Starting out with Vasari (In multiplayer)

The only real tactic is to avoid teching up in the civilian tree and just got for the assailants and enforcers early game to have a larger military to defend yourself and then worry about your economy.

Teching up to ice planets is suicide in a game in many situations. 2v2 on Tempest is a prime example of this. You have a dessert world right next door, and the potential of a terran world just next to that. You have at least 2 roids nearby to colonize. 2 roids + desert planet, or even just 1 roid and the desert planet is plenty for a while.

8 assailants fits into the initial 50 supply cap though. This means that you never upgraded beyond this and you just didn't build more ships. It might seem like fun to blow all your income on trade ports and ice planets and such. But on a map in which your opponent is only three or four jumps away you will be dead long before you make your money back (16 minutes to get back the investment on a trade port, lord knows how long on an ice planet. And that's not even considering lab and research costs). Instead get 2 or 3 new planets/roids and then jump up to the next fleet cap. Keep pumping out ships and start attacking your opponent making sure to queue your reinforcements to rally on your enemy. Try and hit his mining platforms and focus on his frigates and not his cap ship. Build a repair bay at your closest colony (ideally one jump away from one of his colonies) and retreat injured frigates there. Either he will have wasted money on civi research and you will crush him, or he will have been building his military and you will have a good fight. Remember to avoid tunnel vision and continue to place down weapons labs so that you can get enforcers.

I have some questions about this strategy.

So, if I'm not supposed to research Ice Planets, then I'm guessing I'm not supposed to research volcano planets either?

If so, usually I end up having to cross a volcano planet or ice planet to get to a desert planet, taking hits along the way.

Then, when I DO get to a desert planet, it's usually defended by kodiaks which tear apart my assailants.

So am I supposed to have my fleet wander around looking for asteroids rather than take volcano or ice planets?

Also, how many planets does the strat work on?

I mean, what's the limit before you switch to an economic strategy? 30 planets? 40? More?

More specifics in general on this would be helpful.

Thanks again!

I usually start out by making a small force of basic frigates (probably 5 basics and 5 assailants) ad then heading to the planets that are one or two jumps away maximum - if they happen to be volcano or ice, I research the tech and grab them anyways while upping their civ infrastructure at least 1 level. After i have about 4 planet at 15 mins into the game, i focus on getting a choke-point and then lay out the research labs to get weapon ups and the enforcers.

A similar thing happened to me last night. If your opponent has got a fleet that fast you can bet it is by focusing solely on those techs and he won't have expanded much if at all.

The trick is to keep an eye on your enemy at all times to see what he's up to. If he is pulling that "rush" strategy, figure out what ships he's planning to rush with and build some counter-ships to that rush (in this case - fighters and bombers?). Also consider ambushing his homeworld (or wherever he's built the labs he needs) and killing a bunch of his labs or frigate factories - he'll lose the ability to build the cruisers.

As for desert worlds protected by Kodiaks - use your cap ship to wipe them out. In my last game I saw a cap ship all on its own managed eventually to wipe out a two-kodiak plus other frigate desert world (though it was nearly dead by the time the fight finished).

At least that's what I plan to do next time to avoid getting rush killed!

The problem with using fighters/bombers against heavy cruisers though is it doesn't really work.

If I had gotten transporters, his heavy cruisers would have rushed them and torn them to shreds.

The only thing I can think of to counter them is subverters, and if I'm going that far into the research tree I might as well just get heavy cruisers of my own!

My strategy is very similar to Talnoy's, and it got utterly decimated by the heavy cruiser rush. This guy was a pro, or something. By the time I had finished researching ice planets and getting trade centers, heavy cruisers were showing up on my door pounding my face in.

Running past him would have been pointless, as he could simply have built more heavy cruisers at his home base and killed my counter offensive. (Assailants and Light Frigates do not work vs. heavy cruisers).

I suppose scouting would help to a point, but against this kind of thing I think it's a matter of fighting fire with fire. Knowing that 12 heavy cruisers are coming for you won't help very much if you have no counter for them.

actually once you hit the 20 mark with transports youll destroy an equal cost kodiak fleet unless your opponant has flak. it takes 20 vasari bomber wings 1 pass to kill a kodiak. However it only takes about 10 flaks to counter any amount of bombers.

If they haven't built flaks couldn't your transporters just keep running from the Kodiaks indefinitely? How about trapping them in a system (at least for a little while) using a jump inhibitor and building several hangars there?

Answer: No. HCs can outrun carriers by 20%, and accelerate faster to boot.

To the OP: You spent your money on economy, and he spent his on fleet size and prototypes. Going for trade as Vasari is a very expensive proposition, as you need to build 4 Imperial Labs before you can even buy the tech, then 750 credits for the trade ports themselves, to say nothing of the metal and crystal. Is it any suprise, then, that he could have built 5 weapon labs and researched the long range frigate and heavy cruiser prototypes, plus a single fleet upgrade?

Had you simply spent your own money on skirmishers and assailants, plus a second frigate yard, you might have beaten him to the punch. Certainly going to his home system and popping a couple military labs would have curtailed his plans, and given you the breathing space you need.

Hmm.. It would be handy to have ship speeds, accelleration and turning speeds in the master spreadsheet. Is there a reference with that info in it? How did you know the ships speeds dieinafire?