That "Cloud of Doom" as you call it are all the Iconus Guardians deploying their shield-mitigation generators. Those are the shield bubbles of those ships. When you stack 20-30 of them on top of each other they basically go completely opaque making observation impossible.

I think the only thing that really works is to hit them hard, make sure that without the 33% you're still winning. Vasari Always have the phase missiles, TEC has, I guess, sheer brute force to overpower shields. Don't have your abilities on autocast, use your heavy hitting abilities all at once on the mothership to hopefully knock it out of the battle, and you keep them from refreshing the shields.

Jhessick, just on a side note, you do realise that with 20 guardians with generators active most ships have about 40,000 shield hitpoints to which they can transfer damage before the extra mitigation starts failing.
Sure you can punch through the shields by downright ignoring the shields but you can't cut down the mitigation in a meaningful way. Even focussing on the Iconus won't help much, each ship has 2000 shields with an added layer of 38,000 HP worth of partial damage mitigation buffered on top. As an extra complication, once they all fire up their generators you can't target inside their radius effectively anymore. The slowdown is horrendous (i'll turn down the graphics a notch to see if that helps counter it) and because the field is almost opaque finding a ship to targeting is pretty tricky. (although i admit, i could try targetting through the Empire Tree) Add the high base damage mitigation Advent ships have on their already formidable shields and a fleet with lots of those guardians becomes very hard to stop.

Personally i dont think they need to be nerfed as such, they're fine in principe, but what would be nice if mitigated damage for a ship got transferred to a single guardian, limiting their effectiveness somewhat and rendering them more vulnerable to concentrated damage rather than spreading to all guardians in the fleet.

The graphical glitch is a tough issue, but if you can see and target, then you're good. The mitigation doesn't stack, at least I don't think it does, so you're only ever dealing with a 33% defender mitigation. In my weeklong experience, the TEC has enough firepower to make up for whatever is given to the defenders, and the armor of an advent is too weak to handle grouped vasari with phase ability.

I'm also talking about armies of equal logistics. If you're holding on to two 50 point caps and he's got a single cap and ten or so defenders, there's nothing equal about that (though I'd still take my chances and focus on the cap and hope I knock him out before I run home).

But, I also run away a lot, so...

Going to get flamed for it and accused of being a troll but I'm inclined to say the Advent are overpowered compared to The TEC and The Vasari.

What? You're a dirty dirty individual, Rec... I feel sorry for you and your children.

The thing about the advent is that their specials are so very potent compared to the other two. I'm still trying to figure out what TEC is especially good at (besides making money, rich bastards).

I wish something extraordinary stood out for the other two that was on par with defenders and their networking ability that forced the others to look out and prepare for the strategies that come from those abilities. What do you do with the TEC? Stop buying things?

the TEC is excellent at maintaining a war of attrition, their far stronger economy (providing you put some research into it) means they can rebuild far quicker. Also they'll probably end up getting higher fleet cap sooner because of their increased resources

key is "if you can see and target". in a lot of cases, all you see is a gray bubble of doom. And if you zoom in, your video slows down to the crawl with many layers of those semi transparent baubles and you can't target for shit. All the while, their strong fighters ripping you apart. At least they have to take that bloody effect off. That alone will help big time. Balancing is another issue all together.

I for some reason have never had the bubble of doom problem with the defenders. I do have a rather shitty graphics card that can't display anything properly. Maybe it just gave up having the bubbles. Yay for stone age hardware I guess.

Vasari - Extraordinary scouting, you can watch enemy fleets moving around without ever building a scout ship . Their phasing missiles are also very effective.

TEC - Extraordinary armor. Research that thing to full, build some Kodiaks and heavy caps and watch the fun begin. You have more time to fight AFTER your shields drop than before with that research done, especially with the superstructure done as well.

The Advent have the most interesting abilities, but are also the weakest at general fighting. Without those abilities they'd be pushovers. From what I've seen TEC are the macro empire, the one where not microing and worrying mostly about your economy will win you the game, the Vasari are balanced, good microing goes a long way but you also want to macro a lot, advent need the most microing to be effective but when played right they seem overpowered because of their unique abilities.

Pretty good recap. This rings true.

I had the AI pull a massive swarm of guardians trick against me. Fortunately, my favored tactic involves several of the Vasari dreadnaughts with phase missile swarms. It was slightly annoying to take down, but not particularly dangerous.

ummm for Vasari you can just get a good group of subverters to disable the guardians. This makes them sitting ducks and disables all abilities. While they are disabled they are basically just floating pieces of steel. Its not impossible to beat the advent. you just need to find a good mix. Also the dreadnaught for the Vasari isn't the greatest, but its primary weapons are phase missiles so in the case of going against advent it is very effective. And again the subverters help because they increase the % that phase missiles will pass through shields by 20 or 25% im not sure which. If someone could cite that for me.

Subverters + Assailants would make a good anti-Advent main fleet with capital ships being Vulkoras Desolators and/or Antorak Marauders, and capital carriers.

Subverters would disable Guardians and give Phase Missiles a 25% accuracy boost. Assailants would fire long-range Phase Missiles delivering area-effect damage to help kill cap-ships and counteract the Illuminators' triple-laser attack.

Vulkoras would pound the Advent hard with lots of hard-hitting Phase Missiles.
Antoraks would Phase Out enemy cap-ships and give a speed boost to the Vasari forces.

And with the Vasari cap-carrier/s deploying Microphasing Auras, their bomber squadrons would be able to make rapid-fire Phase Missile strikes in considerably shorter times. With support from the Antoraks and the Aura, Vasari fighter squadrons would also get a considerable speed and agility advantage in battle vs. Advent fighters, so the smaller squads would also be much stronger squads, giving high kills-to-losses ratios.

Cielo cruisers is made for anti Advent. -25% to Mitigation owns them badly!

But for Vasari, upgraded phase missile assailant, target their support cruiser first. And as capital use the first ships with passive abiltiy to disrupt antimatter powers! This is important as facing advent will cause you to lose antimatter! The passive ability is great. Secodn choice woudl be the one with phase out! Phase out the motehrship so it doesn't use shield restorer and malice.

Can't advent just upgrade their armor and hp, and go for the armored cap ships against vasari? :3

The lasers and beams on the first advent cap ship are insane and it drains am, gains am from receiving damage.

Even fully armored Advent ships have less actual armor HP than a Vasari vessel, and while they can take out the enemies AM supplies very quickly, that won't stop the Desolater from pounding its target with phase missiles. Sure the ability won't work, but its main weapons are missiles too.

Sheesh. Just give up. You'll never beat the unity. Stop resisting and join us in the light.

OT: Kill the mothership first. It's your number one target. Ignore everything else but the mothership. The Advent progenitor is the king of its fleet and it holds everything together. Unless you're a missile dependant Vasari hack, you're not going to do any real damage to an Advent fleet until you down that sunovagun.

In fact, if you see more than one level 6+ mothership: all your base are belong to us.

You forgot excellent economy-of-force. One fleet can project itself almost instantly to wherever there's a built phase gate.

Regarding how you can counter Guardians from the TEC standpoint. Stock up on the light frigates, and research the anti-antimatter ability. They will eat right through the Iconus antimatter, leaving them useless.

Toss in a few Cielo Cruisers additionally in any anti-Advent fleet, as Astax mentioned. Their Focus Fire ability helps against the Advent's heavy shielding.

Doesn't the TEC light frigate have sabotage? I don't think it drains the antimatter, just hurts the target when they use it.

So the Cielo Command Cruiser and Stilakus Subverter are both Advent-killer cruisers - the Cielo focusing fire on shields to eat them away.

The Subverter, though, would be giving ALL Vasari weaponry a 25% boost in their chance to penetrate shields. So even their Flash Beams and Pulse Guns would be able to cut through once in every four shots, while Phase Missiles would be flying around as if there was nothing there to stop them at all. Kanrak Assailants would obviously take the role of staple 'infantry' frigates being stronger, better optimized, and longer ranged than Ravastra Skirmishers while taking less supply slots, being cheaper and quicker to build.

But what Capital ships the Vasari would bring is a slight problem. A Skirantra Carrier would be obvious for it's hull-repair service and defense against bombers. The Antorak Marauder would be a no-brainer because of Phase Out and it's portable Phase-Gate ability. The choice for a direct-combat cap-ship would between the Kortul Devastator and Vulkoras Desolator.

The Devastator would have a strikecraft squadron and it's Disruptive Strikes antimatter-killer ability at lower levels, would get Volatile Nanites at higher levels, and would have better armor, more defensive guns, a tougher hull, and stronger shields(all of which are normal characteristics of battleships).

The Desolator, on the other hand, would have Phase Missile Swarms at lower levels, a strikecraft squadron at higher levels, very strong siege capabilities, and a far stronger front-end Phase Missile attack.

It would kill Advent cap-ships in a blitz manner but get battered if something goes wrong. The Kortul would have a slower approach with much weaker Phase Missile armament and would need Subverter support to help get it's main Beam shots past Advent shields.



The Progenitor Mothership is actually quite lousy in it's own armament, with somewhat heavy broadsides and pathetic frontal armament, and worse shielding and armor than other Advent cap-ships. It would be focused on it's 3 abilities, and it would be easy for bombers(esp.), Assailants and Desolators to punch holes through it. Or it could get pounded by Disruptive Strikes to take out it's antimatter, or just be Phased Out of the battle and allowed back in when everyone else is dead or have run away.

PeskyFly: No one ever said anything about the Progenitor's armament. If you were worrying about that, well...

It's just that shield regen that should scare the pants off of you.

And as I mentioned earlier, unless you were a Vasari missile hack *points finger*, you're going to be facing fleets of big laser beams that don't take any losses while you suffer staggering amounts until you down it.

Is there something wrong with being a missile hack? I thought that was one of the general strategy for the vasari. Leaving it out kind of limits them.

Oh, nothing wrong with it. It's just annoying. Annoying. Like your whole misbegotten race of pansy cowards! I'm sure your ancestors must be real proud of you. ANNOYING ANNOYING ANNOYING! Gragh! Real alien men fight with laser beams!

*cough*

In all seriousness. As a prolific Advent player, I'll safely say that our only real problems in the later stages of the game come from Vasari missiles.