A hints how to go vs Advent

For tactics:

Advent support ships are cruiser & frigates (forgot the name sorry but maybe someone can fill in) and that shoe (stick?) looking capital ship - they can deny lots of damage. Target them first.

You have to build a balanced fleet too. Some capital ships that have high armor & support. If he's know's his stuff he'll use lots of bombers with Advent - you need fighters to counter that.

At least he decides to fight, advent can win sometimes without firing a shot because they can spread culture so fast. Revolting causes problems on early games..

Thank you a lot i will be greatful for more opinions and possibly with some more facts ( longer posts , revealing more stuff) Thanks

Advent starships heavily rely on their shields to stay in one piece and their support ships help with that.

*The Progenitor Mothership has a shield-recharge ability, make sure you deny it to your enemy as soon as possible.
*The Iconus Guardian acts as a huge shield damage buffer, offering all ships in its radius a flat 33% damage reduction, which is transferred to the Iconus' shields, it has tonnes of them to deal with that.
*The Disciple has to ability to steal your antimatter and transfer it to a friend.

Counters as Vasari:

*Ravastra Skirmisher Interference ability.
*Stilakus Subverter Shield Disruption ability disrupts shields, and the armor on advent ships isn't exactly the toughest stuff around.
*Kortul Devastator Disruptive Strikes passive ability. This nullifies anti-matter i believe, probably one of the best things to use against their Antimatter heavy vessels.

I think that against Advent its basically down to making sure you get through his shields as quickly as you can, once those go down so do the ships, their armor is less than that of the others. This does not make them easy targets though, they have lots of nasty special abilities, which is why the Kortul with its disruptive strikes will come in handy.

To add on to Ronald's post:

Yes, a lot of Advent combat tactics rely on more than one ship to pull off. The Progenitor Mothership can be very mean when it gets to keep recharging shields - so why not take it out of the picture?

Build yourself an Antorak Marauder capital! It has a very cool ability called Phase Out Hull, which completely takes a ship out of the fight for a little bit. It's not long, but it's quick to recharge (recharges before the duration is up) and doesn't cost a whole lot of antimatter, so you can keep chain phasing that damned Mothership

Also, since the Advent are all about shields (shield mitigation bonus in friendly culture, shield damage transfer to Iconus Guardians, shield restore from the Mothership), research those Phase Missile techs, go straight for the hull! Phase Missiles get a 30% chance (at max research, plus you can use the Subverter cruiser which can put another 25% chance) to penetrate shields and do damage to the hull. Along the same lines, the Jarrasul Evacuator (commonly referred to as the Space Whale by the beta folk) has a very nice ability that reduces armor and does direct hull damage per second (I think it's 30 per second for 40 seconds at max rank).

Deny the Advent their antimatter and their shield advantage, and you win

Thank you a lot guys, this will help a lot. It seems that Advent are the most powerful here anyway i am open for any further thing that may come in to your mind to fight them. And if you have the time give me an advice for the TEC i mean, I playerd with them but they seems with so old technology that they can't do much to anyone especially Advent ( lol those guys have gone in to my skin)

The TEC doesn't really have anything flashy. They're fairly basic as far as abilities to. Make sure to bring along a bunch of Hoshiko cruisers, they do some very good repairs to your ships in battle. Cielo cruisers are great if you have a bunch of LRM frigates. Always bring one or two Dunovs because they can restore a lot of shields to a single target. But besides that, there's nothing too special about them

nooo! Don't teach them how to counter Advent! How will we continue our awesomeness if everyone knows our weaknesses?!

By exploiting their weaknesses, of course

My friend had a fully ugpraded military tree as well as a full upgraded set of capitol ships. His highest armored ship was 12, I was advent and my highest armored ship after all upgrades was 14. These were both the main battleships as no other capitol ships had higher. Maybe overall the advent do have less armor, but in the case of the best battleship capitol ship, the advent had more amrmor. Add on top of that a higher shield, its quite useful. Although the advent does have less hull hp.

Just a quick sidetrack, but any tips playing as TEC vs Advent

Edit: Oh wait already asked, I just suck as TEC vs Advent... I'm good vs Varsai.

So in short words what are the main capitols and small ships that i have to build and mass ?

TEC ships versus Advent, lets see:

* Cobalt Light Frigate, Sabotage Reactor ability. Nothing hurts Advent like denying them their key resource for combat, antimatter.
* Hoshiko Cruiser, Demolition Bots ability. Why bother with the shields if you can attack their hull instead.
* Dunov Battlecruiser, Destabiliser Charge. Again, Antimatter denial hurts Advent a lot, use that fact.
* Any ship that is capable of increasing the damage other ships deal, you have a lot of shield to plough through.

We will strip you of your cultural distinctiveness and give you our own. You will be unified.

Resistance is futile

Was over at my at my brothers, and he was playing it so I got interested, and it's really funny! Defenitely a must buy! The game just feels very crisp, fresh and adequately polished.
I just thought I'd add my newbie advent-viewpoint and how I played in the only game I've played so far.

On all frontier planets I had repair, reantimatter and hangars. With that tactical slot upgrade you can get like 5 hangars and still afford a few repairs and antimatter rechargers. When you have upgraded fleet research and tactical research theese guys can kill stuff fast. The turrets doesn't really seem to do much even though if you feel you have enough repairs and *cough* enough antimatter (wich you never can have) you might want to build a gun or two.

I would avoid having a too wide frontier if possible since you can't really move your fleets around that fast. On comparison the Vastari's ability to build their own phase lanes really should give them much more reactive fleets than you will ever have. With adequate "infrastructure" they can react more quickly on distant fronts than I could. Their bypass shield things are also annoying.
Make sure to fleet up all your frontier worlds and max out defences there. Combined with stationary repair/antimatter/bombers you will really eat stuff up. Do not let anything get past the frontier worlds, even though you might want to consider the planets 1 step behind the frontier as 2nd frontier worlds also destined for full defence so you can retreat etc.

Balanced fleet is defenitely the way to go, even though I tend to go heavy on thoose bomber drones boats. Works better against the AI than a player I guess

I got one of thoose desert planets close to the AI's border and just smacked up, I think it was 8 of the propaganda boxes. I was pushing out something like 40+ culture/second. On my distand and secure homeworlds I didn't really build any heavy defences, just tons of thoose culture guns (tactical slot) and trade stations (logistic slot). If I got any odd numbers of slots, wich you usually do, I just smacked down anti-matter rechargers, repairs and hangars as per normal. This is so if the enemy bypasses your front somewhere your pursuing fleet will still have it's supply of anti-matter and repair.

If you survive the beginning, can hold your defences, you can eat the AI one world at a time. Your culture will take care of the rest and in addition I think that lowered alligeance will result in less cash/mineral income for the enemy, so thats a bonus to the eventual overthrow of goverment


To sum up. Fleet up all frontiers. Your bombers/fighters alone cant defend them, but together with an adequate fleet that benefits from your repair/antimatter stations, you'll be inpenetrable. Bring up culture. I'm not sure what's the best way to build it, but I prefer building it on frontiers, the culture will seep back into your empire eventually, the logistic slots on your homeworlds are prolly better served with trade stations.

PH34R 0UR 1337 1@53RZ 0F D00M!

pew pew
heathens will be purged

how to go vs. advent: join the unity
else you will be cleansed

I'd like to re-emphasize the use of the Antarok when playing Vasari against Advent. Advent really rely upon the synergy between ships, and Phase Out can really screw with that synergy.

Advent is only race I have played. Why bothers others? They will eventually be in The Unity.   

It's not they have more armor, they have more shield mitigation, which is basically the same thing.

TEC have the Dunov Battlecruiser.

With it's EMP bomb, you can annihalate the shields of the target and whoever is grouped close enough to that target.

I always have about two of them in my capital fleets, because that is so dang helpful haha.

Dunov battlecruisers rock my socks. emp bomb + shield restoration makes them perfect for any engagement involving capships, the advent, or both at the same time.

To understand how to beat the advent, you really ought to try playing them. Some things I've found:

Every Cap ship boosts a different aspect of my navy and without them, my ships don't stand a chance. If everyone is close enough, every ship I have fires faster, takes less damage, regenerates faster and every nearby enemy ship takes more damage than usual. Knock out one of those capital ships and you just dropped my firepower by about 20% in a large engagement. Knock out another one and you just made all your ships take 20% less damage. In a large engagement, always drop the cap ships first. Start with the motherships, then the carriers, and so on leaving the battleship for last. Most cap ships do nasty things to a single target. Advent caps do nasty things to entire fleets.

There's also a nifty quirk to Advent ship economics. Some games you aren't hurting for crystal. Most games you are, and crystal is your main limiting factor on what sort of toys you can build. Now when I go to build cruisers, costs are relatively even except for one thing - carrier cruisers cost only 50 crystal while all the others are pushing 100. If I'm strapped for crystal and looking for firepower, you better believe I'm going to be building those carriers. Because of that, you better be prepared to face a lot of fighters and bombers. Against the Vasari, you might be able to split fighters and bombers since your carriers are equal in cost to the other guy. Against the Advent, that isn't going to happen. Build fighters.

The Dunov Battlecruiser will knock down shields with it's EMP Bomb, but the Progenitor Mothership will just put them back up again. What's worse, if the Advent enemy is a human player, than they can build a Disciple-frigate antimatter trucking-service with a bit of micromanagement, and keep those AM-hungry cap ships fueled even through a prolonged battle.

The Vasari's Phase Missiles appear to be the best way to cut through shields as the Advent can't simply restore their hull strength like they can with shields. Also, the Vasari have a tech and/or abilities that make their strikecraft harder to hit. So with their super-agile Phase Missile-armed fighters and bombers, the Vasari may just be able to even the odds with the Advent drones in a carrier-vs-carrier duel. It would be a battle between brute force & numbers(Advent carrier wings) vs cunning & technology(Vasari carrier wings). Once their carriers and flaksters are down, LRM and carrier strikes should be able to pull it off against the synchronized harmony of the Advent Cap-force.

Don't forget one of their Cap Ships (Vasari) has a Phase ability. Phase Missiles mixed with Phasing out the dude that makes attackers take 33% damage and you can own.

However you are unlikely to be able to pull that one off against an AI player.

Last night its largest fleet showed up on my doorstep with over 20 Guardians, while the damage reduction doesn't stack, it does appear spread to all guardians in range meaning its all but impossible to punch them out. Focussed fire took out a few of his capships, but his support was extremely tough to take down and eventually they destroyed my entire fleet. Sheer endurance won the day for them. I was playing Advent myself aswell, but i certainly didn't have the firepower to take all those things out, their effective shields were amazing.

Today I played a game against a normal advent AI. I was vasari, and after a while of battling back and forth we ended up fighting over one planet. Suddenly their fleet attacked. It was smaller than mine by a little, but most of the fleet was made of Iconus guardians, which unfortunately meant that the only weapons that did any damage at all were phase missiles. Couple this with their fleet-boosting capship abilities and my superior fleet couldn't even make a scratch. I rapidly lost ships, including 2 level 7 capships, before I could even kill one of their capships. I retreated, only to be chased by this 'invicible fleet' all the way to my homeworld, at which point I surrendered.

Does anyone know an effective way to counter those infernal Iconus guardians?

Oh, and on a side note, what is it that makes the battle obscuring cloud of doom appear? Not being able to see any of the ships involved in the battle is a tad irritating.