@DrabaTactics make a big difference, and the Odyssey has stats that allow for them.
For example, I vent anytime I feel like I can do so safely, and I mean any time. I don't wait for my flux caps to max out. By doing so ASAP whenever you have the chance you gain the benefit of active flux venting dissipation rate but without the dangerously long vulnerability time, you're getting rid of hardlfux (even if only a little) and it's not like you lose out on too much. Since you're the one who vented first, you gain the advantage in case the enemy also vents in response. If they don't vent, you gain a huge leg up in the flux war. This also allows me to pull off tactics like pressuring ships to retreat. And I don't just go ham and brawl straight away. Once I've isolated a ship I'm often free to 'reset' the fight and re-initiate it in whatever manner that the Odyssey is capable of. Frequent venting also makes the limit of flux caps irrelevant in most cases.
Odyssey can do the frequent active venting far easier than most cruisers and capitals because it has the mobility to either retreat safely or manage distances properly (staying around max range vs its target) or use allies and/or enemies to block lines of fire, it has the flux stats to do so quickly, it has a ship system that can boost you away from torps, it has fighters that can run interence and/or act as PD while ship weapons are disabled, it has an omni shield, and it has capital class range. Many ships have some of these, but few, if any, have all of them.
Oh btw, all ships are granted fixed OP values based on ship size and weapon mounts, though I think there are some exceptions (I can't remember any besides Conquest). OP for weapon mounts is sort of like an 'average' (small=4, medium=10, large=20 I think? that's probably not correct values), so weapons that cost higher than those base values end up taking from the fixed pool of addition OP you get based on ship size. I can't remember if flight decks add OP. Anyone know?
Onslaught only seems like it has way more OP because it has such a gratuitous amount of mounts. Although you can, of course, downgrade or even remove weapons, there's also the potential that you end up using more of your ship-size base OP on weapons than a ship with less mounts. Another factor to take into consideration is that flux stats are a hard-cap on your dps output, no matter how many weapons or how hard they hit. Missiles skip this but they have additional considerations which may limit their use. Also, Odyssey has a lot more missile capabilities so Onslaught can't claim this as an advantage.
By default Odyssey has a huge lead on all ships (excl Paragon) regarding how much flux dissipation they have access to while shields are up. Very very few ships actually have such a highly efficient shield upkeep factor (nothing above frigate size, I think), so it's kind of like you already have Stabilized Shields, and Front Shield Conversion is also unnecessary, giving you all the good stuff with none of the bad. You also already have ECCM, which is pretty important for a missile-dependent ship, especially a high tech one. Ships that come 'equiped' with hullmods, by default, typically have an advantage in additional OP to spend....though this is often done as a balance so that they aren't encombered by hullmods which are must-haves and are instead free to ACTUALLY customize the ship. In the case of the Odyssey, it's a bit of both. The ship is high tech and thus requires lots of flux and can benefit from Expanded Magazines, and it also has a large amount of missiles (potentially) which it needs to rely on due to the lack of other mounts as well as two flight decks. Your OP, therefor, is tugged in a lot of different directions at the same time. Of course....you can also choose to omit going in those many directions and make use of the Odyssey's natural gifts to double-down in a specialized direction. Personally, I like to do so with flux stats (including hardened shields), missiles (including utilizing bombers as an unlimited source of torps or sabots), and PD.
Oh and the shield efficiency of ships is relative. Even though an Onslaught has a 1.0 shield efficiency it'd be silly to think that it's not as tough as a Scarab. A more accurate measure of a ship's shield defense is Max EHP and EHP Regen, where you multiply total flux cap and dissipation, respectively, as well as the dps and flux efficiency of flux damage that ship can cause. EHP (Effective Hit Points) is a true measure of how much damage a shield can take, and offense can also be a defense by inhibiting the enemy's ability to cause you damage. Armor, shield type and even PD and flight decks are also a factor because it determines that ships ability to tank kinetics with armor instead of shields or inhibit damage from reaching in another way.
Regarding armor...Odyssey might have less armor and armor cells than Onslaught but it's by no means less able to tank kinetics. Most kinetic weapons reach the max 85% damage reduction at armor below 300. To play the devil's advocate to my arguments, hull+armor is the more important factor than just armor. With hull gaining 5% of max armor, big ships with big armor gain an astoundingly huge increase in durability against most weapons. If considering only armor and hull, Onslaught is definitely a class above.
That being said, Odyssey is pretty well equipped in preventing damage from ever breaching shields or armor. But that's just a 'potential' and not as fixed a stat as an Onslaught's outright durability. As far as damage output goes....that's debatable. Odyssey has a similar ability to blow up ships like a Doom, but trading mobility and periodic invulnerability for firepower and durability. Also, the weapons that Odyssey has access to paired with its flux and agility (including weapon agility) grant it a greater potential dps over time. Again, that's just potential, and AI has a much lower capacity for strategy and tactics than players. Legion easily my favorite capital to hand over to AI.
Anyway, no ship can do everything perfectly. All ships are basically are pidgeon-holed (squeezed into a small nest) into roles and specializations. I never claimed Odyssey could do everything better than everything. What I was claiming is that Odyssey has the potential to do a large variety of things with at least a good degree of effectiveness with a single build. Or at least higher than average, while also being fun to pilot.
@GoumindongOh interesting, I didn't know that about HE vs hull. I don't suppose you know offhand where that's mentioned by Alex? Not that I don't believe you. I had actually thought that the presumed ineffectiveness of ballistic HE vs hull that I saw in my stats might have looked slightly underbalanced. I just prefer 100% verification, when possible, so I don't need to remember the details of veracity (truthiness).
Aye, I'm aware of the quirks of beams vs reactively degenerative damage reduction (I think I referred to it briefly before), though it's good that you pointed it out more clearly. As to why I didn't mention it further, especially together with the stats table I made, is because many different combinations of weapon traits have some hidden factors, like miss rate for true projectiles, insufficient turn speed for lances or shields but not ship in range (counts as miss), durability of projectiles, loss of dps due to softflux, etc etc... It's quite an exhausting list of unlisted and sometimes very difficult to quantify factors, so by necessity I'm leaving that in the hands of the audience and, austensibly, they'll inquire if our conclusions differ, at which point we can figure out what details they lack.
Reactively degenerative damage reduction is a pretty significant factor though, and I'd love to have a proper metric for it but my calculus is rusty and I'd have to learn how to fit calculus into spreadsheets. The TTK that's often used here is a good metric but I haven't yet figured out a way (or rather, spent the time to do so) to condense it all into a single spreadsheet cell so I haven't added it to my master spreadsheet (designed so you can just paste any weapon from the game files and it will calculate all stats).
Anyway, I'd guestimate that the effect can have up to around a 35% increase in effectiveness, with high damage beams being at the top. But I have no solid math to back that up, so I didn't mention it. By the way, for anyone reading this, take that '35%' with a grain of salt. A more secure estimate would be something like "greater than 15% but less than 35%".
@FaFTAnd thank you for the polite reply. Glad we could veer away from disrespectful discourse and get some good communication going.
Ever since I started my spreadsheet, with data pulled from the game files and formulas showing info not displayed in-game or on the wiki, I've been using it pretty much as my sole source of information. I've also memorized a fair bit of the stats so I go by memory unless I'm working directly with the spreadsheet, in which case all data is evaluated from game data. Before I started this thread I was working on the potential of a Paladin on an Odyssey and fixing a series of single complicated formulas which determines weapon type and calculates stats from them based on how damage for those weapons are evaluated. The part for burst weapons is especially frustrating and this whole thing is not as straightforward as you'd think. Chargeless burst beams also isn't done yet so the correct values for Tachyon weren't displayed and I thus ignored it. My end goal is to create a spreadsheet that anyone can use, to paste game data from any weapon, which will give you all kinds of useful stats without the user having to do any fanaggleing. I'm also experimenting with metrics and systems to evaluate the comparitive effectiveness of weapons as well as a 'balance' score so modders can quickly and easily balance their weapons, and so the AI tourney is less prone to meta domination via overpowered designs. Anyway, my head was filled Paladin stuff and lacked a reminder, so I mixed it up. That's my bad. I just wish someone would have pointed that out politely earlier on, it'd have helped cool this thread done some.
Regarding EMP: True. 'Pointless' was a bad statement. The measure is not an absolute one. It'd be much more appropriate to say that I believe that the EMP on Tachyon is of low value for the Paragon, Odyssey and Apogee.
Regarding Burst vs Sustained: I'm a rather at fault in the way I addressed that since I was also replying to other people's comments via that big wall-of-text.
Regarding Armor Calcs: Higher damage just means less reduction, it's not an overall score of a weapon's effectiveness vs armor. Other factors affect the actual dps, flux efficiency can be important, and the nature of burst and charges combined with the scenario can also affect the actual effectiveness in battle. Chargeless burst against armor can be good if you have many weapons (and therefor a confluence of flux) that are highly ineffective against armor, giving them earlier access to hull, but that can also work against it if you don't full penetrate the armor. Burst can also suffer from a ship turning fresh armor at you.
That's why I like HIL so much. Even if it's 66% dps @ 66% damage compared to the burst of Tachyon, the actual sustained DPS is hugely supperior and even more flux efficient. It only takes like, what...2-ish seconds before HIL is outperforming vs armor? And it's a constant beam, so hitting fresh armor isn't as big a deal. Also...if what Draba says about HE using armor damage to calculate hull 'armor', HIL actually has a fairly substantial lead even against hull.
Regarding My Mistakes: I usually use vague descriptors to show that I'm rounding things out or guessing. I can't remember if I did in that case, but if I didn't, I admit that that's my mistake. I also come from the mechanical engineering field so offhand estimations and approximations when just discussing things (when exact figures may take time to gleen) is a habit of mine. Spherical cows, and all that. When entertaining others, I also often teach random science stuff and exact figures aren't important for that. Heck, even when writing proofs or designing parts there's a thing such as significant digits, insignificant factors, allowable deviation and etc, so approximation is practically a way of life for me....which is ironic considering I'm mildly autistic and used to struggle with doing things perfectly. "Work smarter, not harder" was a challenge for me to overcome. I guess I now go by the motto "If the cost of reducing the approximation isn't worth the loss risk, just leave it and do something better with your time". (note that I said loss risk)
That being said, that 400% and 100% I threw out was based on an incorrect value so it doesn't really apply to my philosophy of approximations, except that I rounded up (and said so).
Regarding Armor and Hull Table: I didn't include shield dps since it's straightforward (except hardflux vs softflux, which is highly relative to the target) and there didn't seem to be much if any confusion about it. All listed DPS except for HIL is true vs shields, and it's no labor to figure out HIL.
Regarding The Little Thug: Not you
But thank you for taking the time to read that far! I appreciate it.