Vasari the best race? Esp vs Advent

The way phase missiles work, they just butcher Advent. Combine that with the fact that said uber-crutch is on almost everything they use...

TEC vs Vas and TEC vs Advent is a lot more balanced.

Basically unless Advent can out-spam the Vasari at T0, it doesn't look pretty.  At a close-range game that T0 spam is totally viable, but at a long-range game the Vasari has ample opportunity to diversify and prepare to defend against it, so it won't work very well.  I do find Advent has some leeway for a mid-game push before Vasari really gets cooking, but if the map is large enough that T0 spam will hit late this matchup is just horrendous.

TEC, on the other hand, really should be able to bring the hurt to Vasari early and throw off their progression to their more powerful late game.  With a steady progression of LRM's to hoshikos you should be able to make a push on even the largest of maps before Vasari really gets going.  TEC has the upper hand here, but if Vasari can keep up into the mid-game and pull out their better combos then the advantage shifts.   This is a much more balanced matchup, and probably more in TEC's favour since Vasari must first survive TEC's early-game while remaining competitive as they pursue their higher tier tech.

Here is what you do against vasari as advent.

First, start with progen cap. Level 1 is colinize, 2, 3 and 5 is shield restore, that is your mobile fleet healing, and better than repair cloud for fleets. Second, scout scout scout. Is he going double carrier cap? If yes, you better start researching repair platforms and put at least two on front line planets (you should do this regardless). Next, you get a halycon with telekentic push then extra squadrons. Now, is he getting assailants or light frigates? The if yes, the counter to both is ILLUMINATORS. Don't rely on light frigates at all. Assailants will kill them faster than they can kill carriers or flak.

Now, if they dont have a flak, but lots of bombers and assailents, get another carrier cap or just plain carrier cruisers and fill them with fighters. Going bomber to bomber against vasari is a losing battle, kill their bombers, then have your fighters kill their assailants.

Thats just early game combat, you gotta look at your econ as well. Advent get culture early, USE IT. Little bit of culture on your HW will give you a nice economic boost. Another thing to do is put culture on front line worlds and use it offensively. It forces a vasari to invest heavily in culture or start losing planets.

Ah....Remember when the Advent were the OP race of the game? With the "bug" fix they suddenly become

Problem I have here is that the Vasari will mix in sentinels, which soak up illuminator side-beams while dealing decent  damage back and helping out against your strike craft.  Unupgraded an illuminator/defense vessel combo will prevail against assailant/sentinel, but a few phase missile upgrades will even it up.  Vasari gets a very natural progression towards discharge missiles and subverters, with the option of carriers always being open, leaving you with few options. 

Definitely agree on Progenitor, though.  On larger maps, your economic edge over Vasari in terms of colonization is one perk you can't afford to skip over.  Advent can definitely get its economy rolling - both trade and culture - that much earlier than Vasari and you need to pour that advantage into a mid-game push before his fleet gets really nasty. 

Doesn't help my phase missile situation (as some of u have already predicted i would say).. but a fare defense vs other forms of weapons on the vasari flak and caps. Wasted ability to some extent.. i find it prudent to dish out the 30% reduction in planet costs ability at level 3. I'd be silly to ignore it. Malice aint bad 2.

1. question do Malice and Detonate antimatter go together or em i mixing up what it does? As in will 30% of direct hull dammage be distributed to other ships? In such a situation 2 radiance 1 pro combo sounds sweet

No, but Malice and Cleansing Brilliance can be a strong combo. Used to be too powerful but it got nerfed a bit.

@StatusIpod, don't know if you are a relatively new player or not (haven't seen your name before), but any old-timer not living in cognitive dissonance will tell you this game has been plagued with severe balance problems since it's inception.  There have been wild swings between balance patches, and there has always been an OP race (or UP race), and OP or imbalanced units.

Simply put, the devs never put the resources into balancing the game, for whatever reason.  There has been speculation for ages as to why.  One conjecture is that this game is chiefly a single player game (multiplayer community is largely non-existent), and for single playe,r balance isn't nearly as critical (the existing balance has always been good enough for single player mode to not notice a difference either way).

Not too many patches ago, Advent was actually the severely OP faction, and Vasari was the red-headed stepchild.  Everything Advent had, starting with scouts, then disciples, and on up to illuminators and carrier caps, was OP.

I always liked this game, but personally I won't buy the expansion unless or until I see a commitment from the devs to balance better than they have in the past.

EDIT.  I have no idea why the first paragraph is orange.

Personally i think when they gave Vasari bombers phase missiles that killed the balance

<too early to ask for some karma?>

ehh... vasari bombers always had phase missles?

Yep, its the scramble bomber buff plus the Illuminator bug removal that shifted the balance. When you consider VeryHeavy damage does 50% damage this gave the Advent the advantage on the field with the nastiest weapon. Now, its the Vasari's turn. Even if the TEC can tank it better.

This is what the healing platforms are for. Phase missiles don't deal extra damage, they just have a chance of doing damage to your hull instead of shields. If you are using both hull repair and shield repair, it actually puts the vasari at a disadvantage because you are able to double heal before your shields go down. Now if you are really hard pressed against a vasari assault, deploying a star base is always your best bet. Get meteor storm over weapon upgrades of course.

Star Bases fall to bombers easily as they are unaffected by meteor storms and the mass disorientation abilities. Platforms are nice defensively but carrying hull repairers offensively for the Advent is a bit hard with their Domina's wonky mechanics.

So let me get this straight -- illums where firing 18 dmg from all directions and if concentrated on 1 target 54dmg? someone explain. I bought the game post bug fix

Phase missiles also bypass shield mitigation. Which means they do Massive Damage.

I don't recall exactly what it was... but it was something about doing extra damage as it was a damage over time. All beam weapons were set to DoT. And all beam weapons were bugged in the same way, just the Illum was the only mainline beam ship.

Also the scout nerf.

Hmm the only good help i've seen in this post against vasari vs Advent is the maintaining excellent scouting. 

As advent you MUST get a neutral or two...its worth it to go a long ways, defend them and you will be able to stand up to vasari quite well.

I rarely go double capital vs vasari since it gives kanrak spam too much power to ice your caps.  Going progen against vasari in my opinion is a terrible idea since it is so weak against bombers.  Single cap halcyon is the way to go.  Easy to manage, easy to micro, and can effectively deal with two skirantra carriers with at least one support carrier.

If the vasari go double skirantra's then you quickly research carriers and build 3-4.  This will give you enough early firepower to counter their starbases and their carriers.  I generally run my Halcyon with pure fighters and let my carriers become my bomber force.  Then they are usually starting to spam a few since they have scouted you and your first carriers, and you watch to see what they are producing as a counter ship.  If they build flak build disciples, if they build kanraks or skirmishers build illuminators.  This fleet will tear up some of the nastiest stuff the vasari can throw at you while the halcyon with some fighter upgrades will tear through the vasari figthers and bombers alike. 

Now if the vasari has a lot of neutrals, then you are most likely toast since they can own all the neutrals pretty quickly if they get lucky or are fighting players who don't fight for neutral resources.

 You must ALWAYS know the position of large vasari kanrak concentrations (10+) so that you can keep your halcyon out of range of kanraks.  

Scouting is key!  also this strat works well against the vasari planet bomber rush as you will get capital killing power of bombers quickly.  In that strat your halcyon will be running full bombers as well and get the disciple upgrade to such away their antimatter so they can't hurt your planet as effectively.

Also remember that docked bombers and strike craft virtually nullify the effectiveness of flak ships, so if they have a lot you can buy yourself a lot of time with little to no loss and spam some disciples

Vasari are the weakest race against bombers, let them cry when you ice all their high value targets .

... until they bring out phasic traps.

If you go overboard, they can really cut you off by bringing out a Kortul for jam weapons.  Not a good investment against reasonable amounts of SC, but if you're leaning on them almost exclusively for your damage output that's a very powerful defense.

I know how to deal with phasic traps, its called.... wait for it....starfish!  I had my nest of illums and 7 starfish take out all 4 nested phasic traps before the starbase, fleet and fighters could take out half of that fleet.  It was worth it because then I just bombed everything to oblivion.  Talk to higgy about his carpetbomb game if you want some more fun details.

He also had jam weapons up and that worked for a little bit, it kept the battle longer but didn't prevent the inevitable destruction of his HW and fleet.

If you're investing heavily in starfish, you're sacrificing fleet-killing units to do so.  Those things are very expensive both in cost and command.  Unless the Vasari is doing nothing but turtling and has a crappy fleet, you're probably shooting yourself in the foot and are going to lose the fleet battle because of this.

If the Vasari fleet is there, it's not even a safe bet you'll be able to take them out if he's got subverters on the field.  There is simply no good way to approach a well-balanced and managed Vasari defense.

Seven starfish will run you 126 command.  In raw terms, that means you sacrificed 6 drone hosts, 12 destras, or 21 illuminators.  That's a massive hit to counter 3 or 4 hangers, and if you can still swat down the Vasari's fleet in spite of it you've got the match locked down.

Yes, but i had already butchered the majority of higgys fleet and therefore the costs were justified.  Spend the cash on the tool that most effectively gets the job done.  I agree that it is a rare situation when the costs of starfish are justified, but in this situation it broke the vasari defense.  Without phasic traps he was unable to protect anything from my 40 bombers and my fleet could take his out easily.  His fleet did a last ditch bum rush for my cap which was easily deflected at a great loss to his remaining forces. 

Higgy was unable to build subverters because I had the pressure on him very hard from the start(and I also targeted his frig factory early   ).  With the right pressure at the right time, and gaining the initiative you can to some extent control some of the other players choices.  Its a sequence of events, not an analysis of what the entire best fleet vs best fleet would be. 

In most cases the best fleets never even get built.

as this is a defense only tool you kill the vasari offensive, which gives you time to work other angles against them.  Advent are built to stalemate, so give them enough time and enough fleet size and the all rounded capability of the advent fleet will just get more and more dangerous.  Its a winning position to out wait your opponent by forcing him to face YOUR strengths. 

So basically you had already won the game, he just wasn't dead yet?

I'm with Kitkun here; Adjudicators may be servicable as a coup-de-grace, but against an enemy who can still seriously fight back they're just too pricey for what they do.

so then you agree with me as well, because that is what I said.  fun fun

Adjudicators are nice to clean up structures while your main fleet chases down fleeing enemy fleet. I wish they could be used in main line attacks, conceptually they are really cool. Just not functionally.