I usually see it kill with 100% hull, this time it took some scratches and ended up on 98% hull. AI can be funny sometimes with how it uses shields, but that's to be expected. The conquest absolutely didn't stand a chance. This is no officer. Plenty of fleetwide player skills though. Better to test with those than without, because you are absolutely going to have them.
Fair enough, I agree it works when the Odyssey has about 20% more shield capacity from fleet wide skills. The 84% CR means your shield damage ratio drops to 0.71 from 0.75 and 10% extra OP dedicated to vents and capacitors combines to about 20% more shield capacity. My test didn't have those, and so I saw a much different result.
I guess it depends on what you're looking for out of the test. When I do ship comparisons, I prefer to do it without fleet wide skills.
I will point out, enemy fleets in campaign also can have both fleet wide player skills. I've certainly fought at a -20% EW penalty in a 200 vs 300 deployment fight even when both the opponent and my character have EW skills. Most capitals in enemy fleets will come with an officer.
There's a 249k bounty in my game right now. If I look at the campaign file these are the leader's skills:
"ordnance_expert":3,"missile_specialization":3,"coordinated_maneuvers":1,"officer_management":3,"combat_endurance":3,"helmsmanship":3,"target_analysis":3,"defensive_systems":3
The ships in that fleet benefit from coordinated maneuvers, a fleet wide skill. Not to mention the Onslaught she is piloting has a lot of damage skills, better shields, and is faster. And will be at 85% CR, not 70%. And she's allowed up to 10 officers.
She has 9 officers in her fleet are at varying levels, around level 15 or so.
The reason to test no skill vs no skill is because in real fights it is skill vs skill, and the sim can't replicate that for the other side. The only in combat skills I think the player can benefit from that the AI fleets can't is the Loadout Design and Fleet Logistics. So you do have the 10% OP over all other opponents, and possibly 15% CR. On the other hand, sometimes you engage 2 or 3 enemy fleets simultaneously. Always fun facing 20 enemy officers.
Look at this way, if the position was reversed, and you were using the Conquest with an extra 31 OP dedicated to 10 more flux vents and 21 more capacitors, it'd beat the sim version of your Odyssey setup hands down.
When I'm comparing ship effectiveness for myself to use, I often modify the sim to include both variants I'm considering and will put them head to head, at least if I'm interested in 1 on 1 performance.