How do you use Repulsion?

The secret is that you use ships that CAN hurt them.

Some people who like strikecraft will use repulsion to keep ships like light frigates and heavy cruisers from attacking their carriers. If you use repulsion to keep the badguys at a distance, that gives your interceptors and bombers time to do their job.

are strikecraft the only ships that can hurt ships effected by repulsion?

ugh double post

Illuminators are long range too. Granted, not as long range as strikecraft, but the final upgrade for their beam weapons is a range increase.

Is the benefit from repulsion really good enough to overcome how terrible Illums and carriers are?

Ilums are pretty good. They have turrets on three sides, so you need to position them in the middle of an enemy fleet to maximize their usefulness.

That's where Repulsion comes in! The guardians can push the enemy fleet all around and keep them away from the illums.

wait so if repulsion pushes them away, how are they still able to fire from three sides? Wouldn't moving them up close to have all three turrets firing defeat the purpose of repulsion?

No, Illuminators are crap now because their damage type is Capital, they're crazy expensive, and it's very difficult to focus fire with them because of the whole three laser thing. Guardians will help you get all guns firing, certainly, but you could do that before by running up close, so the Guardians don't really help the illum much. They do let it fight at max range, but it does about 1/3 of its damage that way, and gets outranged by other LRMs anyway.

You really can't use the argument that Guardians are good because they help illums because they merely make illums bad, instead of terrible.

I first thought repulsion was gonna be great. When you can knock your enemies around to wherever you want, you've got a lot of tactical options, keeping them away is only one.

Knock their carriers/LRMs into your own shorter-range things.
Push them away from the edge of the gravity well so they can't jump (mind you, if you push them while the phase window thing's already opening, it won't get interrupted - is this intended?).
Push half their fleet away so you only fight a small group at a time, reducing their ability to focus fire.
Scrunch them all up so cleansing brilliance or malice (or both :D) can damage more ships.
Move their fleet away from their tactical structures, so you can fight them without repair bays and turrets.
Etc.

In practice though, I found trying to do any of these things almost impossible to pull off due to the point-blank nature of repulsion, and the unwieldy maneuvering of Guardians. Better players than myself might be able to use them to their fullest, but for me, getting my Guardians to all spread around at just the right spots to push in just the right ways seems like way more micro than this game usually needs, and then if they're in a fleet they'll just move straight back anyway.

From my experience Repulsion is a strange, situational ability, but at times can be a life-saver (particularly for your important ships).

Guardians out of the box are a very important unit to an Advent fleet. Their ability to absorb damage for a fleet (and the Mothership's ability to easily replenish multiple Guardians shields) allows them to dramatically increase a fleet's survivability. So by default the Advent fleet should have Guardians around, and researching Repulsion isn't that expensive (except in Crystal, which it is very expensive in).

Repulsion (a T5 ability) comes a couple tiers after you can technically get Guardians (although getting Guardians at T3 is usually not a wise move, Advent doesn't have great damage dealers this early and doing Guardians would just set you back). But by the time you have Guardians, and can opt to get Repulsion, you'll often be going up against significant numbers of Heavy Cruisers as your enemy's main source of damage.

Repulsion allows you to chose how and when to fight Heavy Cruisers, as the ability can force Heavy Cruisers out of their effective weapon range. Focus fire from Heavy Cruisers is usually the biggest killer of my good ships in long games, so being able to see an important Capital Ship is at 30% of it's health and dropping, and simply flinging enemies away to repair and regenerate can be quite the asset.

There are other situations where they can be employed, live covering retreats, stalling an enemy (with carriers they can be a real pain sometimes), or using them to delay an enemy's phase jump.

I wouldn't use Repulsion to try to guard a Carrier fleet (although technically two Halcyons using Telekinetic Push and Guardians using Repel could be quite a pain to combat) because although you could buy immunity from almost everything the enemy uses (except LRMs) your own strikecraft will be very easily neutralized by a relatively small, cheap amount of Flak. So sure, your fleet would be almost untouchable unless the enemy brought back their own LRMs, but you wouldn't be able to do much damage either while they go around trashing your worlds. I also wouldn't try to use it with an Illuminator fleet, since Illuminators are significantly outranged by the other LRMs and the Guardians wouldn't be able to protect themselves (bsesides the Illuminators damage and price issues).

Overall, it's not an ability you go in to battle always expecting to use (I never have it on Autocast) but in the situations where it has use it can be a lifesaver. Good to giving you breathing room and help prolong the lives of ships in trouble, alone not really a battle winner (like most of Advent toys) but with the right fleet has it's uses.

That's my take on the little guys.

Repulsion is an incredible ability. If your micro'ing you can move push and focus fire down, your pushing part of his fleet away from u in a circle then moving straight towards the unit u want to kill, it dramatically decreases the dps on u by moving units out of range. They can also be used to delay an incoming force or clear out a jump area using repel. The key is to micromanage them and turn the auto cast off and only use it situationally, if not they will be blowing the shield when its not even being used and not have enough antimatter for repeated repulses. Its also a good idea to keep along a few disciples you can use the to restore the guardians antimatter and just keep repulses and occasional shields going. They are primary advent ship almost no fleet should be without.

Yes, to repeat what others have said...

They are great against heavy cruisers, because you can keep them away.

You do have to micro with the ability. You may not use it in every battle, but the chances are you'll have guardians anyway and Repulsion can be a lifesaver. Personally, I tend to use Illums and Guardians and when I hit t5, get Repulse and Deceptive illusions before upgrading to Heavy Cruisers.

I usually get Destra Crusaders before I start getting Guardians for this reason. And whatever we may think about the Advent's other vessels, my opinion is that the Destra Crusader is the best heavy cruiser in the game. Doesn't quite have as much hull as the Kodiak and doesn't have the nifty special ability of the Enforcer, but in terms of raw firepower it has the highest DPS of the three (at least that's what I've observed) and certain auras Advent capitals get further increase its DPS. And while it's not a cheap vessel, the amount of DPS in relation to its cost is very favorable.