesting designation, suggestions that the Wing Commander universe has specific definitions of spacecraft more capable than heavy fighters. The Bloodfang, with more of a performance fighter, is classified as a "superfighter" and then Privateer 2's CIS and military field an "Extra-Heavy Fighter"! Do you think Extra is higher than Super? The original announcement calls it "a cross between a Vaktoth and a destroyer" while the official guide says that it's "between a bomber and a corvette". The Authorized Combat Guide follows in the same direction: "not a corvette and not a true fighter, the Sorthak is… a large, wedge-shaped armored attack machine." In spite of all this lore, they don't seem THAT big in Wing Commander III. And thanks to the length provided by the Kilrathi Saga manual, we can get a good comparison to all of the other types mentioned:
One of the official guide mission descriptions refers to the Sorthak as a "fighter destroyer" which brings to mind the twin-engined fighters of World War II and the Messerschmitt 110 Destroyer in particular. This was the same basis we used for creating the "deep space fighter" role in Star Citizen. So it's a good bet the Sorthak is intended to be a sort of long range, jump capable spacecraft constructed explicitly for destroying enemy fighters. And if you leave the first Kilrah mission running without joining the fight, they very quickly wipe out all three of your wingmen's Excaliburs! It's also interesting to note that the name Sorthak is explicitly said to be a code-name, which brings into question whether or not any of the Kilrathi ship names are actually called the names we know them by the enemy. In spite of the fact that they all 'sound' alien, we hear multiple times that new ones are code names; the Sivar dreadnought is another good example.
Question 3: how are the Sorthak's systems arranged? I was genuinely surprised to discover that the 'cockpit' of the ship is on the far left in the smaller 'wing'. The four compartments house, from left to right (small wing to large wing), the pilot, the turret crews, the forward guns and decoys and then the missile racks. Presumably, the pilot has some kind of fly-by-wire system that compensates for his unusual perspective! Here's a quick chart of the Sorthak's components:
Every ship in Wing Commander III has a set of five unique destroyed parts! It's pretty fun to look through the meshes and figure out where they came from on the undamaged ship. If you're interested in playing it yourself you can view all of the 3D components in your browser here. Here's the selection for the Sorthak:
The Sorthak makes one more appearance after Wing Commander III. There's a single Sorthak card included in the Wing Commander Customizable Trading Card Game: Unrepentant Rage Squadron ("The Ultimate Warriors"). It's a rare card and it's one of the best ships available in the game (though this is balanced by an appropriately high summoning cost). The artwork on the card makes it clear that the ship has fore and aft turrets. It's also worth noting that the Sorthak card has a bombing value which means that, as Victory Streak suggested, it can mount torpedoes without a special adapter!
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Original update published on March 4, 2026
