I play Vasari but don't usually do a mass Assailant rush, but on occassion when I do I find these tactics very effective against me...

- Scout spam, especially with Advent but also with TEC.  An army of scouts is cheaper and faster to build and will eat through Assailants when they out number them.

- People getting their Capital ship out of there before I can destroy it.  The combo of Egg and Assailants excel at killing cap ships early in the game.  When it escapes, sits by a repair bay for a minute and is back in the fight good as new it is harder with win a fight that relies on speed.

- Illum spams.  Ship for ship Illums will beat Assailant, but they take longer to get up.

- Carriers.  Same as Illums they take longer to get up and running but they are very effective against Assailants.

- Maxing a planets health so I can't take it and build a closer frigate bay.  Odds are if I am rushing I am not going to be able to colonize volcano or ice planets, so if it takes me a long time to kill an enemy asteroid then that is all the longer my ships have to make a handful of jumps to get to the action. 

Things that wouldn't bother me much...

- Building multiple capital ships, even carrier caps.  If they are pumping out 2 or 3 cap ships (and not getting fed) then they don't have enough frigates to support them and will either have to retreat or die.

- Building defenses at some place other then their home world.  If they fortify their asteroid then I'll just leave it and go to their home world.

- Building so many defenses that they have no money to build ships.  Seems like a no brainer but people do it all the time.  I'll just research carriers and flak and come back with a more balanced fleet and mop the floor. 

- Spaming any light frigate or Jav's.  Assailants can tear through these quite easily and just cost my enemy money he could use to develop something better.

Make sure to always scout effectivelly early in the game.  Don't worry about what is 10 jumps away from you unless you are vasari and trying to find neutral resource asteroids, instead let your teammates deal with that and focus on what your closest enemy is doing.  If he is outright skipping planets to get you with a lrm rush he is doing a "sink or swim" gamble.  Of all the things listed above I would rush a large number of scouts, without over doing it, to blunt his initial wave then start developing a more advanced ship like the carrier which can target both Assailants and cap ships depending on whether you make fighters or bombers. 

Alright cool. So scout spamming should be effective against it? What if I am also Vassari against him? He just seems to beat back me very easily with me getting defeated really easily.

alright. Ill try the scouts method. Thanks!

IF your advent agaisnt vasari.... just make a huge number of scouts and disciples.... (about 1/2-1/2 to 2/3scouts 1/3 disciples.. and a haylcon or two)  as soon as you reach a critical mass where you have this friggin huge fleet... there is nothing a vasari player can hope to put out there to defend himself. (the only thing that beats this stratigy is nothing.... i did the battles, and did the math, and assuming equal resources/fleet supply the scouts/disciples win... except starbases and heavies... and good luck with those...) Dont waste money on military labs (at least for a bit)... civic labs of course... and do research and build zillions of trade depos to support your massive army.  If your not pumping out scouts or disciples constantly out of 2 or so frig factories your doing it wrong.... if your enemy managed to somehow defend himself agaist you your doing it wrong.

dont do it wrong.

and then hope that your opponenet was a dev so that he may be like "herm... that needs to be fixed"

As sad as this sounds though, a good scout/disciple rusher isn't going to have many problems dealing with early, modestly upgraded starbases.  Several times I have had mine, or watched allies fall victim to hordes of scouts.  70-80 scouts with 30-40 disciples can be built suprisingly fast and will dispatch a starbase with minimal loss, along with your Cap too.  They simply are too cheap to make and have too many hit points. 

Interesting, So the base idea is that I use scout rush? And that should work well against like 10-20 assailants?

Remember that you have to "focus fire," i.e. grab all units and target a single unit of his with them at a time.

One of the great things about scouts is that you should have no problem scouting.  Know what he's building, and have the right counter-units ready.  A smart player will produce units to kill your scouts, so you should try to be one step ahead of him.

For colonizing, your best pick is always the colony-class capital ships (Jerrasul, Progenitor, and Akkan), and for attacking your best bet is usually the carrier-class capital ships, though there are other great choices depending on your factions.  It's very common to see a player build a colony-class as his first cap, then build a carrier-class just as he's getting ready to attack.

The thing with scouts is you have to out number him, 2:1 is ideal.  Don't go overboard though because then you will be stuck with a ton of scouts after you have killed his assailants and he has moved on to flak and carriers (or something else).  Also during a battle you have to be constantly producing units to replace ones lost.  Honestly if you can do a scout spam right you should be happy that he is still making assailant because that is a ship you can counter.

As far as balancing exploring vs. research vs. combat here are a few things to remember.  If you lose in combat then it doesn't matter how much you have explored or researched.  Also why expore and colonize a new planet which takes ships out of the fight when you can use those ships to defeat him and take over one of his planets.  All things being equal I would take an enemy planet over a neutral one every time.

The other ships which will counter assailants are carriers/fighters and heavy cruisers.  Carriers is the more logical route to go as they are quicker to develop and can switch over to bombers if he goes heavy cruisers himself.  The down side is they can't defend themselves so you have to keep an eye on them so they don't get killed. 

Alright thanks! Ill try those ideas. Ill get back to you on how it works. Its definetly stressing him so far, he said yesterday that we was stressed during a scout spam so If it is just improved a little more I can defeat him!

Oh so you watch it?! Fantastic! Its a fantastic show isnt it? I was jsut to lazy to shrink one of the many pictures I have of it to be icon size.

I am glad I found other people who watch anime though! Lol

Oh I see. Still its a good show! 

Alright, I fought him again, and his constant stream of assailants still overtook me. Though I think I still might have won due to my massive money income he also seemed to be superior still. However one of our internet died before we could finish.