Good day, Joe and STOers and Endeavourers alike! It’s been a while, but I finally got around to upgrading and testing the Seneca, except…not exactly the Seneca.
It’s the Hiawatha!
The Hiawatha is the Fleet version of the Seneca and the only way to get the Discovery-era skin to replace the Seneca’s 25th Century glow-up.
Why the Hiawatha?
Fleet ships tend to have a few advantages over their Z-Store counterparts (when a counterpart exists):
- +1 Console slot (usually in a spot specific to the type of ship, e.g. a Science-based ship would get an extra Science console slot).
- A bonus to the Hull Modifier and Shield Modifier (so slightly more health for both your shields and your ship).
- A larger maximum hull strength.
You’ll need to be in a Fleet (STO’s term for a Guild) to get a Fleet ship. I’m in one (run one, actually); Reddit has at least 1 Fleet; and I’m sure various content creators for STO can either get you into their Fleet or suggest one to approach.
Since I’ve shown a fully F2P, minimal investment setup can take down an Infected: The Conduit queue on Normal solo, I wanted to see what some upgraded gear could do.
Build Change Criteria
How did I go about choosing what could go into this updated build?
- EC: Since the majority of the EC was spent to get the initial build done, any EC spent here is considered inconsequential. Endeavor reward boxes and selling off trash loot to an NPC that gives 40% value will make up a lot of this quickly. Admiralty is also a good way to possibly get hundreds of thousands of EC per day with little effort, not enough for higher-end gear and traits off the Exchange but plenty for our purposes.
- Dilithium: I assumed a 4,000 Dilithium per day rate of gathering in addition to running 1 Event for the full extra week after initial completion. Without going into the math, this should yield 159,000 usable Dilithium Ore that becomes Refined Dilithium inside of most 30-day months (Summer, Anniversary, and Winter Events likely notwithstanding).
- Fleet Credits: You can donate a number of different materials into various Fleet projects to get Fleet Credits. Fleet Marks yield the best return but are usually the first items to fill. Talk to your Fleet leader about ways to get Fleet Credits more quickly and/or easily. I assumed this would be a non-issue over the span of a month.
- Reputation Items: Reputation gear bought for this assumes you’re running only the necessary Reputations for the gear and get enough Reputation progress in all those to hit Tier 5 (for all the Space Traits and the Tier 5 reward of enough Reputation Dilithium and other inputs necessary to buy a single item from that Reputation). Additional items will require other queue runs and/or turning regular Marks into that Reputation’s Elite Marks.
- No Re-Engineerings and no Upgrades were done. There was Dilithium left in the budget, but it was only enough for 5 Phoenix Prize Boxes which would only ultimately yield 5-7 Phoenix Upgrade Tokens. I also didn’t assume any use of Ultimate Tech Upgrades.
THE COMBAT VIDEO
Okay, enough of the build-up! Here’s the video of the Hiawatha in action in a solo run of Infected: The Conduit on Normal difficulty on Tribble.
THE PARSE
If it felt like the combat part of the video was quicker, you’d be right! But just how much?
What we have here, ladies/gentlemen/non-binary friends, is a definitive increase in performance.
I give you…THE STATS! (queue celebration music)
This build saw a ~22.618% boost in DPS and a ~27.514% decrease in queue completion time. Yes, the overall damage was lower (by ~11.122%), but the queue was done nearly 4 minutes sooner. If time is money, then 4 minutes buys you a Winter Event run with time left over to slot Duty Officer assignments for those Ornaments.
Of interesting note, the pets were responsible for less of the overall DPS (~1.2k less), but I had 4 individual pets at or over 1k DPS each, with the Geneva (from a Fleet Support activation) doing about 2.4k DPS on its own, the highest among all pets in both recorded runs.
The five highest DPS sources last time were one source at ~2.1k and 4 sources in the 1.2k-1.3k neighborhood. This time, 3 sources were at or over 2k DPS while the next 3 sources were in the 1.6k neighborhood each. Even the Radiation Clouds from the Boimler DOFF did more damage this time! (Very roughly ~19 DPS more, which isn’t a lot but it’s free DPS!)
Almost no matter how you look at it, we’re looking at across-the-board damage improvements.
And this was with Mk XII-Mk XIII gear. If I took it all to Mk XV and Epic’d it up, I’d be surprised if we saw less than a 10% boost. I may just do that as a follow-up once the next part or two are done. Hmm…
Anyway, you’re probably wanting to see the updated build. While some stuff did change, the basics didn’t. Instead of giving the full build, I’ll refer back to Part 2 and the video I did on the bare-bones budget version and simply point out changes below.
BUILD CHANGES
So what all changed, and why? Let’s take a look!
GENERAL IMPROVEMENT: All Reputations are at Tier 6. This gives every Reputation Space Trait a 25% boost in its performance, and any weapons I slot from those Reputations gets a 2% boost in damage output. This means Magnified Firepower and Auxiliary Power Configuration – Offensive provide more of a general damage boost, while Energy Refrequencer gives me more healing and Precision gives me more Critical Chance.
SPECIFIC IMPROVEMENTS
Ship
- The Seneca is now the Hiawatha, giving an extra Console Slot and boosts to the Hull Modifier, Shield Modifier, and Hull Strength (health).
SCED – This section saw a full re-design, so instead of tracking changes, I’ll give the new list.
| SCED* | Name | Method |
| Deflector | Elite Fleet Intervention Protomatter Deflector Array Mk XII [ColCrit] [CtrlX]x2 [EPG] | Fleet Colony, Renewable Energy track Tier 3 |
| Engine | Prevailing Innervated Impulse Engines Mk XIII [Spd] | Competitive Reputation, Tier 3 |
| Warp Core: | Mycelial Harmonic Matter-Antimatter Core Mk XIII [AMP] [S→W] [Scap] [SSR] | Discovery Reputation, Tier 4 |
| Shield: | Tilly’s Review-Pending Modified Shield Mk XIII [Cap]x4 | Discovery Reputation, Tier 5 |
| NOTE: All Very Rare Mk XIII Reputation items are due to a Temporal Recruit bonus. | ||
| * Pronounced “sked’, it’s the Shield, Core, (Impulse) Engine, and Deflector(s). Items are listed top-to-bottom in the order they’re listed in the UI. |
Why these changes?
- The Deflector helps our Critical Chance, Critical Severity, Shield Penetration, and Impulse Speed & Turn Rate. There are bonuses to Control Expertise and EPG, but they aren’t as relevant for us.
- The Impulse Engine is for speed. Combined with Evasive Maneuvers and the Deuterium Surplus device (likely as separate activations), you should be able to either stay at Red Alert or minimize your time outside of it while moving across the map. Plus, we get a bit of Tactical Officer BOFF cooldown reduction and a bit extra Defense.
- The Warp Core is for the [AMP] bonus and (primarily) to be a 2-piece bonus to the Shield.
- The Shield helps our Hull Capacity, deals extra damage to shields, and is the 2nd piece for the 2-piece bonus that provides +120% Hull Regeneration (helping your passive Hull regeneration).
Weapons
- A Phaser Beam Array (Standard Issue) swaps into a Terran Task Force Phaser Beam Array (Tier 6 Terran Task Force Reputation). There is no 2-piece bonus here; it’s just strictly better than a Standard Issue Phaser Beam Array.
- The Trilithium-Enhanced Phaser Turret has been replaced with the Advanced Inhibiting Phaser Heavy Turret (Tier 6 Gamma Task Force Reputation). The Trilithium turret wasn’t offering anything extra (the Omni-Directional Phaser Beam Array from that set was the 3rd piece for the set bonus), and this Heavy Turret has a 2-piece bonus with the Ordnance Accelerator I added.
Consoles
- I added the Ordnance Accelerator (Tier 2 in the Gamma Task Force Reputation) in the additional Science Console slot. Along with providing a passive boost to Phaser damage on its own, the 2-piece set bonus (alongside the Heavy Turret above, in this case) gives an additional 10% Phaser damage and helps our turn rate. And trust me, this boat needs all the help it can get to turn!
- I swapped the Phaser Relays for Console – Tactical – Vulnerability Locator Mk XII (Pha), available at a Fleet Spire whose Research track is at Tier 3. These not only give the same Phaser damage boost as a standard Phaser Relay of the same Mk and Rarity but also give a boost to Critical Chance (“CrtH”). The closer you can get to 100% CrtH, the harder you can hit more regularly with a boost from your Critical Damage (“CrtD”) stat.
Traits
- I dropped Warp Theorist. With my Weapons and Auxiliary power levels already high, and having 1 Personal Space Trait too many for a F2P build, I figured this was likely the best drop.
- I also dropped Tyler’s Duality from the Reputation Space Traits for a similar reason. Buying an extra Reputation Trait slot from the Fleet Research Lab is expensive! While you’d want to have that last trait slot usable in an optimal build, we’re not there.
Bridge Officers (“BOFFs”)
- No abilities changed. Who knows what, maybe, but not the core set of BOFF abilities I had from last time.
- Three BOFFs got swapped out with Romulans.
- “Refugio” got swapped out with an Uncommon-level Romulan Tactical BOFF that has the Romulan Operative trait from the Fleet Embassy, Tier 1 of the Recruit track. This choice was due to budgetary constraints, otherwise I’d have gone for a Very Rare Tactical BOFF with the Superior version, literally Superior Romulan Operative.
- Geordi La Forge (Hologram) was replaced with a Very Rare-level Romulan Engineering BOFF from the Fleet Embassy, Tier 3 of the Recruit track, for the Superior Romulan Operative Trait.
- Similarly, I dropped T’Met for a Very Rare-level Romulan Science BOFF from the Fleet Embassy for its Superior Romulan Operative Trait.
- “Why are Superior Romulan Operative BOFFs so important,” you ask? Without these 3 BOFFs, I’d have 5.5% less CrtH (meaning out of 100 shots [cycles?], on average 5-6 fewer shots/cycles would have Critical Damage applied) and 13.8% less CrtD (meaning any hits that did land as Critical would have 13.8 less extra damage assigned for every 100 points of normal damage dealt).
Duty Officers (“DOFFs”)
- Wasted DOFF spaces from Beckett Mariner and the Emergency Conn Hologram were replaced with generic DOFFs that helped with BOFF abilities actually slotted on BOFFs.
- Two Maintenance Engineer DOFFs help Engineering Team reduce its cooldown and buff your Hull heals.
- One Tractor Beam DOFF drains shields on use of Tractor Beam.
- Finally, there’s a Deflector Officer DOFF that can reduce Deflector-based cooldowns (like Tractor Beam or Gravity Well).
Captain Abilities
- I ignored Tactical Initiative in my first run. I likely ignored it during the recorded run, but I at least had the presence of mind to slot it!
- Because I’m using a Warp Core with a Battery-style effect, that’s now slotted. It’s a Shield Capacitor, helping shield healing, providing a boost to Shield Power, and restoring Shields from an Offline ability.
NEXT TIME: A STRICTLY BETTER RUN
For the next part of this series, I plan on taking two ships each with 2 hangar bays but 2 extra weapons through an Infected: The Conduit on Normal solo to see the difference 2 extra weapons makes. Both ships will be F2P purchasable (not quickly, just that you have the ability to do so), so you could take these guides and make the ships up in-game to try and replicate what I’ve done. They won’t have the detail of the Seneca/Hiawatha posts, but Parts 2 and 3 have covered enough on the build that I don’t feel I’ll need much more detail than what I’ve already provided.
If I’m up to it, I’ll come back to the Hiawatha and do a fully-Epic’d version of this build, then I may try a “as much meta as I can fit into this” build to see what I, a “professional novice”, can get out of it on my poor piloting and cooldown management skills.
Until next time, enjoy STO, and have a Happy Holidays!
Joe and STO 