Advent Capital Ship Abilities

from Sins Forums
I've played mainly as the Advent, because they best fit my playing style. Here are my observations on their capital ship abilities so far:

Radiance Battleship
Detonate Antimatter: Quite a good ability, can deal a fair amount of damage when leveled up. Useful for depleting    antimatter stores on enemy ships.
Animosity: An ability useful during the early game, when you need the Radiance to draw fire from your weaker frigates. I have found little use for it late game, except used with the Rapture's Vengeance.
Energy Absorption: I have found that this is quite useful in keeping your Radiance alive. At level 3, this converts 15% of all damage done to your Radiance into antimatter, which also lets you use abilities more often. This is great if used with the Revelation's Guidance, which reduces ability cooldowns. It also gives a boost to armor, which the Advent are lacking in.
Cleansing Brilliance: A very good level 6 ability, doing a lot of damage when used at the right time. If used in conjunction with the Progenitor's Malice, this can wipe out entire enemy fleets. However, with the changes made to Malice in patch 1.05, this requires careful timing.

Revelation Battlecruiser
Reverie: A  good ability that disables all weapons and abilities on an enemy ship, with a good 40 second duration at level 3. If enough damage is done to the target though, it will be shaken out of its "trance".
Guidance: A good ability only when you have multiple capital ships in a fleet. This can let them use abilities more often by reducing their cooldown.
Clairvoyance: A good spying tool, with a decent 150 seconds duration at level 3. However, a careful opponent can spot the "eye" above their planet, so be careful when using this to plan attacks.
Provoke Hysteria: Another great level 6 ability that can destroy enemy planets very quickly but the duration is rather short in my opinion. However, this ability's duration carries on even after you destroy an enemy colony and colonize it. I have accidentally destroyed some of my own colonies because if this, so be careful.

Progenitor Mothership
Colonize: Pretty self-explanatory, comes with a reduction to structure build time and planet upgrade costs.
Malice: A super power in my opinion, it spreads damage to all ships within range. Can increase your fleet's damage by over 300% in long battles. This can destroy entire enemy fleets if used with the Radiance's Cleansing Brilliance.
Shield Regeneration: Good for keeping your ships alive.
Resurrection: A good ability for players who find themselves losing high level capital ships; it lets you bring a lower level one back up to that level.

Halcyon Carrier
Telekinetic Push: Good if your opponent has lots of strike craft, this pushes them away from your ships along with doing some damage to them.
Adept Drone Anima: A so-so ability, increasing the number of drones in each squadron.
Amplify Energy Aura: Another super power. This decreases the weapon cooldown on all energy weapons (which are the only ones the Advent use), in other words increasing the DPS of all ships within range.
Anima Tempest: Another so-so abiltiy, sends extra strike craft to fight for a while.

Rapture Battlecruiser
Vertigo: Quite a good ability, increases weapon cooldown on enemy ships and reduces their chance to hit.
Vengeance: A powerful ability that can retaliate 120% damage at level 3. Very powerful if used with the Radiance's Animosity.
Concentration Aura: Good only if you have a lot of strike craft, this increases their damage if within range.
Domination: Not worth the antimatter cost in my opinion, this permanently brings an enemy frigate under your control.

All comments and opinions are welcome. If there is anything I have missed out, let me know and I will edit it. I would be curious to know how these abilities compare with those on TEC and Vasari capital ships. 
strategy
13,969 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
One note, the Progenitor's colonize ability is actually a percent reduction on planet upgrade cost, not structure build time.

With 1.05, I've found malice to be almost utterly useless. I mean, I see the effect, but it certainly doesn't seem worth it to me anymore. Still, shield regen is invaluable early game, and the colonize ability is useful too. I still use this as my first capital ship.

Now for my second, normally I'd have gotten a Radiance for the malice + CB combo, but I've yet to pull off a successful one since 1.05 and I don't really feel that CB is a good enough ability on its own to have paired with a Progenitor. I may consider a Radiance + Rapture, since vengeance is getting a boost in 1.1, and strike craft are probably going to be a lot more prevalent with the carrier boost.

More likely, I'm going to get a Halcyon now as a second capital. The ROF aura has always been good, but since I expect to see more carriers, telekinetic push just got a lot more appealing as well.

Does anyone know if vengeance affects strike craft? It seems to me that the damage to HP ratio on bombers means that they'd die pretty quickly after hitting a lvl3 vengeance'd target. If this is indeed the case, I may go Halcyon + Rapture, with guardians and drone hosts for repulse. (of course plus flak and an illuminator screen as applicable). I think another thing it comes down to how capable a Halcyon is of surviving a massed bomber swarm, with vengeance and telekinetic push working...

I dunno, all theory for now. We'll see if the boost to carriers actually makes them good enough to be the main strike force.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Oh, one more thing, concentration aura is used on the hosts, but does amplify energy aura apply to hosts as well, or does it have to be in the thick of it for the strike craft?

...on second thought, the strike craft cooldown is determined more by their flight paths than the actual weapon cooldown itself, isn't it...
Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I believe that Amplify Energy Aura directly affects the strike craft, not their carriers. Otherwise, you could pack all your carriers together, move in your Halcyon, and in effect boost the damage of all your strike craft. This just does not seem logical to me, but does anyone know for sure?

About Malice, I do admit that its effects have been reduced greatly in 1.05. However, I have been in really long battles using other capital ships, but once I bring a Progenitor in, my fleet just seems to mop the enemy up. I don't know if this is because of Malice, or something else.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Animosity: An ability useful during the early game, when you need the Radiance to draw fire from your weaker frigates. I have found little use for it late game, except used with the Rapture's Vengeance.


How do you use Animosity "with" Vengeance, given that you are drawing fire AWAY from the one you want to reflect damage? Only possible way I can think of is using the ability to take the heat off the Rapture after it's taken serious damage so it can get away.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Animosity forces everyone to attack your Radiance. Revenge causes all those ships being forced to attack to take 120% of the damage they inflict.

Do you see?
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Oh, now I do. The part I was missing was that I thought revenge was a cast-on-self-only ability.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I tested Amplify Energy Aura, and found that it actually affects the carriers, not the strike craft themselves. In other words, you could just gather all your carriers within Amplify Energy Aura's range, and boost the damage of all your strike craft.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Dead on man. Great post. I do have one clarification to make. The Battleship's armor ability does two things. Raises the ship's armor and converts a percentage of damage taken to antimatter. I know it's called energy absorbtion but this passive buff applies to any damage the ship takes.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks Raging Amish. Energy Absorption's description is misleading, because it says the ability converts a percentage of energy attacks only, not all attacks. I have edited the post to fix this.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Also note that you aren't really getting a tough capship with energy absorption, since that ship begins with weak armor. Getting absoption upgrades merely brings the armor back up to what it should be for a cap of that class.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I have to disagree Manty.

Level 1 Kol and Level 1 Devastator: Armor 5
Level 1 Radiance: Armor 4.5

Not too much of a difference. The radiance has better abilities imo, especially if you couple animosity with vengeance and energy absorbtion. I'm not calling the Kol or Devastator's abilities bad, cause they aren't by a long shot, but I think the Radiance abilities win here.

All caps can be helped by the early health point upgrades.

TEC focus on armor and its upgrades, so I'd expect the Kol's armor to be superior (and it ups faster, .45 per level compared to the D and R which each get .4 per level)

The Radiace gets the shield bonuses. Higher shield total and shield regen rate. Couple that with the Guardian shield bubble and shield regen from the mothership. Not to mention upped shield mitigation from upgrades and culture. With all that, yeah, it's a damn tough cap ship, cause you'll never see a radiance alone without some sort of upgrade.

Course....you'll never see a standalone kol or Devestator. In the end, Advent synergy makes it tougher than it's counter-parts.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top


Great post.

Which combination of abilities work best with the Advent.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
General_Fear, I think these are the abilities most people agree work together:

Malice + Animosity + Vengeance

Malice + Cleansing Brilliance (requires good timing)

Guidance + Any other capital ship

Resurrection + Any other capital ship (this is just a safeguard in case another capital ship gets destroyed)

Amplify Energy Aura + Any other ships

Concentration Aura + Carriers

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
im confused does Concentration Aura have to have the carriers or the strike craft to be in the aura to be affected. also same with the amplify energy aura
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Styrofoambullet, as said above, Concentration Aura affects the strike craft through their carriers. Therefore, you can gather all your carriers together, move in your Halcyon, and boost the damage of all your strike craft, even if they themselves are outside Concentration Aura's range.

Amplify Energy Aura affects all ships directly. I am not sure if it affects strike craft, but I don't think so.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

Stupid noob question here. Ready?

To exploit the Advent ship abilities, I have to stay close to the ship that fires the ability. Right? For example, the Mothership has shield regeneration so I have to stay close to the mother ship in order to get the benefit.

What about timing. Does that come into play when playing Advent.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Yes, you must stay close to the cap ship. If you zoom out and put your cursor over the ability of that capship, a circle should pop up showing you the radius it affects. I'm almost certain that does the trick, but if not then press alt too. That shows everything.

Timing is crucial for some abilities. Shield regen should be fired when a ship is about to die to prolong it's life. Malice + cleansing brilliance has to be so carefully timed that it has lost most of it's value.

Animosity and Vengeance must be fired together as well. It's a good idea to hit the battleship with vengeance first, then fire off animosity.

Some stuff is passive though. The Halcyon's aura and the Support cap ability that makes strikecraft stronger is also passive.

As a rule of thumb, strike craft only feel passive auras when the carrier is in the radius of the source of that aura.