[Starsector] Odyssey good capital ship

This is the best capital ship build i could come up with using only 6 levels for piloting skills. You can comfortably dump the remaining 9 levels into fleet and officer skills.
You can typically find a resonator MRM launcher in the weapons cache in the alpha site. Otherwise, it can be replaced with a medium sabot. Sabot actually works better against high tech and redacted. MRM is simply more reliable. Expanded magazines doesn't need to be S modded either.
The point of the build is to maximize manoeuvrability and speed. Helmsmanship and unstable injector are essential. You still want to get the extra range from targeting unit. Elite impact mitigation can be substituted for auxiliary thrusters. Because of awkward weapon placement and plasma burn, having 200% manoeuvrability is important.

[@denseaf1582]

Ramming maneuvers are my favorite thing to do with the Odyssey. Just being able to send an enemy cruiser flying away from a fight is invaluable.

[@javid62663]

Have you tried safety override aurora with ion pulser?

[@mayak1649]

The Odyssey had a purpose

[@Trubbl3]

ASLIMBUSA CIMPNASY

[@alexgauss8452]

I always run the Odyssey as my command ship because its versatility can make a huge difference in heated battles. I hope they make the AI better at piloting it soon though lol

[@ThatSlowTypingGuy]

I've been finding that a cautious officer tends to work well with it. Or at least better than most others.

[@ThinBear4]

Nah. Odyssey is currently fun to use, so I fear more likely they're going to nerf it. Fun is not allowed in Starsector.

[@gotmilk5899]

@@ThinBear4you can revert any change you don’t like super easily, it’s literally just editing an excel document

[@ThinBear4]

@@gotmilk5899 That argument doesn't really work. Sure, you can do whatever you want with the ship stats, and I *did* do it before, but there's one huge flaw. By tampering with the stats, you're cutting yourself off from the rest of the community by playing an entirely custom game. This is not like mods. Even heavily modded games have a population of fellow gamers. Meanwhile, by making changes to the game on your own, you're playing a unique version of Starsector that literally no one else in the world is playing. That means sharing builds, asking for advice, etc. goes entirely out the window. "Hi guys, can I get some good builds for [insert ship name here]? Oh btw, I've changed my game so that Gryphon's system recharges every 3 minutes, recall device has no cooldown, Hyperion doesn't have delicate machinery, Omen has 10% more speed but 0.00025 less shield efficiency and 0.001% better flux vent, and has a higher maintenance cost, and higher base cost, but lower fuel capacity (etc. etc.)".

[@Ryuujin1988]

How do you make it work? I have such a hard time with broadside type ships... forward facing has been by goto because of that

[@gameplaysuffering1620]

Odyssey is the only high tech ship i respect

[@micserusus]

Omens would like to speak with you

[@ievgeniiromenskyi3375]

don't look down on afflictor, it can erase fleets with some skills

[@88chaines]

I love the tempest and you can't change me

[@olegoleg258]

eh. onslaughts kinda suck because they use shields despite their armor being their main stat, and paragons alone are piloted quite poorly due to utilizing their fortress shield too often as well as having no support ships. almost any ship can be piloted by the player and massively outperform the AI, even if they have a full fleet.

[@dennylukman1801]

I found someone put in shield shunt mod with heavy armor, plus automatic repair and resistant Flux conduit, basically a lightweight invictus. My favorite is the Retribution, plasma burn that can wipe anyone close to my ass? Yes please, and three devastator, four chaingun, and five light dual machine gun will shred anything, just get some frigates or destroyer with escort package if you not confident avoiding getting flanked.

[@TheHuffur]

@@dennylukman1801 Shield shunt is often massively underrated and overlooked, with the shield no longer hogging 80%+ of the ships flux capacity that means even really flux heavy weapons are on the table because you dont care until the flux capacity is nearly full and that is a LOT of damage. Usually the enemy is much worse off on both their flux and their health simply because they maxed out their flux trying to soak up that damage with their shield and failed. Boosting weapon range gets really important though to put the pressure on ASAP. Been having a lot of fun playing the Roider Union(?) faction mod and shield shunting everything!

[@kanedakrsa]

I always found the weakness of the Ody to be applying hard flux to shields without closing range, so I just leaned into the strengths and went with Tach Lances and friends who'll force them to give me clear shots on engines.

[@ewanlee6337]

Squall? With sabots to help when you get close.

[@kanedakrsa]

Getting close in an ody is generally not great, weapon placement really wants you flanking and if YOU get flanked you'll have engine burnouts in no time. [Redacted] will eat you alive trying to brawl like that

[@ewanlee6337]

@@kanedakrsa trying to flank redacted capitals in general is a poor idea. One is a battle cruiser and the other can teleport to face you. But you’re not restricted to flanking even if that’s ideal. Odyssey can deal a lot of damage, you just need to be a bit more choosy where and when you engage. Against every other faction you can do pretty well with a shorter range build though and even against redacted if they’re a distracted a bit and you can jump in a deal some damage before they retaliate. Since you’re fast you can retreat from an enemy capital and drop shields for a bit if needed.

[@kanedakrsa]

@@ewanlee6337 If you flank the boy and he teleturns to face YOU, then the rest of your fleet is where, now? Oh. Yeah it's ok if they turn to face you.

[@VitorOliveira-sk8dz]

Just go double plasma, lmao

[@eppiox]

I think your positioning / priority / kiting etc is the true hero here, nice moves!

[@clockworkcadaver]

My current fleet has 2 of these bc they’re pretty cheap to upkeep and it’s fun to watch both with reckless pilots. they get destroyed by any fleet with more than 3 capitals but not before ruining some poor kite’s day (who committed the cardinal sin of being slightly ahead of all other ships to cap a nav beacon) by chasing it down and ramming it over and over instead of turning and fighting the legion/Pegasus/onslaught that’s blowing them into 2-3 pieces (I got field repairs and hull restoration, they’re fine)

[@ewanlee6337]

Smodded expanded magazines really helps dual autopulse odyssey get enough DPS. Effectively gives it 3 autopulse. Another build I like is 1 plasma cannon, 1 paladin and all the left smalls have IR pulse lasers with smod IPDAI and elite point defence skill. The pulse lasers and Paladins efficiency helps against shields and hull plus they’re ironclad PD and plasma cannon cracks armour and general DPS. Squalls and Xyphos like in the video for kinetic softening and emp.

[@ThinBear4]

My favorite is double plasma + 3 sabot launchers + 1 hurricane, supported by 2 xyphos. S-modded flux distributor and resistant flux conduits. Combined with elite ordnance experise and polarized armor, this thing can vent away max flux in *2 seconds.* Plasma cannons generally tear things apart and there's very few things larger than a frigate that can escape an Odyssey with helmsmanship and systems expertise. Sabots often deliver enough kinetic alpha to insta-overload most things. Hurricanes to pair with sabots or to finish things off. Xyphos will paralyze everything that tries to survive the damage you're hurling at it, plus serving as a free PD that works even when you're venting or overloading. The result is a ship that can roam around the map, pick its fights, chasing down and murdering the lone ships that stray away from the main force (backline carriers being prime food), until all that remains is a surrounded capship, which you can easily 1v1. Some folk under another video suggested double tachyon lances with high scatter amp instead. Less DPS than plasma, but even more EMP damage, and still enough burst damage to instakill frigates and some destroyers.

[@rishidas9731]

Wouldn't that be extremely flux hungry

[@grouchypotatowolfpack5580]

good old Odyssey. my first ever capital, and still my favourite in vanilla. if you can't outgun it, you can always outrun it.

[@zephyrm.6564]

That is the fastest goddamn capital I've ever fucking seen.

[@dennylukman1801]

Retribution would challenge that, although only faster by five points. Though Oddysey tank shield better than Retribution, so I should find way to outflank the Oddysey, while in reverse I merely need to stress the shield and shred the enemy Retribution. Problem is: 10 OP more expensive than Retribution, while just measly 5 OP less than Executor, which I prefer than Pegasus because Tachyon Lance is my main weapon, cause high damage plus EMP damage is juicy.

[@rottenmeat5934]

Odyssey always was my favorite vanilla cap until the Retribution.

[@hallowedbeyourdays]

Running a Paragon with 4 HILs, 2 ion, graviton, tactical beamers. The exactly two burst lasers do not matter. There is honestly no ship or station that I cannot melt. The rest of my fleet is frigates, as Ludd intended. Remember burning insects alive with a magnifying glass? Well, there has been not a single means of shield-tanking better than this. EDM? Drum and bass? Naw son, it's *d i s c o t i m e*

[@seniorbob2180]

Paragon is an interesting ship now that we have the Missile Autoloader mod. Equip reapers in the small and medium universal slots and you've got 6 reaper barrages. I'd love a variant of Paragon that has some kind of burn drive instead of fortress shield, though.

[@nikoladd]

Paragon is a joke in current builds. Has no staying power and no speed. It used to work fine in early 95a, but got nerfed twice (or thrice). It can kind of still go well against normal ships, but is literally useless against remnants now and that's where it's staying power was actually needed. You don't need it that much in normal battles. Odyssey is actually useful though.

[@Kozak006]

@@nikoladd "Has no staying power and no speed". I mean it has a fortress shield, you pop it before receiving big dmg for huge mitigation anytime you want. If you combine it with some of the Spindle mod weapons it is utterly ridiculous. I would say almost unkillable in 1v1 combat.

[@nikoladd]

@@Kozak006 so your logic is if it takes a mod to make it work it isn't bad? Remnants make a mockery out of it every single time. Fortress shield makes no difference. For that amount of deployment points that's "no staying power". Two Auroras, which have the same DP cost will outdo a Paragon both in offense and in defense every single time.. and are fast.

[@Kozak006]

@@nikoladd If you're timing your fortress shield for all the missile hits it matters a lot. I'd prefer the Paragon when going up against stations or any other capitol ship. I agree Auroras are good and Ode as well, they just don't anchor as well. I prefer anchoring above superior movement - that's what my frigates are for. If you're struggling to tank maybe your dissipation isn't high enough, sometimes you need to hold fire and let out large bursts. Works for me.

[@rishidas9731]

​​@@nikoladdwdym it's useless it's the most powerful 60 dp battleship outside of alpha ai radiant. if you put in the right skills and smods with heavy needlers/autopulse/tachyon you can easily 1v1 alpha radiants

[@nikoladd]

That's actually pretty cool vanilla build. Not sure how well it would perform when piloted by AI, but it probably will do well. I like the Odyssey quite a lot as secondary capital ship. It has a lot of staying power so you can give it a officer and even give it direct attack orders in battle. Basically all other ships would die under such conditions but Odyssey can survive quite a lot. Then I can get a high damage cruiser(Erradicator(LP) or Aurora/Fury ect.) for myself and go do precise fighting, without worrying that my fleet has no bone.

[@genericscout5408]

Personally I find the paragon to be much better to give to the AI. Play with tweaks in battlesize and the paragon can handle anything the game has.

[@0x0404]

In the previous version I used tachyon lances on mine. They are great when you have a critical mass of lances. The AI could fly it well too. It isn't as flashy as this build though.

[@ThinBear4]

Tachyon lances with Odyssey work very well if you put high scatter amplifier on it. Sure, the range is shorter, but Odyssey is very mobile and can close the distance very quickly, (especially with systems expertise), so this it's the kind of ship where high scatter amp really does make sense.

[@christopherschneider2968]

@@ThinBear4 I think ill try this out. Was farming redacted and i think this might help herd enemy fleets...

[@ThinBear4]

@@christopherschneider2968 ​Just a word of advice from the me with more experience than the me who wrote the previous comment: While an Odyssey does work with high scatter amplifier, I'm still getting somewhat better results with double plasma cannon. Although I'm usually piloting it as a strike ship - charging at fat targets or stray destroyers and pummeling them with the cannons. Tachyon lances have a notably lower damage output, but in exchange have EMP. Thing is, while stunning the target with EMP might be great in a prolonged fight, Odyssey isn't really a ship which likes to stick around and tank incoming damage. Perhaps there is a specific tactic to make this work well using some kind of support from the escorts, but at least in my case, I'm getting better results with pure damage from plasma cannons. In short, I'd say Odyssey with tachyon lances is the best use case for high scatter amplifier, but high scatter amplifier tachyon lances might not necessarily be the best Odyssey build. Regardless, whether it's optimal or not, it certainly is a fun loadout.

[@therealbahamut]

Ah, a fellow autopulse enjoyer.

[@Sheepo_Coffee]

Odyssey is a really niche ship in game really not ideal for AI to control with autofit but extremely deadly when it's being piloted by players and armed manually

[@FiltyIncognito]

Neat build

[@holdenroberts6973]

I've played with both as my flagship and while the Paragon has higher base durability and firepower, the Odyssey is arguably a lot more fun and has a higher skill ceiling. And getting the initiative in battles is underrated, being able to charge in with my cruisers and pick my battles is really strong.

[@RedSemen420]

this is were i would keep my odyssey: IF I HAD ONEEE!!1

[@misos1393]

I like to build in gyros and use plasma cannons, that extra dmg from the build in is $

[@cookies23z]

Odyssey with a omen escort and I feel fkn invincible ngl

[@Grummar]

but wait thats illegal

[@kasper7574]

better off using a Radiant... does the same thing only better...

[@hideshisface1886]

I must admit, I tried so hard to like Odyssey, but I can't. I suck so hard at piloting it, its not even funny. I suck so hard at piloting it, its not even funny, and AI is suicidal in it. And I find its firepower to be lacking for its deployment cost. Conquest has lower DP cost, squeezes way more firepower. AND AI is not trying to kill itself while flying it. The only thing Odyssey has going for it is its outstanding mobility.

[@gabriellourenco5206]

Now do it without RNG dependant Omega weapons

[@ramiel7666]

Both look awful! Legion and Invictus forever!

[@dennylukman1801]

I have six midline battle craft consisting of Executor, two Champion, and three Centurion, accompanied by a Retribution, two Eradicator (the OG, not the Pirate)and two Mora, with logistic consisting of two Dram (go use it with safety override and unstable injector to ensure the little tanker always escape) and an Ox because I need the burn to run away after openly trade in black market.