I think my favorite 2 vasari cap ships are the Skinatra carrier and the Evacuator in that order.

Carrier:
I am a big fan of the carrier for a starting ship for a few reasons. 1. Their strike craft make it easier to fend off against LRM spam strategy (which so many people seem to do these days) their healing cloud is an amazing ability that almost always gives you the edge in a fight, and their replicate forces technique is just an amazing and convenient.

I will usually build a carrier if i am going to build 4-6 LRMS and tech straight for Returning armada. This allows me to keep the early battlefield and have a huge fleet later down the line.

Evacuator:
I know alot of people don't like colony caps, but the Evacuator is really an exceptional cap. Aside from having the obviously advantageous colonize ability, it also does decent damage, has alot of health, has an ability which locks down enemy cap ships when they try to get away, and the drain planet ability it gets at level 6 is just monstrously effective for destroying enemy planets, 45 dmg/sec and 15 resources/second transfered to your swiss bank account. I think this is arguably one of the best planet seige abilities in the game. I usually use the evacuator when I am going for a sort of more economicly strong warfare tree strategy.

Marauder:
I don't use it often but every time I do, I find it to be to my liking. I usually pair it with a squad of Seige frigates (destructors) to do guerilla style strikes on newly developing (or home world) enemy planets. Using its sub-phase speed boost ability to get into the planet, nuke the population/infastructure, and then zoom away before I lose anyone. At level 6, its phase stabilization ability is really handy to have around, but i find if you don't start off with this ship as your starting cap, you'll almost never have that ability in time for it to be of any use.


Battleship (destructor?):
Its slow, its hardy, it does alot of damage. It's a battleship, what can I say. I find it to be somewhat boring of a cap ship, so I hardly ever use it until late game when I will use it as a heavy hitter to reinforce my already massive dark armada.

I almost always use the evacuator and start off with colonize and pick the -armor ability second. its cheap, lasts quite a while and does good damage over time.

It never disappointed me so far as a first cap ship.

I love the marauder, at first I thought it was a bit weak and almost never built it, but it really grows on you. Phase out is amazing, keep enemy caps out of the fight or save friendly ones suffering from focus fire. The speed boost ability is great when catching up to fleeing enemies or for getting away and it actually makes the space whale move at a decent speed (evacuator). Subversion is nice as well as it gives you recon for quite some time when it's maximum level but usually don't take it over the other two abilities. Quite dependant on having a lot of antimatter to be effective though. Usually build it as 2nd or 3rd cap ship.

All in all I think they did a great job on the vasari cap ships, makes it quite hard to choose which ones to use.

I never get bombers with my Skiranta since it gets the scramble bombers ability anyway. I think fighters are more important early game.

The planet eating space whale is just awesome. Sieges on plnates have never been easier than having a Lv6 Evacuator (well, except for a pair of Lv6 space whales). I use it pretty much the same as Snipafist.

However, I'm torn between the Evacuator and the Devastator(battleship). Ya, it is not as flashy as the others but i wouldn't call it boring(at least twice as interesting as the TEC Kol). It's powerful and the Lv6 volatile nanite can do some extreme things especially when you have some subverters around for stunning. Wiped out some severe pirate infestation with that...

The carrier and marauder are also nice. Vasari bombers are great capital assasins and phase technologies are simply unique.
I must say the only cap that I do not quite love is the desolator(phase missle cap). The siege platform and assault specialization are unimpressive. However, i have limited expirience with its Lv6 disintegration, so my opinion may change later.

i've actually thought if its a better idea to level several evacuators to level 6 somehow than taking the rather fragile planet bombers in your fleet... i mean 3 of them could drop a 4500 hp planet in 30 seconds, thats a record kind of. and would give you tons of ressources.

I like the Marauder a lot, there are just too many uses for its speed boost ability for me not to use it anymore.

1) You can use it to speed the retreat of ships when fighting the neutrals. Not only will the ship fly away faster and thus have a higher likly hood of living to fight another day, but it can phase out quicker. Retreating wounded ships takes a lot of micro, but it keeps them alive and it makes the enemy waste time shooting at a ship that they won't even kill. This can work on players in the begining because they all like to focus fire, but in bigger fleet situations your ships are just going to get killed too fast by focus fire. Still good in the begining.

2) A lot of people like to focus fire on cap ships. The Marauder can use its speed boost to fly around a grav well in cricles with the enemy chasing behind it, and with my fleet chasing behind the enemey. I was just in a game where the two enemies were massing up heavy crusiers and flak, and I didn't know what to do to them(flak counters bombers good.) So instead I used the Marauders speed boost and ran my carrier fleet right past all of them, and then started flying circles bombing his expensive structures(Bye-bye 2 phase stabalizers, take that dark armada!). Sometimes they will have their ships fly a counter circle from the other dirrection, but your ships can be moving so fast that unless they have guns behind them, they'll only get a few shots off before they have to slowly turn around.

3) I guess 3 would be retreating your cap ship, so far the only time I've had the Marauder die was when I stopped watching it for 30 seconds and the enemy followed it... other wise it almost always seems to escape using its speed boost/phase out increaser.

It's Subversion ability is also very usefull. You think, "But Norrec, its only 45% at maximum level!" Well your right, except you have to remember that it lasts 600 seconds and stacks. You can sit there for as long as you want spamming subversion, my personal record was -325% or so. Even after you blow up the planet, production will stay slowed after they recolonize it. Combined with the speed boost, if your feeling adventerous, you can fly your marauder around the enemies base subverting his planets untill you finally run out of antimatter and his fleet comes home.

The Phase-out-hull ability I don't find to be very usefull. All it does is drain your anti-matter. No anti-matter means no speed boost, no speed boost means no quick retreats and circle flyings. I read somewhere that at max level you can keep 5 ships phased out at once, but thats only going to go on for 30 seconds or so and then you've used up all your antimatter. Whether or not keeping 5 ships out of the battle for 30 seconds is usefull, you'll have to decide on your own. I don't think that it is.

I think everyone can see the use in Stabalize Phase Space, but the past few games I've put my sixth point into subversion instead. If you don't have any phase gates(which are expensive) then you don't get any benefit from phase gates. Also it is good to note that the Marauder can not use its own stabalized space, only other ships. Maybe some of you think its obvious, but this mistake led my fleet into a pirate base instead of back home.

For the Vasari, I like the Kortul Devastator capital ship.

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Hmm, phasing out your own ships to save them from focus fire is actually ingenious. Since they can't be attacked the enemy will turn to blast another ship, and when the 6 seconds is out you can hit retreat and your ship will fly away. Every ship saved is a ship that can live to fight another day. This would allow the ship to do maximum damage all the way to the last 100 hull points before having to retreat. So in that regard, phase out hull could actually be really usefull.

However, the part about phasing out enemy capital ships to keep them from phasing away does not really work very well. You can't damage the ship while its phased out, and when the 6 seconds run out it will immediantly begin to jump away. I guess if you timed it just right you could get 2-3 seconds of firing in before phasing it out again, but your not going to be able to kill it before it escapes(not enough antimatter). I could see it being usefull to stop the cap ship from running while you catch up...

My cap ships ussually don't get to maximum level, and given a choice between phase out hull and subversion, I think subversion is more usefull. I can raid someones planet, blow up some key buildings, stack a few subversions on his planet to slow him down, and then fly off again. The line of sight given to me by subversion allows me to see what ships he has on the planet and whether or not they are going to chase my raiders.

The Kortul Devastator doesn't do well in straight fights against the Kol and Radiance because:

1. It doesn't have the immense armory and hull strength of the Kol nor the immense shielding of the Radiance, but is instead somewhere in between.

2. It's firepower comes more from research than leveling up, since it's Pulse Beams get a whopping 35% damage boost and it's Phase Missiles get 25% shield negation and 20% damage boosts from research. Most of this firepower is also concentrated on it's side banks or is manifested through it's bomber squadrons(75% damage vs. cap-ships), with only the weaker Wave Cannons being completely front-facing.

3. The 2 battleships have abilities that look as if they were designed to screw the Kortul. The Kol's Adaptive Forcefields make it a point to nerf Phase Missiles, and the Radiance Battleship's Energy Absorptive Armor completely neutralizes Disruptive Strikes in the most precise and perfect manner. The Radiance's Detonate Antimatter, and the Kol's Gauss Railgun and Finest Hour abilities are specifically anti-capital ship while Power Surge and Volatile Nanites are support abilities which help fight off fleets of frigates or cruisers.

The Kortul is more of a mixed-fleet combat-support capital ship with heavy weaponry and defensive features designed to make it fare better when faced with heavy cruisers, bombers, LRFs, etc., but not other battleships, unlike the Kol and Radiance which are of a more anti-capital nature.

The Skirantra and Antorak are also very nice with their abilities that make them more optimized for long-range fast-strike carrier fleets in different ways. The Skirantra with it's Repair Cloud and Microphasing Aura make friendly strike craft more durable in battle, but the Antorak is still better for supporting a carrier fleet since it's direct firepower, Distort Gravity, Phase Out Hull and Stabilize Phase Space abilities all add to the speed and disruption capabilities required to shepherd carriers away from danger and take out flak without engaging the actual enemy fleet, and therefore allowing strike craft to deal tons of damage to their hapless targets.

Phase out hull a waste of antimatter? It's the best ability in the game.
A level 5 Antorak is almost unstoppable.

Desolator is my second favorite, and I used to use it as my first capital ship. The phase missile swarm is great for clearing out a lot of neutral defenders and by the time it's levelled up pretty well, it's good for knocking out planets too. It's just that the Evacuator is so much better as a first ship.

The vacuum sucks because you have to stand still for 30 seconds to use it and odds are the only time you'll be able to use it safely is when you've already gained control of the planet's well. The main reason to use the voluras is that it can siege and destroy structures simultaneously due to the insanely wide firing arc of it's missiles. Plus it's an effective siege engine from the get go and can quickly knock out asteroids early game.