So what's the typical approach to dealing with crappy advent economies?

Well if im not mistaken, Advent can get an extra 40% resource income from their Trade Ports when they use Resource Focus. I think its a fairly expensive tech to research though.

Advent's biggest economic advantage is the use of the Progenitor Mothership's colonize ability that reduces upgrade costs significantly.  Since these population ('infrastructure') upgrades are so expenseive, it alone can give Advent an economic advantage over any race!

true  but some planet already come with a disscont. the advantege that advent have is there powerfulll culture u can get those towars eirly in the game next to your enemy planet with a a few towars your enemy will lose contrlo over the  planet

Advent eco is based araund the 20% culture bonus with allure of unity.

If you want insane credit income, you need to upgrade planets, and not rely soly on tradeports.

Also getting one of 4 mines ice and metal planets inside 90%++ allegiance range and dedicat it to concentradet exstraction will get you all the metal and ice you will ever need.

With advent, its possible to build make shift economy from just 2 civic labs.

You just have to use the progenitor with lvl 3 colonise, and upgrade all your planets cheep, then culuture them up.

TEC focusses on credits,  Vasari on recources

Advent are somewhere between,  however,  u can get around 90% of TEC credit income and 90% of vasari recource income, if u play smart

first of all,  Progenitor coloinze ability reduces infrastructure upgrade,  this is the best colonize ability in the game

secondly: advent have a tier 3 tradeport, means they can get credits pretty easily iit's also combined with a refinery.. if u bother upgrading it meaning u can save alot of logic slots by putting amassed  trade ports then switching them back and forth between cash and refinery (neeaat)

advent have easy-to-get culture buildings.. alot of peopel often ignore culture and use/think it as a form to take over planets,   

in fact  culture does alot of things,  1. increases planet's allegiance,  higher allegiance means more loyalty, means harder to overthrow ,  means more income $$$$ (prolly cheapest way of extra income, since u only need 1 center every 2 planets to get good spread (1 per planet if enemy is deploying its own culture tough)

2 increases antimatter regeneration   i bet u didnt know that one huh ?    and guess what,   advent love antimatter what nifty duo

3 if u invest on culture enough  you can put some serious strain on your enemy,  him having to deploy culture centers of his own or sending capital ships to prevent a loss of a planet

so,  to be honest, i've never made more combined income with TEC or vasari  then with advent,  guess the unity truly is unstoppable....

advent culture increas shield mitiagetion

TEC is AM reg and vasari is damage.

nub

And don't forget the Advent's tech that allows it to see anything in its culture.

Don't forget scrying, and you only need 3 temples for that.  Expert metal and crystal bonus are quite common, and also trade or population bonus.  Explore planet is so cheap when you have a level 2 colonize plus scrying. 

colo lvl 3 + scty lvl 2  = free artefact search

That's the TEC culture bonus. Advent ships gain increased shield mitigation when in their own culture (up to 6% more). Six percent may not sound like much, but consider this:

Frigate mitigation maxes out at 57% without any research/culture bonuses or penalties. A 100 dps weapon would then effectively do 43 dps.
An additional 6% increases this to 63%. The same 100 dps weapon would then effectively do 37 dps.
Ignoring other gameplay mechanics, if this frigate had 1000 combined hull and shield, without the mitigaiton bonus, it will survive 23.3 seconds, but with the mitigation bonus, its survival time increases to 27.0 seconds.

Allure of the Unity allows a 10% increase of overall income across an Advent empire, which compensates for the lack of upgrades to trade ships and a refinery.

I'm having a very similiar problem - I've just started palying Sins, and my first try was with TEC - I went all out economy and almost never had any problems with cash. But the advent ship design and voice acting cought my attention, I love the look and feel of the race and I'm struggeling to get a decent economy going without dying.

I'm playing a TEC AI and he's gone and set up a Frigate and Capital ship factory in a neighbouring planet group, he's got some hangers and Turrets to kill my stuff and a Kol somethign or another ship plus like 15 light frigates.

How do I get a decent economy going ? It's about 40 Minutes into the game, I've got 1 Planet + 1 roid. I've got about 3 Military and Civilian labs. I've researched all the population increases up to this point I could, as well as Getting illumiinator frigates and 3-4 levels of shield research + some laser and plasma research. How do I kick him off of my doorstep ? I can't expand to the other nodes on the map yet cause there's like 15-20 neutrals in each system - more than enought to maul my poor fleet of 10 ships. What do I do ? I need resources especially crystal and Credits - how do I make lots of it reasonably quickly ?

that's you problem, 40 min into the game you should have an empire.

the advent get 10% higher alligience = 10% hhigher income than other races, but it does not kick in until late game(last row of thing in the civillian reshearch tree-> allure of the unity) but advent are by no means week, a well designed fleet will loose almost no ships vs an AI

start out building the capship -> Progenitor Mothership - chooce level 1 colonize -> go get an astroid -> send it to a planet -> after 1-2 kills it'll level up choose level 1 shield restore --> laughat neutrals as you make an empire

I read teh title and thought first that we should vote for change and a bail-out.

Wrong forum. 

ROFL

Personally I will take my highest crystal producing planet and my highest metal and I will only place trade ports there and will have all run resource focus.  This can really pump out alot of metal and crystal and the additional allegiance through allure is quite nice for some extra credits. 

the new starbase can get your planet +30% alligiance + 10% with the tech allure of the unity + resource focus = extreme resource output

Stay away from generalizations about economy.  Sure each race is a bit different, but they are mostly the same.

Everyone loves the mighty TEC trade stations that are a tier 2 tech.  But the tier 3 advent trade stations are simply out of the question?  Doesn't make sense.  If you want a advent credit economy, build trade stations just like you would with TEC.

Reminds me of a 3v3 I played.  Large Multi Random map.  I noticed I was off in the corner by myself as Vasari, the only way anybody could reach me would be to fly through the pirate base (and thus, the only way I could get out was through the pirate base).  Also, the pirate base was near my allie, so they couldn't sneak in either.  LOL, to top it off, I was the only Vasari, and I had a nice assortment of neutrals on my side of the pirates.  (They can't sneak a colony through the pirate base, so those neutrals were uncontested the whole game.)

Our 3rd allie was alone in another system up against 2 enemies.  (You've seen this scenerio before.)  I started feeding him to help out, and building my own economy as Vasari.  The way things worked out, I never built a fleet, but just econ boomed and fed my allies the whole game.

I ended the game earning 128.0 credits per second.  My resource income was good as well, but not godly.  We obviously won.

   we're all about changing the economy

Hey Buttons - that was me as your 3rd ally - you were feeding me resources faster than I could spend it! With trying to micro two simultaneous battle fronts against the two enemies in that system - should've built more factories - that was the bottleneck for a while. As mentioned already, the Progenitor Mothership and spending points on her colonize ability is the key to getting your econ up and running in the opening game - then it depends on map and opponent's distance from you - obviously researching population increases on all planets and researching ice planet colonization and upgrading crystal production asap is important too I find.

Do people play mostly large games, 20+ planets? It seems the initial planet grab is over and action begins before I could really upgrade the progi... not to mention it wouldn't have time to colonize very many planets either. Not sure if most maps even have a planet with 4 resource asteroids - didn't regular ice/volcanic have just 3? And yeah Allure of Unity requires 8 civilian labs, I don't have room for those on my maps!

What is the point of using resource focus on metal only or crystal only planets - doesn't the bonus apply to both types, and output is dependent on number of extractors, allegiance, etc - not on whether the planet is all single resource type?

Could advent be better tuned to large/late game economies than the other races?

the other races face similar problems. In endgame with full fleets Advent becomes very hardcore but so does vasari, and a well played tec will just keep pushing.

but generally 8-10 worlds/astroids per player seems to be the most balanced/fun (imo)

the bonus applies to each exstraktor on the plant

4 mines with bonus gives more than 3.