Okay, hopefully this doesn't turn out to be a mess. It's pretty obvious everyone has an opinion on how the Vasari are, how they want them to be, and what they want to see changed.

Right now, these opinions are scattered in a bunch of threads all over the forum. We know the devs try to keep up on all the reads, but why not make it easier for them?

Here's what I propose:

Everyone sit down, and come up with a way to summarize your opinion on the Vasari. What you like, what you don't, if you have any suggestions, whatever.

However, let's also obey these ground rules:

NO replying to critique/debate/insult/whatever another post in this thread. You post your opinion, other people post theirs.
NO jabs/insults (no matter how well hidden) at other people/ideas/developers for not agreeing with your views.
TRY to say everything you need/want to say in one post so the devs/forum goers can read it once and get everything you were trying to say. If you need to add something and you can't edit, reference the old post and quote what you are adding to/modifying to make the flow of thought easier on readers.

This is not another thread to argue/debate different ideas for the Vasari. It is only a thread where everyone posts their opinions so the devs don't need to shuffle through 10 threads riddled with arguments and debates to figure out what people think.
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That said, here's my take. Overall, I'm very happy with the Vasari and so far I enjoy them more than the TEC. Their special abilities (especially on capitals) make them quite a bit more varied than their TEC counterparts, and their tech trees are diverse enough to offer some interesting bonuses as well.

But the real diversity only comes into play with late-game tech levels, that are mostly unreachable in small/medium games unless they drag out for unreasonably long periods of time. This denies the Vasari most of their tricks, and more or less forces the player to play them in a manner very similar to the TEC. Yes, they have a bit smaller fleets, and they start off a bit slower, but the core gameplay is essentially the same.

For this reason, I believe the Vasari could benefit from a two main tweaks, both of which were already suggested by me and others:

1) Make some of their defining techs (such as phase gates) available earlier in the tech tree, making them a common enough occurence in at least medium games, and thus allowing the Vasari to be played the way they are meant to be.

2) Slightly rebalance their core ships to provide a little more firepower at the cost of some survivability and possibly even higher fleet point requirement (the costs I feel are fairly sufficient, at least metal. Perhaps a little more credits/crystal, but the metal drags down production in the beginning pretty well as it is).

The reasoning behind it is that any highly mobile force traditionally is able to get in, do its damage fast, and get out before the more cumbersome enemy can drown them in their own units. We know that the TEC are meant to be this cumbersome "hammer down" force, and the Vasari are meant to use mobility and finesse. But currently, the Vasari ships are balanced much more on their staying power (higher base hull hp/shields, earlier tech shield research, self repair) than their ability to destroy their targets more efficiently. So while they can get in as a mobile force, once in the grav well they lose much of their mobility and finesse.

Essentially, I am NOT proposing a change that would make smaller Vasari fleets be able to take down much larger TEC fleets. I am NOT proposing high survivability AND high damage output. I AM proposing a bit of a rebalance that would allow them to show more finesse by being able to achieve their objectives faster, but because their ships would be more brittle and fewer in number, they would not be able to stand up to a large TEC fleet. Essentially, guerrilla and hit and run tactics that have become synonymous with 'finesse'. The TEC player would then have to split up his defensive forces, and the Vasari player could then organize surgical strikes to take out some key defenses here and there, and thus always keep the sluggish TEC on its toes.