and it lacks the OP necessary to properly equip both broadsides
Well there's your problem mate, don't try to put best possible weapons in both broadsides, use one for PD. It's how I make every single loadout for it, don't know how well AI would pilot that since I never trust it enough to test. Btw if you're already criticizing shields, Odyssey also has awful ones for a high tech ship that needs to get close to put hard flux on enemies. If I'm not mistaken it has worst shields out of all high tech ships.
What are your other options though? Paragon and Astral are way too slow. I tried a setup with 3 Paragons once, but they were simply too slow to cover each other. Swapping the two AI paragons for 2 AI Odysseys turned battles I could not win into ones that I won without effort or losses. Astrals obviously aren't going to cover anybody, but they technically do have better shields.
Dropping down to the Cruiser level, the Apogee and Aurora technically have better stats. The Apogee is slower than the Odyssey and lacks a movement system, which makes it easier to overwhelm. It doesn't really have much firepower either. Ultimately when the Apogee gets into combat it becomes a stationary shield bubble, whereas the Odyssey can fight free and back off. The Aurora looks great on paper, but we all know how it goes in practice. The AI simply can't use the ship no matter what, and it's just not strong enough to be worth piloting as a player (you'd need multiple anyway). Theoretically if you don't care about damage, the Aurora might be your best bet as off-tank for the paragon, but while the Odyssey lacks in killing power (as I said earlier), it still does do substantial damage in fleet, more than enough to justify its cost.
I would however take any one of the ships I mentioned over a conquest, even the no-damage AI aurora. It's just that bad.
I truly wonder if all those who say Odyssey has the best potential as a player ship ever piloted a Conquest.
I have and it sucks. The Conquest is the worst non-civillian capital in the game regardless of whether you give it to the AI or pilot it yourself.
It's slow, it has AWFUL shields, it does not focus firepower properly, and it lacks the OP necessary to properly equip both broadsides. The AI cannot handle it because of the poor shields, and frankly broadside ships feel terrible to pilot normally but the Conquest deserves a special place in hell for that shield.
You know you can leave mounts empty right? I usually outfit my conquests asymmetrically and put some downsized stuff in the weak broadside to fend off small ships and then I put heavy hitters on the other side. I also often leave the medium missile and medium energy slots empty to save OP for other stuff. You're right that the shields are a big problem, but if you either max capacitors or put hardened shields on it (or possible heavy armor and avoid using shields), you can solve that problem without too much trouble.
Odyssey is literally everything conquest should be, but isn't. It only has the one broadside, so it doesn't have to waste OP on unusable firepower, it has a great shield, great speed, and its own fighter support.
Odyssey shield is not very good: it has 1:1 damage to flux which is on par with low tech shields (onslaught has 1:1) compared to high techs like paragon with 3:5 (.6) and apogee with 7:10 (.7) damage to flux but it still has the very high shield upkeep of most high tech ships. The odysseys shield is its weakest part by far IMO (assuming you have plasma cannons for firepower). I consider odyssey to be more OP starved than conquest since it really needs all the mounts it has to put out any decent firepower while conquest can easily do good damage with partially filled slots.
Also
Still difficult-to-impossible to player-pilot, but the AI makes good use of it as a high-speed tank.
What? The odyssey is primarily useful as a player piloted ship, the AI just burns straight into the enemy fleet and explodes 50% of the time when against significant opposition. I love flying it, but I would never even think of giving it to the AI against any serious opposition. I remember the conquest AI being significantly better on this patch, but I still consider both ships primarily player ships that are wasted potential (and possibly a major loss) in AI hands. TBH I slightly prefer odyssey as a player piloted ship, but I usually just fly a doom so I end up using neither most of the time. Conquest is better than odyssey vs. ships with good shields because it can equip kinetics, but odyssey is better for smashing ships with bad shields.
Odyssey shield upkeep is half of what high tech cruiser shield upkeep is. The Aurora is 425/sec, the Apogee is 420/sec, the Odyssey is only 250/sec, Onslaught is 240/sec and Conquest is 480/sec. Not that it makes all that much difference at that level, but keep that in mind.
Also, one would expect that you max capacitors and put hardened shields on EVERY ship. So you can't say the "conquest is good with those upgrades" because compared to better ships that also have those upgrades, it's just as flimsy as it ever was.
While one might think the Odyssey just charges ahead and explodes, in practice that's not what happens at all against large enemy fleets. It DOES charge ahead, but it DOESN'T explode. As long as you have a fleet to support it. Ultimately the Odyssey is an overgrown Cruiser, not a true capital. You use it to support other capitals (ie the paragon) because the base game cruisers are all severely lacking in one area or another whereas the Odyssey has no such weaknesses, it simply doesn't have the raw might of a capital (ie paragon)