I've been working on a new strategy for the Advent. I haven't been able to play it enough to how well it works.

Early game, instead of getting a battleship or colony cap for my first cap ship, I get the big carrier and build interceptors on it. Its consorts will initially consist of Disciple vessels and Illuminators. The Disciple vessels are primarily to take down anti-fighter frigates. The Interceptors from the carrier are very good at countering LRM spam. The Illuminators are unique among the long range frigates in that they do good damage to capital ships. Sometimes, I'll attack early in the game, before anybody has much more than four systems or so with this fleet, and it frequently does well. I won a practice game doing this. I had a fleet headed by a big carrier, and about 8 each of Illuminators and Disciples.

I haven't tested it on a human opponent yet. Against a human, I might go for a battleship instead of a big carrier, and wait on getting interceptors right off. Once I research the light carrier, I'll add that to my fleet. Since a lot of people are highly fond of hords of LRM frigates, I'll need to use significant numbers of light carriers to counter them.

Late game, I'll continue to build enough Illuminators to stop the enemy cap ships. I'll build a solid core of heavy cruisers as the main body of the fleet. Since the heavy cruisers are more than able to deal with LRM frigates, the light carrier's interceptors will switch from LRM suppression to bomber suppression. This alleviates any need to build anti fighter frigates and keeps the command and control of this monster within reason.

small 1v1/2v2 maps:
Buy 2x Crystal (at 300);
Build Capital Shipyard;
Build Crystal Mine;
Build 2x Scouts;
(Queue up Capitalship (Revelation,Radiance or Progenitor));
Build Colonizer;
Look at your credits, if all 2 Assembly Drones are building, build a Disciple, if one Assembly Drone finished building, build a Mine.
Repeat until no Metall/Crystal spots available.
Build Disciples.
Scuttle Cap-Shipyard.
Scout enemy, if hes going LRM/Assailants, go Defense Vessel ASAP.
Take your nearest roid.
If he build Civilian Research Stations, you have won.

Usually i will build the first Temple of Hostility after i reached pop-cap with Disciples(research Shield)- although you will have a hard time vs. a potent LRM/Assailant rusher(Reverie can give you an edge here).

i go with the revelation capital ship, helps me keep an eye on the enemy. unless i'm unusually close to the enemy i always go for trade first then head up military tech. plus you can stun the enemy capital ship and destroy his fleet without the capitals support.

At this point you can usually tell if your opponent is lrm spamming or assailant spamming. in which case all you really need to build are defense vessels. it may be hard to believe, i sure didn't believe it when i first heard it but defense vessels (all flak frigates) simply rip apart lrms and assailants, still good on illuminators but not as much as the other 2.

since most people don't know better or refuse to build other ships you'v already won because the keep bashing there lrms into their counter units.

if they actually know what there doing you should have been spending your extra time/money on getting a decent fleet of illuminators ready one jump out for when he brings out his basic frigates to counter the defense vessels. also grab some iconus guardians they do wonders especially if you have mother ship to help recharge there shields.

I generally end up with Illuminators and then try to keep around 1/3 of that number of flaks around. then throw in about 4 iconus guardians to call it good. if your fighting near the edge of a gravity well one of the best things i'v noticed you can do is to keep say 4 or 6 more guardians ready to jump in and when your current guardians run out of shields or die jump 2 more in and repeat when those are emtpy.

When comes to bringing heavy cruisers into the mix i'm still trying to figure out a good ratio. When it gets to that point i generally end up with about 30 illuminators 12 defense vessels 2 capital ships 4 or so guardians and end up filling the rest of my fleet supply in with destra's.

I generally just skip carriers because people should be building flaks either to counter my illuminators and makes carriers useless or they often assume i'll have carriers so there was no point in building them.

I still have a lot to learn but lately all i run into is people spamming lrms and it keeping me from learning anything