Orion

"The Orion is designed for close range engagements. Shield damage is absorbed and converted into energy to power its mobility and offensive systems, allowing Orion to quickly close in and destroy its enemies."

General
The Orion is a fighter modeled after the cutter class. Though it has very short range, it gains a massive boost to speed whenever it takes a small amount of shield damage, enabling it to get in range very quickly.

Like other Tier 8 Altairian ships, the Orion can recharge its shields even after being fully depleted.

Advantages
Like other Tier 8 ships, the Orion has greatly increased movement speeds over Tier 7 ships and thus can better dodge incoming shots and rearrange fleet formation. It also has a fixed repair time of 2 hours, regardless of equipment, so it could return back to the fray in a relatively short amount of time.

Compared to its Pharmakon counterpart, the Operator, the Orion has slightly more usable mass, enabling it to field more equipment. Moreover, instead of being dependant on not taking damage for a speed boost (otherwise the Operator would get pulled out of Phase State), the Orion actually becomes faster when it takes damage, making it easier to close the distance, particularly against ships with the Ranger role.

Its Swift overdrive also grants 100% shield defense making it a very efficient NPC farming ship. As long as you keep your shields up, the damage taken is capped to 100-300 health damage every 4 seconds depending on resistances, assuming that the enemy does not have shield bypass.

Moreover, the 100% Plasma resistance granted by Swift is a hard counter to Pharmakon ships as both their Damage Over Time effects and Plasma weapons are unable to make so much as a scratch even when the Orion has been drained of shields.

The Orion applies a small amount of Phase Hacking and does extra damage to screens, thus improving its effectiveness against the Pharmakon faction.

The advent of the Empyreal Burst trigger gave a new use to the Orion as a base siege unit, as its speed and maneuverability can be used to detonate the trigger near a base's center and hit as much of it as possible.

Disadvantages
The Orion lacks the burst capability of the Operator, with only a 50% DPS boost for 4 seconds at Mk V, compared to 550% for 2 seconds in the case of the Operator. Even after taking the +40% screen damage bonus into account, it is nowhere near enough to oneshot enemy ships.

As a fighter, the Orion only has a single armor slot, making it extremely vulnerable once its shields are down. Enemies with shield bypass can quickly take out the Orion regardless of shield energy as well.

Skins

 * Chrome
 * Sunset
 * Toxic
 * Cipher
 * Oni

Trivia

 * Two Orions were gifted to players on 22 Dec 2020 for Christmas.