One single word.

Vasari Loyalist.

Vasari Rebel can also be pretty good at hit and run, but yeah Vasari Loyalists are the only ones who can do scorched Earth.

To me this seems pretty contradictory. If you let your enemy both have bigger fleets and more research than you, you'll pretty much be forced to win by exploiting bad AI behavior (say against Starbases). Even if you don't want to have a straight up fight, having a large fleet is still good for raiding multiple planets at the same time for example. And while improvement research isn't that important in Sins, unlocking things like superweapons and all your ship types really are, so you'll need to do plenty of research no matter what.

Actually the Advent are probably the best at avoiding loses, but you have to get them fully researched and with all of their fleet synergies active. Also they love straight up fights.

There is no good way to deal with such a situation, especially with a small fleet and little research. The most painless way to deal with them is to just build a large force of carriers with bombers.

Against TEC.... totally true.... against Vasari.... expect severe casualties.

I think you mean Aries.

Shield restoration is not the only thing at the battleball's disposal. Now that the domina doesn't suck so badly you can keep hull Regen of the same magnitude as repair cloud on your capitalships and titan. In addition Vertigo and Suppresion Aura are just as effective against phase missiles as anything else, if not more so. The problem is that these don't work on bombers and human players will work on sniping the vital pieces of your battleball, often times with bombers. I would be interesting to see how it would work if bombers didn't have phase missiles though...

Sup.

I understand you have been playing sins of a solar empire rebellion for a while now. I understand you love the game to death. And I understand you've been trying to find a faction you want to play. Allow me to be the first to say you can stop looking now, because it seems TEC Loyalists is the obvious fit for you.

I dont know how you missed it. Allow me to iterate why boombases, I mean TL, is right for you.

Your playstyle is:

Small armies, TEC loyalists is all about building dat starbase, baby. 

Assasintion, raiding, hit and run, scorch earth etc. I'm sure you are aware what happened when the Germans invaded Russia back in June of '41. They got owned cuz the russians scorched earth everything (I suppose the winter too). Imagine having the power to do that. But to your opponents planets. For example his homeworld, Every 5 minutes. Thats the power of novaliths baby. 

The one thing i try to avoid is a straight up fight. You see, when the TEC Loyalists big shots were sitting in their conference and brainstorming how the fuck they were gonna stop the aliens, they started with a pledge. Duty. Integrity. Honor. There was gonna be none of that bullshit in that conference. THEY WERE GONNA FUCKING STOP THE FUCKING ALIENS WITH EVERYTHING THEY FUCKING HAD WITHOUT ANY STRAIGHT UP FIGHTING. 

Everybody agreed it was novaliths that was gonna win them the war. But how to stop the aliens coming in with their phase missiles and their freaking corvette-disciple spam? Simple. Allow me to elaborate further.

Back when the first Argonev-class starbase, the Stratonev, was commissioned, much of the technology was still experimental. While the weaponry, armour and hanger bays were standard and just needed moderate changes to become adopted into the Strat, other technology was more challenging. One of these roadblocks was the power generation systems required to power a space station of this size. As many predicted the final solution ended up being an innovative power plant designed much like a fission nuclear power plant, but re-utilised the fuel from another TEC staple. Novalith warheads. 

As with many experimental weapons, the Stratonev was taken offline within a few weeks of commission. Officially, there were design problems with the starbase that rendered it 'costly to run' - these mistakes were to be corrected in future starbase designs. However, the truth was that the power plants generating power for Stratonev were pushed beyond tolerance levels during stress testing, leading the starbase to...well, the word 'explode' does not really do justice to what happened. Perhaps the only word I can use to describe it is that it was an 'event'. 

So, back to the future. Loyalist high command, at the request of the Central world leaders, pushed the starbase powerplant design to the limit. It is now rumoured that TEC starbases can now, as a last resort, self destruct. High command officially denied this of course. How are such rumours possible when there are not even lifeboats aboard the Argonevs?

Now, internaty, heres what you ought to know about TEC Loyalists. We dont fight fair. We don't fight fleet battles, because we lose fleet battles. We fight with unfair shit. We use shit which gives us a high kill-to-dollar ratio. And by that I'm talking about the fact that TEC starbases can blow themselves sky high with an appropriate level 5 upgrade in the defence tree, taking out any and all enemy frigates, cruisers and (perhaps most importantly), strikecraft out with them (god bless their souls). 

This has perhaps been a bit long of a reply. So I'll just end this memo with this: You + starbases + self destruct upgrade + enemy = You don't gotta fight straight up battles and also I hope you got shit in the gravity well to soak up the xp.

I dont like giving the enemy a fair chance to win. Hey. What a coincidence. Neither do I. Thats why I sit behind all my cheap ass crap and bunker down with novaliths. I'm not gonna lie to you though - there is a chance the enemy won't like you building novaliths. They might even do something about it. They might even do something about it before you get more than 3 planets. So be prepared to whatever it takes - WHATEVER IT TAKES - to ensure you get those starbases ready and the novalith warheads pumping out like the sweet seeds of some horrible flower (your homeworld).

If you reach this point, you are crippling their economy, and if they invade you, you got a big advantage. Don't like fighting fair? Play TEC Loyalists bro

No i want him criple broken and begging for death befor the fight even starts. May I assume you like planets. You like getting planets, and then building extractors, labs, and various other shit on planets. That income is pretty nice too. So when somebody, somewhere, extends out their giant..arm and whacks one, two, three of your planets, you are gonna annoyed. When more die, in a blaze of thermonuclear smiley faces, you are gonna get worried, because that juice keeping your fleet growing is going to disappear. So, you, knowing your economy is completely, utterly screwed up, knowing your fleet is probably not gonna get any bigger and probably not going to get replaced if it dies, are going to attack some guy who has got starbases which you cant get close to, a titan you cant kill, and a fleet motivated by some herbal substance which increases their fire-power by precisely 30%, novaliths about ready to fire again and the largest economy in the game. 

You should play TEC loyalists.

But it's expensive to build a starbase in every planet and equip it with planet loss prevention, and there's still the killed population and lower trade income. TEC already have the best economy, if you can cripple the enemy's you will be able to replace losses much faster, which means that even if your military is weaker, you'll eventually come to a point where the enemy will be too worn-out to counter anything

Just play tec rebels and make sure you end the game quickly. Once you have mastered the game then you can play vasari loyalists.

Advent is reserved for those who have a nac to pull off some stupendous win with overwhelming odds. You my friend are not there yet.