@ShipTechnician showcased a vanilla ship optimized for combat. His build had 5 leftover mass budget, which was used in this updated build for replacing the 1x1 hab with an empty control station (+3 mass). This allows up to 8 crew which can improve combat performance as the build uses particle and ballistic weapons, so it benefits from having more than 4 crew. Also an Equipment Plate (+1 mass) a ComSpike (+1 mass) was added.

optimal crew:
Barrett (Particle Beam Weapon Systems + Starship Engineering)
Sam Coe (Payloads + Piloting)
Omari Hassan (Shield Systems)
Andromeda Kepler or Vasco (Aneutronic Fusion)
Gideon Aker or Jessamine Griffin (Ballistic Weapon Systems)
Sarah Morgan (Astrodynamics)

original build:    • Extreme Difficulty + Extreme Analytic...  

full credits for the build to @ShipTechnician