Interesting question.

To a point. But thats a fixed value designed to balance against a variable.

Any advantage the other two races gain in being able to have 'more ships' will slowly disappear the larger a map gets, and the vasaris jump advantage will more or less stay the same.

i use them cos they look so dam cool plus they have a cap ship that looks a bit like a vulcan cruiser

But think about it this way. It was a 3 way, the third player died. Now it's you and him. You're Vasari and he's Advent. You have the ship advantage but he has combos. Therefor you might want to duke it out. You're using your tricks and he's using his. The issue is he has more combo ships than you have your ships, his air is better ect. You have to focus on Phase Missiles, shield disruptor thingies and phasing them out. Both of you are about equal. But he has more units to spare. He bring 10 Cap ships around the side while you're using your psychic dude and your heavy guy ect to soak the damage. You see them coming, if you go for them his army will break the line. If you don't you're boned. The only answer is to back up your lines so your supply gets to the front line faster, the question, will he fall for it?

Dont forget returning armada, I have not used it myself but was allied with someone who did and his force was massive and only kept growing, for free once you get it all up.

Oh, well in that case it's still slightly balanced by the fact that while they have to use less units, they still have to break up into 2-3 fleets on huge maps, and since their armies are smaller this means that an organized attack can send you reeling.

Also, the other factions will just grab 15-20 planets probably, and then try to take yours out.

Not to mention that a phase gate costs 10 tactical points, which severely hampers the static defenses, and makes it pretty easy to just destroy the phase gate so the enemy can't reinforce it.. no?

They can only move around like that as long as both ends are connected by the gates. In addition to it still taking a while to travel even in a direct line, an attacking fleet can easily be done with all the static defenses (and the phase gate) before the defending fleet arrives.

So, in my view, this argument has no merit.

I don't think I've been playing even nearly long enough to really comment on what the races are good/bad at (Have only used TEC so far).

But. Someone above said that the Vassari can only make one defence fleet whilst the other races might need 3 or 4 in larger games to cover multiple fronts and this is an advantage to the Vassari.

It seems to me just from reading that there comes bundled with this possibility a hidden dissadvantage if a Vassari player chooses to play this way, for example.

A Vassari player is only using one defence fleet and is jumping it around in order to defend multiple fronts in his local area. The other player has 3 defence fleets covering his areas. The other player now decides to take one of his defence fleets and attack a front with it (I assume the defence fleet would be a smaller force) and the Vassari player phase jumps his defence fleet into that front to defend. Once this battle is going nicely the other player focuses on his main attack fleet and moves in to attack another front.

The Vassari player is faced with:

1. Splitting his fleet, ending up with 2x weak fleets and loosing 2x planets.
2. Phase jumping to the new threat, loosing the planet on the first front.
3. Staying and finishing off the first fleet that attacked it, loosing the planet on the second front.

Note also that in the second example, the Vassari fleet has already been fighting the first attack fleet which is smaller than the second, has lost a good few ships and is already weekened. It probably wont have the strength to face the 2nd larger attack fleet which is already bigger than the first anyway, so there is a possible loss of two planets there also.

Again I have only been playing a few hours so far and only with TEC so appologies if there are game mechanics/Vassari abilities which would prevent this but that is how I would play it if a Vassari player was doing that to me.

I played an advent game against Vassari. The enemy having extreme mobilization was a hinderance, but not so much as the fact that my shields were totally worthless. I'd had 2000 shields yet no hull. Given that Advent specialize in shields, the Vassari's ability to ignore shields seems amazingly overpowered.

I loved Advent but I have given up on them for this reason. I now play TEC and Vassari.

The Advent's Iconus Guardian cruisers have shield projection powers which can screw normal weapons, but they won't work against Vasari Phase Missiles - the Phase Missiles will just pierce through the many layers of shielding and blast the hull of their target with the Guardians being helpless to do anything about it.

The Radiance Battleship's Level 6 "Cleansing Brilliance" super-beam could possibly kill many Vasari LRM frigates if successful, but if the Vasari player micromanages and pulls the LRMs out of range using their superior speed, the special attack is just a waste of antimatter. Or better, if the Vasari use their mobility to knock out the Advent antimatter stations, the Advent fleet will be cut off from their fuel lines and subject to operating without their special abilities(Big Problem).