Jupiter

The Jupiter is an unlockable ship. Jupiter is six tiles wide, with one tile being an empty scaffold. The ship part to the right of the scaffold is Weak. Jupiter starts with Warp Prep and Jupiter Drone Hub. One of its Basic Shots is replaced with a Basic Shift at the start of a run.

"A comms vessel with no cannons of its own. It launches special Jupiter Drones which channel its attacks."

Strategy

The Jupiter is unique among all ships in Cobalt Core as it is the only ship that immediately offers powerful offensive scaling in the form of Jupiter Drones. This allows it to snowball into a powerful offensive force over the course of a combat, by lining up multiple Jupiter Drones on the enemy and then hitting them once per drone with each attack. It cannot attack prior to launching a drone (any line on a card with is greyed out with no Jupiter Drones), but getting off to a slow start offensively isn't a problem for this ship, as if played right, its offensive scaling will overwhelm most enemies. Look to use your Basic Shift to keep your drones alive while using Evade aggressively to have an open spot for your Missile Bay to launch drones.

Its signature Jupiter's Moons card, added to your hand at the start of combat, has some interesting deckbuilding considerations. Because it has Recycle, Retain, and starts in your opening hand, it will usually start out in your hand every turn, whether you play it or not — this can lull you into thinking it's similar to the Ares's Toggle Cannon. It isn't, however — there are some important differences:

1. Playing Jupiter's Moons and then playing a card draw effect will redraw Jupiter's Moons. This can be a great tool to launch multiple drones in a turn, or it could be undesirable if you were looking to draw something else. For example, if you play Jupiter's Moons with Flow State active, you'll just redraw Jupiter's Moons.

2. Playing Jupiter's Moons and then not playing a card draw effect will "cost" you a card draw next turn, as your first draw will be used to re-draw Jupiter's Moons. So unlike Toggle Cannon, playing this card does cost you a card draw in addition to an Energy. As such, this ship is similar to the Ares in that it can be considered to have reduced card draw compared to other ships.

3. If you discard Jupiter's Moons because of say Ventilator or Dice Roll, you will not get it back until you naturally redraw into it, just like any other card. (So these cards are dicey propositions on this ship.)

4. If you Exhaust Jupiter's Moons with Admin Deploy, Total Cache Wipe, or Static Noise, it's actually gone for the rest of the fight. This could softlock you if you run out of Jupiter Drones!

For all of this ship's offensive capabilities, its weakness is very much its defense. It starts with a Weak Comms, and on higher difficulties you'll also need to worry about your Cockpit. It also very much wants you to use Evade offensively to make more Jupiter Drones, and you need to spend card draws and Energy on playing Jupiter Drones and having offensive cards to capitalize on them. You can certainly use Jupiter Drones as shot blockers if you need to, but this isn't ideal, especially in boss fights where you're getting shot in multiple places, and in fights where the enemy scales, as this slows you down significantly. You'll want frontloaded defenses like Warp Mastery, Blocker Burnout, Desperate Measures, Solar Flair, Basic Dodge B, and I Frames that can buy you enough time to set up, then overwhelm the enemy with offense before they're able to take advantage of your weak defenses.

Its boss artifact, Jupiter Drone Hub Booster, is probably not much better than Prepped Batteries in practice if you're building this right. This ship certainly likes Prepped Batteries, so that's not too bad, but it's not quite what you'd like from a Boss artifact.

Character-specific interactions

Character	Strategy
Dizzy	Dizzy's normal game plan tends to struggle on Jupiter, as the ship doesn't want to be playing defensively - particularly not with Shield, given its wide frame and multiple weak points. On Hardest difficulty, it might even be advisable to cut max shield on Jupiter even with Dizzy on your crew, which you usually should avoid doing on other ships. Dizzy's card evaluation is thus significantly different on Jupiter. You should deprioritize picking up cards that encourage leaning heavily into building Shield over time unless you absolutely need it to survive. On the other hand, cards that provide frontloaded defense, such as Button Mash and Blocker Burnout, become significantly better. For attacks, Dizzy's Stun cards become premium pickups on this ship, as they allow the drones to defend themselves. Acid Cannon also has hilarious synergy with Jupiter Drones provided you can handle its cost, as a single massive volley can overwhelm enemies with large amounts of Corrosion.
Riggs	Riggs makes winning with any ship easier, and even the offensively-minded Jupiter is no exception, as Evade remains a crucial short-term defensive tool while aiding in offensive setup as well. Many of Riggs's good pickups remain good on Jupiter. Her card draw effects offset the Recycling nature of Jupiter's Moons, allowing you to speed through your deck and set up for kill turns much more consistently. Her offensive options are also no slouch, with Hand Cannon providing huge output and Charge Beam guaranteeing that no fight lasts too long.
Peri	Peri's focus on offense makes her a good fit for Jupiter, with hard-hitting multihits and access to Overdrive and Powerdrive allowing you to make short work of enemies once you've established your drones. Her position-shifting attacks, like Lunge and Barrage, also quite likes this ship's gimmick — your ship will move, but the drones won't, which makes it easier to benefit from both effects. Even outside of attacks, her access to instant movement is perfect for Jupiter, being able to act as frontloaded defense (avoiding the enemy's attacks for just long enough) while also fulfilling this ship's need to keep its Missile Bay open too! Stun Calibrator with Peri on this ship is especially powerful as all of her multihit attacks will immediately proc it, allowing each drone to defend itself with little effort.
Isaac	Jupiter is a decidedly mixed bag for Isaac. While the ship's design interferes with his normal gameplan, Isaac's support capabilities for the Jupiter Drones themselves are almost unmatched. You usually don't want to be launching Midrow Objects that aren't Jupiter Drones. This makes his usually strong Attack Drone starter much weaker, and many of his midrow objects become very hard to draft. Additionally, Isaac lacks large attack damage in his card pool, meaning he won't be contributing as much to your offensive output. On the other hand, he has access to Droneshift that's better than what Basic Shift can provide, allowing you to freely upgrade to Basic Shift B for precious tempo gain. He can further protect Jupiter Drones with Bubble Field, which is an amazing pickup for this ship. While his attacks do not have much output, Shift Shot and Scattershot move the enemy directly - and this repeats with each Jupiter Drone that hits with these attacks, allowing you to buy more turns to set up. Many of his artifacts also pair beautifully with Jupiter - Wave Control gives frontloaded Droneshift that Jupiter appreciates greatly, Bubbler allows you to protect outgoing Jupiter Drones, and Drone Piercer essentially allows you to ignore the enemy's defenses entirely.
Drake	Drake thrives on this ship - it is such a perfect fit for her that she arguably becomes the best character in the game on Jupiter. She provides many resources that Jupiter loves - frontloaded defense, massive immediate output in her attacks (some of which Pierces as well), and access to repositioning to create more Jupiter Drones. Jupiter is also more than willing to gambit hull on its own terms to finish off enemies quickly, just like Drake usually does on her own. To boot, both of Drake's starter cards are great on this ship — EMP Slug provides all-important Stun to keep your drones alive (and hits the enemy super hard when multiple of them are out!), while Heatsink opens up your Missile Bay for another drone. Look to create dense attack cards such as Explosive Slug B, Sear B (which also stuns the enemy), and Aggressive Armoring B to quickly put an end to any unfortunate enemy standing in your way.
Max	With effectively reduced card draw and Energy per turn as well as a high risk of Exhausting Jupiter's Moons, Max can be inconsistent on this ship, as building large combos can be more difficult. However, that doesn't mean Max can't contribute to a Jupiter run, as he still has his fair share of strong offense, such as Memory Leak and Total Cache Wipe (but make sure the latter is used only as a finishing blow!). He can also help defend short-term with tech cards such as Branch Prediction and Enrage. Jupiter also appreciates the heavily frontloaded card draw from Math.Max, which can immediately set up for kill turns. Cloud Save loops can also be very helpful for recycling the aforementioned defensive cards or Basic Dodge B in a pinch, allowing you to defend for just long enough to establish board presence and finish off the enemy. All that being said - remember to not Exhaust Jupiter's Moons!
Books	Books tends more towards a slow-and-steady game, but being on Jupiter will often force you to take a different approach with her. Many of her strong defensive options, such as Mineral Deposit and Medusa Field, are significantly worse on Jupiter. Zircon Zip remains very strong, however, also allowing you to immediately reposition to set up more Jupiter Drones. If you want to lean on Books for damage, you will want to look for ways to accelerate your Shard economy immediately in service of a finishing blow from a Shard payout such as Bloodstone Bolt or Glimmer Shot. Cards such as Quantum Quarry tend to be too slow without an upgrade, while Crystal Shard generators such as Unpolished Crystal B and Shardpack help more in speeding things along. Perfect Specimen is almost a perfect card for this ship, allowing you to heal off any hull you might've gambited and adding a permanent Crystal Shard to your deck to immediately give you Shard with no setup required. Crystal Shards can also be a useful way to redraw and/or replay Jupiter's Moons.
//cat.exe	Jupiter is one of CAT's stronger ships, as she is surprisingly adept at playing hyper offense while having a lot of cards that provide immediate value to match the preferred aggressive tempo of the ship. Temporal Anomaly and Prism are premium pickups on Jupiter, with both being able to output absurd amounts of damage with almost no setup. In particular, Prism B can hit astronomical numbers with a little bit of investment. Some of her more awkward defensive options, such as I Frames, are much better on Jupiter - on a ship that's this defensively inept, anything that can stop massive amounts of damage and maintain momentum will be strong. AI Overflow allows you to fetch all of her cards at once, allowing you to play upgraded basics right away. This is most useful for frontloaded movement if you've upgraded Basic Dodge and Basic Shift. Quick Fix gets a special mention here since it affects Jupiter's Moons, and with card draw this can allow you to set up a lot of drones very quickly.