1.05, then try 2/3 Kodiak, 1/3 carrier + Hoshiko with full fighter.

Or build Phase Jump Inhibitor + Repair plaform + Planet Shield in your choke point planet, then withdraw your ship from that choke point. When the AI move their ship in to conquer that planet, jump back and kill them. If they retreat, pursue else kill them all.

Huh. Couple of ideas from me. One is that you should have expanded faster (I'm guessing you're at like 50/50), since the Advent is slow to build. I'm also curious as to your defenses; I hope you have at least 2 repair platforms. I should point out that the TEC is never, ever going to win a fair fight with Advent; their shields are simply ridiculous.

But mostly, the above poster is right; your issue comes down to trying to fight toe-to-toe and beat him back. Screw that. Go defense-in-depth on him; make every planet a nightmare of carriers+hangerbays+LRM+repair platforms+shields. When he really starts doing too much damage, withdraw one planet, replinish the fleet, and repeat. He'll end up sinking everything into trying to break you. Meanwhile, invade through the pirate base, or try and send a second fleet around his, and start killing everything. If he's chasing you, try to just whack trade ports and factories to screw up his economy. If you have more time, do more damage. If you can make him chase you ALL the way to his rear corner, invade with your other forces. You should be able to keep ahead of him in ships and even bounty if you're consistent. Don't even bother trying to fully destroy his fleet until you take most of the system. And Novaliths can help if you keep them out of danger, but aim them yourself; go for actual planets, and the closest ones to his homeworld. I'd even suggest trying to make sure every planet you kill is with a Novalith shot, so they can't recolonize for a while.

Try more Monilth cannons; they will destroy your oppoents economy, and every ship you kill after that, does not get rebuilt (so do hit and runs after you've downed several key planets).  Except on your bottleneck planet, destroy all defences around other plantets to make room.  With a small map, 3 or 4 cannons should be plenty.  The AI will recolonize planets FAST, and redevelop it too, FAST, so it takes a while to wear him down; sooner or later, he will not have enough money to reconstruct his planets AND build new ships.

I'm comming back on at 12:01 to get 1.1 

So, I did it. Thank all of you for the advice.

I managed to start winning some fights through some slightly different fleet composition.  I ditched all my bombers, and went all fighters, increased my ratio of kodiaks to about 60%, and built a second Kol to go with my Akkan and Dunov.  In the fight, I micromanaged flak burst and magnetize, turning all other autocasts off until I managed to kill the majority of the bombers.

But that wasn't enough.  They still had too large a fleet, so what I did was let them on into my empire.  I abandoned my choke point, and the AI started branching out, attacking my planets, which I fortified first.  I was then able to pick off segments of their huge fleet one by one, all the while keeping up bombardment with my novaliths.  I had to keep the pressure on, so they didn't rebuild their damn fighters and bombers.

Eventually, I pushed them back to the chokepoint and recolonized my planet.  From there, I was able to push past the chokepoint in the biggest battle yet in the empty sector invervening, and pushed on to take the terran planet they had behind the chokepoint.  MWWWAAAHAHAHAHA!!!

I needed to rebuild my fleet at that point, so I captured my worlds and built them up, and built another novalith when I hit fleet capacity.  From there, it was easy.  I was able to keep my forces more concentrated, especially after I found the artifact that boosts phase jump speed, and actually outnumber the bastards.

Now that I know it's possible to win, I'll be playing for a while.    I'm excited to try out that same strategy the AI used against me as the Advent myself.

I haven't been online yet, but at some point I'll definitely give it a shot.  When I can beat multiple Hard AIs, I'll probably venture out.

You learn the most playnig with/against others in a full MP game (i.e. no AI). However this can be brutal for people starting out.

The biggest lesson I learned when I went to MP is that I played slow against the AI - you need to be quicker online. Turtling is no good as someone will buidl an empire 2x your size and then smash your defences. Entrenchment might change this some, but not vintage Sins (at least not 1.05..)

Because I cant get it to quote right, consider the red text quotations.

I'm TEC

Theres your problem right there.

1) I can't win an even fight.

No matter what ship composition I make, I can't win an even fight.  In this particular case, I'm being mobbed by fighters and bombers, while being unable to seriously damage them due to massive numbers of defenders shooting up shields over the whole area.  It's not research - it's far along, and I've had this problem with all other types of AI.  My best odds seem to be using 33% kodiaks, 33% percherons, mostly with bombers, remainder split between hoshikas and gardas, with a handful of cielos to round it out.  Missile frigates are good for only a volley or two before being destroyed.  I use different mixes of capital ships, kols, dreadnoughts, durovs, usually 3 or 4, with a total of about 300 ships in play.  Yeah, that's a lot of ships.

I try destroying their capital ships, and I often can, but they never seem to retreat, usually because they outnumber me 2/1 by the time the capital ships are gone, and they've got other capital ships enroute.  Even if they don't they still don't run because they outnumber me, and by that time all my bombers are gone and I can't take the frigates.  Or if I can, more ships arrive.  I can only win when I outnumber around 1.5/1.  Technically, I shouldn't even be able to hold them off, except they're overly scared of my planetary defenses, and when they do chase me off, they never fortify enough.  That leads to problem 2...

You WONT win an even fight. TEC is weak in combat, their advantage is in numbers. You must spam. Research Industrial Juggernaught (50% faster ship building), when in a epic battle set your rally points to the place where its taking place (Rally points can be set in any gravity well, anywhere).

2) I can't outproduce the AI when it comes to ships.

I just can't.  Even with me having more money and resources, with multiple shipyards churning out ships as fast as my money will allow, they've always got more.  Any gains are quickly crushed by a new fleet to trash my worn-out victors.  I don't understand it.  With this much fleet logistics in play, they should really be hurting for resources, especially with less income.  Yet somehow they keep churning out cap ships, no matter how much I keep blowing them up.  My economy is in high gear, with max planet upgrades, trade lanes, and orbital refineries.

Scuttle the orbital refineries unless there is 4-5 phase jumps on that planet. Refineries can support the planet they're on plus the planets 1 phase jump away. But even then they are pretty much useless unless there are a lot of planets 1 phase jump away.

You seem to think caps are the be-all-end-all of warfare. Not so, caps are fragile and more support ships than enything. Instead of building 16 caps, build 6. Save the money and use the supply to build carriers, HCs, repair cruisers, ect. They will deal more damage and have more collevtive HP.

Here is a nice trick: Send in ONE Akkan. Get swarmed. Use Armistace. Send in the rest of your fleet. IDK if it still works, but the enemy fleet ont fight back.

3) The AI seems to have infinite money.

I've tried tanking the AI's economy with raids, but it took too much away from my defense.  In desperation, I built 2 novalith cannons, and I've got them autofiring to blast the enemy planets to pieces, which should be tanking the economy, since they've essentially got almost no population.  In fact, it seems to be, since when I quit the game, I can see their credit income rate is in the toilet.  Yet somehow, they keep replacing the ships I blow up, even super-expensive fleets of capital ships, and running up the pirate bounty on me.  The noviliths seem to be helping a little, but they STILL seem to be outproducing me.  Even if they had an absurd stockpile of credits saved up they've been draining, that sitll makes no sense because they're outproducing me in ships.

Research Pervasive Economy. You get a fraction of whatever your enemy spends. The Novas are good for hurting him, but if you're not strong enough to capitalize on it then its useless.

I sugggest loading up an autosave and not researching refineries, those last 8 cap slots, and novas. Spent that money an Industrial Juggernaught, Pervasive Economy, more ships, and altering your DNA to become Vasari.

EDIT: Why cant I get it to properly quote what I want it to? It does these stupid quote within a quote littered with my [/quote] commands.

oops double post

I am also a Vasari player but was in a similar situation.

Hyperion gates; four players, FFE, one TEC AI set to hard.

I dominate the Vasari AI in my system, but they still control a corner when suddenly a juggernaught of a fleet comes through the star, taking seven planets before I can muster a respectable defence.  I burn my stockpile (now quite sizeable due to forgetting about building) to use returning Armada to use up all of my support slots and retake all but the terran chokepoint.  they repulse around four of my attacks of nearly maxed fleet, I finally research the last fleet upgrade, and take the planet, their fleet fleeing.  I hold and do not follow up on my advantage.  at this point I deal with the Serak Warriors (the in-system Vasari) with a few interuptions to deal with full fleet invasions which I repulse fairly easily with planetary defenses and my full fleet.  they only send one capitol ship with each fleet, even though they have multiple in the other system (as I found out later).  I station a Navigator at each of the stars, to give me a chance to see them coming.  I rebuild my fleet and push my tech advantage to take their terran chokepoint, where they had massed their fleet to push another invasion.  I manage to drive them away, but most of their fleet survives (except their capitol ship - whenever I went against one of their fleets w/ a cap, I made sure that the cap didn't survive).  they flee to a nearby planet and mass once again, and I attack before they can.  they already have a Marza, which doesn't survive when their fleet immediately flees.  at this point I have a foothold still, but am limited to two planets in their system. 

I haven't really played much past this point only because of time constraints, but it was a full force fleet that I had to use.  I have built up static defenses on most of my planets to repel the thrice-be-damned rebels that appear at random planets, because of the TEC's ability. (They have come to be an extreme pain in the a**)

It's so funny

I've actually developed a nice TEC strategy that works almost all the time. Here is what you do in turns of fleet composition.

1) Build Cobalts. Lots of cobalts. Shit tons of Cobalts. On average my fleet will be usually made of 55-65% Cobalts. ir cheap, their fas, and if upgraded, can do quite a bit of damage to ships that use anti-matter. Plus they are awsome at carrier rushes.

2) Don't rely so heavy on carriers. if i have a fleet of 300 ships, I usually have 20 maybe 25 carriers. No bombers all of them are fighters.

3) I can safetly say that I have gone through entire games against the hard AI without flak frigates. I don't even bother with them, it's all about the fighters.

4) LRMF should be used liberally. This is usually my second most numerous ship, especially with the AOE upgrade. While your Cobalts are carrier rushing and your fighters are running interferance, your LRMFs can do some serious damage.

5) That repair cruiser, the one with the crazy name, Hock-a-loogie, or something, is also very important. If you have 100 cobalts, you should prolly have 20 HRCs. The demolition ability helps alot too.

6) You should also throw in a few Kodiaks and Cielos, but in a fleet of 100, you should have 15 kodiaks and 5-10 cielos.

Now dont worry if the enemy has waaayyyy more carriers than you. Thats okay. Your not supposed to match him in carriers, you just want enough fighters to stop him from completely raping your LRMFs. So here is your basic combat doctrine.

Cobalts, Kodiaks, and Cielo charge the enemy fleet, along with any HRCs and Cap ships you have. This should cause the majority of the enemy bombers/fighters tp go for them.

Your carriers should stay back and let the fighters zip around, running interferance and cover your LRMFs.

Let your LRMFs blast away at the enemy fleet.

If it is a close fight, mircomanage your fighters. Focus them on the enemy LRMs/equivilant and carriers, while your Cobalts go flying in. I can not tell you how important Cobalts are. Build lots. LOTS. If you build ten Kodiaks, build 100 Cobalt. Cobalts Cobalts Cobalts Cobalts!!

yes because you fighters will be sooooo effective as their carriers are shredded by long range cruise missles