poor economy my ass. With progens colonization bonus you can save tens of thousands of credits on planet development by mid game. Get allure, build a handful of culture stuff and all your planets and extractors work much more efficiently than anyone else's. Particularly visible with furthest planets, where others get only 25% income, can get 35% and you can have 45% basic (which means your distant planets give from ~30 up to ~80% more income than theirs).

I would say that TEC's flaw is that their ships are somewhat weak early game. Javelis and Cobalts are pushovers if they're not potected and can quite easily die en masse. By later game they get kodiaks and hohos tho and it's getting even. And they have the Marza ;]

As Vasari I find the weakness to be T4 trade ports (irritating) along with incapable refinery. This means you are basically screwed if there are no neutral extractors out there to grab - or god, if you have a lot.
Then comes the general meh-ness among Vasari caps, with the single exception of the EGG. Vulkoras is a great planet bomber but it needs to fight to gain levels and it's not at all too good at fighting.
Then come the rather meh Assailants. Their damage is relatively nice, phase missiles and all, but if they're not microed, they will do 30% less damage than Javelis - simply because phase missiles are so slow compared to TEC's and it is common that 80 Assailants waste a full salvo of 80 missile batteries on a ship that was going to die from the previous salvo anyway.
Then comes the overpriced Enforcer with overpriced upgrades and very poor ability (reintegration), which pretty much means if you don't gain an upper hand in your fight against the tec, he'll steamroll you with kodiaks later.

What brings you to that assumption? At the absolute start credit income and income from extractors is the same for all races or am I wrong?

TEC gets access to trade ports at tier 2 and the first metal extraction upgrade even at tier 1.

Vasari get the first resource extraction upgrade at tier 2 but thats for both, mineral and crystal, therefore much more efficient than the according TEC and Advent Research.

Advent get the Temple of Communion at Tier 2, according TEC and Vasari Research is available at Tier 3.

So without hard numbers I would guess that in the early game phase TEC (on credit level due to Trade Ports) and Vasari (on resource level due to research and neutrals) economy is a little stronger than Advent because the benefits of early (and expensive) Temple of Communion building do not instantly apply.

But back to topic, regarding the flaws I have to (partially) agree with Darvin3 and N3rull.

TEC:

• weak ships at the beginning until you get armor upgrades and hoshis
• somewhat useless or at least "hardly usable" capital ships (sova, akkan

okay, but the Progen Mothership needs to be around for that time thus cannot help cleaning and colonizing further planets, right? So I would say this bonus is a Money-Saver on the one hand but a Time-Consumer on the other hand. AND you have to spend ability points to "colonize" in order to maximize the effect thus you have less points for the other abilities. So yes, I see your point that this is helpful but I don't agree that it is "almighty" or even has a severe effect on the economy (because at the end the Advent player will simply have LESS colonies when the Progen remains for 6.5 minutes at each newly founded colony).

I don't agree. Okay, refineries are too expensive to spam at every colony, but well placed refineries easily can affect 9 extractors or more. with the additional Vasari research upgrades increasing metal and crystal extraction the effect of refineries can be huge and pay off the investment in no time.

I would do the maths but I do not exactly know the amount of increased extraction due to refineries.

Oh. I didn't know. So Progen only has to stay there for 30 seconds and once the bonus is applied it works for the full 6 (10) minutes even if the Progen leaves the well? Then I have to agree, this ability IS almighty  

is that "for each resource" or "for each extractor"?

EDIT: either way, even if its for each resource it would sum up to +0.6 per second and with a multiplicator of 4 (resources<->credits) that would be like 2.4 creds/sec. Now that is not so bad, assuming that a tradeport generates 1 cred/sec + 0.1 cred/sec/jump.

Hmm, fuzzy math... (drool)

FIRST: 1 metal/crystal is NOT 4 credits.

If you have too little of it, then it's worth 4,5 credits for you.

If you have too much, it is worth a little over 2 credits, simply because that's how much you're gonna be selling it for.

A mid game Vasari will likely have 15-18-ish credit income and about 7-10 metal/crystal income. You will clearly have more resources than you need. If you sell them, you get 2,25-2,5 credits per unit of resource. So your effectiveness goes down to ~1,1 cred/sec, equal to one trade port.

SECOND: This effect is with 3 levels of extraction upgrades done that you have as a prerequisite. That's 2k credits dumped right there already and quite a lot of time, since there is a lot of other cool research in empire tree, better than resource extraction upgrades (terran lockdown, colonizations, enforced labour, some would add improved salvaging for cap factory, i say fortification specialist is awesome too, phase detection is a must have).

THIRD: Refinery costs way more than a trade port.

Conclusion - for the hassle, it is NOT worth it. You're better off building two more civ labs and going tradeport.

As a curious fact I may add, that researching Culture and building a media hub instead of a refinery will increase your income by about the same amount, if you calculate the credits you get as well.

Why? Every planet has basic extraction level and allegiance controls how much of it is used. 80% allegiance means 80% of that potential is used, so your income is cut by 20%. If you build a culture structure, your allegiance will rise by up to 10% and spread around other nearby planets. This means, along with being safe from recolonization, that you get increased income from all your planets in effect of your culture. This effect is 'refinerish' near your homeworld, but very visible far away, cause the distance from the homeworld cuts down on allegiance, down to 25% at worst. An increase of 25%->35% is a 40% relative boost. Beats the ass off a refinery.

- > Refineries suck.

Advent economy IS the mothership.  It is great to have the discounts because the advent need them.  They don't have early trade ports or pervasive economy like tec.  They don't get neutrals and combined extraction research like vasari.  Advent get the mothership.  It isn't the quickest economy by any means.  Having the mothership does give cheap upgrades that are ok at first and very worthwhile at level 3 but that doesn't mean instant cash.  If anything it is a drain on advent early economy.  To get that discount, you have to spend that money right after you colonize so its a choice of something you might need later in the game versus spending on fleet, trade or whatever that you may need sooner.  The other races don't get the benefit but they can choose to upgrade things like logistics, infrastructure and tactical slots when/if they need it.  Population upgrades pay off eventually but its not a fast thing other than hw pop upgrade in non quick start and getting out of negative upkeep on a planet.

Sorry, to answer the original question:

TEC's fatal flaw is being mediocre and Vasari's fatal flaw is expensive ships, infrastructure, and technologies required to be effective.

neither race has refineries at tier 2 and only TEC has trade ports at tier 2.

IMO the fact that vasari get access to refineries (tier 3) before trade ports (tier 4) absolutely fits into the picture that the vasari are a resource-focused race whereas TEC is clearly credit-focused (trade ports at tier 2, refinieries at tier 4) and the advent is clearly culture-focused.

And that is exactly what you want in an RTS: different races with truely different focuses and aspects. If you want perfect balance instead of variety: play chess