Postmortem analysis - your input is requested

Rofl you bit the dust cause of the Hoshi's.

Hoshi's jam your ship weapons if he had 30 your 20 enforcers where screwed bigtime while the hoshi's also heal his ships.
Also your subverters where probebly picked off by the enemy sc before they could really do anything descent, right? Only bring in subverters when you have airsuperiority.
Get overseers before you get enforcers you'll see overseers do wonders.
That many dunovs are a question too me too they probebly used magnitize too kill your SC and restored shields but 5 dunovs is something i've never seen in an online game before.
If you trully want airsuperiority get a skarintra carrier and put your sc on local area so they stay close. Skarintra can pull sc into phase space for a short time and also heals sc.

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik

Yeah, with that many Hoshi's you won't even scratch a cobalt. He'd repair ships like crazy. Dunovs would help with that as well. I'll agree with the magnetize ability on your strike craft. But the 'weapons disabled' clue is the best one. Most of your ships were just sitting there defenseless, getting beaten up while his cobalts and SC worked them over. One reason you've never seen this is most TEC players don't go for the Hoshi upgrade that allows the disabled weapons. They leave it on 'auto-repair' and let them manage themselves.

On the surface, it doesn't look that scary. So, you attacked what seemed to be the threat ( Caps, and SC ), and ignored the real threat, the weapon disabling Hoshis.. Which left you defenseless for the cobalts and SC. I wonder if it would have worked better with a few Kol's ?

An interesting technique, and one we'll probably all be seeing a lot more.

Would have worked better with Kolls, as far as I know magnetize is crap compared too flak burst. So I repeat I don't see the use of 6 dunov's and no other caps.

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik

You can't do the Skirantra cluster trick against Dunovs, because they'll magnitize the Skirantra.  Like most anti-strike craft abilities, the only real counter to magnetize is to keep your strike craft spread out so any one casting won't slaughter your entire strike craft force.  Keep in mind that magnetize also damages the unit the strike craft crash into, not just the strike craft.  It's not as effective as flak burst at purely killing strike craft, but it actually turns them into damage against enemy frigates and caps which is where it shines.

This seems to be primarily the work of Dunovs wasting your strike craft, and Hoshis disabling everything else, leaving you with minimal damage output.  Jam weapons works wonders, but it doesn't kill anything, so if you have no damage output a couple seconds later it's all for nothing.

Personally, I think if Vasari end up in a massive "all out" fleet battle late game they're in serious trouble.  This faction more than any seems to shine in small skirmishes rather than huge fleet battles, so I really feel that to be successful late game as Vasari you have to keep the enemy divided into smaller fleets.

Please explain.  I played with overseers a long time ago to test them and figured they were crap.  Had some ability which for a short time caused hp to creep up to a higher level, but the effect isn't instantanous, it doesn't last a long time, and it has to be micromanaged otherwise it just buffs anything and everything, even stuff that's already been buffed.

Explain.

I've never seen it either.  All I ever see are Kols or Marzas.  But I counted them, LOL.

Actually, I didn't attack his caps.  I tried to go for his carriers first, and robotics cruisers second.

Nobody told me what they would have used against his fleet, especially against his robotics cruisers?  Just a ton of skirishers?  What counters those things?

Hoshikos have heavy armor, so anything that attacks well vs. heavy armor (LF, support, bombers, HC...) would be good against them, you just need to make sure you have a lot more of them then he has hoshikos or they will just sit there and look stupid.

As Vasari, I would have made my fleet like this:

15 Ravastras

20 LRFs

10 HCs

2 Kortul

2 Evacuators

maybe one Skirantra

40 or so Lasuraks. (95% fighters)

5-10 of both Seruvens and Stilakuses

blow the hell out of the hoshikoes (if there's more than 10 in a decent size engagement, they are top priority!) then his dunovs, and so on.  after the Hoshikoes are gone, I'd let my strikecraft auto attack, or focus on the percherons.

Not to mention the fact that the Cobalts are perfect for carrier-killing, so without any other ships higher on their targeting list (Light Frigs pretty much always go after Flak first), they chase your carriers first.

If you've got Distortion Field researched, definitely micro them so you keep as many Hoshikos out of combat as possible. Skirmishers with Interference can inhibit them by doubling AM cost (doubling cooldown time isn't as effective, since the cooldown for Repair Bots is something like 4 seconds).

Overseers are your best answer to Hoshikos. Although they don't repair over time, their Reactive Nanite Armor instantly increases current hull points by 200 and armor points by 2 (to a maximum of +2 armor and normal max hull + 200). Its also stackable, so having 10 Overseers using RNA on one target instantly replenishes 2000 hull points. Cooldown time is roughly on par with the Hoshi, 4 seconds.

How on earth was your first clash with fleets that large on a small map? Your best bet against TEC is to rush him. Midgame, his production capability and the lvl 6 Marza he should have had give him the advantage.

Vasari are a late-game race.  TEC is an early game one.  Advent is middle game.

Okay explanation on overseers.

Overseers instant heal ships and for a short time add armor. Over time the armor fades but the hp stays. See the picture? You can even start a combat with caps hp above maximum(not much though). But overseers are the only ships that can truly keep otherships alive because they instantly heal a large amount of hp (and the hp doesn't go away over time).

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik

ps: forgot too mention that overseer heal hp also stacks

It was a 4 player map.  The other 2 players dropped, leaving only me and him.  Still, it was a "small" map compared to the huge maps some people play.  It was the topmost random map you can play on medium maps.

Rushing him is fine, but I wasn't able to this particular game due to issues I won't go into.  Either way, I'm not asking about overall strategy (rush, turtle, boom, etc), I'm asking about tactics, counters, etc.  I didn't lose because I failed to rush.  I lost because of failing to deploy the right mix of units, or failing to use them correctly.

Correction:
I don't know 100% bout the others but vasari are clearly the best early game race. And tec the best late game race.

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik

Vasari is definitely the strongest early game faction.  However, those strengths taper off and their only redeeming factors late game are their civilian phase techs and those wonderful phase missiles that penetrate shields.  Not enough if Advent or TEC get the upper hand.

Personally, I'd say that Advent have the edge over TEC late-game, but it's less pronounced than Vasari's early game advantage.

TEC economy should be able to just steam roll, even IF  you wiped out his/her fleet (likely not his/her only one).

TEC has the better economy, for sure, but Advent has the better fleet.  It's highly presumptuous to say that either faction is better.  Economy means jack shit if the enemy fleet is just steamrolling your's time and time again while money just stockpiles because you can't use it all, and a strong fleet means jack shit if you don't have the cash to keep it at full fighting strength.

I'd agree that advent is better, especially if it is not a very open map and the advent only has one or two choke points to win. 20+ gaurdians and carriers with lots of illums and a few motherships (and if you're defending repair bays) mean that no matter how many ships the TEC brings in, you're not going to take enough damage to lose your fleet. The Vasari could stand a chance do to more DPS and phase missiles, but I've never had a losing encounter against a TEC fleet with a post tech and fully developed advent fleet. Now if its an open fleet, the TEC can win by lauching multiple attacks at one and thus forcing the advent fleet to split and lose alot of effectiveness. But even if the planet you're fighting on is your homeworld, a large advent fleet in a fortified position won't be losing a battle to any number of TEC. Of course, you won't be going on the offensive either, so stalemate is the most likely outcome.

If Advent are down to their homeworld and have a massive fleet defending it, TEC can just build a few superweapons and nuke it out from under you.

Well, until the TEC pull out their Novalith Cannons (which may or may not get screwed over by the Auxiliary Government Starbase upgrade--can anyone confirm?). Anyways, Vasari should be best early game, TEC mid game, and Advent late game.

I've seen a lot of people analyze that TEC is second best the whole way through, and Advent's advantage begins earlier on if played right.  Other people seem to think as you say, that Vasari have the early game, TEC mid, and Advent late.  While the Vasari are pretty blatantly skewed towards the early game, I tend to think that TEC and Advent have different strengths and weaknesses at mid and late game, and which one is stronger will depend on the styles and skill levels of the players, as well as the map layout.

Darvin3, you beat me to the punch...haha. I agree with you though: which race is stronger will definately depend on the styles and skill level of the players.

Your missing Halcyon and rapture in that fleet . Vasari will strikecraft your fleet too death(having the best sc) with some verry simple support too it's sc. So I would say at least get a halcyon.

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik

Unless you're talking about Entrenchment, with the way I play(always Vasari), if I survive the first half of the game, I absolutely OWN the end.  TEC gets econ bonus earlier, so they get more ships earlier.  Vasari ships are more expensive with a worse econ, so they gets fewer early ships.  once their mining and RA developments are maxed at late game, they own.  there's no spending all the crap they earn.  I routinely win games with 100k credits in the bank and maxed fleets.

You've updated to the most recent version, haven't you?  RA got a massive nerf in one of the patches, so it's really no better than the other high level civvy techs for the other factions.

Tec get's better than RA in late game Orodum. Tec will have WAY more econ than you and will be able too spam all he wants like hell faster than you can RA. Also the tec will be able too put his fleet together like he want's it.

Grtz,
[_]-Flipkik