Sorry, but I all ready made a post just like yours, called "Best Capital Ship", just put it in the search section in the upper right hand con. There is around 57 post, the last time I looked, and they should be able to answer your question.

Thougth for me, an Vasari player, I go with the Kortul Devastator hands down

I like each of the TEC cap ships but for different reasons.

The Kol Battleship has bar none the greatest firepower and durability in the fleet and is the best bet for going toe to toe with another enemy cap ship. Its level 6 ability is a nice buff that gives the ship significant staying power in a protracted battle. This ship is the most independently powerful ship and will be my ship of choice in a rush game where I only intend to ever build 1 ship.

The Sova Carrier is a much more specialized ship, in my opinion, but its extremely good at its job. It might be the best ship in the game for economic harassment. Embargo is an absolutely amazing ability and combines very well with a ship that can load itself to bear with bombers and blow up enemy resource extractors easily while leeching tax income. The Sova can provide reasonable fleet support as well if you emphasized heavy fighters and the missile batteries instead, but I feel that this is not the ship's best role. The biggest weakness of the ship in my opinion is its incredibly poor level 6 ability.

The Akkan Cruiser is very good and I use it as my first cap ship in many games (almost any game that isn't an outright rush game). Facilitating early colonizing is always good, but most importantly I find it crucial to have this ship around later in the game to be able to capture territory near the frontlines (after nuking an enemy asteroid base for example) and build up a forward fleet base with repair bays and frigate factories. The Ion Bolt power is crucially important in taking out enemy cap ships as well. The targetting aura can be a critical advantage in LRM vs. LRM spams, but I still think its the least powerful ability on the ship. The level 6 power, Armistice, isn't always useful but sometimes its a total lifesaver either for getting your fleet away in-tact or if you use it carefully you can disable enemy ships with it and then jump in the rest of your fleet to raid the rest of the system unopposed.

The Dunov Cruiser has one critically important, but highly specialized ability. The EMP bomb is the only real anti-matter draining ability in the entire TEC arsenal and is in my opinion by far the best bet for dealing with enemy repair support cruisers (Iconus Guardians, Hoshiko Robotics Cruisers, and Serevun Overseers). I don't think Magnetize Hull is worth anything at all, you should just use Flak frigates instead. Shield Restore can be decent but most opponents will just fire on the Dunov first and since it can't restore its own shields this doesn't really help you absorb damage at all. The level 6 power that reduces your anti-matter costs is very strong in a long fight, particularly if you've got something like a Kol or Marza that can spam a high damage/low cooldown ability.

The Marza is a favorite ship of many but I don't use it as much as alot of people do. For pure firepower I prefer the Kol. The Marza has similar (or even slightly more) DPS as a Kol and longer range but it isn't as durable and its a little bit slower. This is a nice ship though and all of its abilities are good. The Radiation Bomb does a HUGE amount of damage, more than most people realize since as best as I can tell the damage completely ignores shield mitigation (someone correct me if I'm wrong). The Rad bomb can devastate clumps of enemy LRMs with frightening efficiency. The sige guns are great for blasting asteroids but not much else. Still, thats a worthy task and if you want to bomb planets fast a single Marza is infinitely better than any number of Siege Frigates you could build.

I think most people probably go with the Kol or Marza as their first ship just because of the firepower, which is a perfectly good reason. Personally I like to build new capital ships throughout the game and utilize each one for its intended purpose. I like a Kol + Akkan working together in my main fleet, often joined by a Marza towards the end of the game where blowing up big clumps of enemy ships becomes more important. Sometimes I'll build a Sova first though and just try to embargo the enemy into the ground. If your opponent is slow in researching appropriate counters (such as Flak Frigates) you can catch them helpless and win almost automatically. The ship I use most rarely is the Dunov, but I like it quite a bit against Advent in particular where the EMP bomb is priceless.

Halycon, Progenitor, Radiance

Haly has +22% dps aura and an insane amount of strike craft, not to mention the ability that pwns enemy strike craft.

Progenitor can colonize and has aoe invulnerability aura(at least close enough to it), oh and auto levels your replacement caps if one of your other caps dies.(haven't actually seen this work yet, but putting it on autocast seems to cast it whenever a cap dies in the game period, not just your own :/) and of course, malice, which is, imo, a bit over rated, but extremely useful all the same.

Radiance has animosity(aggro rotation ftw) detonate antimatter(disabling enemy abilities is always useful + dot!), and lets not forget the BFG, cleansing brilliance, if aimed right you can take out 3/4 of someones fleet in 2 shots. Radiance is also the highest DPS cap in the game, and is tough as hell, especially when you've got a progenitor sitting around.

Probably not the most significant reason to choose a capship...

Then again, I used to choose Admiral Hawkes in Conquest: Frontier Wars just to hear him say "Well now, look who's coming to dinner!" in that proper-like English accent whenever enemy ships entered the system.

Well, that and he was good with missile cruisers which were wtfawesome in the early game.

I enjoy the Radiance battleship, specifically for its animosity ability. It can save you a lot of money on frigates you otherwise would have lost had the battleship not taunted the enemy units off of them. Even in large fleet engagements it seems to hold up for an exceptionally long time. Of course like all Advent ships it's exponentially better the more ships you have backing it up.

Haha, funny tactic!

I really need to work on my capital ships skills because I don't use them at all except for the free one.

I've been winning multiplayer games just fine without capital ships. Of course, I mostly play quick 1vs1 games which last about 2 hours.

Best to start out with for the TEC is the Marza. The beastliness is only amplified by the presence of a Dunov

I dont get it! How do you know this? (that "shield restore" does this? - restores for other ships). It's not in the manual and the in-game info just says "shield restore". How do you find out what that means? (I'm not doubting what you say - just wondering if there's something that I'm missing).

Actually, I find that I prefer adaptive forcefield. When the Kol's shields get low, fire up adaptive forcefield, if it's level 6 use Finest Hour, use an accompanying Dunov to recharge it's shields, and have your Cielos and Hoshikos use their hull repair and shield regen buffs on it. With this set up it's effectively invincible. It can soak up the entire enemy fleet's fire and just keep shooting back. Run her right down the middle of the enemy formation so she can fire all her guns simultaneously at as many enemies as possible. While they're spending their firepower trying to destroy your Kol, the rest of your fleet is eating their fleet for breakfast.

Only weakness is that the Dunov is kind of a soft target as far as caps go. If they get wise to that, then use two Dunovs. One can shield recharge the one that's being focus fired on and also re task your support cruisers to buff it's shields and hull. The Dunov that's being focus fired will having staying power and it can use its abilities to buff up your Kol, or use EMP charge to knock out the other guy's anti matter.

Kol / Dunov and Kol / 2 Dunovs is very potent for the TEC.

https://www.sinsofasolarempire.wikia.com/wiki/Embargo

Embargo is a capital ship ability of the Sova Carrier. You use it on an enemy planet, and it takes income away from the planets owner and gives it to you instead ("leeching").

Thanks Tridus. That's what I'm looking for. (Sorry to be a pest.)