Going civ-labs first with advent is pretty risky, especially for three at a time, since it leaves you wide open to an LRM rush. You might be able to pull it off, but civ lab openings are very map dependent; military labs are generally a safer bet. Other suggestions I'd make is to make a Radiance/Missionary first instead of a Mothership, so you can get to Cleansing Brilliance faster. The missionary only captures planets a little slower, and will let you capture neutrals, which is nice. You almost might want to put more points in Malice instead of Shield Regen since Malice is easily the best AOE in the game, even without its synergy with CB.

As far as fleet composition goes, it's good to avoid drone hosts as they're expensive, do little damage, and are very, very easily countered. As Vink mentioned, though, you can't overlook the power of the defense vessel, as this is the only way you can survive early encounters with LRM fleets. Note that Illuminators have a crappy damage type atm (this will be fixed in 1.04) and so are probably not worth building. Also, don't overlook Guardians. They're expensive, but they really help your fleets survivability, and can be used pretty creatively once you research repulse.

I love playing as Advent because I like the voices and the lines of the ships. But it's harder than TEC, that's for sure. I can sleepwalk through a game as TEC, not as Advent.

I've been able to get into Trade right away, but only on a map with very few phase lanes so that my first 3-4 planets were lined up, no other way for the enemy to get to them. Either way it's worth it, because without the income you can't boost your fleet to the size it needs to be.

The real trick with Advent is to combine the right cap ship with the right cap ship. You almost have to get the mothership primogeniter first because of its high hull points and colonizing ability. So I choose colonizing. But I match it up with another mothership or a radiance, and only get two types of complementary abilities on each, like one is all support (shield, anti-matter) and one is mostly battle/war/projectile, and I take care to fleet them with a lot of two different types of support ships for the early game, mostly just the elite cruiser and heavy bombers later in the game. Don't bother with them all, most are useless, it's more cost-effective to choose to upgrade via research two of them, and make sure the upgrades are enabled on each ship.

If I'm reading you right, you say you DISable the cap ship's abilities prior to a fight? I hope you turn them back on when they are fighting!!!! The only one I micro-manage is the colonizing ability, because there's no need to leave it on when they're fighting and need the anti-matter, plus I don't want a planet colonized before I can afford to upgrade the population.

As long as you immediately upgrade all of your planet's population there's no reason why you can't get into trading very early in the game, and since it's percentages and not just flat dollar amounts, getting in early makes a ton of difference. It's like investing in a retirement account. You make lots more if you start in your twenties than in your forties!

To keep your fleets from dying out too much, just do the math on the hull points. Know how many hull points are in your fleet, figure out how many are in the enemy's. If it's much less, you don't need to micromanage. Just build more as the fleet points become available. Most pirate fleets don't need much micro-managing once you have two cap ships with a full complement of frigates (at least six of the light cheapy ones when you're low on metal, three or four of the heavy). Once you get your trading set up then you can spend the money on the research for the heavier, planet-destroying ships and up your fleet cap. I tend to have two capital ships before I start paying the 9% cost for my fleet.

First advent fleet: One Mothership and a bunch of the cheapest frigates, or a combo of cheap (no crystal) with more expensive, based mostly on hull points. I like to keep to ships that are high in hull points and not too particular about what they'll fight, in the beginning. Advent ships will never ever have a lot of firepower until you've completed the research tree, so use the cap ships' ability to restore shields etc to keep your little ones alive -- and drawing fire away from cap ships -- for as long as possible.

These are replaced with the next best thing, after I've researched for it.

When these are gone, I use the freed up fleet points to get my second cap ship and go back to cheap ships to offset the investment.

Once I raise my fleet caps, I work on creating three distinct fleets, each with two to three complementary cap ships. One fleet is geared towards planets, the rest for fighting and speed. Advent Radiance and mothership work well together, the TEC colonizer with Dunov and Kol is tough to beat. Sometimes I get the mothership and don't even bother getting the colonizing option because I want it more for the high hull points. Two motherships working together is a pretty battle.

If you find your empire has a wide open frontier with a lot of phase lanes that needs a lot of defending, then you really do need three fleets, two to conquer, and one to go back and forth as needed. RAise your planet's health, use the hanger defense, place the cheap guns effectively, and you shouldn't lose any to pirates at any rate. As your fleets gain experience they need much less micromanaging so put them where you can forget about them until you get a warning or trust them to get the job done.

I never skuttle my capital lab, I'm always striving to make another one, make another one! LOL! And I tend to get one harmony, one hostility, and not get another until I have 3 planets of some kind. I'll even skip a planet if it's ice or volcanic and the phase lanes let me. Because really, without the extra shield and hull research, the ships are toast.

Within the first 90 minutes I usually:
have trading posts on two to three planets
have researched things in two levels, a "best of" anything that increases my crystal/mineral extraction, population, hull points, shield points, one weapons system, hanger defense, plus trading, and unlocked one or two ships, ignoring most "luxuries" apart from advance notice of attacks.
Maybe raised my fleet cap to the 9% cost, definitely have two cap ships
am on second support fleet or building third (or fourth if players are aggressive)

Hope that makes sense!
Shelleycat

Oh heck now I feel like an idiot. As someone pointed out in another thread, you meant online playing. My strategy with cap ships may not work with that, I've seen posts where people disdain multiple cap ships, but some that like the idea, especially in terms of Advent.

if you look at the ship specs I really can't think of another solution to Advent's limitations. It's all a numbers game after all, so if your numbers are almost half of someone else's... double up! and have more! They can only shoot at so many at once! Seems simple to me but I'm getting flamed for mentioning doubling up cap ships! Course I think I got dyslexic and said to have two before raising things up to 9% and I probably meant the second upgrade to fleet cap. OH well. We can't edit these posts once posted, can we?

So anyway if you try it before I do please let me know how it goes.