TEC is kind of on the short end of the stick with the 1.04 patch. Their tough as nails early game, but their late game techs and support cruisers just don't stack up well against Vasari and Advent late game techs and cruisers. Most of an Advent fleet's real strength is in its capital ships, so focus firing and destroying them first are top priority. In particular, you cannot let an Advent opponent get a Radiance battleship to level 6.

The best strategy for TEC against the other two factions is to take the offensive early, and keep grinding on your opponent. You have to prevent him from getting his powerful late game technologies.

I'd advice taking them on early. If the Advent OR the Visari build and tech up, the TEC basically stands no chance unless you're playing an easy AI. This game has a ton of good characteristics but it still shares one that some people from Homeworld agree on...it is hard as hell to master this game.

TEC is all about rushing these days. But unfortunately, rushing won't work against a good player generally.

Advent really do have all the cards in their favor late-game, a well made and moderately micromanaged fleet can plow through the hordes of mis-matched Dark Fleet Vasari with almost no worries, the TEC are the early game power-house but fall flat about 2/3 the way through a game. The Advent have some excellent cap-ship abilities that synergise well: (Malice/Cleansing Brilliance, Animosity/Vengeance, Concentration Aura/Halcyon, Reverie vs. cap-ships) Economy is their only weakness, they're the only race that can't get a true refinery, but there aren't any limits on how many trade ports you can have on resource focus per-planet (2 ore/2 crystal desert planets with 8 ports running this way are fun )

Ty for all the helpful info. I was scathing the other day when i wrote these posts. Again thanks for all the constructive comments. If you were just being an ars>:fu

Amen!! My fleets consist primarily of Kols/Hoshikos/Cielos/Cobalts. I use maybe 12-15 lrms and maybe 10-12 HC's. The other guys are really all you need against any opponent if they are teched up (SR, DT, DB). Many don't realize that the Cielo's Embolden skill also adds 10% (in addition to 10% weapons cooldown and 2.5/sec shield regen)damage to standard weapons. When used in conjunction with Designate Target, you get (-25% mitigation which translates into about 57% more damage taken by the enemy) easily overwhelmed Advent shields. As is well known, Advent without their superior shields aren't very durable.

It took getting stomped by a Vasari fleet with nasty support ships to open my eyes about the Cobalt's Sabotage Reactor ability. When used in conjunction with the Hoshikos Demolition Bots you can shut down the support vessels of any opposing fleet.


Another ability that is under-used is Intercept (Kodiak). Intercept bypasses Repulsion, but like Designate Target/Sabotage Reactor/Demolition Bots, it is spoken about very infrequently because on the surface it sounds useless. Take 10-12 Kodiaks, group them with a number, then click on Intercept and target that cowardly Radiance hiding behind the Guardians. To add insult to injury use the 9000 range of the Cielo's Designate Target along with some Sova Heavy Bombers to help your Kodiaks take out that Radiance before the enemy can organize a reactionary force to combat your move.


Yet another under-utilized asset is the ability of the Dunov to employ the Flux field. Your Cielos/Hoshikos/Cobalts and Cap ships can keep using abilities all day long with this little number.

@Cassie intercept does not pass by repulse,

and thank Lord for the acknowledgment.

Late game advent is really powerful. Cielos and lots of hashikos should help, but i haven't played that many tec games into late game like that. And getting pwned by Advent in late game was the reason i switched to it way back when.

OMG just building HC's and LRM's and not getting the specials on my support cruisers cause the forum told me they sucked doesn't work the other faction must be op.

Both TEC and vasari can beat advent late game in fleet battles but in general it takes a little more micromanagement and a little more thought behind fleet comoposition. Add on to that the fact that you should be crushing the advent player econ wise and I dont see the problem. I've been playing advent since they became available and were generally regarded as the worst race, a few people figure out a couple of easy to micro advent abilities and boy does that page turn fast, my god you might actually have to learn to use the TEC and vasari specials that you've been overlooking cause everyone on the forum said they were worthless.

I don't know. Sabotage reactor sounds nice in theory, but it's mounted on a Cobalt which tends to die easily late game to HC's and LRM type frigates. Furthermore, the amount of micro required to make it work well is ridiculous. There simply isn't enough time to micro your cobalts into sabotaging the majority of the enemy's subverters before he stuns 2/3 of your fleet. That is one ability that has to be left to autocast, and I firmly believe the devs will be giving us an upgrade in the targeting AI at some point to make it more viable.

I'll grant you that demo bots is underrated. It's quite fun to use and lends itself well to autocasting, avoiding the nightmare of microing 2 dozen hoshikos. Designate Target is also a favorite of mine. In conjunction with Akkan's Ion Bolt, no enemy capital ship is safe.

People were complaining Advent sucked pre 1.04 because

1 - they had lousy late game tech (compared to RA and Novalith - if you ignore the price tag on the thing...)
2 - they couldn't very easily stop early rushes. If they get lrm spammed, they need to "counter" with defense vessels. However, the lrms would be able to bring down their cap and a lot of their infrastructure. Futhermore, it wasn't difficult to retreat the lrms because the defense vessels dealt low single target damage. Light frigates spam was also something they had no units to counter. LRMs + light frigs > disciples + defense vessels

Now that their illums are better, point 2 is basically gone now. Sure it takes 3 labs, but that's not difficult to tech rush to.

With all that said, Advent has always had the best late game fleet in the game. The trouble is that their late game fleet needs to stay together so that the units synergize with each other. RA players can attack multiple fronts bringing them down. TEC players... well, no one ever said TEC had great end-game. However, thanks to their econ, they could basically just spam HC's and also attack multiple fronts (but that tactic wouldn't be nearly as reliable as RA).

I still don't think they're overpowered. They can be beaten. You have to play strategically. Their strength lies in their ships synergies. Split up their fleet and they're not nearly as potent.

Repulsion is broken though. That much I agree with.

Frankly, I don't see the problem. Advent have a powerful endgame fleet, but since they have the weakest economy hands down, they'll have the hardest time teching and building it. So they just got as tough as you let them.

Klentrogen or anyone else for that matter , if you have replays where as TEC you beat advent end game could you pm me on the forums and I will give you a mail where you can send the replay to?

Would be appreciated. I actually like vasari, went TEC for 2 weeks solid and went vasari once and found my end game so much better. Didnt feel overpowered either. Im not saying advent are, just I hear so much about them and from the races Ive tried TEC seems to be the weakest.

I am not advocating balance changes just would like some TEC vs Advent replays where TEC beats advent end game with players of similiar skill, either that or if someone can link me to a replay as described thats compatible with the current patch it would be appreciated.

Thanks again all

no, which is why we've been saying it's completely broken and op. (see HuntingX's post)