BCF Bismarck
Legendary Excelsior
Build Overview and Focus
I have always enjoyed the Excelsior class. When the 11th anniversary pack came out with a Legendary Excelsior, I was equally excited and disappointed - it was an underwhelming and overpriced version of the Excelsior. Nonetheless, I tried many times to grind enough dilithium to pick up the pack. I finally managed to hit my stride, and over the course of 4 months and 9 characters, I did it. What did it cost me? Everything. About 8.5M Refined Dil and a bit of Lifetime Stipend Zen. Is the Legendary Excelsior worth grinding for? No, please don't grind for it. However, you can probably put just about the same build on the other two Excelsiors; Fleet Excelsior and Excelsior II. I also have a Kinetic Fleet Excelsior which is quite effective.
Disclaimer: This is an extremely expensive build. If you want DEW on a better budget, check out my Hydra build or my Cyclone build.
This is a premium build, with the highest available budgets and resources utilized in its creation. See the build costs page for more detail.
Namesake
This is a bit of an odd one, BCF-Bismarck.
One of my first tactical Star Trek games, and probably a great inspiration for the STO we have today, is Starfleet Command. You pilot ships of different factions through combat missions at a significantly slower pace than STO. One of my favorite ships was the BCF (Battlecruiser F). This was an Excelsior hull and the only Federation ship with a Plasma Torpedo, which at the time was extremely cool. This was also known as the Bismarck Class. Check it out here.
Meta Analysis
ISA:
ISE: 760k
HSE: 699k
Budget Analysis
T6 C-Store Ships
Emergency Weapon Cycle Starship Trait - Arbiter
Calm Before the Storm Starship Trait - Ghemor
Super Charged Weapons Starship Trait - Endeavour, et al.
Legendary Ships
Event Items/Ships
DOMINO Console - Denorios
Improved Critical Systems - Temporal Recruit
Lockbox Gear & Duty Officers
3x Energy Weapons Officer (Beam Overload Variant)
2x Projectile Weapons Officer (CrtD/CrtH Variant(s))
Context is for Kings Personal Trait
Fragment of AI Tech Personal Trait
Intelligence Agent Attache Personal Trait
Self-Modulating Fire Personal Trait
Symbiotic Ice Personal Trait
Terran Targeting Systems Personal Trait
Lockbox Ships
Dynamic Power Redistributor Module Console - Atlas
Experimental Power Redirection Console - Excelsior II
Lobi Gear
The Boimler Effect Personal Trait
Lobi Ships
Preferential Targeting Starship Trait & Point Defense Bombardment Warhead Console - NX Refit
Superweapon Ingenuity - Ateleth
R&D Promo Ships - None
Other
7x Isomag [Phaser] Advanced Console
Superior Beam Training Personal Trait
Change History
T6X2 - Feb 2024
New build - August 2023
Build Breakdown
An energy focused build with a lone torp, and no holds barred on budget, I forced the build onto this platform.
Skills
Since this skill tree is shared amongst many builds, I made a separate page for it and the discussion of it.
Build Goals
My goal with this build is a solid, hard-hitting Energy build. Since the Excelsior line can't support cannons, we automatically choose beams. With a 4/4 layout, you can choose to broadside, but that makes a Torpedo difficult to use. We could also choose Fire at Will, but I'm saving FAW for tank builds such as my Lexington.
Side note; I could set up the Legendary Excelsior as a tank, but it's extremely similar to a Lexington in layout so I'm not in a hurry to try it.
With Miracle Worker and Pilot seating, I could also use some specialist firing modes. Exceed Rated Limits 3, on paper, does significantly less damage than Beam Overload + Cannon Scatter Volley. Reroute Reserves to Weapons 1 is even less effective, and it's only a Lieutenant Commander Pilot seat, so that's as high of a rank we can use here. Biggest drawback is that I couldn't afford Legendary Vanguard for the suite of power extenders: Vanguard Specialists.
So with all of those firing modes off the table, we look at Beam Overload as our primary firing mode. I'll go into more interactions and details below, but this is the main build goal.
Starship Weapons
Notes
There are several flavors of weapons, but the classic Phasers ended up winning out. I wanted to use Plasma, but it lacks a set omni and stronger beams. Phasers have a lot of support for exceptionally strong weapons that are easy to obtain. I won't belabor the options, at the end of the day the flavor doesn't matter.
However, a few choices we make are better enhanced by choosing Phasers. The Excelsior II's console is Experimental Power Redirection, which does Phaser damage. The DPRM+PDBW 2pc enhances Phaser, Disruptor, and Plasma so we benefit extra from choosing one of those. If you choose a different flavor, then simply choose other consoles as an option.
Advanced Phasers are great, but out of budget. In Lieu of Advanced Phasers, there's a great selection of Reputation and mission reward phasers. Since I wanted to have a forward firing arc, I have to use a mix of Omni Beams and Turrets in the rear.
Of the forward facing weapons that are not DHCs, Wide Angle Dual Heavy Beam Bank is the top of the list. If I was using ERL or RRTW, it would not be a good choice as it does not benefit from the haste. Combined with the 2pc set from the console, this is probably my best weapon.
The next slot is the Teran Phaser Beam, which hits, on average, as hard as a DBB due to its scaling as the target hull drops. Doesn't afford us any set bonuses of note, but is a strong weapon on its own.
The Prolonged Engagement Phaser beam is often the next beam of choice, however when you dig into it, I have the firing arc to go to a Dual Beam Bank. There's nothing special you can slot for a Phaser DBB that we don't already have, so I went with an Agony DBB I had lying around. It's a small chance for some extra damage, versus the normal phaser's miniscule chance to disable a subsystem.
There's one other weapon we could use here, and that's the Wide Arc Phase Cannons which don't have a ship restriction. However, since we are using a Beam enhancement mode, these cost us some damage overall and cost a steep 200 lobi, not to mention we won't be picking up the 3pc set.
Leaving the torp for later, we have 4 rear energy weapons to fill out. Omni beams are the best since they get the best enhancement, so we start with those. "Set" and "Non Set" Omnis each limit you to one choice. Note: It's not that simple anymore.
The best "Set" omni is either the Trilithium omni or Gamma Reputation omni. I chose the Gamma rep since the Trilithium wouldn't be getting a 2pc for the constant 5% haste (an Isomag beats the socks off of a Reinforced Armaments). The Gamma weapons' gimmick is that it applies a -DRR to targets slower than you, which last I checked is everything but a few Hurq ships. It's not a chance roll either.
When we get to non-Set Omnis, we have R&D's vanilla Phaser Omni or outrageously expensive lockbox flavor omni options. Since the only difference between these is the 1 in 40 cycles proc, I went with the R&D flavor. There's a new kid on the block with the Protostar omni which is just ever so slightly better than the base version, but again it's just a different proc. Oh, the Protostar is part of a set? But it shares a slot with the non-Set? Oh you have to be moving… On paper, Protostar wins out, but in reality, I've got bigger decisions to make on the build. I'm sticking with what I have upgraded.
Sadly, no Breen Omni (it got patched) or Kinetic Cutting Beam (it doesn't use firing modes), we are stuck with Turrets. When it comes to Phaser turrets, we have a few similar options to Omni beams, such as Trilithium and Gamma Rep. Same justification as the omni, I picked up the Gamma Rep turret; yes you can slot both turret and omni.
For our last turret, I also want to loop in the desire for a torpedo up front. Aiming for a "Plasma" torpedo to hail back to Starfleet Command's Bismark class, I originally went full Plasma damage on this ship which got a Plasma Altamid torp. However, a good friend pointed out that a Bio-molecular torpedo looks rather green and plasma torp-like under High Yield. This torp happens to also have a strong 2pc set with a Heavy Phaser Turret. As such, the Enhanced Bio-molecular Photon Torpedo looks great and does well up front, and the Heavy Bio-molecular Phaser Turret does well in the back.
Also as a bonus, all of these reputation weapons that I use come at Ultra Rare Mk XIII and have 2% bonus damage which often edges them out over any lockbox flavors. Set bonuses help many to be even stronger as well.
Starship Equipment
Notes
I won't spend much time here - this build is as meta as it comes, we aren't after any special interactions with the gear choices and each piece is standalone.
Deflector is used on just about every damage-dealing build, with maybe the exception of a tank. Since our team composition will more than likely have a tank, we won't take a ton of damage to cut into the CrtH/CrtD bonuses from ColCrit.
The Impulse Engines can be one of several, but I chose the extra damage type. Romulan engines have a built-in Weapon Amplification bonus, which ends up giving about 12.76% CrtD with weapons. If I needed more survivability, I could choose the Discovery Reputation engines to go with the shield or core for extra Hull Regen. If I needed more maneuverability, I could use the Competitive Reputation engines to get a burst of speed, but with an Emergency Conn Officer, I simply don't need it. A ship this heavy (aka inertia) would also tend to powerslide out of the Competitive engines anyways.
The Shields have a few options, but tend to go for the Tilly's (Discovery Reputation) shields as they increase shield bleedthrough.
Warp core tends to fill set bonuses, but in my case, I wanted the weapon power cost reduction and Power Transfer Rate of a Spire core.
Targeting Lock and Energy Amplifier batteries are fine, but Advanced versions are strictly better and since we run a lot of elites, we get a lot of Loops needed for crafting.
Deuterium Surplus is also a cheap slot, and serves as a backup evasive maneuvers if needed.
Kobyashi Maru is some free buffs, but please don't get this from Mudd's market, its too low-impact.
We could slot our Delta Reinforcements or Nimbus Distress Call here, but these work from your inventory so no need to take up a device slot. With 5 device slots, what is left that I can slot? Satellite Turrets are awful damage, but there is no opportunity cost here. More batteries would go unused as 2 batteries cycle perfectly for maximum uptime. Red Matter Capacitor just gives a little power every 5 minutes. Satellite Turrets are also very cheap and easy to obtain, so until there's a better 5th Device, I'll use these for the extra 1k DPS they provide.
Starship Consoles
Set Bonuses
Notes
I won't go into the details on why Isomags are better than Locators or Exploiters. This ship is also a Miracle Worker primary ship, so it has two Universal Console slots at T6X plus 5 Engineering slots. Due to math that has already been done, we have more Isomag slots than Locator slots, so Isomags win out. We fill out all 7 available slots with them, use [Phaser] mods for the weapons we have, and fill the rest with basic consoles.
I used TRINITY heavily for deciding what consoles to bring along. I started by slotting 7 Isomags, and filled the remaining 4 Tactical slots with beam Bellums. This gave me a baseline to work off of. I started filling the Science seats with two consoles I assumed would be best-in-slot regardless: DOMINO and DPRM. Both of these have passive +Phaser or +Energy. Both have lots of additional damage for clickies. Both of them I had obtained a long time ago. If you don't have either of these, they are extremely expensive now. DOMINO requires an Epic Phoenix token per character, while I have the event unlock from 2018. DPRM requires a Lockbox ship (since I am a Federation character) usually selling for around 1.5 billion Energy Credits on the exchange. I picked mine up in a different era when grinding EC was easier and the Atlas was only 600 million EC.
This fills up our console slots. But why isn't my build using any Bellums? Remember, I had all of this added into TRINITY, and as such, I saved a baseline with 7 Isomags, DPRM, DOMINO, and 4 Bellums. Then, I went through several prime candidates for consoles that might out-parse a Bellum. Bellums also only apply to 5 of 7 of my weapons, as one is a torp and two are turrets. This makes +Phaser stronger even at the same or smaller amount of value since it applies to 7 of 8 weapons, as well as any other abilities that generate Phaser damage.
Lorca's console was an easy slot, as I already had it for other builds and had the Phaser DBB in the front for the additional 2pc. The console gives Shield Pen, and CrtH, while the 2pc also gives CrtD. This blows away any amount of Cat1 from a Bellum, and applies both CrtH and CrtD to every ability I have. The Shield Pen also benefits all 8 weapons. Every time I replace a Bellum, I save a new "baseline" to see if additional changes are better or worse.
Ordnance Accelerator would also be a good option since we have one piece of the set already equipped on the ship. While this has no CrtD or CrtH, it does have 25% Cat1 Phaser, +10% Cat1 Phaser for the 2pc, and 25% Projectile damage. This means that it applies to all 8 of our weapons, and a few extra peripherals.
Approaching Agony would seem to be another good choice, with passive CrtH and +Phaser. However, the magnitude of both of these is lower than a Bellum by a lot. We could take the clicky into account, however it is tough to justify on this build, especially as a lot of Supports pick up this console for the -DRR. This one did not make the cut.
Point Defense Bombardment Warhead may not seem like a great option, but there's several things in play. First of all, the ship it comes from can be obtained for Energy Credits. Mine happened to be graciously given by a friend of mine. You can also spend Lobi or get it off of the Legendary NX. Regardless of how you obtain it, it also comes with Preferential Targeting (Starship Trait) which is a solid trait for a Beam Overload build. The console boosts our torp with 25% Cat1, and all of our damage with 1% CrtH. This alone doesn't beat out a Bellum, but the 2pc adds 33% Phaser damage. This alone beats out a Bellum. We do get some damage from the clicky as well, I got 18k from it on my record run. All of these things work together to make this replace a Bellum console.
We have one slot left, and at this point, I wanted to find something to replace the Bellum on the merit of having no Bellums at all. The Tactical Maneuvering Matrix comes with the Legendary Excelsior, as well as the Resolute. It's mostly a weaker DPRM, and doesn't have great passives for our setup. While the active is really strong, the lack of beneficial passives means we can find something else. It ends up being just a little weaker than a Bellum.
This seems rather excessive, but I wanted to pick up the Excelsior II anyways because reasons. As such, my event campaign reward was already earmarked for an Excelsior II. The console that comes with it has great passives with +Energy and Weapon Amplification. The clicky is harder to evaluate, but does damage on its own as well as a weird mix of FAW and BO for your energy weapons. I did the best I could to evaluate how much this would benefit my build, and it narrowly edged out a Bellum on paper. On my record parse, it contributed about 40k on its own damage! This doesn't even count the passives. I was pleasantly surprised, not to mention it is a fun to use console and comes from an Excelsior.
Bridge Officers
Notes
I am sure I could spring for a pile of Superior Romulan Operatives, but that gets expensive. I went with what I had handy.
Commander Engineering/Miracle Worker
Since we have two dedicated Engineering seats, and each shares seats with the specialists, we can go with higher-rank specialist powers and slightly lower rank engineering powers to fill out the seats. Obviously, engineering powers are interchangeable between the two seats. Energy builds and Miracle Worker are known for picking up Mixed Armaments Synergy and Narrow Sensor Bands. With this being an Engineering seat, Directed Energy Modulation is the best option at Commander, and MAS3 easily beats that. Emergency Power to Weapons 3 is the best option at LtC, and we can downgrade that to rank 2 to pick up NSB3. Since our cooldowns are handled, I like to have the quick cycling heal and resist of Aux to SIF at the LtC seat. Finally, the last slot is filler and I went with Endothermic Inhibitor, although Let It Go is also a good option, though does much better at rank 3 than rank 1.
Lt. Commander Engineering/Pilot
Even before the Pilot Rework, Fly Her Apart was a solid damage bonus. Coupled with Boimler, we can have nearly 100% uptime if you fly right. I take this at the highest rank, which once again displaces EPTW, but we only lose a tiny bit of power and Cat2 energy in exchange for a lot more Cat2 All. The last two seats are filled out with EPTW2 and EPTE1 for the merit they have to energy builds.
Lt. Commander Tactical & Ensign Universal (Tactical)
Beam Overload is our firing mode of choice, so we simply start with this at the highest rank we can: Rank 3. Cannon Scatter Volley buffs a couple turrets, as well as triggers Preferential targeting and requires at least a Lt. seat. The ensign tactical power is Torpedo Spread as it is higher damage on a non-torper. Kemocite Laced Weaponry 1 is often used for its -DRR, damage, and ensign filler.
Lieutenant Science
Photonic Officer 1 is our reliable cooldowns when Boimler just has a bad day, and Hazard Emitters is a reliable Heal over Time to counteract Fly Her Apart, as well as cleanse any hazard debuffs.
Traits
Personal Traits
Starship Traits
Meta-Focused Tweaks:
I think we have all the meta personal traits. There might be a few lockbox ships with traits that could replace Improved Critical Systems, but you'd be hard-pressed to replace the other 6.
Budget Tweaks:
The last trait I would replace would be Boimler without significant build changes to compensate for the cooldowns it provides. The rest of the lockbox traits can be replaced with free traits, but it all depends on the budget. You won't even have this ship on a budget. The NX Refit is probably the most Extra trait on this build, but the others are just about required. CBTS, SCW, EWC are used on any energy build, ICS is a good generalist trait, and Superweapon Ingenuity is the extender for BO.
Reputation Traits
Active Reputation
Duty Officers
Meta-Focused Tweaks:
This is a great place to put in the Tac/Intel "of 47" Duty Officer, but it is hundreds of millions of EC.
Miscellaneous
Ship Stats
Piloting
This ship is set up to be forward firing, with 360 degree firing arcs in the rear. Being a cruiser, it handles like a cruiser. However, the Excelsior line is pretty nimble and it handles a bit better than you might expect. I've been flying cruisers for years, so it's not unusual for me to fly this one.
Parse Breakdown
My record ISE is 760k. No surprise on an energy build, 392k comes from energy weapons with Beam Overload 3. 529k comes from all of the energy weapons, enhanced and not enhanced - with the exception of Fire at Will 3. You'll note that FAW is not present on this build. FAW, in this case, comes from Experimental Power Redirection's active. If we sum up all the FAW 3 and other benefits of EPR, the console nets us 46k. Symbiotic Ice is 24k. The torpedo is 91k, but some of that comes from my team's Concentrate Firepower. If we look at team effects, 94k comes from Concentrate Firepower and Digital Compilation, neither of which are on my build but come entirely from the team.
Portability
There is a copy-paste hull that is way cheaper than the Legendary Excelsior, and that would be the Lexington. Nearly identical seating, console layout, and stats, the Lexington is far cheaper and includes a hangar bay and access to the Flagship console set and dual cannons. The only thing you miss out on is the Pilot powers, but instead you get Intel powers so it pretty much comes out in the wash.
You can also put the core of this build on either of the other 2 Excelsiors. The Fleet Excelsior will bring its own CFP3 to the table, at the cost of the Pilot and MW powers. You'll pick up Directed Energy Modulation and anything attached to that. The Excelsior II has a bit different seating, but you can pick up Intel powers instead of the Pilot powers, and the MW options aren't as strong. None of these have a hangar or dual cannons, so there won't be a lot of variety.