I've played Vasari online 5 times and have I yet to lose. I also try to take my opponent out as soon as possible, however, RA is not the way to go. Even the fastest RA rush, assuming you want to have some kind of a defense force, is too slow when you're playing against someone like myself.

If speed is what you're looking for, then get assailants. You only need a handful, plus your cap ship, and if the map is small enough (usually is) go attack their home planet. Take out any kind of tech stations they have. If their fleet is too powerful (doubtful this early) then run away and come back in a 2 / 3 mins.

The way to win is by keeping your opponent down while you tech up. Don't worry about RA.

The thread title could also be entitled : how to cripple your gameplay the fastest. At best your turtling. At best.

1. buy 100 (or 200) crystal
2. build 4-8 scouts (map size dependent)
3. build queue: shipyard, crystal, metal, metal
4. build capital ship, whatever you want, i prefer kortul or carrier (repair cloud)
5. explore your starsystem and look for uncolonizables to capture the metal and cristal excavators
6. invade nearby asteroid
7. if you really want to rush, scuttle capital ship factory
8. build 1 weapons lab,
9. research assailants and volcanic/arctic, whatever you encounter first
10 build imperial labs until planet slots are full, continue building imperial labs on your colonized planets/asteroids (dont upgrade slots IMO wasted money/crystal)
11. by now you should have captured some or most of the excavators through the galaxy, if you have money problems, use the black market! always balance your metal/crystal/money
13. stop with your 5th imperial lab, research phase gates, then continue to build imperial labs
14. now you should build phase gates so they can collect antimatter until you finished researching

rest should be clear, continue the way you want to, i havent figuered out what to research after dd2, i guess it's your choice

always have a small fleet of assailliants and your cap ship (of course a migrator if you dont build the evacuator

if you play with pirates, it could get ugly with a very small fleet, i prefer non pirate maps

after 20 minutes you should have your first dark armada research (depends all on found cristal/metal extractors and spawn luck)

additionally you can research the +xx% crystal/metal extraction and trade ports

lots of macro managing btw to capture the excavators, and micro managin to keep them alive, always keep your scouts moving if there are enemy ships in those sectors, you can outrun pretty much ever random spawn, just make some waypoints (across the whole gravity well, because they are suck in changing directions)

i guess i do a lot of things too but i consider them basics, so i may have forgotten some things

Ghley

Usually I just play normally and start teching to RA after I strike a decisive victory against my opponent, such as defeating his fleet. If you can't kill him in one go, retreat and keep a scout around, and consolidate and tech while he licks his wounds, and send harassments at him to keep him off balance.

you need all the free excavators you can get, the vasari scouts can colonize them but it takes lots of time with only 2 scouts, believe me you get much more out of those scouts than you can imagine

Ghley

And HuntingX and I beat him 2v2 using an RA rush strategy. RA can be very potent.