Varsari Might??

Use ships with phase missiles and research the tech that lets them penetrate shields/mitigation.  Assailants are your friends-but so are capitals.  It sounds like you've actually gotten the fleet composition done decently well-you just need to research the phase missile line.

Build more labs and do more research.  You should easily be able to fit a lab per planet (even if it's an asteroid), and unless you're going for RA, you don't need as many civilian labs as Vasari.

It's not necessarily due to you're using Vasari incorrectly, just maybe not as correctly as you could. In a situation like the battle you described it's not simply a case of: "I had more fleet, I should win," as there are many avenues available to an Advent player (with capital ships?) that would allow them to defeat such an army if those strategems are not properly countered. That's one of the consequences of this game being real-time strategy.

Vasari do have some very powerful ships and abilities, but many of them require quite heavy research, and against Advent penetrating phase missiles is very helpful.

One battle like this should not colour your idea of which race is 'fair' or 'balanced.' Play around a bit more, figure out why your friend beat you, and try and counter it to teach him a lesson for having the audacity to beat you. Because, whatever he did, there will have been a counter to it.

Good luck, and I hope my [incorrigibly] condescending tone doesn't put you off.

Definitely agree with Sole Soul. The phase missile line of research is critical to Vasari tactics, especially if you are fighting the Advent which are highly skilled in shield tech. Level 10 cap ships of the Advent can reach 84% shield mitigation, have only seen 74% with TEC and Vasari. The phase missiles can negate this.

A ) You don't sound condecending

B ) I totaly agree with the one battle but it was several battles

C ) The Phase missles take so much research and i already had them up to 20% and it was still a pain (i guess i underestimated them, let me give them anotehr try)

Holy crap advent have good mitigation. I agree with phase missle. Personally i haven't even finished the battle yet because i had to get off about half way through the battle. I remember now that my fighters kicked the crap out of his mostly because he was newer than me so he had like 15 bombers and 15 fighters compared to my 25 fighter 8 bomber mix.

RA is good i know that

I know my fleet composition was at least decent  (thanks for teh complement)

Unfortunatyly in a previous battle i lost my level 7 Evacutator with planet suck (darn that didn't help with the 2 caps dieing as well)

The issue was i had about 4 planets (3 astroids and home) the other 3 i described were astroid belts so i was very short on logistic slots. I had everything full and was having a hard time combating enemy culture from the computer.

I still am mad about my stereotype though. I was expecting more out of vasari ships but i didn't know phase missles could ignore mitigation. HMMMMMM. That could help. Thanks there. My economy wasn't my problem it only took me 20 minutes or so to get that 550 fleet. The issue was credits but even then.

The main issue i think i had was i spread myself too thin and my friend imediatly first pirate raid placed 3k bounty on me (pissed me off) Which didn't go away for 3 or 4 pirate raids (didn't want to spend money on bounty or he'd place more on me, that and i wanted ships not pirates)

FINALLY, thanks for all the help. I'll soon have the results of the game to you. I probally will win the battle but his planet will be the issue. No destroyers at all to kill the planet (another darn) Only 2 level 1 caps.

I also do feel that vasari and tec are balanced very well. It's just advent i want to see some tweaking in. Mostly in ships to make it feel more as if it was inbetween the vasari and TEC not as if some ships are spammed so much more than others because they are better.

P.S. Long reply 2nd longest i've done

P.S.S. Thanks for the help

20% damage or 20% penetration?

They go 10%/20% damage, 5%/10%/15%/20%/25%/30% penetration.  I don't remember exactly how many labs you'd need for that-though I'd guess it'd be more than three.

Incidentally, phase missiles are useful not only in that they can ignore mitigation (at the penetration rate, anyway), thereby doing much more damage, but also in that they can ignore shields (also at the penetration rate).  The key point here being that all you have destroy is the enemy's hull to destroy their ship-they can still have 500 or even 1000+ shields remaining when their ship goes boom.

I see.  So your primary issue was having no real "planets".  Even a volcanic would have helped you immensely.

I used to play as the avent a lot and the advent are amazing, but the vasari are better after you get started and research some things. Also the factions are a lot more balanced than you seem to have assumed. The TEC do have a good economy, but it's not that much more great, the vasari do have better ships and structures, but they cost a lot of research and time, and the advent are good all around.

I had 20% penatration i dont' think i had enough centers to upgrade damage. I agree with the no real planets part.

What are you talking about vasari have good resource economy TEC get credit and decent recource. Advent had about the weakest economy but their ships do more for lest cost. I say TEC and Vasari are balanced it's just that advent have 3 good ships that they spam. They don't need any mix of unit just a spam of these 3. (The carrier{even better than vasari one in hull and shields}, their lrm {huge damage and has lots of hull and shields more than vasari}, and their heavy assault cruiser {takes a pounding and doesn't die, even to vasari ship}) Tec and vasari need more of a mix to get up a decent fleet. Even the tec's best units can't match advent and vasari while some advent ships are easily a match for vasari. Vasari 1 on 1 ship class vs ship class will normally win but their ships are normally 10-30% more expensive and with the proper research on the other side you could sacrifice lets say 1 ship for an upgrade and win a battle. 10 lrm's vs 10 lrm's (area upgrade on one and bring the lrm's down to 9, they win).

Finally i continued playing the game and i lost the battle unfortunatly. But having my economy so much better and having stored a vast amount of resources (about 9000 credits, 2500 metal, 1500 crystal) I built up a new fleet again even stronger than before. I took out my friends defenses at his planet. I took pity on him and stopped attacking and warped to confront a huge ai fleet that took mine out. (caused decent casualties) After that we did some attacking and defending and i found an artifact called resiliant metaloids. The fighting continued but i'm pretty sure i got the game in the bag. I was able to take out an orange desert planet directly next to his terran world. I had to quit again with 2 fleets massing at a planet one jump away form my volcanic planet that i gained (you were right it did help). The volcanic planet had full tactical slots filled with 3 hangers 1 repairer 1 phase stabilizer and the rest in turrets. My main fleet had to leave the desert uncolonized to phase back to help defend cause there was no way even my full defenses could take out the fleet they had. When i do take out that fleet my eco will boost me to the top and i'll not take pity on my friend and wipe him out directly after.

P.S. thanks everyone for the help

For some reason I was thinking the damage came first-it's actually the penetration (which is a good thing).

5/10% is 1 lab, 15/20% is 3 labs, and 25/30% is 5 labs.  Then the 10/20% damage is 6 labs.

Incidentally, you might also want to pay more attention to armor, which Vasari get at 3 labs (1.0/2.0), 4 labs (3.0/4.0), and not so importantly 6 labs (2 levels which results in 5.0/8% mass reduction; I believe it's split evenly), if you haven't done so already.

Vasari ships are generally considered the toughest ships until upgrades are concerned. If you chose the Evacuator as your free capital (which is so common its almost unheard of to use a different one), hopefully, you've put ability points into Nano-Disassembler. Arguably, its the best anti-capital ability which inflicts an armor penalty of -2/-4/-6 on the target as well as dealing 30 hull damage per second (it ignores shields) for 20/30/40 seconds.

I do realize that you are short on logistics slots in this situation, however, if you can get a 4th Weapons Lab, research the Severun Overseer. These ships have an ability called Reactive Nanite Armor, which provides an instant boost of 250 hull (to both current and maximum hull) and 2 armor for one minute or until the additional hull points are depleted. In fact, if the one minute duration expires, the additional hull points remain even though the maximum hull points have returned to normal values and the armor bonus has expired (so on a ship with 700 max hull points, it can end up having 900 until it is damaged). Seeing that you already have a 20% shield negation on your phase missiles, you have at least 3 Weapons Labs. Tier 4 Military also opens up the Charged Missiles ability, which allows your Assilants to sacrifice mobility for extended range and an area of effect attack (it requires both the Assailant and Sentinel prototypes to be researched).

If I remember correctly, there is a possibility that Desert planets can be found in Centrifuge. If that's true, try to grab one of them. Fully upgraded, they have 36 logistics slots, which make it perfect for either a factory, research, or culture planet.

Also, take advantage of the fact that Advent players need at least 3 Hostility Temples to research Illuminators versus just 1 Weapons Lab for Vasari players for Assailants.

Heck ya i had teh evacuator it died though.    The thing of this game was that my friend also had the cpu as his ally and teh cpu had teh desert. As i said above i was just about to take the desert when a huge fleet warped in. Unfortunatly i haven't played past that.

Really 3 hostility temples vs 1 weapons lab. No wonder why i always see TEC and Vasari get LRM's when Advent just go drone host spam. (hate carrier balance) I agree i should get overseers and i'm about to. I'm actually pretty sure i had 4 military labs. Another thing is i find taht armor is too hard to research so i normally get teh hull increases and make sure that  i work with that then get armor.

From what I've read and experienced, one point increase in armor is like a 5% increase in "effective" hull points, which also means that repair abilities are 5% more effective with the same increase. The first armor research subject is in Tier 3, the second armor subject in Tier 4, and research times for any subject is the same as any other subject in the same Tier (simply put, subjects in Tier X all have the same research time, X being any number between 1-8), so its no different than researching shield bypass for Phase Missiles.