Thanks, but I'm really looking more for an offensive force, rather than defensive.

The vasari is the one race I haven't gotten around to playing yet.

Do any other ships have abilities that could help out?

Typically, I thought Advent are seen as the race to carrier spam, as they get carriers really quickly. Not sure how this works out, though, as I've never really gotten into them much.

The Advent can have their carriers squadrens have more fighters in each squadren. They also have Drone Tempest. I haven't used it yet, but I think it gives them the ability to dump out a bunch more fighter. The TEC carrier has heavy fighters which increases the damage and armor of its fighter and its special ability makes all construction in the given gravity well happen faster as well as all its fighter construction occur instantly! I think the devs balanced this out well. The only noticable differance for me is the Sova has a max of 7 fighter, while the Advent and Vasari max out at six.

Advent

I say this because of the repel ability as well as the cap carriers ability that increases the dmg output of nearby ships and strikecraft. coupled with a rapture or 2 for the ability that has the opposite effect (enemies dmg output decreased) a well balanced advent carrier fleet can be... troublesome.

depends on you mean by "offensive force", which could be any of the three race carriers.

TEC: against planets, as there embargo can steal from there world. Also heavy fighters as the fighter can take more and deal more damage.

Advent: Air superiority, as the adept drone anima increase the number of fighters in each squadron.

Vasari: against ships, as the scramble bombers gets you an extra bomber squadron, and the microphasing aura allows for them to evade attack.

I agree with Snipafist. Early game, the Advent can win with their numerical advantage. But later on, Vasari technology beats them. I'll prefer to let the numbers speak here:

Fighters with Full Upgrades:

Advent

Hull: 50
Armor: 4
Repair Rate: 0.18
Damage Per Volley: 20 Laser
Cool-Down Time: 12
Range: 2400
Speed: 2700
Build Time: 16
Squadron Size: 9(11 in Hangars)

Vasari

Hull: 105.4
Armor: 7.5
Repair Rate: 0.51
Damage Per Volley: 36.9 Phase Missile w. 25% chance to bypass enemy shields
Cool-Down Time: 12
Range: 2400
Speed: 2916
Build Time: 24
Squadron Size: 4

As you can see, 1-on-1, a Vasari Fighter Squadron will destroy an Advent Fighter Squadron since you can't focus fire on individual fighters(AFAIK), and the awesome armory and native repair capability of Vasari Fighters will effectively negate Advent attacks. They'll kill off all 9 drones at the loss of 1 fighter. While the Advent will take 144 seconds to replace their losses, the Vasari will only take 24 seconds. That's 2 minutes worth of free time for the Vasari fighter squadron to go around strafing enemy ships, 2 minutes of air superiority.

And, this is a simple fight between a lone Aeria Drone Host and a single Lasurak Transporter(both are carrier cruisers). This is without any support from capital ship abilities or cultural influence. Here are the bonuses they'll get from capitals/culture:

Advent

Halcyon Carrier - The Amplify Energy Aura ability, at Level 3, will decrease cool-down time by 30% and increase damage by 30%, and the Adept Drone Anima will make for more fighters per squadron(I think 1 for every level added to the ability). The Halcyon's ultimate ability, Drone Tempest, will temporarily throw out huge squads of 17 drones each. Although a normal Vasari fighter squad can still defeat an Adept Anima fighter squad for the loss of 2 planes, it's best to run away when faced with a Drone Tempest and wait for the storm to finish.

Rapture Battlecruiser - The Concentration Aura ability, at Level 3, will give Advent strikecraft a 30% damage boost anywhere in the gravity well.

Vasari

Cultural Influence - When operating in their own cultural influence, all Vasari weapons get an 11% damage boost.

Skirantra Carrier - The Repair Cloud ability gives all Vasari ships/structures/strikecraft within a constant free repair service. The Microphasing Aura ability, at Level 3, gives all Vasari strikecraft a 30% chance every second of teleporting 750 distance towards their target in no time, which allows them to rapidly close in for an attack pass or dodge enemy attacks. The Scramble Bombers ability simply throws up and extra squadron of bombers for a little while, and a maximum of two extra bomber squads can be scrambled at once. And the Skirantra's ultimate ability, Replicate Forces, allows it to use it's antimatter supply to instantly build a new frigate or cruiser - like a mobile factory. Anything built by this factory is a perfectly real ship which you can use permanently just like any ship built at a normal factory, so if you need an extra squadron up, you can build a new Lasurak Transporter.

Antorak Marauder - The Distort Gravity ability doubles the speed of all Vasari ships and strikecraft within range, so you could have fighters pulling speeds of >5800 units, and bombers exceeding 4000!

Stilakus Subverter - If a fighter/bomber squadrons target gets hit by the Subverter's Defeat Shields ability, the chance for the squadron's Phase Missiles to penetrate the target's shields goes up from 25% to 50%, and even if they don't get past the shields, shield mitigation is reduced by 10%.

The Iconus Guardian's Repulsion ability is easy to knock out. Using Kanrak Assailants with the Charged Missiles ability, you can shoot shield-piercing area effect Phase Missiles at a range of 8500 - beyond the Repulsion ability's range - and kill the Guardians. The Ravastra Skirmisher's Interference ability also drains the Guardians' antimatter supply twice as fast and increases the cooldown of their abilities. Once the Guardian wall is broken, you can use just about anything to storm the carriers - Enforcers, Skirmishers and Assailants will all do.

There is a little problem in the fact that Advent carriers are impervious to bomber attacks(Heavy armor on the Aeria and Telekinetic Push on the Halcyon), so instead of bringing more Lasuraks filled with bombers, a combo of Skarovas Enforcers with Stilakus Subverters would be the carrier-killer force once Fighters have established air superiority.

In fact, if you don't count the Repair Cloud advantage, the Kortul Devastator makes a better carrier for the Vasari than the Skirantra. It starts out with 1 squadron and a whole ton of direct-fire weapons, while the Skirantra starts out with 2 squadrons and pathetic direct-fire weapons. After levelling up to Level 3, the Kortul gets another squad for a total of 2 while the Skirantra is operating 3. Eventually, the Skirantra will operate 6 squads, but 4 extra squads don't make up for the advantage that the Kortul has in MUCH better direct firepower, much better durability, considerably stronger bombardment weapons, and better abilities(Power Surge, Volatile Nanites esp.).

Er... the fighters will be engaged in suicidal combat against my fighters, and after they pop, the bombers go down as well. If flak is present, this process is accelerated.

Even while the bombers are still alive, they won't be able to do much damage to frigates or support cruisers. Bombers use AntiVeryHeavy weapons, which do 50% damage against Light(Assailant), Medium(Skirmisher) and Heavy(Subverter/Transporter) armor types. They only do max damage against structures and heavy cruisers, and the Enforcers have their Reintegration ability to nullify that damage once the bombers have been downed.

The Kortul Devastator is effectively invincible against bombers because of it's Weapon Jam ability which knocks out the weaponry of hostile strikecraft flying withing the ability's aura, so the capital/s won't be hit either.

And Guardians are barely even armed. While the bombers may focus their attacks and take down a few Skirmishers, the Guardians won't be inflicting any losses at all.



The Aeria has the same Heavy armor as all Flak Frigates, Support Cruisers and Carrier Cruisers use. It takes only 50% damage from bombers.

Vasari if you have time to tech to the appropriate tier and are really committed to wanting dozens of squads (not that spamming will always work well).

-15% extra damage in influence (the cap is not 11%.. I wonder why so many people get to that wrong conclusion).
-it takes the carrier cruisers anti-matter to create each bomber/fighter, vasari create full sqauds the fastest of all cruisers, Ive got replays that show this. Which means they can replenish the fastest. Include the fact that each fighter/bomber vasari itself dies much slower than other races and they can have their squads survive a bit longer due to each fighter/bomber being killed slower and replenished much faster.
-phase missiles, which at 30% phasing (assuming the player doesnt have subverters yet) and the enemy has 65% shield mitigation (will occur if under ff) means that instead of doing 35 damage per 100 damage, it would do 54.5 damage per 100 damage (30 of it influenced by armour).
-unlike advent that focus on shields that are useless for drones (100 shield) and fighters/bombers(no shields at all), many vasari players usually do focus on hp/armour like tec.

now I ignored capital ship abilities, cause advent and vasari have pros and cons when it comes to them and you cannot really measure how valuable they are (its too specific to the positions of the fleets and whats going on in a specific scenario), however I will say this: antistrikecraft abilities that do aoe damage can usually kill all advent bombers/fighters instantly, they need 2-5 tries for vasari.

I have a different opinion on the TEC's Carrier capabilities. I have only played for a few days, but its not how you compare the individual squadrons, but how you group the carriers themselves.

I build what i call an escort strike force and a full fleet. (this comes from my old days playing wing commander, loved that game)

Basically, you build a total of 3 sovas and 6 perchons in the escort strike force. 2 of the sovas build nothing but bombers and the other has nothing but fighters. The pecherons are also nothing but fighters. The TEC's carriers have a total of 7 squads and so that gives you a total of 14 bomber wings and 13 fighter wings. The TEC makes up for in quantity what you don't get in heavy damage, as you can send 2 targets on opposite sides of the gravity well a very fancy present that they won't appreciate. TEC strike craft are ok at the ship to ship fight, but they excell in crippling your opponent's shipbuilding capability especially when you keep the motherships outside the gravity well so they can jump at anytime.

For example. I was playing against a guy who was advent. I took my escort fleet and chased after 1 of my scouts with it. This made my phase jumps totally random and whenever i found a world with his name on it, i used embargo and sent my fighters and bombers after his orbital refineries and his infrastructure. This forced him to buy his metal and crystal from the black market. Since i had a trade port at each of my worlds; I was getting an enormous sum which i then used to corner the black market prices on metal and crystal. If you have to pay a 10-1 or 15-1 per metal and crystal, you just spent 1000 credits on 100 metal and 1500 on 100 crystal. Painful...

The main fleet is a long range assault force consisting of 3 sovas, 2 marzas, 2 kol battleships, 6 LRMs, 4 flak, and 1 each of the command and repair cruisers. I use this fleet to stay right at the edge of the gravity well, or pretty close and pound on my targets from a distance. The kols have a nice anti-fighter ability so i keep them close in to the carriers and have the flak frigates as outer perimeter defense. Again, i build 2 carriers worth of bomber and 1 of fighters, that gives me 14 bombers and 7 fighters. I then use the marza's ship to ship missile banks, agumented by the missiles from the carrier's abilities, and the LRMs to pound on bunched up targets. You guys don't really get to see what the cluster munitions can do untill you use them enmasse. Scary stuff happens when you do. I also see that no one has mentioned the missile upgrades for the TEC. Why not? they give you a cumulative 60% upgrade in damage, add in the Heavy fighters passive 30% and you get a total of 90% damage upgrade as well as extended range for your missiles, bypassing that nasty weapon's jam ability.

So in conclusion, its not a how you fight with just 2 or 3 squadrons, its how you use the carriers full potential in a mixed battle group. I personally think that the TEC has a viable carrier option, its just how you use it.

Edit: for spelling

Jotanhorn - exactly.

The TEC strikecraft get some pretty nifty buffs if you put in the time and effort to research upgrades to their autocannons and missiles. You start factoring in Heavy Fighters too, and you have some very, very potent fighters combined with bombers which can outrange Weapons Lock, and hit with high damage, too.

If we're talking about Vasari under repair cloud, then why not keep in mind that with Rapid Construction, your TEC strike wings are built basically instantly at full health. The Vasari will crumble under sustained fire, and their lack of numbers when their strikecraft are replenising their numbers is their undoing in long-term engagements.