How to start out as a Vasari?

In the beginning you shouldn't need as good economy as playing TEC.  Just make sure you expand well and set up your economy in the mid game.  Take advantage of the Evacuator's power to sway battles to your advantage.  Once the initial expansion has come to an end set up those defencive lines.

In the early mid game your advantages in economy come from the Resource extraction upgrades and Enforced Labor (The Tech that reduces the cost of buildings and ships.

Later game I only set up trade ports as my resources are normally coming in fast enough already.

Vasari are not naturally inclined to turtle style gameplay. almost all of their distinguishing technologies and special abilities are related to mobility. Vasari naturally excel at hit and run, at getting to the battlefield first and setting up traps and ambushes ahead of time.

its generally hard to match the economic performance of a TEC player as Vasari. your tradeports come out later and you have fewer ways of reducing your costs. you do have on really really good cost reducer though with Enslaved Labor (as Haree has already pointed out), so definitely research that as soon as you can.

i think you'll do best if you play more aggressively and learn to keep the fleet on the move. go in and wipe out a vulnerable asteroid on the border. colonize it with your Jarrasul and build some factories there to bulk up your fleet, then move on to the a nearby planet and try to pound it as fast as you can while waiting for defenders to arrive. you can then either fallback and strike somewhere else or you can start reinforcing from your nearby asteroid shipyard and repel the defenders, which can create a massive gap that you can use to run straight to his homeworld.

You could just look at some replays: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/342141

When I play vasari I do this for my first 4 moves. (quick start) (within the first 30 seconds)

Build my cap ship (egg, nano-dissambler rules all!)

Send out my scouts if I have any at that moments.

Build a mil lab.

research Assialants.....

after that I get 3 - 7 assialants and go kicking people that are busy build civ labs.... The hard part is to

not get to caried away with this and get your civ's up for mid game. it take 4 civ labs for a trade post as vasari.

I rarely build skirmishers. only if they are needed for a counter or maybe as much as 2 if I'm worried waiting for

assialants to get researched.

With your scouts, make sure you capture any neutral extractors you find - they'll give you a big resource advantage that lets you get ahead of other players.

Well, thanks for the replies so far..

Still have to figure out wether I like playing as a Vasari, too agresive for my own liking (I reckon that is the only way o play in MP though, so I will have to get a hang of it soon enuff.

Well, you can still turtle with Vasari, but it's best to save your turtleing for later in the game. Get your cap ship built (I forget the names, so whichever one is your mothership/colonizer) and send it to the asteroid near your planet and then build a few frigates and a colonizer frigate and send the combat ships to another nearby planet that's either ice or (preferably) volcano.

While your fleet and your cap ship are duking it out and you've gotten the asteroid, build two civil structures over your homeworld and research the tech to colonize the ice or volcano planet. After you've gotten these initial three planets, expand slightly quickly, but still a bit carefully, and once you have about two more planets, you should be about safe to turtle for Vasari by then.

Hope that helps

Quite frankly, if you want slow and deliberate, TEC is for you.  If you plan your defenses right and tech up appropriately, their defenses are extremely tough.

However, you can still use that play style as Vasari, just acknowledge that your repair stations suck.  Get overseer's and your problem is solved.

i love Overseers. i really do. i do not however love parking them at a grav well and shooting repair nanites at structures getting hammered by bombers. that seems counter-productive. no, i love my overseers because they make my cap ships immune to focus fire until they're all out of anti-matter. they let you bring your heaviest firepower right into the heart of enemy territory and not get wiped out in a hot minute. 

zergling rush!!!!

Transitive, who are you in MP?  I was playing last night and had 12 overseers.  Two of my allies said "WTF?!!?! Overseers?"  I told them, yes, and you'll see why in a second.  Jumped in to a sh*t storm and the enemy started focus firing my caps.  I just mircoed the living daylights out of the overseers and the caps just never died.  Two enemies lost their whole fleet as a result.

Anyway, I am glad to know someone else shares the overseer love.

we've never played in MP, i'm pretty sure. i'm rarely an ICO, almost all my MP experience is from LAN games. i don't think i've ever used the same screen-name twice an ICO anyway, epic smurf that i am. if i find you i'll give you a shout out to let you know its me. 

Finally some overseer love!! The best, just the best.

did you guys know??? THIS AYE NEVA CLOSEZZ

I remember my first lesson in how good overseers are when i focus fired 30 phase missle platforms with max phase missle upgrades on a single Evacuator and I still couldn't bring the darn thing down.  I decided to learn how to start using them after that.

I know most people recommend a space egg for a beggining ship beause of its many utlity abilities.  However lately, I've been playing AI games as vasari and I frequently find myself wondering if a Skinrantra might be better simply for the healing aspects and using a colony ship early on for colonizing.  The map I've been playing time is definitely an issue but the speedy upgrades arent any where as useful as the Advent's progenitor colonize is.  Also resources are hard for me to come by and saving a single ship helps.  Any thoughts/recommendations on a first cap other than the space egg?

I use Overseers. I think it was Tyr (but possibly was How, but fairly sure it was Tyr) put me on to them ages ago. It was only when I looked into them more I realised what they can do. Their upgrade techs kinda suck compared to say hoshikos, but they sure help.

How and I went totally evil on a guy a while back with them.... He had a PJI in system and we both had high level (about lvl8) eggs. I had overseers and some other ship types which complemented How well. The guy quit when his ally fled to defend his system against our AI player. The AI that took over tried to run but couldn't due to the PJI charge up and then us bombing the fleet with Lvl 2 or 3 egg ability... And I don't think we lost a ship due to the the overseers patching up the little bit of damage the AI tried to do while jumping....

I generally get the egg first, but skinranta is often my second cap and the kortul my 3rd...

I just played the beginning of a new game with Vasari.  I tolerated being last place in fleet power for a couple minutes and saved up for a second cap ship and built a SKinranta(I built the space egg first anyway because I figured I'd need the nano disassmbler in battles anyway).  I never used it much because I felt its heals weren't as good as the progenitor and unless you're fighting vasari, shield restore is typically better as you don't have to wait for your ship hulls to be damaged.  It was totally what my fleet was lacking and it totally changed my fleet performance.  It gave me extra fighter coverage and the repair field was keeping my front row of skirmishers intact.  Battle where I'd struggle and have my fleet barely win were over with little to no losses. I'm not sure if I'm going to get a kortul or another skinranta as one of them doesn't really have enough anti-matter to really keep up with the repairs during a large battle.  Now my only problem is how I'm going to combat illuminators without going carriers or cruisers... 

Assailant.....

This aye neva closezz.  Gimme my cigs yo.

speaking of overseers, do any of you find the slow down reinforcements ability, or even the phase detection, to be useful? it doesnt seem like they slow them down by very much...and i'm never really assaulting a world more than 2 jumps away from a world i own. I wonder if it would be better to change this ability into a sortve moble PJI, where it increases one ship's charge up time, maybe not as much as a normal pji, but enough.

phase detection is great. i always research that one shortly after going to tier 5. usually i'll get the 5th and 6th phase missile upgades first, then get phase detection on my Overseers.

ships jump into and out of wells ALL THE TIME, the phase detection thing is very nearly as good as having a planetary remote sensor on adjacent grav wells to your overseers. really helps get the timing right on when to go in for attacks. makes it easy to wait until the enemy is on the wrong side of the grav well, or even has jumped out of the grav well entirely. 

slow down reinforcements is much much lower priority. i rarely get it. what its supposed to do is help you escape a grav well before the enemy catches up with you. this fits in with the mobile warfare, hit/run style of the Vasari. presumably you might get a small force behind enemy lines and the overseer can detect and hinder enemies coming in to try and flush you out. 

in practice that behind enemy lines stuff hardly ever happens. you're almost always fighting fleet to fleet so delaying reinforcements doesn't do very much. 

mobile phase detection is useful when assaulting enemy star systems

Overseers?  Bah.  Die easily to enemy fighters, and require way too much micro and aiming to use effectively.  Just a waste of money and fleet and everything else.

This coming from the person who says his caps die to early.  Build overseers, and then see what happens.

A Vasari player not building overseers is like the TEC player that doesn't build hoshikos: it's stupid.

On my first games i havent noticed that overseers are healing 250 damage in one sek. After i learned that i realy love this guys

And another thing:  there is a recycle ability for the vasarie. with that research (dont know the name) enemy structures and caps that are destoreyed gives you creds and ressources. Havent tested it on Multiplayer, but against AI its realy great. if u dont have res, just attack some strucures and fleet to get some. Research this and look at the overview at the and of the game under resources gained from other. Against AI i try to get it as fast as possible...