Standard Fleet Structure

Like any RTS the best fleet is the one that counters your opponent the best. But in general.

Not very many. Capitalship's are mostly there as ability casters, not combat units. Until they get to mid (carriers) or high (everything else) levels, you get far more DPS out of frigates. That might not be so bad if multiple capitalships in the gravity well didn't share experience, making them all take longer to reach the upper levels. So its much better to have a few high level caps than many lower ones. Have no more than three or four less than level 10 capitalships in a fleet at a time, and even that is rather generous.

Depends one what you're fighting. Long range frigates (LRF) are the primary combat unit (except for maybe Advent) mid-early to late game, but thats because they do decent damage to most units, not because of their range. Heavy cruisers can be quite effective as they can take much more punishment than a LRF fleet can, but have too many and you'll be vulnerable to bomber swarms, which is probably the favorite late game tactic (and utterly decimates the AI, but is difficult for players as well). Bombers are also the preferred unit for taking out starbases and other defenses from a far, but you need to have a lot of them for them to be a factor, otherwise you won't be able to maintain enough of them against even light fighter and flak defenses.

Mostly bombers, but a decent group of fighters just to distract flak and keep bombers from your fleet. The exception is if your opponent sends mostly LRF force against you with little flak support. The big problem with fighters is that flak decimate them, but if they're not present they are the best unit to kill LRF with. Also that's the beauty of carriers, it costs nothing to switch between fighters and bombers (though it does take a bit of time and antimatter, so make sure you can live without those carriers for a bit while they build their new squadrons).

Heck yes. Frigates are your main combat units throughout the game. Later on heavy cruisers and carriers can hold a big combat role, and you always want a few support cruisers for their abilities, but your main combat potential is mostly in your frigates.

Good answers by GoaFan77, but I'd like to add some links, and additional explanation.

Usually, mostly Long Range Frigates, especially at the start of the game, and especially against the AI, which has a tendency to build way too many Light frigates.  But mostly you want to build the correct counters.  (Also see the pinned post above by SithLordAJ)

Simply put, 1 or 2, then scuttle your cap ship factory for extra cash.  In Online multiplayer, you rarely see more than 2, because they get more expensive for each Cap crew, and share limited experience.  For late game single player, 6 is a sweet spot cost wise.  (Reply #8)

Thx guys. Much appreciated!

I already improved a lot. Started with getting rushed by pirates in my first game, to rush the MID AI in my third

Cheers,

hanz

Awesome. Just FYI many players turn pirates off, and that's basically an unwritten rule of competitive matches.

if playing against AI, Starbases, bombers, repairs and static defense.

if playing against human; whatever counter theirs

Sooo.... lat game I played vs HARD AI (Vasari) me as Advent and I almost had him, I had two more planets than him in a 12 star system and attacked his fleet... and lost the battle miracously. Maybe you could giv me some advice bout the reasons.

His Vasari Fleet:

20 Light Frigates

20 Long Range Frigates

5-10 Carriers (figters & Bombers)

1 Cap Ship

My Advent Fleet:

30+ Illuminators

6 Guardians

3 Carriers (Bombers)

10 "Flak Bananas" (dont know the name of the anti-fighter ships anymore )

1 Halycon Carrier (Bombers)

After a quick scouting I thought I negate his carriers by building the flaks... didnt turn out that well since his bombers destroyed my cap ship (stupid flak bananas didnt do their job :/)... and I had to retreat... so I got two related questions:

1. How do you fight carrier based fleets in general? Flak or fighters? Or...?

2. When do you start to do military weapon researches like shields, lasers etc.? Is there a rule of thumb? Do I build up my fleet at first? Or am I doing this step by step from early game on (like I did above)?

Thx so far!

Best,

hanz

Flak counters fighters

Fighters counter bombers

LF counter carreirs

LR counter LF

Flak counter LR

Well, since you didnt have any LFs (which I dont blame you. AI takes those out fast), I would say that the LF and LRFs probably focused on your capital ship. And while you were countering the LFs with your LRFs, you didnt have anything to deal with the LRFs. In the strike craft arena, you were out matched (i averaged a guess of 7 carriers, but 5 and 10 is a big difference), but had some flak to even it out. however, that doesnt bode well for advent since that means each carrier is taking more of the AM drain. Fortunately, you did have the halcyon, and so didnt have that issue for all strike craft.

Others are far better at strategy, but this is what I would do in that matchup:

• Ignore the capital (you didnt say what class it was, which could be important. especially if a carrier)
• Assuming you have some time, swap the bombers out for fighters. send the fighters to take out the LRF. The goal is to keep your capital up.
• If you dont have the time, send the bombers to take out the carriers. The goal here is to get air superiority, because then you could always kite and have your strikecraft mop things up.
• Have your LRFs take out the LFs.
• flak and advent LRFs target many ships but not very far, so you want to group them up and stick them very close to the enemy units. flak should be surrounded if possible, but i wouldnt till the LFs are gone.
• use the halcyon's TK push to keep the enemy strike craft at bay (what lvl was your Halcyon at?).

First off, the Iconus Guardian has an abysmally low rate of shield regeneration, to the point at which it's a single-use unit unless you have some way to restore shields.  It's too expensive to be treated as a single-use unit, so you need a Progenitor Mothership to use it effectively.

You've also gone for drone hosts too early.  The problem with carrier cruisers is two-fold; first they are the slowest unit in your fleet by a significant margin, and second they have tight antimatter constraints.  If you really feel you need more strike craft presence this early, build carrier capital ships, which do not suffer these issues.  You pay a premium per squad, but you get much higher reliability and staying power which matters a lot in the early-game.  Given that he grossly outnumbers your strike craft forces, I'd recommend going pure fighter at this point.  You can always convert to bombers later, but neutralizing his bombers is your top priority at this time since you're a more defensively-oriented fleet.

Drone hosts work well when you're scaling up to a very large fleet.  Huge masses of strike craft have an absolutely terrifying firepower and mobility, but their durability is suspect.  You really need to have a critical mass to make them work to their full potential.  Vasari bombers have the phase missile upgrade (this is probably what is killing you so badly) that makes them very effective even in smaller quantities, so for small fleets like this you won't get the same oomph as Advent as you would as Vasari.

The telekinetic push ability of the Halcyon Carrier, combined with a fair assortment of fighters, is your best course of action.  Don't expect flaks to have much impact against bombers.  They'll help, but they're mostly for dealing with fighters and lightly armored frigates.  Be sure to manually time telekinetic push; it's a powerful ability but it needs to be used at exactly the right moment.

Beyond that fact, you want to retreat your capital ship pre-emptively.  If the enemy strike craft are focusing on it, then have the capital ship disengage and prepare to jump out.  Strike craft cannot jump independently and won't be able to pursue.  Especially with Advent capital ships, if you start retreating after your shields are already down, it's probably too late to save it. 

Your biggest problem is that you're outgunned too heavily for your defensively-oriented fleet to prosper.  The Vasari probably has several levels of phase missiles upgrades, which are going to render your Guardians fairly ineffective.  He also outnumbers you, has both a fearsome strike craft and frigate component to his fleet, and is fairly well-balanced composure (too much LF, but he outnumbers you enough that this matters little). 

Your best option for fleets of this size is to simply compensate with more firepower.  Choke him with combat frigates and high damage output.  You could probably beat him with massed Disciples (he doesn't really have enough Assailants...) if you just went all-out on that one unit type. 

It's a matter of cost:benefit.  The cheap tier 1 techs are worthwhile fairly early, but beyond that technology prices increase rapidly.  Given your fleet size and composition, the only ones I'd even consider would be hull upgrades.  Beam damage is the only one relevant to you, but T3 is too pricey for your small fleet.  You've got more than enough shield upgrades already if you have guardians, so really hull is the only one I'd go for.

You need a bigger fleet more than anything, so I'd avoid tech for now.

For the record, Advent vs Vasari is by far the hardest matchup in the game.  It's actually quite masochistic in multiplayer.  You really need to go all-out on your firepower and out-gun the enemy just to even the scales.

Advent is counter strategist race: 

Don't play them like the other races if you want to easily win  because Tec and Vasari are long range frigate dependent and advent is flak. 

I have won countless lan games with the following:

(Start) 2 Halcyons with Push, bombers, Amplify Energy aura

Spam and Micro defense vessels in enemy formations.

Mother-ship for shield regeneration after i have like 45+ defense vessels

Spam some more up to 70+ defense vessels

1 Rapture with vertigo and Aura for bomber fire power

Spam some more 100+ defense vessels:

2 Guardians with Repluse, 2 with Projection (auto-attack disabled) (auto-cast on)

Build Illums (depends on whether opponent starts to build Light frigates)

By the time your caps are level 4/5 you have like 20+ bomber squads.

Then i build  2 Radiances with detonate anti-matter to disable Starbases abilities like Transcensia abilities and Vasari's Frontal deflector shields and any repair abilities.

At this point i don't give a shit about low hull radiance's because flak ,repulse , push,vertigo and shield regen at 62.5/sec just allows me to steam roll lan players and they still call it spam.

Strength in Unity 

RiddleKing,

seems very capital-ship heavy to me. Then again, it clearly works for you.

Olden golden days you divide ur main fleet into 50/50 balance (usually by fleet supply), and sprinkle adequate support.  Very standard is LRF + Carrier, Carrier + HC, LRF + Flak, HC+Flak for TEC.  Oh good times.

2+1+1+2=3?

Did they change math again?!

What he meant was that he builds 3!(Factorial) capitalships.

It all makes sense now. I'm going to go to my boss and tell him my checks were missing an exclamation point

The 3 caps i mostly use are: 2 Halcyon + 1 Mothership for shield regen or the trinity. The others are just bonuses people-which depends on the situation when ii know i can avoid them getting sniped by lrm.