Odyssey

Designer

**Odyssey** is a Tier 7 ship in Vanilla, KEST, and MCST. It has the second-highest shield capacity and the second-slowest ship speed in the game, both after the Aries. It fires one gigantic frontal pulse that is slow but has the highest laser damage in vanilla currently. It can take out the most well-protected ships, while dealing immense knockback. It has high recoil, allowing it to move backwards while firing with RCS off. It fires two lasers forward and two lasers backward from its sides that do moderate damage, but they are generally useless, except against Flies.

Like the Aries, it cannot be used in Pro Deathmatch.

As a Tier 7 ship, it cannot upgrade and has zero extra lives, in both Survival and Team Mode.

## Strategies

The Odyssey has an extremely low turn rate and speed. However, it makes up for this by having immense firepower, massive shields, and exceptionally high energy regeneration. It is recommended to mine through asteroids by ramming to fill up the crystal cargo, making it far more powerful. When encountering enemy vessels, take aim carefully, predict movements and ensure it hits. Never use the side-cannons, and always wait for the main pulse to recharge, unless you are dealing with a Fly or A-Speedster, or just any type of quick fighter. Efficient use of the Odyssey requires every movement to be made for good reason. Your ship's current velocity is added to laser velocity (laser speed multiplied by unit vector in the direction you're facing), so move towards the target briefly before shooting. With enough skill, you can use RCS to actually fire a slanted laser that is incredibly difficult to dodge even for smaller ships if you fire it towards them.

### Strengths

The Odyssey has the highest frontal sustained damage in vanilla (150 damage/second "max empty DPS"), making it the best ship for dealing damage to destroy a base or heal. Even though the Aries has a higher energy regen of 175, its pulse has only 105 DPS due to its fire rate. In Team mode, one healing Odyssey with two attacking Odysseys is hard to kill, since they protect each other. If an attacking Odyssey is attacked, it will be healed at 150 damage/second. The healer will stay between and be defended by the attacking Odysseys, so trying to attack the healers will result in being killed by an attacking Odyssey. With a larger team, a swarm of two healing Odysseys with many attacking Odysseys is powerful and nearly immortal. It is also recommended to, in case of the need to perform advanced base nuking activities, send some Shadow Xes , preferably Shadow X-3 (because of its pulse damage and considerable speed and agility among fellow teir sevens,) to distract the team. Note that the Shadow X-3 might die during this procedure, and experienced players will not take the bait.

### Weaknesses

The Odyssey is particularly weak against multiple small ships, such as the A-Speedster or Condor though still requiring a very long fight to be taken down. It is also weak against recoil-powered ships such as the U-Sniper, with RCS. To beat an Odyssey, it is always necessary to maintain enough distance to retreat from shots or to navigate around using RCS. A single shot is enough to send a low-mass ship cycling through the abyss, so it is vital to not be hit, while never losing momentum and continuing to hit the Odyssey. It also helps if you have a Barracuda on your side to knock the Odyssey around and make it easier on the smaller ship to take the Odyssey down because it can't aim as easily. At the peak of skill using an odyssey, and perhaps in a large enough asteroid field, the odyssey can beat even the most skilled players one on one. This is because, when properly used, the Odyssey will not receive enough damage to get knocked back once it's on gems, and can simply sit in its gem pool. Any attempt by its opponent to take the gems puts them into point-blank range of the death laser. A U-Sniper can hammer away at such an Odyssey for as long as it wants, but as long as they pick up all dropped gems, the Odyssey takes no damage. However, in a sparse asteroid field or empty space, or operated by an unskilled player, an Odyssey will pick up gems too slowly and eventually lose to a U-Sniper in a 1v1, even if the Odyssey starts with full gems and the U-Sniper has no gems.