Hello, all, and welcome back to Joe and STO! Or Endeavour Game On‘s blog, whichever platform on which you’re reading this.
We’ve seen the evolution of this Seneca F2P build series put together some impressive results, but one thing still nags at me (and was partly the inspiration for this section of the series): as CasualSAB pointed out, its biggest weakness is the 3/3 weapons setup compared to other ships that get more tools (Secondary Deflector or a 4/4 or 5/3 weapons layout) without sacrificing much else.
So, along with proving the Seneca and its fleet variant, Hiawatha, can put up decent enough numbers to run Normal-difficulty content solo (meaning you’re capable of contributing decently to group runs at Normal), I wanted to also show a ship that had more firepower while not giving up any Hangar Bay slots.
Enter, the Fleet Suliban Silik Flight Deck Assault Carrier.
The Silik already has some stat advantages to the Fleet Hiawatha Command Carrier.
- More hull (+2,475 hull)
- Better hull modifier (+.055)
- Better turn rate (+2.5 degrees per second)
But the most important difference isn’t in those stats…it’s in the weapons layout.
Being a “Science Carrier,” the Seneca and Hiawatha are limited to having 3 forward weapons and 3 aft weapons, giving the player a total of 6 weapon slots. However, this is generally made up for by having more Science abilities available, a number of which deal exotic damage.
The Silik, on the other hand, has a 5 forward/3 aft weapons layout, giving it 2 more weapons automatically. Interestingly enough, the Silik doesn’t lose any hangar bays compared to the Seneca/Hiawatha.
So I figured I’d take the Silik for a test run using almost the same setup the Seneca has, with only 2 changes:
- I added back the Trilithium-Enhanced Phaser Turret into one of the aft weapon slots.
- I put a regular Phaser Beam Array up front. It’s an Uncommon (so shouldn’t cost too much) and has the [Acc] mod (likely one of the worst mods since it doesn’t directly add to damage output, which should make it cheaper should you need to buy one).
THE RUN AND BUILD
I parsed a few runs, but this is the only one I recorded so I’ll use its parse for comparison to the Seneca and Hiawatha. As usual, you’ll get the Infected: The Conduit run on Normal difficulty, then you’ll see the build toward the end. If you need to get exact details about anything in the build, just pause the video (I tried to give a few seconds’ pause on everything so you could have time to pause the video).
Another successful solo “ISN” run! But what did the numbers say?
THE PARSE
Before showing you the parse for the Silik, I want to remind you of a few stats from the Seneca and Hiawatha tests.
- The Seneca did a total of 22,479,504 damage over 817.4 seconds (approximately 13 minutes and 37.4 seconds). This divides out to 27.5k DPS.
- The Hiawatha did a total of 19,979,355 damage but over a time of 592.5 seconds (approximately 9 minutes and 52.5 seconds). This divides out to 33.72k DPS, or about 6.22k more damage per second.
And now…drumroll please!
taps two pencils on his desk in quick repeated taps…
43.32k DPS! Compared to the Seneca, this build averages an extra 16,000+ damage every second! This was the shortest run, clocking in at 478.2 seconds (approximately 7 minutes and 58.2 seconds), roughly 41.5% faster than the Seneca run. It’s the 2nd most damage total at 20,716,656 damage.
Why would the Seneca have more damage dealt? Easy: the enemies most likely healed. Because of that, I had to push out more damage to compensate.
So what changed in the damage data? Let’s take some closer looks.
Seneca’s Sources of Damage and DPS
Hiawatha’s Sources of Damage and DPS
Silik’s Sources of Damage and DPS
I notice a few things going on.
- First, the Seneca only had 17 sources of damage that dealt at least 100 DPS. This compares to the Hiawatha’s 18 and the Silik’s 20.
- Hiawatha to Silik makes sense as the Silik has 2 extra weapon sources than the Hiawatha. I believe the 3rd entry had more to do with something else in the build breaking the 100-DPS threshold where I chose to cut off the list of sources.
- Overall, pets ended up dealing less of the damage but held all but about 800 DPS from the Seneca run to the Silik.
- This makes sense; if enemies aren’t around long enough to heal, less damage is needed overall. It is interesting that the DPS stayed mostly the same, but since both damage and time were down, this can make sense.
- Only 2 sources on the Seneca dealt 2,000+ DPS. That bumped to 4 on the Hiawatha and 7 (almost 8-10) on the Silik.
- As the DPS went up, the healing came down. Notice the Seneca had about 1.7 million healing on it, whereas the Hiawatha has 1.6 million and the Silik was barely over 1 million healing.
- This should be no surprise; if the combat gets done quicker (here, about 41% faster than the Seneca), there’s not as much need for healing as you’re destroying enemy NPCs faster. If they can’t deal damage to you, there’s no reason for needing as many heals (which is why high-end DPS builds mostly forego healing traits and items in favor of boosts to Damage, Critical Hit, and Critical Severity.)
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!?
I’m getting there! Slowly, but surely!
My entire point was this…although there are better ships that can do mostly the same things the Seneca/Hiawatha can, you’re not outright wasting your money on the Seneca.
But you just showed the Silik doing 16k DPS more than the Seneca and 10k more than the Hiawatha!
Again, comparatively, yes, the Silik will beat out the Seneca and Hiawatha. The Silik is just built better for combat.
But the entire point of this was to combat ideas about the Seneca being terrible because of its setup, which I was afraid would lead newer players or Discovery fans to skip it because it couldn’t pull its weight in the content I mostly talk about anyway (Normal and Advanced content).
I felt it could, and I hope I showed it’s very possible for a Seneca/Hiawatha to run well in Normal-difficulty content.
THE NEXT STEP: META-STYLE BUILD
Now, let’s say you’ve bought your Seneca/Hiawatha and really want to put it to the test. In the next part of this series, I’ll run the Hiawatha and the Silik in a head-to-head battle of performance metrics using meta-defining traits and gear like Dynamic Power Redistributor Module, Immolating Phaser Lance, A Good Day to Die, Context is for Kings, Terran Goodbye, and much more!
It may take a while to get it all done (I’m already thinking of 3-4 Starships I need to level on Tribble just to get that done), but we’ll see just how well a built-up Seneca can do and compare it to the much more capable Silik to see just how far off the Hiawatha really is.
Until next time, continue enjoying STO!
Joe and STO 