Its hard to actually use them in multiplayer because of Corvettes, but they didnt suffer as badly as the other ones. The best way to use them is when in a group throw them in the middle of the enemy forces. All there banks will fire upon the enemy fleet giving huge AoE damage.

Crusaders are better at focus firing than Illuminators, so they are easier to use and probably do more damage. That said you can get Illuminators earlier, and if you really micro them to get into positions to fire all of its banks they probably do close to as much damage as Crusaders. Also if you're Advent Rebels, their illusion ships they can spawn have the extra advantage that you can use them for the Eradica's purification ability, so you can basically heal it for free that way.

Also when using Crusaders they are more vulnerable to bombers, so if your enemy builds a lot of them to deal with your titan or starbases most of your fleet will be taking a lot of damage.

Basically, late game fleet composition for any faction is either bombers+LRFs+flak or fighters+HCs...personally, I'd go with the fighters and destras for Advent, but illuminators definitely have their place....

It does help, but corvettes aren't spammed as bad as they used to be, and corvettes still hit Illums hard, Illums just can fight back for effectively than the other races.

First of all, ruthlessness does not stack (or at least not very much). If it did they would be by far the most damaging non phase missile ship. Second keep in mind maxed out plasma research gets the same +30% damage output beams get, but with an extra 10% rate of fire bonus as well. Beam gets a range bonus, but in terms of raw damage output it keeps HCs easily ahead. That said, beam research will also affect bombers, it does not seem to be an accident that every race's long range frigate shares the same damage type as bombers.

I think you missed the point i was making with beams range over the plasma itself, in terms of fleet effectiveness it makes sense to go beam research first.

Secondly if you look at what i was saying, i'm aware the 1.5ruthless doesn't stack. I just said if you put 1 Destra in with 50 enemy ships.. theres your 75/s but i said 10-20 so they aren't sniped off too quickly to make ruthlessness useless or wasted.

AND does no one read? Riddle that is exactly what i said?

I think when you have flak and illums together, corvettes are even more obsolete than just with flak. 20-30flak& 20-30 illums would still decimate 100 corvettes

yes but a good mix due to a quick counter via lfs.. hence why a pre mix works better so you aren't playing rock paper scissors.. also illums are better against structures ect..

A discord's fracture is all that you need to destroy corvettes with flak and illums.. There armor is 0 during fracture and that for the high dps defense vessel can be insane dps on top of beams with point accuracy lockons. Manual casting scream during malice turns it into a turkey shoot.