Well, as TEC keep in mind that you will need to have superior numbers to beat the Advent. You have a better economy, and you will need to use it to have a chance. Build all the factories you can on your border worlds. If possible you are going to want to attack on multiple fronts, forcing the Advent either to split their fleets or lose some of their planets. If not, you'll just have to out mussle them. A Marza's missile barrage or a Starbases safety protocol override abilities would be the easiest way, but if the Advent player is any good he'll avoid them. A Sova carrier with embargo is good for slowing the rate he creates reenforcements at his defending planets, but you can't count on them (or any capital ship) to survive focused Illum fire.

You know thats a good idea using embargo. I Sova spam because of the illums, so early to mid I'm surprisingly unbeatable with the 3 Sovas and 1 Akan running around. I've also considered splitting their fleet by frequent bomber raids. Anyway, much appreciated.

I'm going to assume you mean the Illum Heavy fleet. Well, here's what comes my mind.

1. Never, ever, build carriers. Not only can Illums chase them down, All the guy has to have is a few flak or a halcyon and your carriers just became dead weight in your fleet.

2. Try an Akkan with LRMS if you're fighting repulse. The Akkan gets the range bonus ability, and provided it's high level, (it's always my first cap of choice), it should have armistice so you'll never lose it. Keep it near repair bays/hoshis and that Akkan will become your pride and joy.

3. While repulse negates these units, that does not mean stop buying them. Get scouts, and get HC's. I say HC's because they are highly armored, and if you stop telling your units to kill the guardians, they can hit anything in range (thanks to a recent HC range buff). You won't be near as effective, but you need highly armored units that even Illums have a hard time taking down.

4. Mass like say 80 or so scouts so he thinks you're going to fight him with them, and then send them behind enemy lines and find his military labs. Use tactical strikes. Leave the scouts there. A force of 40 or so at a planet is something he'll HAVE to achknowledge. Not to mention if you can get those guardians to jump around, they lose antimatter.

5. Illum fleets LOOOOVE going after your caps. Keep a level 6 Akkan. It's a must. It's the only way I've found to successfully thwart the annoying pissants who go straight after your caps. Best part is you destroy a bit of his fleet, and your Akkan just flies away.If he won't stop, then you're going to have to send the fleet in first.....and THEN your caps.

6. 2 Dunovs can be lethal. EMP Blast, Magnetize, and Flux field are highly underutilized abilities in this game. They're all awesome. The problem is the dunov itself isn't that good a cap early in a game, but for a late game support cap, this think kicks some ass. 2 level 2 emp blasts knock out enough antimatter on a guardian that it'll have to waiti a while to do repulse again.

7. Armor and health upgrades. Buy them. You'll need them.

8. Try to fight in repair bays. TEC repair bays are ridiculous with upgrades.

9. Unlike Advent, you can afford the risk of separating your fleet. Like....send your fleet one way, but your Marza and Akkan the other. See if you can knock out a planet.

10. Antagonize him. I've actually gotten a few guys to stop using repulse by calling out their manhood. It works....occassionally.

11. Red button can do amazing things for you if you get the chance to use it. Just make sure your shit aint arround it to die with it.

Just let me write that into my playbook... always looking for new ways to kill an Advent (seriously, 80% of the the games I personally lose are when I start point-blank with an Advent.  The last game where I personally was beaten by a Vasari or TEC player was... either when Tyr pulled off a flawless Vasari starbase rush or when I got map-screwed (1-lane no roid) against a TEC enemy who got fed to rush with two caps at the very start of the game.

I'm shocked by how many players fall for this.  If my enemy has 5 labs, I just presume every starbase is rigged to blow and refuse to let my fleet close in.

I played my first 50 games with advent without even building a guardian. only won 49 of them that way.

late game aside, im gonna talk about a few key points to keep in mind when your fighting an advent player, the late game will be decided by early and mid game, so thats what you should focus on. As a point of reference my points are gonna be confined to 5v5 scenarios (since thats where people usually have the most trouble with advent).

Firstly, anything other than massive illum spam/halcyon/guardians can be pretty effectively countered by TEC. And recently I've come to the realizations that an advent who wants to LF/scout a TEC is making a huge mistike, since TEC's only LF spam can bring it hard, faster, and stronger and paired with a marza youll knock the advents friggin lights out.

Darvin is right on the money as to WHY advent has such an advantageous matchup against TEC, but speaking from a high level of play....I feel it is incredibly foolish to build any LRMs early or midgame against an illuminator spam. 40 LRMs MIGHT beable to take 20 illums...factor in malice and shield restore and youll probably need more like 50 to take 20 illums. Provided the advent player is using them properly.

Secondly, YOU MUST HAVE THEM SCOUTED...I know that goes without saying but I dont think most people understand what i mean. SCOUTED does not mean you know where there HW is. SCOUTED means you have scouts queued to jump in and out of the advents strategic positions. You must know when they start producing illums and beable to react IMMEDIATELY. If you cannot start producing when they do then you can expect to be on the defensive for the rest of your empires existence. Also, hitting them fast and in sufficient number is the only way scouts work. A certain Amish-man will tell you scouts become useless once they have about 40 illums, and i think that is LUDICROUS. Onces they have around 20, your looking at needing about 60 scouts to fight effectively and with malice and sidebeams at higher numbers scouts get exponentially less effective. If you are gonna use a scout based strategy, I suggest a rush, and the sova would be your best bet as 4 bombers squads on a lvl 1 halcy would tear up a marza. the fighter squads would also be a great help for dropping constructors quick.

Dont get me wrong though, 20 scouts in a fleet of flak and LRMs are some extremely cost effective meat and firepower, just dont risk crippling yourself with a terrible fleet composition.

As Amish said, ARMOR UPGRADES. TEC has amazing early game defensive upgrades, and for good reason. I always prioritive those over offense because the tougher your ships are, the longer hoshis can heal them, which essentially means your ships get exponentially tougher from upgrades.

Against a fully blown halcy/illums spammer flak is absolutely your way to go, with a marza as well. just be sure to put on your dancing shoes cuz this strat requires very effective use cap micro and repair bays. use lose the marza and its game over. yes guardians will be a problem but the flak will negate bombers, and the goal is pressure the opponent constantly, you want to skirmish to get MB. repulse is hugely expensive, and for good reason, if someone rushes it prematurely they likely wont even have enough illums to render LFs completely useless. In this scenario SABOTAGE REACTOR (most underused ability in the game...right next to infailable jump drives....T--7 FTW ) is your best friend.

One last thing, DO NOT EXPECT TO HAVE AN ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE. I don't know who said that but...eeek. Even with an akkan advent cap colonize is about right on par. and if you have civ labs and tradeports then you dont have military labs or ships. and therefore expect to be on your back all game spamming scout (best case scenario) or joining a new game lobby (most likely scenario).

Ok hopefully I have a point or good advice in their somewhere, I have a hard time keeping on track when someone asks a question like "what should I do against advent". And I can speak in length about this matchup (900+ games too much free-time and an over-active brain will do that I suppose). But I have to cut myself off. Hope this helps.

apologize in advance if I hi-jacked your thread =P

This tip is like, totally awesome.   This makes me want to switch back to TEC again just to try.

as an advent player i'll tell you what TEC strategy i'd hate to be used against me ^^

make 2 dunov (3 is better) 2 marza (lvl 6), 1 akkan lvl 6 and you won the game if the dude has his fleet together

let me explain

armistice

run in the middle of his fleet when armistice is at half

prepare double missile barage and use dunovs to cover the marza

game over

I've started noticing 3 as well. A fully weapon upgraded starbase with lvl 3 targeting uplink can cause some serious damage. Its good to see Akkans are finally useful now.

I have to disagree about the carrier caps though. Halycon may be a bit too strong now, but the other two carrier caps were truly pointless to build before unless you were on point blank and were going for a Sova rush. Even now, I don't think I'd ever build more than one Vasari carrier capital and Sovas only truly shine as (ironically) raiders and trench fighters. Kortuls, Devestators, Evacuators, Kols, Marza's and Dunovs are still much better choices for most Vasari and TEC players.

i didnt say it wasnt couterable i said i'd hate to see that ^^

problem is that rady is nice but you can dunov or ion bolt it ^^ ther's always a way out, but once you have your fleet in the middle of his illums its becoming a real battle, repulse don't work so well when it pushes the fleet all around, that kills illums focused fire, repulse is at its best when the enemy fleet isnt scaterd all around but concetrated on 1/3 of the repulse circle

Can you stack embargo? It's pretty effective.

Well, then do tell what these dirty things are. What I meant by raider was using a Sova, scouts and carriers to quickly destroy all the planetary structures while using embargo, then run when an enemy fleet comes. By "trench fighter", I meant using it on heavily fortified planets where frigate factories are constatly providing reinforcements, as embargo is good while on the offensive and rapid manufacturing on the defensive.

Early game I wouldn't use a Kol either, but this is a thread on how to beat late game advent, so I assume it is also late game for the TEC. And while I would probably get a Marza instead, if you want a strong individual fighter, the Kol is hard to beat. As long as the other battleships aren't around.

Ok ill keep it simple, but first this is what you need.

Late Game:

Economy 1 - you need to at least heve loads of trade, and you can have more then one trade port per planet (remeber that). When you get near to an advent fleet, upgrade the planet with two frig factoires (even more if ur economy is good) and repair bays WITH FULL UPGRADES (saves ur cap ship). Just build enough fleet to defend ur self and get trade up. Here comes the best part.

A fleet of gardas or kodiaks supported with hoskios will help you to keep them alive to kill the late game advent fleet. If they decide to use repulse, you need to build quite a few long range missles, but listen to this carefully, KEEP them AWAY from there fleet, they are one of the longest range units in the game, they dont need to be in direct combat.

Use the Jarvis Missles to kill the guardians, once this is done, then you can preceed to retret back ur long range missles, and fire them from long distance, while helping to support your other units. A good tip is to take there cap ships out first. 

Usally Advent end game fleets have loads of strike craft, you dont really need to build carriers yourself, you can build a kol, with a level 3 abbility on the shrapnel ability, you can wipe out almost allof there strike craft, even if they have bombers, gardas will make sure that all strike craft are kept to minimum levels. you can also spam colbalts to kill there carriers.

and if ur having problems with AI seige firgs running around, build about 14 socuts, and then can be ur defensive fleet aginest them, cheap and nimble.

Any other advice, post me an Email.

Yours Sincerly

The Hawk, The Great One, The Peoples Champion.

Best tactic against Advent is to find out their address a deliver them a pizza.   "What?  I didn't order a pizza!"   They can't pause.