Thanks. I'll try this. I thought guardians were useless after cobalts bit into them.

Guardians...lots and lots of guardians. These coupled with an attack fleet supported by at least one Progenitor Mothership are just about unstoppable. Just be sure to micromanage your guardians so that they keep a continuous shield up instead of all going off at the same time. By doing this you can render your opponents shots to be worthless especially when the Progenitor is doing shield restores. Shield mitigation plus damage sharing from that the guardian shields will protect all but the weakest Advent ships. The fleet your wielding can be balanced or spam ships...the outcome is normally the same.

What I find works very well is 25% damage propagation (mothership ability) + 2 radiance battleships using their most powerfull ability (the one you get at level 5 or 6). With that combo it seems like all enemy frigates within the 25% damage propagation will be pretty close to dead, and as long as you have a few heavy cruisers the rest of the fleet will soon follow. At least this works extremely well against massive AI fleets.

But perhaps humans are more carefull not to expose their whole fleet to 25% propagation or something? Because in my experience a decent sized advent fleet (say 2xradiance, 2xmothership all high level) with a good compliment of heavy cruisers can pretty much take out any fleet within a minute or so. As long as a good chunck of the opposing fleet can be put under 25% damage propagation it really doesn't matter how large it is.

they're still within range normally, but the problem is the illuminators will want to auto attack something and follow a unit after it's been pushed.

The range of the Illuminator is less than the range of the Guardians Repulsion (the Illuminator has the least range of all the LRF's, after all). As a practical matter though, Illuminators can sit just sit near the Guardians and be firing off their beams because many ships will be able to get a bit into a Repulsion field (they just have difficulty really getting in close to the Guardians usually). The Illuminators will usually not be able to use their greatest advantage, bringing all three weapons to bear, but if you're just trying to hold off a superior fleet, that isn't too much of an issue.

If you're keeping a fleet using Guardians, it's often to keep your units on Hold Position to avoid the problem Raging Amish mentioned of units chasing enemies out of the Repulsion field and off into the jaws of your enemies. This ensures none of your units stray to far or your Guardians wander off, and usually a good way to fight defensively as Advent.

But anyway, against the AI in general, Repulsion with Malice and Cleansing Brilliance can be a very potent combination. You can use your Malice and Cleansing Brilliance, then simply push away the enemy fleet while you recharge (a Radiance using Guidance can help hasten the Cleansing Brillinace recharge cool down if needed). Then once charged you can let them in close and give them another hit. Fighting from a world with multiple Repair Bays to cover damaged units, and if possible an Antimatter Recharger or two will help you in longer battles. If the AI has taken a liking to Carriers/Transporters/Drone Hosts, going heavy flak or getting a couple Halcyon's with Telekinetic Push should help solve the problem.

This works best against Advent AI's since even their Illuminators will have difficulty hitting you and the Destras are more or less out of the picture. Against a Vasari AI it can work fairly well, although the longer range of the Assailant can be a problem, but the biggest issue is the Subverter, it has to get fairly close to use Distortion Field but quite literally all it takes is one getting through and hitting your tightly packed fleet and you can lose your Guardian's Repulsion and Shield Projection, then you're in trouble. Against a TEC it depends on the number of Javelis there are (they significantly outrange Repulsion, can easily strike at things inside the field, or the Guardians themselves), a large number of Javelis can simply shred the fleet safely.

This generally doesn't work against a person either, since there are a variety of counters to the tactic once they see it. They will often go heavy LRMs to get you outside your Repulsion range, use a number of Strikecraft, various Antimatter stealing/disabling abilities, or they may just bypass you altogether since it will be much easier to glass planets than deal with your annoying fleet that is just trying to keep them busy.

But the AI will grind itself to dust on you.

i use a combo of Disicple/Defence/Areia/Iconus/Subjagator/with caps depending on the role of the fleet. when i have to go up against the vasari i use radiance battleships to deplete their antimatter, Halycon carrier to keep back fighters, and iconus guardians with their shield projection because i usually use them to give my ships a chance of lasting longer, but i always have lots of escort vessels to take the brunt of the attack.

guardian repel ability really only makes sense in combination with a strikecraft heavy fleet. Its for keeping your carriers from dying.
If you rely mostly on illumns and hcs then use the shield ability as usual. As a addition use subjugators.

Subjugators are very useful against Vasari. The buff they give friendly ships temporarily makes them immune to being stunned, IIRC. This can be priceless if you're against Subverters.

to be onest i dont even go with illuminators i just go straight crusaiders+drone hosts guardians and subjicators works best for me having large host of bombers as your many body of your fleet with crusaders for heavy support damge allows me to deal with enemy ships Ie grabbing all bombers and chain killing what needs to die with the guardians+halcyons. Illuminators i find die far more often than that which they kill so the extra 2 to fleet supply spent on the drone hosts is worth every penny