I.S.S. Wolfram

Terran Sirius Command Dreadnought Cruiser

Released: 2023 - 05

Build Overview and Focus

When the Sirius was released with the 13th Anniversary bundle, most people I know didn't think too much of it. It's another command cruiser was and still is a common phrase. And its true, it really is just another command cruiser. However it offers some unique twists—Miracle Worker Specialization Seating at Lt.C level and its placement on a galaxy platform.

I saw something much different than most, my next heavy tank platform.

Build Purpose and Scope

The Wolfram started its journey as a middling tank, something to poke around in and do content and look flashy but mostly just be a puff of smoke. It...really surprised me in how well it handled, how well it synergized together and how well it really did.

From there, and many many tweaks to the idea, and one bug patch later, I ended up with a ship that punches far above where it really ought too for how little damage buff consoles I have placed on it. It's ended up far overbuilt for durability but this allows it to just eat incoming damage at any content, and makes it an ideal choice when you want to just saunter through a pack of enemies.

Miracle Worker Specialization

Something that defies the meta heavy tank building exercise I've chosen here is to use Miracle worker spec. While the Bedivere uses Temporal Primary paired with Strategist specialization for the damage from entropic rider under Ba'ul beams, my tactical captain is not so lucky to have a set of those upgraded and is instead a phaser based character for all builds. This means that those particular choices for temporal specilization fall out of favour. While support tanks will usually want Intelligence for Intel fleet, this is meant to be a heavy tank, and so I end up with Miracle Worker Specialization, which has a few interesting things:

Pairing these effects with Strategist and a copy of Hazzard Emitters means you have one boff power that effective grants: +40+ All DRR, +5% Critical Chance, a heal over time, and a chance at +10% Cat2 all damage, all for 20 seconds as each tick of HE refreshes these effects!

Advanced Phaser Beam Arrays

I choose these for one reason and one reason only: they blue. Well that's maybe a bit of an exaggeration, they also have an interesting effect whey there proc scales with how many you have on. Each has a 5% chance per cycle to grant increased critical damage to those weapons, and each one increases this buff by 10%. With 5 installed, we can use the formula 1/((1/[CycleTime])*(1-(1-[Chance])^[Instances]) to determine a mean expected time between events at 22.5s per proc. In practice however, this buff is always on, even with only a 15s duration. This means that this effectively grants all Advanced Phaser beams with this proc a passive +50% CrtD.

The downside of this weapon type is the acquisition method. I get mine from the 10th anniversary bundle (which also grants the disruptor varient at the same time), which has been superb value, its not exactly a cheap initial purchase.  You can also quire these from the promotion version of the ship, the Constitution Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier or D7 Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier. In reality, you can use whatever flavor you want, this is just an item I had in my toolkit to pull on and wanted to use...also its blue and it contrasts with the red and black paining on the ship really well.

Namesake

Named from Stephen Wolfram; known for advanced in computer science, complex system analysis

Meta Analysis

Budget Analysis

Change History

Build Breakdown

The Wolfram is a blend between where I think the Bedivere is and the d'Alembert lies. As such it offers a mix of more duability than needed, some team support elements, as well as personal sustained damage.

Skills

Skill Unlocks

Notes

Teryh's skill tree is similar in many aspects but lacks a few features compared to my engineering captains. Because tactical captains get no inherent power management, I've taken points to buff up weapon power. I've also skipped Drain Expertise, mostly because its of no important, and the other being there isn't any case for me to use Drain Scaling powers on her. There is often a case to use Energy Siphon but it doesn't normally find room in bridge officer layouts to make it worthwhile enough to spec into DrainX when the points could instead be spent on EPG or power.

27 vs 26 Point Tactical ultimate

There is some comments floating around about people moving back to the 27 points in the tactical branch for the cooldown reduction on Focused Frenzy. I maintain that this is a negligible effect and and good build should already have and maintain proper cooldown reduction chaining. Therefore the cooldown reduction from Focused Frenzy should be redundant and therefore ignored. Unless you can maintain Frenzy the entire run (in which case all members have agreed to specifically build conditions and timings before hand) this point is wasted in the sense that the extra unlock will at most times be of unimportance, Therefore 1 point can be moved for utility to Science or Engineering .

Hull Restoration vs Hull Capacity

Once again I took a point in hull restoration. While the same argument as in Jayiie's skill tree doesn't quite hold up, as a tactical captain there is a distinct lack of healing innately avalible to her. As such taking that last point does help in scaling healing things up.

Shield Regeneration

While Teryhs primary goal isn't to tank, this last point in science does get her to the next unlock for +10% max shield capacity. While not a massively important stat, shield regeneration is statically anomaly and adds a huge amount to shield regen in just the first point (more Information on shields can be found here). As such, I have taken the single point. If you want to take the final point of EPG or something else such as power or hull capacity feel free too do so.

Build

Starship Weapons

By all means, the Terran Task Force Phaser Beam Array would be a viable addition to the build, but I wanted to try and eek out more from the Advanced Phaser beams and I think it's payed off on this build with its almost 400k DPS record.

Starship Equipment

Starship Consoles

Notes

With the introduction of Advanced consoles I've phased several consoles out, but if you need replacement options here are the ones I removed:


There are some more meta picks this could take; the immolating phaser lance is a great example of something that would not only be thematic with the integrated lance but also buffed nicely as this is a phaser build. I don't have it on this character however.

Set Bonuses

Bridge Officers

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

This boff layout isn't really ideal to take advantage of control effects, so it would likely suffer when attempting to use Unconventional Systems but that likely wont stop anyone. What I could see happening is dropping CRF for Narrow Sensor Bands, but I found this to be a net loss from not having a weapon effect for the turret vs bonus damage that this build already has lots of from being on a tactical captain.

Traits

Personal Traits

Meta-Focused Tweaks:

For tactical captains Coordinated Targeting Solution is available to them, however with Intelligence Agent Attaché, cooldowns on Fire On My Mark aren't exactly hard to find.

Budget Tweaks:

For budget players who want to save some EC, there's a few standard traits that could be used to manage durability and damage:


Starship Traits

Budget Tweaks:

Most people will have Entwined Tactical Matrices, which is a fine substitute in place of Redirecting Arrays if you don't want to buy another C-store trait. Theres more information found over on the Support Basics page.

For those looking to pick up more Defensive Traits:

Reputation Traits

Active Reputation

Duty Officers

Budget Tweaks:

Agent Nerul unfortunately has no equivalents. As such and durability driven duty officer would be best to put here. Dal R'el is a close equivalent, but this is a chance at an effect rather than guaranteed like Nerul. Another technician would probably be the easiest slot here.

Miscellaneous

Ship Stats

Keybinds 

As an player who's been doing this for some time, I have very few keybinds as I use most of my powers manually. As such I have only 1 "spam" button, which consists of the offensive rotation.

Parse Breakdown

ISE Record Damage Breakdown

ISE Healing breakdown

HSE Healing breakdown


In both ISE and HSE, you really see the SAFG perform, but it almost is an over perfomance, since you get with so many shield drains. However I do notice that I do keep shields up better with the console without and it does make second warp core breaches from cubes negligible so having the console to keep shields up is helpful, just don't get wowed by these numbers so much.

Portability

Any ship with commander command seating will work here. Obviously the higher the hull mod the better. The problem with porting 1:1 will have less to do with the ship bridge officer layouts and more with the unique consoles locked to the Odyssey and Flagship lines. However lots of other ships have unique consoles that let you deal more damage or run more support (team damage buffs or target debuffs).

In order of highest to lowest hull mods: