First of all, the presumption for TEC late game is that you must outnumber the enemy.  If we're talking equal fleet sizes, you might have some leeway with armistice or hit-and-run, but you really don't have any business in a straight fight.

Massed Javelis will avoid the worst of repulsion, but against these units Advent can safely lean on a shield projection/restore combo and mince you with destras or even defense vessels, reserving repulse in case they need to make a hasty retreat.  Early on you can fight it by attrition and repair power, but once Advent gets mature they can inflict casualties far faster than you can knock out those Iconus or Progens.  At this point, you basically have to outnumber them 2:1 to have any real chance of fighting with frigates.

There are two primary approaches to subverters

The first is to stagger your approach against subverters.  5-8 groups is a great idea to minimize the effect of subverters, but it works better as 3-4 waves each with 5-8 groups.  You throw a few medium to small kamikaze waves with a mix of cobalts and gardas to soften them up and drain antimatter before committing any serious (non-strike craft, at any rate) attack runs.  When you finally do commit to an attack, you only want to send in about one half of your forces.  Keep the other half in reserve to feed them in slowly as subverters disable units.  If you can keep it together for about 30 seconds into the main fray, you're in the clear since he can't disable your entire fleet anymore (so long as you avoid bunching up).

The second approach, my personal fav, is to catch him just as he phase jumps into the system.  Position yourself behind where he will appear, forcing him to turn around when he first jumps in.  This will ensure your Cobalts hit first, negating a lot of the shut-down.  You want to pound him with superior firepower for about 30 seconds, and basically throw everything you have at him.  Remove the minelayers first, then the subverters, then hope you outnumber him after this exchange so the remaining battle of attrition works out in your favour.  Once the subs are down, this really turns into a complete slaughter since the Vasari can really do nothing to escape TEC Kodiaks with their speed boost ability.

Don't mistake me as saying this is balanced; in most cases, TEC needs to significantly outnumber Vasari to pull off these kinds of wins.  However it is feasible to do, and can be done with far less of a numerical advantage than is necessary to beat a well-played battleball.

Silverion23, I'm sorry but I have to disagree...sins is an RTS game with a strong multiplayer element...when it comes to multiplayer, balance between factions is PARAMOUNT...otherwise, everyone picks the same factions, does the exact same thing and your game becomes BORING...

You are asking for the factions to be intentionally unbalanced because the background story suggests it...that is fine for a game like Galactic Civilizations where you actually have a campaign and a strong SP...after all, if your only adversary is the AI, who cares if the factions are balanced so long as they're different, right?

But sins is different...there is no campaign, and SP is not a good challenge for veteran players...most of the people who demand a balance patch want one for multiplayer purposes...when you play competitively against other human players, you gotta go all in and do your best...that means picking the best, which right now means you pretty much can't play Advent, and you have to start with either a carrier or colonizer (maybe Marza or Vulkoras)...

If you are fine with the factions as is, then that's great...but try and understand the perspective of someone who plays MP games a lot...people are tired of seeing dual skirantra rushes with scramble bombers or sova rushes with a horde of LRMs...

The developers may have done a good job, but the game still has a lot of room for improvement...

To be honest, I don't think anybody is trying to get rid of the faction differences you describe...nobody who's serious about game balance wants to remove phase missiles, make TEC the most powerful late game faction, or make Advent impervious to phase missiles...but there comes a point where faction differences don't just make factions different -- they start making one faction better than the others...

TEC has a terrible late game....really, it does, so much so that it is utterly hopeless against a late game Advent or Vasari with a comparable number of planets and resources...

It is fine to say that TEC should have a better economy but poorer quality ships...that is justified by the "storyline" and perfectly fine...but the problem is, the TEC economy does not compensate for the pathetic late game TEC fleet...no one is asking to give TEC the best late game fleet or one equal to the Vasari...however, TEC late game fleets need to be at least good enough where the TEC economy/industry can compensate...that is balance, and that what makes games great...

I'm still a big Kortul fan.  It's not as powerful as a Skirantra opener, but it's viable at very least.

Yup; as much as they're a balance nightmare, I have never once even suggested weakning phase missiles.  This is Vasari's gimmick, and it shouldn't be taken away, but what we need is a way to encourage diversification.

As much as I sympathize with my beloved late-game TEC, I'm actually leaning towards this one as lower priority.  TEC at very least can perform early and try to carry an advantage into the late game, so it's still winnable even if they are at a rather severe disadvantage.  More important is dealing with the Advent vs Vasari matchup or early-game TEC vs Advent which don't even have redeeming qualities currently.

I agree with Darvin. TEC can handle themselves late game, it's difficult but possible with an advantage. The big problem is Vas vs Advent and TEC vs advent early game. The advent need something they can use against phase missiles.

And to silverion, logic has little to do with it. By your argument, if the vasari developed a weapon that vaporized entire fleets then they should put it on every ship because it would make sense for them to do that. Yes, all factions need strengths and weakness and yes the devs have done very well with Sins in most respects but at the moment the Vasari have far more strengths than weaknesses and the advent are the most disadvantaged. 

Wow yea... I would like that.

Not like such a foe will ever be caught dead fighting in a plasma storm.  Even when the storm does random as a choke point, blowing through it into the next gravity well is actually quite easy.

That said, putting an Orkulus on one of these is nasty.  Very difficult to approach that beast until well into the late-game.

Isn't Cykur a heretic though, since he wants Scramble Bombers toned down again?  I presumed you were 100% against that?

I have consistently agreed with Cykur's two main points- the Halcyon should be rolled back along with the Skirantra (to extra strikecraft rather than extra squadrons) and that fighters need a buff, though I want this accomplished indirectly by making flak counter bombers more than fighters, which would diminish their effect on fighters.However there is a lot more that needs to be done to make variation away from capital carriers/lrf/flak more viable, and no doubt the other changes will have an impact on balance. 

Yet I have been unfairly cast as a Vasari-hater.  Who else among ye has called so often and so devoutly for the removal of cost from the returning fleets?  No tax on our brethren!  Perhaps fewer in number, but no longer plagued by space tolls.  Curse the unbeliever Quar and the crazed Skirantra faction he represents, which will only bring scorn and ruin upon the Hive!

Qu4r, the Vasari have gotten far more buffs to them in this mod than nerfs...in fact, here's a list for you...

• Space egg's colonization ability -- major buff, arguably better than akkan's in some situations
• Marauder's Phase Out Hull -- moderate buff, lower AM cost and more shield damage/restoration
• Marauder's Distort Gravity -- minor buff, lower AM cost
• Marauder's Subversion -- major buff, has a whole host of changes to empower it (and more to come in the future)
• Vulkoras's PM swarm -- major buff, wreaks havoc on early-mid game fleets with a much larger target cap
• Vulkoras's Assault Specialization -- minor buff, does more structure damage
• Wave cannon and pulse beam techs given bigger advantages
• Pinpoint bombardment -- major buff, gives +100% bombing range per level
• Orkulus SB -- minor buff, colony pods now viable and debris vortex buff fixed
• Volcanic and Ice population techs -- moderate buff, add significantly more population on these planets
• Skirmisher -- moderate buff, does more damage (good since LFs are more important now)
• Overseer -- major buff to the two researchable abilities, actually worth researching now
• Gravity mines -- moderate buff, duration of affect doubled
• Envoy cruiser -- minor buff, nanomedicine much more viable

Now let's look at how the Vasari have been nerfed...hmm...

• Kostura -- doesn't affect ships, yet still can destroy/disable structures (which INCLUDES SUPERWEAPONS) with ease and still allows your fleet to be anywhere...despite being nerfed, it's still the best superweapon
• Scramble bombers -- moderate nerf after virtually unanimous opinion that it was overpowered (and it still is extremely powerful early game)
• Overseer's Reactive Nanite Armor -- minor nerf, AM cost was increased slightly to reflect the fact that capital ships are much harder to kill now (Vasari caps were near impossible to destroy)
• Subverter's distortion field -- minor nerf, AM cost was increased slightly to prevent this ability single-handedly stunning entire fleets...
• Mutual Threat -- moderate nerf, bonus decreased because it was by far the most powerful envoy bonus
• Vasari SC -- construction times increased to be the SAME as the other factions

So lets see here...the two OP elements of the Vasari, SB and Kosturas, were nerfed yet still are better than the other factions' superweapons and SC carrier cap abilities...

And the other nerfs are outweighed by the numerous buffs given to the Vasari...of course, you would know all this Qu4r if you actually read the change log for the mod...which I doubt you'll ever do...

As you can see, despite coming in from official sins as the most powerful faction, this mod gave the Vasari far more buffs than it did nerfs...and in general, the only things nerfed were elements the vast majority of online players would agree are OP...

Are you serious about this?  Because really, I have actually considered doing this (RA is so underused now, if used at all)...I just didn't think it would go over real well given current Vasari power and how ridiculous RA used to be...

I agree a global cooldown would be the best...unfortunately we can't implement that...however, we could change RA's cost/units it gives, etc...larger maps would make balancing free units problematic, that is true, though as of right now RA is not feasible at all...it certainly could just be left like that, but it would be nice to have RA be viable...

Free RA was bad.  Don't get me wrong, I had so much fun in those days.  Vasari had a lot of disadvantages back then -- their mid-game sucked, so you had to come out of the gate racing, then survive to get either RA or old OP Subverters, at which point you had a chance to win again.  Of course, I had this bad habit of getting RA & Subverters and maintaining fleet diversity unlike lazy RA people who would just quit if they couldn't pull off RA.  I can't exactly remember if I ever lost a game after I had RA ... it might have happened.

Speeding to RA was fun when it worked but reckless.  I can't tell you how many people I shut down their gates and then they would just quit.  It is bad to have one "all in" strategy.  I never raced to RA back when RA was king, it was a late game strategy after I claimed some territory.

I don't really play much anymore, but I used RA constantly in multiplayer games after they nerfed it.  I value phase gates just to get my fleet moving around fast and after I have the phase gates up it isn't such a stretch to invest in 50% discounted ships.  I dunno why everyone says it sucks; RA is great, but it isn't meant to be rushed for an instant win.