The result is a ship that reliably 1v1s any other 40FP unit in the whole game and is the only 40FP ship capable of clubbering a 4tach lance Paragon without taking a iota of damage when player controlled (since the AI is not reliable enough to stay at max range, eh)
Odyssey is technically 45 FP, but a player controlled one can defeat any Paragon build without taking more than few armor scratches as well. Key is plasma burning to Paragon's side and sticking there, out of most of it's weapon arcs.
Damn you TaLaR, you know I have a sweet sweet spot for the Odissey and I can't deny anything you reply with if you also mention that beauty of a capital
The AI will use maneuvering jets to get better position and save its life. It will use burn drives to dive stations and get itself killed. Also the thermal pulse cannons on an onslaught are fixed and so spread out its common for one stream to miss the target when firing both simultaneously, wasting a LOT of flux and time, whereas the conquest has large turrets that can properly focus fire. While the onslaught may have more total firepower, the conquest is much better at bringing a given quantity of guns to bear on one target with much better convergence--and if that side somehow gets knocked out by EMP or sheer damage it can flip over and fire the other broadside while the damaged guns repair themselves. If the conquest gets flanked, it hits the jets and flips--if the onslaught gets flanked, it dies.
For station sieges, the onslaught is probably a tougher, more forceful option but for fleet engagements, the conquest has distinct tactical advantages. The onslaught is simpler, as low tech ships are ostensibly meant to be, but the conquest can do things the onslaught simply cannot.
I'll agree on the Onslaught being better on sieges despite being quite the insatiable flux hog.
It gets exponentially better with commander skills and officers bringing its overall flux dissipation on par with the entirety of weapons it can field but a stock, non-XIV Onslaught with no officer or any commander skills giving it more OP or even the option of getting 60 vents instead of 50 really, really struggles to properly use all of its weapon mounts without sacrificing a lot in the way of anything else, altough the version with quad Annihalator rocket launcher 1x gauss, 2x Devastator,4xHVDs can do a lot of work.
Conquest on the other hand can just barely be fitted with 2xHurricane Mirv, 2xGauss,1xIon Beam and 2xHVDs and it's simply disgusting against anything that can't move out of the way in time i.e other capitals and stations. It's devastating provided you're ok with the ship losing a lot of its bite after the Hurricane MIRVs run out of ammo, given the fact just scraping by those extra 30 Ordinance Points just to get expanded missile racks is a bit too much to ask for without level 3 Loadout Design.
And that is why I present to you my no-missile, all dakka-pew-pew Conquest without any Loadout Design shenanigans meaning it's stuck at max 50vents/Capacitors and only has 315 Ordinance Points!
I'll have to admit it took me a while to remember how my setup was AND to adjust it without loadout design. I'll advice people getting ticked off by empty weapons slots to NOT look at the following screenshot:
The only mod-introduced feature of this setup is Automatic Orders allowing me to give it a Timid personality without...you know...using an officer or modifying my fleet doctrine and having my overridden monsters in the rest of my fleet run from a missile only Kite. It will properly stay at a distance while keeping the pressure on with all of its 1200u range weapons (plus ITU) and successfully sniping enemy fighters/missiles while at it too. Here's my weapon groups by the way, quite important for the AI:
It successfully murders a Gauss/4xAnnihalator/2xHVD/2xMauler Onslaught and most Odissey/Legion variants and still gets its engine block handed to it by a 4tach lance Paragon under AI control.
bah, I went into the refit screen again and made a double hurricane mirv version work without Loadout Design. Had to axe a lot of stuff but it actually cuts thru the same onslaught a lot faster. Enjoy!
There isn't any good medium missile weapon option to directly link with the Hurricane MIRVs in vanilla so I decied to keep them empty, as much as it bothers me considering the ship already has Expanded Missile racks.