A thick ring of Phase Missile turrets with a few Regeneration Bays, at the planet targeted by the pirates, should generally hold them off rather well since they don't attack the Regen Bays first and kill themselves over the turrets. Their ships have lousy range and they don't use strikecraft, so fleets and hangars are pointless against pirates. A 25-tactical planet should do well with 3 Regen Bays + 19 turrets near the pirates' entry point and the trade ports.

It would also be useful not to neglect the Empire tech-tree because Trade Ports and Matter Processors are must-haves for a stable economy, and the Vasari Metal/Crystal Extractors are the best available. And the Phase Mastery branch is unavoidable even in a smaller map. Phasic Transmissions gives you free fleet supply(always useful) and Phase Stabilizers are a Vasari specialty that gives them direct travel between any two Phase Stabilizer structures.

Vasari strikecraft are easily stronger than TEC strikecraft and are simple to upgrade by directly heading up the Hull, Armor and Phase Missile tech branches in the Warfare tree. The Fighters are good against enemy fighters, bombers, scouts and LRMs, and the Bombers tear apart enemy structures, capital ships, and heavy cruisers(like those Kodiaks you're facing).

So try grabbing Lasurak Transporters and fleet them with a group of Enforcers and Ravastra Skirmishers. The Enforcers will hold off enemy attackers while your Transporters circle the rim of the gravity well, and the Skirmishers are good at taking down flak frigates so your Fighters and Bombers have free reign.

@HuntingX: Looking forward to that

Dark fleet = Vasari victory button. Maybe a 1v1 is a little too close quarters for that to work, but in larger games, if you give a Vasari any breathing room, they will dominate the mid to late game with their ever recharging horde of free ships.

This seriously needs a nerf in 1.03 Only people who regularly play Vasari might disagree.

Could someone clear up how this works? Can you actually get the RA phase gates to spit out units above your currently researched unit cap, if you have fleet cap upgrades in the research queue (ie in the way you can queue building most things over the cap so long as an upgrade to whatever cap is in the planet/research queue)? Or will it only spit them out until it reaches the current existent fleet cap and then wait until the fleet cap upgrade is actually completed?

Just played another game with 14 planets, he and me. He managed to get over to me with an lazarus cap ship or something and 9 lrm frigs, that was enough for him to kill my cap carrier and 5 lrm frigs, and a bit later 9 more lrm frigs after he destroyed the first bunch. So i just surrendered, i could build up again because he didn't have anything to siege my planets with beside his cap ship. This game lasted for about 30 min.


Edit: First game i used the support carrier cap ship, played again now(not finished, took just a break)choose the devastator ship, but still, he had about 10-15 lrm and the same cap ship, i had 10 lrm and the devastator, and again he managed to kill my cap ship without loosing his. But managed to build another one and then he started running away since his cap had lost all shield and had minimal with hull left.

Thanks for the tips! Been having some more games now, and it seems like things is getting better. But i really must say that the battle cap ship from TEC is pretty damaging, don't like that at all

Been having a game now which has lasted for about 6 hours, its only 14 planets and he has the most of the planets, but am starting to gain the upper hand again now, with the dark armanda fleet. Reason for this long game is because we have been slacking a bit of and just building, but its been fun, looking forward to beat him if everything goes as planned.

Anyway feel free to post more strategy's for using Vasari, anything is appreciated.

Vasari strategy for 1on1 is very different than their large map Returning Armada strategy. Basically you can't go wrong if you play very aggressively because you have the best Battleship (the Devastastor) and the best Dreadnaught (the Desolator). The battleship in particular is spectacular and will completely dominate all other cap ships at levels 1-5, things don't get even remotely close to competitive until large fleets supported by level 6 cap ship abilities and high tech tree support cruisers start to provide advantages that outweigh the brute force and efficiency of the Devastator battleship.

Seriously, you can win alot of 1v1 maps by relentlessly attacking the enemy capital ships every time they even think about leaving a heavily defended grav well. If they stay and fight your Devastator WILL win a 1 on 1 vs any other capital ship. You can seal the deal by rallying Assailants to support your flagship and researching the phase missile upgrades (the largest damage upgrade available to any race at tier 1+2 military tech).

well thats awfully vague. what cap ship were you using and what skills did you get for it? what cap ship was he using and what skills did he get for it?

i've found that without exception a Kortul Devastator with Power Surge and Disruptive Strikes can beat any other cap ship 1 on 1. The Disruptive Strikes are incredibly unfair in a 1 on 1 fight.