Could someone explain to me how to play the Vasari

It is okay. You are not alone in your thoughts. I feel the exact same way. I even tried to play a game last night as them again thinking "Maybe this time I will get it". Meh. I still hated them.

So hopefully someone will answer this as I want to know as well.

The Vassari ar great early game killers.

The first part of there economy tree is the fact that they can get resource processors and resource extraction rate increases earlier than any of the other races.

With this it makes quite a bit easier to produce ships a lot faster and earlier than others, the cap ship that are good are the space egg, the volkorus destuctor, and the other siege like mass destroyer cap.

I don't have entrenchment, so I can't answer any starbase questions, but I can give you some tips. First, their abilities are not lackluster. Their colony ship (space egg), is considered to have some of the best abilities out there (as in all of them are good), and the rest of their caps are good if somewhat specialized. They have the best early game military as they get LRMs at lvl 1 military, and this gives them their best damage potential, phase missiles. Once upgraded with shield bypass, they can start doing lots of damage en mass versus other units, especially vs. advent. Their flak is also considered to be the best. Their civilian upgrades are indeed... unique, but its nice that the metal and crystal mining upgrade is combined, as are the techs that increase fleet capacity and  decrease unit cost across the board. Oh, and while its late game, the phase stabalizers rock on maps with big galaxies, its almost a single defense fleet is really all you need for each star system, no matter how far the planets are from each other. I've also heard their superweapon now creates phase stabalizer points (in entrenchment), allowing them to attack any planet behind enemy lines.

I just plain up don't like the Vasari.  But one things I can tell you, is they have like the best Colonize Capital ship, the Doomsday Egg, which at level 6 can suck the life out of a planet.  I can play them okay I guess, here's what I've learned:

*Scouts take resource extractors: Get every single one you can, this'll give you a huge advantage

*Quick access to long range jumps: Get this fast if  you're on a multi star system, and make a foothold in another star's planets.  This can be a fall back point as well as an uncontested resource whore.

For busting starbases, build some Skirantra or their Light carriers and spam bombers. Support with some Sentinels and also some fighters in the mix.  Aside from other fighters, starbases have virtually no Anti Strike ability. (The empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat, or else they'd have a tighter defense! <LolStarwars>)

Late game:  Phase Stabilizer = God.   This esentially makes your fleet 1 jump away, build there's everywhere you anticipate your fleet will have to go.  Also returning armada is free units.

Major Cash:  4 Starbases in a stars gravity well with Colony pods and max hull/weapons provide a near unbustable economy boost.  Unlike other starbases, the Vasari Starbase is extremely (Almost to the point of imbalance) powerful in Star gravity wells.

I hope that helps.

I don't play as vasari, but certainly in the hands of the AI the Vasari are the strongest faction.

I have played 3 large random maps, two single star one multi, where I put the 9 (hard) enemy AI into 3 teams of 3, pitting Vasari vs TEC vs Advent (and then me :)). In each case, within 3 or 4 game hours the Vasari have completely wiped out the TEC and advent forces, and have taken over the majority of the game territory (until I evict them of course :p).

      Personally, I love the Vasari. The early resource boost helps. But another hidden treasure they have is the resource salvage from destroyed enemy ships. you can research this to level three to get a fraction of the resource cost of all enemy ships. So if you detroy an enemy cap ship you get, (not sure) 15-20% of the resources it cost to make it! So you start with the LRM first thing, don't bother with the light frigate. Find an enemy fleet or an unprotected homeworld, and for every unit you destroy, or orbital structures you get more resources. I find myself with almost too much metal/crystal to manage!

   With so many resources you can get some mad upgrades to your fleet/economy/or defenses. I also realy like the caps. The mother ship has a weapon that keeps the enemy from phase jumping out, so along with the salvage upgrade you can make some money when the enemy is trying to run.

The carrier has a mass heal ability that heals ALL friendly ships in a radius. And the other three are about as useful as the other races.

One cap has a "speed" ability that allows your fleet to really move around a system.

The other is a siege cap that helps with planets. And the battle ship is a huge diamond in the rough. It has a jam weapons ability that disables weapons of enemy strike craft in a radius. And also a cool lvl 6 ablilty...

     As far as strategy goes, just research the She I T out of the resources and esepcially the salvage techs. They can be found under the Empire tree... GOOD LUCK!

While the Vasari don't have any dedicated Starbase killers other than their own Starbase, they're the race that's best suited for a normal engagement with ships. With phase missiles (bombers use phase missiles as well) and the Subverter's ability to increase phase missile chance, your Assailants and Bombers get a 55% chance to deal 100% damage, ignoring shield mitigation - which is a big deal. The Jarrasul can permanently keep a starbase armor debuffed, -6 armor is -30% effective hp. And the Vulkoras deals flat extra damage against structures with every phase missile shot if you upgrade its siege ability.

And since the Starbases attack lots of targets, the Skinkatra carriers come in real handy with their mass hull repair, and some Overseers can permanently keep your capital ships alive with their +250 hp injections.

If you know what you're doing, it's hard for a Vasari to lose a lot of ships to even the most upgraded starbases. It just takes a while.

Personally love Vasari, their main strength is mobility. Their entire race oozes it, from the subverters who stop movement, to starbases who can move themselves Vasari is about movement. While they suffer mid-game the most they're probably the best rushers and to me they're my favorite end-game race. With the kostura buff in entrenchment you can use your cannons to send your fleet deep into enemy territory in a moments notice. Their only drawback to me is skirmishers aren't that great early on compared to assailants, and overseers to me aren't as effective as TEC or Advents ways of either healing or stopping damage. (hosk and guardiens)

As for their caps the egg has my favorite ultimate ability followed closely by the Kortuls volatile nanites. Their the only race to me that has no bad cap abilties. (ok phase out hull is pretty bad) Plus I love how Vasari bombard planets.

To take out starbases really you either need to make your own, take it out with bombers, or simply attack it head on and try to keep your overseers behind your fleet so they don't need to turn much to heal your ships. If you feel wasteful you can use volatile nanites on it for the 30% damage boost.

I play almost always Vasari and here is why I can't see myself changing, esspecially in Entrenchment.

I kick off with the Egg, I usually only ever build 1 but  i'll rebuild one if I fail and get it killed, like I did last night >.<

I'll back him up with Assailents until I decide it's time to up the Fleet Logistics.  I bring out a desolator normally on the Logistics upgrade and start backing up my fleet with Sentinels.  If the enemy aren't on top of me already I'm dumping down Civilian Research labs.  the key things I get are the resource bonus researches, Ice / Lava, Enforced Labor and eventually the Phase Gates.  Also during the 1st Logistics upgrade and onwards im upgrading my warfare techs prettyu much based on the order in the tree.  So starting with Phase Missile and Hull upgrades and moving right.  I often miss the non phase missile weapon upgrades early game though.

As a secondary i'll try and get Trade Ports up everywhere.

These days I don't bother with RA.  I will have certain planets as my border worlds, they will have a star base slightly upgraded with hangers, repair bays and a couple of turrets.  I'll upgrade my outer worlds with Phase Gates and have gates on my factory planets.

By the time the war is starting proper I will have a level 6+ egg and a nearly level 6 Desolator.  Them 2 combined backed up with a half decent fleet will have no problems.  I take a fair amount of strike craft and a near equal mix of assailants, skirmishers and sentinels.  The Enforcers, Overseers and Subverters are added later when I have an economy pumping out more cash than I know what to do with.  My third cap is the Carrier for the repair cloud and secondly the Micro Phasing aura.  I auto cast repair cloud, I micro the desolators abilities, saving disintegration for star bases or when it is needed, using phase missile swarm when facing large fleet and only use seige cannons when im speeding up mopping up.  I auto cast colonise and micro the rest of the eggs abilities, when facing fleets I use Nano on fleet ships that will die with one hit.  Killing their fleet fast with the egg will make their caps useless on their own, there is no need to focus their caps, killing their LRMs, flak and LFs fast will mean minimal loses to you.

So here's how I attack a world.  I send in a scout on 1 side of the well and shift click to send him back.  I make sure I watch the grav well when he arrives.  The Star Base is almost always one side and sometimes there are mines.  I then send my entire fleet the other side and a Colony ship straight in after them.  As soon as my main fleet jumps I click the create Star Base button with the colony ship and choose a location next to where the ship will jump in to.  Then I manage my fleet destroying everything in the grav well except the Star Base, avoiding mines.  I will not engage the AI fleet unless he moves away from the Star Base, because sometimes he tries to draw you there.  Because of the amount of flak and strike craft I have, usually 50/50 fighters/bombers I will then have bombers attacking the star base after several minutes of combat, Once I have my star base built I will upgrade or not depending on the defended base.  Then I send in my egg first do a Nano-Dissasembler, send in the Star Base and do the Disintegrate with the Desolator.  It's enough to totally ruin most star bases.  I'll then mop up, not bother upgrading the star base unless it's going to be a new border planet.  I can chuck down a trade port, Phase gate, a couple of hangers and repair bay while I am already clearing the next well.

These days with the power of the Vasari's moving star base and phase gates in all important areas in many games I can skim round with a single fleet.  In the old days I would have 2 or 3 fleets.  Phase stabalisers make defending simple.

Hope this helps and wasn't too boring

edit mistake

Vasari are your true masters!

Strike, deal damage, retreat if required. With the Vasari, you ALWAYS dictate where and when you fight, especially in Entrenchment with their quite powerful and gravity-well-covering starbase. Plus, they have the Space Egg, possibly the most useful cap in the game, and have no need to build colony frigates at all

Oh rly?

Phase Out Hull is actually a pretty awesome ability, it just doesn't scale well to large fleet battles. Early on, it's great at saving your capitals, or disabling annoying ones. Even late game though, it's the quickest and easiest ways to interrupt Marza's Missile Barrage or beak the Advent's (albeit nerfed) Malice + Cleansing Brilliance combo.

YARLY

Scout frigate can colonize mining operations, the Space Egg can colonize planets... Because of the fragility and insecurity of the small energy pool and low recharge, I try to avoid using colony frigates.

He probably meant other than starbase building.

ah but his rebuttal would suggest not   

I've recently become a big fan of the Vasari, esp. in Entrenchment for one reason, jump gates.  For instance, say your attacking on a front line and are running low on ships, well, if you have a jump gate on your ship production planet, and you also have the Vasari Desolator in your attacking fleet, the Desolator can create a temporary jump gate in the grav well it resides, allowing you to jump to it from anywhere within the same star system.  So imagine you've struck deep within enemy territory, you took a planet but suffered some heavy losses, and now you need some more ships for backup.  Well, you can just create a temporary gate via Desolator and warp your reinforcements right to the front lines.

Another jump gate goodie in Entrenchment is the Vasari super-weapon.  It creates a temporary jump gate in whatever planet it hits.  So, if you've run into a stalemate because an enemy front line is too well fortified with turrets and mines and maybe a starbase.  Well, now you can just fire a shot directly at his homeworld (or next to it), and bybass his entire defensive front, by jumping deep into his territory.  

This is becoming my favorite offensive tactic now.  Scouting to a weakly defended planet deep behind enemy lines, creating a temp jump gate with the super-weapon, then sending the Desolator,  (2) colony ships (colony ships are how the Vasari build their starbases), and some seige ships.  I immediately start building a star base with the first colony ship (you lose the colony ship in the process), to make matters worse, the Vasari have a Defensive tech, that once upgraded, allows you to build starbases 50% faster in enemy territory.  While building the star base, the Desolator and seiges are taking the planet, then I can colonize the planet with my other colony ship.  When I move to the next planet, I already have a colony ship to build another starbase, which will also get the 50% build bonus in enemy territory.

Thing I miss this most from coming from TEC is the economy boost TEC gives.  But after reading SkyMan's post, I may be able to grease the credit engine a little better so that I have my money coming faster playing Vasari.  I'm going to have to try his tips next chance I get to play.

You don't need antimatter stores for a starbase, no need to wait after a long trip, and it arrives laterin the game...

Theres a simple way to kill as a vasari other tarbases you bild 5 of these mine ships who make mines then you go with you armada to the planet with the sb then you have to lay some mines if the ability is recharged you have to re lay some mines. So the sb will concentrate his fire on the mines.you can win without losses

I'm pretty sure that that tech only applies to capital ships and not enemy frigates.  Problem is--how often (in online multiplayer) do you get to destroy an enemy capital ship?  Perhaps one or two a game, on average?

Please correct me if I'm wrong and if you can gain resources with that tech by destroying enemy frigates and cruisers as well.

I actually started by playing Vasari when I was a noob since I liked their ships.  Then I played Vasari in online multiplayer when I was still learning the game.  I was merely mediocre (being a nub) and later moved to Advent.  Playing Advent is when I learned to get good at the game.  Later I learned to play Vasari again but only ten times better than I had played it before.

My point is that while you might think the Vasari sucks now, you might see things differently later after you've learned to understand the game and its strategy better.

No, it doesn't work off frigates/cruisers, but it does work off structures and you'd definitely be blowing those up.