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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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%.

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.

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! )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).

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.

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.