Advent Cap ships make a good balance against the late LRMs: Illuminators. I've seen some experimentation with getting a second capship early, rather than rushing to defense vessels / Illuminators. Other than the high cost of the capship research this makes a good bit of sense for an economic player as you'll need the logistics spots for Civil Labs then Trade Ports/Refineries, and Broadcast centers. Since Advent capships are arguably their strongest suit, militarily, this fits with a longterm plan of cap-heavy fleets.

I usually build 1 lab at each early asteroid, then upgrade their logistics to fit a broadcast center and tradeport, or tradeport and frigate factory if on the front lines. With 2 asteroids and the starting planet, you can make it to trade ports, barely, but you'll want a 4th and 5th planet(oid) for military labs ASAP, or you'll face filling out your early logistics spots before you can place trade/broadcast.

This means scouting and taking 3 systems ASAP, which is a good policy anyways. The reason I mention it is that if this doesn't look like it's possible, it may be better to defer economics for military initially.

Just my 2 credits..

I've found that 1-2 Motherships(sheild recharge + malice) along with guardians makes for a really hardy force. I use illuminators for primary damage. Not for the beginning, but for early mid-game, it works, especially against AI.

I've also really liked the Halcyon carrier's ability to passively increase energy weapon damage of ships near it. That adds up quickly.

Hmmmm...sounds like this strategy has potential. Alot of people slam Advent for being underpowered, but with the right BO, this might work. Do you have replays of this in online play?

Nah early game the capital ships will have to retreat vs LRM blob. Don't kid yourself man.

- duplicate post -

There are lots of ways to get around that. My favorite is to jump in a Radiance, order it to fly right up into the LRM blob to literally smack noses with another ship, and then jump in a Progenitor to do shield repairs while basically having it run right into the back of that Radiance. This allows both ships to have all gun ports firing at something. At that close range the Radiance shouldn't last long...but if you look closely you'll notice that the missiles being fired by the LRM's overshoot their target and go spinning around to hit the Radiance and sometimes miss. If another capital ship is available it will jump in and go right into the middle of the LRM blob while an earlier, probably heavily damaged, Radiance retreats. The trick is to watch and see how much damage those LRM's are doing and then taking appropriate action to issue a retreat order to a heavily damaged ship before you lose it. Because the enemy will pursue a heavily damaged capital ship it is important to have a pair of repair stations standing by on that retreat planet and a well-prepared defensive force.

Alternatively, if I'm running Halycons instead, I just jump one or two of those in and give it circular move commands so it's running at top speed around the outer rim of the planet's gravity well. This makes it harder to hit. As soon as it completes one full circle I normally time a Progenitor jump in to match up with the Halycon to do shield repairs while it jumps out or another capital ship arrives for support if a single Halycon was used.

In the worst case scenario, those Disciples or Scouts will need to be called in for extra support. Normally several of those stay behind to play defense if someone has to retreat. I'll park them right where my retreating ship shows up so if a pursing LRM blob comes they're immediately fired upon. By this time the blob has taken such severe damage it either has to fall back or we're both sending reinforcements. This is where things get unpredictable and capital ships may have to retreat even deeper into allied territory. If that happens, it's important to go get and build phase jump inhibitors as quickly as possible to make sure that LRM blob never makes it back home or is unable to pursue.

EDIT: BTW, depending on the level of the Progenitor, the more research put behind it's damage propagation ability (I forget its name) the better since attacking a couple of ships will hurt the entire LRM blob.

With advent it's best to fleet cap disciples and attack before they get many lrms out, overwhelmigng them, killing frig factory and construction ships.

If you wait too long after capping your first roid then it becomes too late very quickly to be offensive with Advent.

You pretty much have to do this now with tec's boosted eco in order to buy time to tech up to guardians+illums, otherwise you die before getting em.



How do you have 2 caps + a fleet 10-15 minutes into the game?..

Getting in an attack before the LRMs can really blob up is pretty important, from my experience. Using Disciples, your first capital ship (I prefer a Radiance) and Guardians as soon as possible, you can get the upper hand.

On your way to getting the Guardian you have to do Shield Research, which in total gives 15% more shielding, and, more importantly that early in the game, 15% faster shield regeneration. This benefits all of your ships, and if you can end up fighting the LRMs in small groups, one, two, three at a time, your shielding and it's regeneration rate can be a real lifesaver for your units when the fighting is such low intensity. Focus firing and taking the LRMs out each one at a time can be very effective, and if they stop coming in order to group up, you can just move on forward.

Something I've managed to do, if I don't have many losses that require replacing, is trying to go for those Heavy Cruisers relatively early. To get the five Temple of Hostilities needed you need another planet beyond just your homeworld and first asteroid (if you're lucky it was an Asteroid or a Terran/Desert and require no Temple of Harmonies to colonize). If you can bring them out while your opponent is still LRM spamming in relatively small numbers things, things can get really messy for the other player.

From the current build, it looks like Advent has to win early or not at all. Get in before the LRMs can mass, stop the TEC before his or her economy gets going, stop the Vasari before his or her Dark Armada starts showing. If you don't, you can probably drag it out, but things will probably go against you in the end.

I ran my strategy on 1.03 last night for the first time against human opponents and it stalled badly after the second capital ship. Yes, I was the capital ship leader the entire time (I always had one more than my opponents), but I had a ton of problems allocating resources due to all the black market changes and because I was fighting a war on two fronts plus dealing with pirates. Resources either sold for less or were bought at a higher rate the entire time, which seriously screwed things up initially. However, my capital ships were at higher levels than the enemy and it was a breeze to just steamroll over the first guy (playing Advent). The second guy (playing Vasari) was a bit more annoying, but a guardian or two would stop him from attacking one of my planets just long enough for my main fleet to start causing so much damage to his colonies he had to come back and fight my fleet instead. By the end of the game he had 3 capital ships and I had 6 (#7 under construction) plus a modest fleet. Guardians and Halcyons packed in a fleet with tight formation frustrated my opponent so bad he quit instead of surrendering and then the game crapped out during the migrating thing instead of giving me a win. Unfortunately, I don't have a replay because all my settings got wiped out by 1.03.

Aeria Drones and Disciples can work, I have seen that. But the trouble is that LRMs do great against Disciples, so if the LRMs stay and fight your Disciples targeting the Flak instead of chasing the Drone Hosts around you can be down to just your Hosts soon.

I've been trying to play with the strategy myself by also trying to get Guardians to the field early to assist the Drone Hosts. Guardians are only T3, although they require you to Research 3 different levels of Shield tech, those shields help everyone. And if you manage to get 5 Temples of Hostilities and get the Guardian Repel ability, you can really be in business.

The trouble is, at present, TEC LRMs out range the Guardian's Repel ability, or if your Guardians get hit by some Vasari Subverters you can be in for trouble. Although Carriers can make short work of Subverters, and Disciples can steal the Subverters Antimatter if you get the upgrade for them.

Advent have a lot of potential interesting strategies in their playbook (probably a good number of ones out there that people have yet to stumble across or appreciate). But they're more complex really and require more micromanagement than just pumping out vast numbers of LRMs.

Ummm, what does that phrase mean in English? Whatever it is, it sounds painful. heh.

wait...

Advent Scouts > Assailants ???

cost for cost , obviously.