strategies for the advent?

My guess is with advent you really have to make sure you have ships with support abilities at hand at all times. Their shields are second to none, and they have several ships with shield recharge or support abilities, use them. Their ships don't have much in terms of armor so once an opponents manages to get through those shields your ships will get destroyed fairly quickly.

Progenitor Class Mothership is excellent shield support! Pair that with the carrier to lower cooldown of beam weapons and your ships can go wild

Some interesting synergies for the Advent: Animosity (Radiance battleship) to make a bunch of things attack it, and then Vengeance from the Rapture (to make all attacking ships take damage in return). Works even better when coupled with the Mothership's shield recharge, and if the Radiance has a rank or two in its passive ability that grants it armor and converts damage to antimatter, to keep feeding Animosity.

If you like carriers, a few Halcyons with a Rapture and its fighter upgrades.

Don't neglect your Iconus Guardians! Combined with the Mothership's shield recharge, they are all kinds of awesome! They get over 2k shields with some upgrade, and they give 33% flat damage reduction to all your ships nearby! (taking that 33% of the damage themselves, hence the high shields).

Use those Subjugator cruisers, too! They fix up your ships, and can zip around disabling enemy ships/structures.

I love the Advent. The only thing I think they lack is in economy and their addiction to crystal.

The Advent is interesting because they can field tonnes of supercheap but effective units early game, then come in later on with superexpensive guns and powers that knock anything but the sturdiest Vasari cruiser out of space. The only thing that scares me as an Advent player with my full 300 unit fleet is a full, 300 unit Vasari fleet. Why won't they die!?!!!

They have incredible range, so you'd want to exploit that. I think their turrets are the only ones that can hit incoming phase jumpers. (But their turrets do laughable damage) Hangars are expensive, but carry more fighter craft than normal. Which is good, considering the next point:

I LOVE their bombers. So bloody powerful. And they get so many. It's nuts. No one can fight them fighter vs fighter.

Their support ships are crazy strong. Never neglect them, and always immediately research the antimatter and ship ability upgrades so you can spam their abilities. There's nothing like watching those shield bubbles go up and enemy units lock down. Then your battlecruiser comes in and converts units to your cause while the rest of your LRLs turn everything to toast.

Their capital ships aren't that "Strong", "sturdy", or "powerful". But don't underestimate them. They are meant to be used in groups and when they do... ho ho ho. Fear. No comparison. Who needs bombs when you can get a planet's populace to kill each other? Who needs colony ships when each new colony you found with the progenitor gives you free planet exploration and 60% discounts of all upgrades?

You can't turtle as the Advent. Don't even try. It's not possible. Their defense sucks. (Hangars are too expensive for practical defense purposes) The only reason you would build defenses is to buy enough time for your fleets to come to the rescue.

They put a lot of emphasis on culture. It's expensive, but if you manage to climb the culture tech tree and spread your culture across the galaxy (which shouldn't be a problem with the superweapon), you've basically got free defensive and offensive bonuses in every planet plus free eternal vision of everything your opponent is doing along with a sizable hit on your enemy's economy as well as chance of "peaceful" overthrowing.

The Advent is the only race that can build suicide bombers, aka, the scout with the corresponding tech upgrade. Never tried it though.

In conclusion, if you think of the Advent as Zerg in the early game and Protoss in the late game, you'll master them really fast.

The only problem I have with the advent is there trade port/refinery i cant stand those there harder to manage and dont seem to do as much. otherwise I like everything else about them. I think the advent have the most variety of choices in strategy.

Radiance Battlecruiser, Animosity + 2x repair stations. Even with pirate raids on higher settings it was a power-leveling beast. Once I got it higher in level and got to use that beam of death it was even more fun. I beat the last player down to one planet and just watched pirate waves crush against my Radiance for several waves, just for fun.

Never underestimate repair stations, 2 or 3 of them may be a problem, if anything goes on my "watch list for future nerfs" it is probably those.

Not really They're heavily antimatter dependant, and there are plenty of things available to either disable abilities, or just plain nuke antimatter with.

True, true. Vs computer opponents they're currently way out of wack but that can be tuned with AI tweaking (which based on SD's history will happen frequently).

Edit: Although for all technical purposes, adjusting the AI to be more aware of repair stations and acting upon them would be a nerf

delete

Say, for the Rapture Battlecruiser, does the Concentration Aura only apply to nearby fighters or fighters and bombers?

My first 10 minutes as advent go something like

1. Build a capital factory
2. Build and send out 2 scouts
3. Queue up the metal and crystal harvesters
4. build 3 of them frigates(the ones after the scout)
5. build that mothership
6. send them off to nearby belts
7. Get at least 3 planets before 10 mins is up
8. start pumping out Drone cruisers,carriers,revelations battlecruiser and 2 motherships,upgrade them

ye thats exactly what I do(2 scouts, 3-4 disciples), but I try different caps.

I just played a long (5:40) game as Advent and did extremely well with capital ships. With two points in Mass Transcendence, they level up to 4 by themselves and earn +50% experience. I got that tech and then maxed out capacity and got all 16. By the end of the game, I had a level 10, a lot of level 9s, and none under 6. For its equivalent fleet capacity and resource cost, a high level cap ship is way better than making frigates/cruisers in terms of damage, armor, and abilities, plus they can all bombard planets, which makes purge vessels unnecessary (well you might want a few to speed things up). I think the level 10 Mothership has 320 total damage, level 9s are over 300, combined armor+shields about 8000. They're probably still competitive with frigates at level 4. Domination works on cruisers, and it lets you go past the fleet cap.

Allure of the Unity gives you a free 10% allegiance to all your planets, and even though it's at the end of the tree and rather expensive, it should pay for itself if you get it early enough. 10% allegiance roughly translates to +10% credits/minerals. One thing I am confused about is that I somehow had a 10% bonus before I even researched this, and I ended up with my home planet at 120%. I didn't have any artifacts that could explain it either.

That's a benefit of 100% culture saturation. (a bonus to allegiance that was displayed seperately in the beta, but not in retail) Maxed culture gives a 10% allegiance bonus, which stacks with Allure of the Unity. All races get that bonus btw, not just Advent. So the culture broadcast centers can really help stabilise planets sometimes.

Thanks for the explanation Ronald. I guess that makes early culture structures a bit better than I thought, which is certainly an advantage for Advent.

only the homeworld can get to 110% without the advent tech, the rest stay at 100%, with the tech it goes up to 120%(homeworld)/110%.

It applies to both fighters and bombers - the naming is a little confusing

Great thread. In this thread and others I see people stuff like the following:

"Animosity (Radiance battleship) to make a bunch of things attack it, and then Vengeance from the Rapture (to make all attacking ships take damage in return). Works even better when coupled with the Mothership's shield recharge, and if the Radiance has a rank or two in its passive ability that grants it armor and converts damage to antimatter, to keep feeding Animosity. "

The guy above mentions how the ships working together make a difference. Does this mean that I have to micro manage my ships? If so, what do I do to get the most out of the Advent's abilities. Is being near each other enough, or do I have to do more.

I'm one of those people that doesn't care about capital ships. I'll build the first because it is free (only cost is the factory). Anyway, my Advent build is always fun.

1. Get Drone Cruisers


2. Get Gaurdians


3. Get Illumninators


4. Get Repulsion (guardian power)


5. Get Illuminator power


6. Get steal anti-matter (Disciple power)

Form a small army with a few Guardians (5 or so will do), a bunch of drone cruisers, plenty of Disciples, and many Illuminators. The Drone Cruisers will sit in back at a repair station or at the edge of the well and use their drones, you don't have to worry about managing them. The guardians will require a bit of micromanagement. You will use them to separate the enemy fleet and push them (really just the caps ships) away from their escape route. You will use you disciples to drain the cap ships. The illums should be used to pick off everything around the guardians.

Basically you are herding the enemy fleet. The Guardians' Repulsion skill allows you to force the enemy away, which means you Illuminators are now making use of their range... Of course, there are plenty that enjoy keeping Illums in melee range, I don't. Anyway, this is a varied fleet, and it takes a bit of micro-management to make it work. It's enjoyable, and it's well rounded nature makes it very effective.

My usual start off as Advent runs kinda like this on normal ressource as start:

1) Build cap ship yard
2) Queue the Halycon Carrier (The extra bombers and the aura are aweseome at all times imo.)
3) Build the extractors and a Hostility Lab
4) Queue 2 scouts and a missionary. After that it depends on your personality but I usually build 5 frigates and than start researching the first tier shield upgrade.
5) Go off capture a romantic rock of your local liking and build a civil research lab at home and at the rock. Depending on the ressources avaible in the system I either start off researching the Progressive Knowledge (I think that is what the + research speed thing is called) or mineral feat.

After that it is basicly what everyone else stated. Focus a bit on getting your ressources up as the Advent eats from crystal dishes, they wash their hair with crystal shampoo etc... (You can never have enough! :P)than slap up your shields and get Drone Cruisers, Guardians and illums. Now your ready to kick ass.
Important notice: You'll hit a point when you have a nice overflow of ressources usually around 3'rd civillian ressource tier... It is nice to build a capship at that point (Mothership + Guardians + random artillery = turtle in a titanshell).

 

 

1.illumunators (use desciples for quick colonizing and replace them with illums cause at tier 3 u can upgrade the hull to almost equal vasari frigates and have better shields)

2.scouts ( to swarm assialants and other lrm)

3.bombers ( To kill caps and entire fleets)

4.guardians (after a sizeable fleet build guardians to protect them)

 

note: U best use the illuminator ,scout, guardian combo till your economy can support carrier production. Once again [ Have 2 caps (Carriers with bombers--that will give u enough bombers at first)]

 

Advent can get going with military without the bs...  if u see to many carriers on the battlefield and your combo is getting slammed then i suspect the carriers got fighters killing your illums. At that point make desciples , swarm him and bash hes carriers. If u see a massive fleet of assialants-- dig in and make scouts or change carrier drone production to fighters, swarm him and bash em.

 

The key to a quick responsive counter is to have a production planet with 2-4 frigate factories producing units.

 

Including a mother ship in a fleet with guardians to repair there shields is strategically sound while making sure other abilities aren't on auto cast except the shield regen.

3+ year thread necro... wow, that's gotta be close to a record around these parts.

Please check the dates before posting.  If the last post was more than 6 months ago, create a new thread and let the old one lay in peace.  The changes in successive patches largely invalidate the old comments.

i had my eyes closed.....was tired.

My strategy for advent is simple.  The only ship worth having is the halcyon.  Build one, or two.  I prefer one, as a higher level halcyon early on is a very strong advantage, and it minimizes the micro you have to do to keep it alive.  Since I began this strategy I have only had my halcyon sniped once in a year due to an early LRM spam.   You then use the rest of your cash to spam disciples and defense vessels, along with some illuminators.  You have to plan for an illuminator buildup, as you need some time to build up 30+ (the golden number for illums).  While you are building up you need to prevent any illuminator losses, since killing illums really helps your enemy since they still are worth a crapload of experience.  To do so you need to be on the attack, or pretending to be.  Make them chase your fleet if you can, prevent losses and waste their time.  always have scouts with your fleet so you don't wind up in a horrible trap!

Upgrade the disciple and defense vessel attack, and presto you have a mean fleet.  Since advent ships are so expensive and you have very few economic options in the early game, you need to focus more on building your fleet up.  If you are playing multiplayer online you have to focus all of your energy on fleet to have a shot.  Advent are the most assailable race, and when you begin attacking an enemy you should already be researching repair platforms because most of the time you will have to retreat your halcyon because it doesn't last long in a fight.

People like to say "shields are SOOOOO good", but in all reality the guardian+progen+shield upgrade combo is an advent endgame strategy that isn't going to be effective in an early multiplayer game, as it is way too expensive, and gives you little to no offensive capability.  What good is a defense that eventually crumbles and you can't strike back?

Advent suffer from a focus fire issue.   With the right ships they can defend against focus firing effectively.  But at all times they lack the ability to build up a strong focus fire to kill capital ships and starbases with their ships.  The only way to build capital/starbase killing power early is to spam carriers with bombers.   A halcyon with full fighters and the anti fighter ability will take care of enemy fighters/bombers, and you will have the advantage.  This strategy is easily countered with a pure LF spam by the enemy, so keep them scouted at all times!  If you see a LF spam you need to go LRM if you can, or spam your own LF's and choose a battle location closer to your home so that you will have the resupply advantage.

You can try advent mines, but they are costly and they take forever to activate so they are nearly worthless.  Also, they don't do much damage and tend to all home in on one target and therefore aren't much of a threat to an enemy fleet.

 

With disciples, defense, and lots of illums, you better hope your enemy doesn't rush for heavy cruisers. A couple of Halcyons probably won't have quite enough bombers to do enough damage quickly enough.

Also, a new thread'd be better.