Nice! Advent is a force to be reckoned with!

Ya, Illuminator is slick now. The drone host nerf is questionable, BUT I noticed astroids now have 3 extractors instead of 2. And those gas planets have 3 also. So that sort of balances things out a bit. A big plus is the black market, its much better.

One thing that still bothers me is LRMs. Drones do counter them, but they are so fragile that they are easily picked off.

Oh yea! I love the new resource setup they have for the planets. 4 cystals on an ice planet!



The LRMs are not a problem. The Defense Vessel for Advent and the Junsurak Sentinel seem to work well for me against the LRMs. They have heavy armor and the LRMs have light armor. These flak units do 100% damage vs LRM light armor while the LRM inflicts 75% damage vs the heavy armor of these flak frigates. This spreadsheet explains this very well Google Apps Ship Spreadsheet

Just like the game manual says "Single Defense Vessels are weak, but used in large numbers or as an escort group, they can be a force to be reckoned with".

Some people prefer to use fighters against LRMs, but I normally just stick with the flak frigates.

But Advent was already a force to be reckoned with... Build a bunch of guardians, disciples, and then a pair or triple of capital ships and you're just about unstoppable. Having those guardians around effectively turns the enemy's shots into blanks when you consider the 57% (depending on ship) shield mitigation and then the 33% damage reduction on top of that. If you sit there and micromanage the battle you can keep a guardian shield on at all times and prevent your ships from leaving its radius. The drone host change and the illuminator change really don't have much of an impact.


I do have to agree that the new resource placement is better. I saw some asteroids with 3 resources and some with 4. The new black market is also a little less friendly. For me it seemed like buy prices were sitting around 480 credits for crystal or metal and selling prices were around 220 or 230. Personally, that change caught me off guard since I'm prone to shifting around resources early on.

maybe, but now there is absolutely no reason for anyone to complain about Advent.



You're out of your mind. As TEC, I had to build Kodiak Heavy Cruisers to counter my opponent's Illuminator spam. That wasn't the case before, especially now that the Illuminator is an antimedium ship.

Yeah, the Illuminator's front cannons do WAY more damage now, and they're more survivable, with Antimedium attack type. How won't that have an impact?

Kruelgor: As the sheet says flak have anti very light damage. In the patch this damage type has been nerfed to do 75% versus light instead of the previous 100% (which isn't in the sheet yet).
So the flak are actually a little worse vs LRM now then they were before.
And there is the whole point of why the heck flak (anti strike craft vessels!) should counter LRM at all. It just makes no sense ...

Anyway, flak are of cause still the best thing to do against LRM and in fact they are the only possible thing to do - except maybe strike craft harass, it will be interesting to see if the LRM speed nerf will really help there and I can't say much about that. But flak have not been buffed or anything against LRM, the contrary actually.

By the way as TEC you can simply get LRM yourself to keep up with the illumintors But heavy cruisers do of cause also help.

Oh wow. I didn't realize that. Thanks for letting me know.



You're right. I see that now.

Yeah, I fail to understand why flak is a good counter against LRM's, but I'll take it. =D I play as TEC and I still think the Advent are the weakest faction in a balanced game. The TEC and Vasari will completely wipe them late game with TEC's uber economy, and Vasari's "Experimental units." I came from SupCom:FA because of really poor support from devs, so I still refer to units in that sense, somewhat. Advent do have some nice synergy going on with their units, but overall TEC is still the strongest faction.

I've been singing this song about advent since they released the patch notes way back when. I really do love 1.04, since i've been soley Advent, and this patch just basically buffs me.

I just started playing...

Did they really need a buff? It seemed to me that they are a late game race. If you can hang on until you research the high end armor upgrades and the gaining experience while sitting around skill, its game over for your opponent.

Then again, I havent played multiplayer yet and I could see the strategy would be to jump advent early because they are significantly less powerful and increase power much more slowly.

Jump advent early is an understatement. Everyone targets me early anyway because of games played, but ouch, being targeted every time because you're advent is harsh.

I fixed that for you, Kruelgor.

leadhead, there shouldn't be such a thing as a "late game race". Across all tiers, all races should be equally potent, just potent at different stuff. In 1.03, the Advent were a gamble to survive the first 20 minutes, and then they started to rule. In 1.04, they just rule. Nothing compares to Progenitors with Guardians and Light Frigs...

Hitting strike craft doesn't take much punch, just accuracy.

So when you hit a virtually unarmored LRM, you don't need a lot of punch, and the accuracy is just gravy

I like the balance. However, I don't know too much about the late game phase since my online games typically last 2 hours or less.

Progenitor with level 3 shield, Guardians with extra shields and infinite antimatter... Invincibility. Use whatever offensive ships you chose to. Hell, use Defense Vessels to take down Caps, you have the time...

I see its definately what I would do.

If that is the intended design of the game, then I can see that the buff is definately needed.

That setup is the way I go as well with one exception. If I am an opponent with TEC, I think I could win with an equal number of robotics cruisers and (not good with the names yet) that big thumper battleship + equal number of frigates. The progenitors are awesome ships, but it seems they do not deliver enough firepower to make your opponent pay when he decides to take his time and snuff out the guardians then go for the throat. They need to be screened by something like (is it the radiance? the damage dealer, first ship to the left in the queue). If it is much later in the game, I dont go anywhere without those heavy cruisers (all the way to the right in the cruiser queue 5 or 6 of them is a can of woop ass)

Then again, I havent been playing long so there are probably alot of actions that I havent learned how or when to do in the battle.

If I came across a strong shielded fleet such as this then I would concentrate on attacking your infrastructure, structures, mines, planet bombardment, etc. I would just skip past trying to kill the mothership and attack your planets instead.

Question for you Advent guys, what would be the best defense to set up for your choke points? I have all my tacticals filled there, but I'm talking fleet. Right now I'm in a huge 102 planet game with 9 AIs and I'm getting attacked in 3 different spots by large forces. What would be the best fleets(ship makeup) to leave at these 3 spots?

It depends what you're facing. I would say put illums around a regen chamber with a couple iconis guardians and some other stuff, but if you're talking about heavy cruisers coming at you, then you need to match wit HCs, even though illums now actually hurt heavy cruisers.

I have 2 cap ships and 10 destras at each point. Trying to figure out what else to leave there. I'm being attacked my TEC and Advent fleets. Sorry to hijack this thread btw with questions.

For me, I like to build 2 to 3 frigate factories at my choke points and guard them with a dozen or so plasma turrets. I build this mob of mess closest to the planet surface so to provide planet defense too.

I personally do not like hanger defenses and find them ineffective.

Well sacra sounds like ur in a mid-lategame scenario so i would say add iconis, and illums. have them stand ground around a regen chamber

I use lots of heavy cruisers and shield cruisers and long range frigs for cheap firepower with heavy defense frigates to take out strike fighters and they are a cheap way to add something for your opponent to gnaw on for a long while.

But for defense, the key is protracting it out as long as you can to win. Use a nearby planet as a staging ground. Build a frig factory, battleship factory, and 3 or 4 repair stations. What you are going to do is retreat your battleships as they get low on health and park them next to your repair stations on your staging planet. They will heal quickly and you start a relief cycle retreating low health ships and sending in repaired ships. As you accumulate resources, you build the ships you need and send them in

I've always liked playing Advent every since I got this game. I'm thrilled about the changes to the illuminators.