Hard time with Hard AI

sell your capital factory and buy assailants earlier, that ought to help some...

sometimes, entrenching for a time (even without the Entrenchment xpack) is helpful

use repair bays (even though they suck for Vasari) to help keep ships alive and build/research up

you can easily out build/research Hard AI

Honestly, for the pittence you get for it I don't think scrapping the capital shipyard is worth that much.  If you need the logistics space that's one thing, but if you don't it's not worthwhile IMO.

I find on small maps like these it's just as viable to scuttle your civic labs (leaving your capital shipyard intact in case you want to go for a second or third capital ship later) once you've finished researching the necessary colonization techs.  Heck, if none of the three planets connecting the players randomized an ice or volcanic, I'd probably skip civics altogether on this map and go all-out military.

Can't emphasize that enough.  Repair bays are critical regardless of your strategy.  Playing without repair bays is like playing with one arm tied behind your back.  That said, Vasari repair bays aren't that much worse than the other factions.  Most people don't give them credit for their lower antimatter consumption and cooldown.

Now, as for strategy, I don't think it matters much what order you take the planets.  The AI is a pretty shabby opponent and can easily be driven back if you know what you're doing.  Personally I think your first move with your capital ship should be to take the planets between you and your enemy.  Scout and find the one with the least militia, and go for it right away.  You can send regular frigates to claim your asteroid and leave that ice for later.

The important thing is to conserve and build your fighting force and make your attacks count.

Well I know its more for the slots than the cash, but ehh..  I do it most of the time and it helps with getting labs up faster..

At any rate, the AI is pretty stupid.  It won't go for capitals like you would.  If all else fails, get more planets than it does so that when the line between you and it forms, you have the numerical advantage.  I can generally get two-three times as many planets as a hard AI before we even meet.  After the line forms, barricade it and create a second fleet to capture the enclosed worlds.

As Darvin said, don't underestimate repair platforms...  They are very helpful indeed...

It sounds like I should be expanding faster than I am. I have only been using the cap ship to clear/colonize planets- should I send the capship to one planet and use a few frigs and a colony ship to others at the same time?

Thanks for all the help.

The problem with splitting your aquisition team is that the capital will be able to take the worlds you send it at, but it will miss out on the experience given for killing off the pirates guarding the world.

I can't think of the map off hand, but one thing you could do is rush through each world and only killing the pirates in the world and neglecting to colonize the planet at all; taking a planet means that you have to spend resources to upgrade it that you could instead be increasing your fleet size.  I would say definitely get the asteroid next to the homeworld since they are cheap to get, but move your fleet through to the world that is the "choke point" and colonize there.

By being able to block your opponent off into only going through 1 or 2 planets, you can leave your forces there as well as put up a lot of defense there, and stressing using repair bays; they can make a fleet of half the size almost as strong if not stronger due to the healing.  Once you feel you have a large enough fleet at that planet, take the capital ship and go back over those other planets and take them and also upgrade them.  This leaves your fleet short the capital, but the colonize bonus is just too great to use a colony frig, and you will most likely have level 2 or even level 3 colonize due to killing the pirates off.

Edit: ok looked at the map.  best way to go about it is keep them limited to the planets they gain.  have a scout stay in the grav well with the sun so you can see them coming at you from there, then colonize the asteroid and the ice planets, then just methodically move across the chain between you and them.  my guess is they will send some LF, LRF, siege frigates, and a carrier cap through the sun grav well within the first 15 minutes at your homeworld, so you can either keep scouting the small 3 planet string between you and their homeworld to see what they have there, or be ready to fight in your homeworld.  have at least 3 repair bays, all over lapping so they heal each other.  scouting is important, so if you see that they have more fighters or bombers from carriers, get a few flak frigs to help with that.

I don't think it is all that hard once you have the repair bays and make the fight come to you.  make sure your fleet fights in the range of the repair bays.  also, if you let them get the desert planet in the middle, they have the upper hand on you, so be ready to fight hard to stay alive.  remember getting the technology upgrades for damage are the least important for such a small map, so focus on adding to your fleet size or an armor upgrade.

Anything else, just ask.

I've been meaning to try that out with scrapping the cap factory, even as Advent or TEC.  The problem is, when you have the problem with the logistics slots (too few planets), that means you have less of the other problem (need to rebuild it closer to the border, to reduce phase jumps).  

As Advent, I've been meaning to scrap the cap yard to get earlier Illums.  As TEC, I've been meaning to scrap it to get earlier trade.  The problem is, vs. Hard and Unfair AI I've gotten stuck in a rut where I win the same way every time:  always play as Advent,  tech up to max military, get the cap-ship-experience tech, put out 3 Raptures.   Get them all to level 6, take over carriers like crazy.  My fleet logistics has gone down as low as -596 doing this.   It's fun and it works, but need to switch up.

You generally don't want to split your forces, but a properly supported Orky (don't play as TEC/Advent much so I don't know if this works so well for them) can fend off a moderately sized fleet.  Even without any actual ships, the combination of the regenerative maw, insane health, and the deflector shield, you will take a heck of a lot of damage before you go down.  In fact, between Mitigation and the Deflector Shield, you are only taking about 10% of incoming DPS.  That means that if you have your health up to the third level and your weapons up to the second so you have PM's (and you have the weapons banks reserachable) you can easily fend off fleets from the AI.

What I do is after I draw the line in the sand between the AI and myself, I create a second fleet that goes and captures the rest of my worlds (this one happens to be led by a Kortul btw).  It goes through and takes a migrator with it so that if it comes to an asteroid field, I can set up an economic SB to bolster my trade and tax income.  The result is that I own 2/3 of the map while the AI only has 1/3.  This neutralizes its income bonus.  As I finish taking worlds, I begin to put up phase gates to link my worlds and once I finish, I take my Korul's fleet to the front and send it to flank the AI's main force while my Egg's fleet slams against the brick wall of the AI's heavily entrenched worlds.  It yields severe losses, but then I retreat and it doesn't dare attempt an attack against my defenses.  All the while, my Kortul is slowly shrinking the enemy flank until the AI has splits its forces to attempt to deal with the problem at which I wipe the floor with both of its fleets.  After losing its ships, the AI is unable to recover and I win.

Early on, frigates can only reliable take asteroids.  Maybe an ice or volcanic with only 4 defenders could be done, but in general anything other than an asteroid I clear with capital ships.  So yes, you can send frigates to take on asteroids, but avoid sending them to full-sized planets with full-sized militia.

Now, there are ways to speed up colonization.  One of my favourites is to target the Krosov siege frigates first.  Once they're destroyed, the militia have no way to bombard the planet, so you can colonize it, yourself.  Now build turrets to kill the remaining militia.   If your capital ship was damaged, you can build a repair bay while you finish off the remaining militia, or you can just head off to the next planet (be cautious of this; Javelis LRM outrange turrets, so be sure that you can lure them into turret range or have already destroyed them).

While this is true, quickly colonizing planets is far more valuable than a few capital ship levels.  Certainly for anything more than a lightly defended ice/volcanic I'd send a capital ship, but for asteroids speed and efficiency is the most important criteria.  Often times ignoring asteroids can make you level up faster.  The reason is that you can plan out a "tour" with your capital ship that minimizes backtracking.  Less time spent moving means more time spent fighting means more experience.  This can actually outweigh what you get from going for the roids.

That is true..  And one more advantage you have over the AI is not only you can think, but you have unlimited time to do so..  Its called, "Pause|Break."  That wonderful little button can give you all the time in the world to plan your course of action without missing a beat.  So, if you are ever debating which way to go, just pause the game and think.  Its not MP, so there is no rush.  Now, I rarely pause the game for anything other than a screenshot, but if I really can't decide between two paths that look very similar, I won't hesitate to pause the game

If I ever get in this situation, all I do is build another turret within range.  The LRM isn't going anywhere. 

Well, something I came up with tonight was another thing you can do to somewhat neutralize your AI ally's stupidity.

In my case tonight, my normal eco AI ally had dominated the map due to my blocking off and using every last resource defending against two unfair aggressors (and they had more planets than me).  Unfortunately, my ally hadn't researched much at all and as such was only receiving a fraction of what he could have...  

My response?  Save the game, quit, and then start playing as my ally.  It didn't take long as I suddenly had a few million of each resource to research the entire tree (I was also playing DS which speeds up research times).  Then as that was occuring, I put Argonevs on the border worlds to take a little heat off my fleets.  I also used the level 6 marza it had lying around to guard one of the worlds.  I then sped the game up to 8x and waited for research to finish.  Once it did, I had gave my normal self a few tens of thousands of credits/crystal/metal and switched back to Vasari.

Call it cheap if you like, but if I was playing with a real human being, I would have easily done better against two Unfair AI's I just happened to spawn beside.  I haven't actually launched an attack yet, so to even the odds a bit I'll likely go in and help the unfairs so that its not a complete slaughter...

Nonetheless, doing this certainly does show you how incredibly stupid the AI is.

An Akkan will fix this.

Uh, were you paying attention to what I said?  I was talking about something that could kill a turret once your capital ship left, so no, you won't have an Akkan there.

That said, TEC turrets with range upgrade and an Akkan are positively deadly.  Half a dozen of them are pretty much like having a starbase.  I remember once I had to build a starbase just to get auxiliary government, but I never bothered upgrading it; my turrets were doing the job just fine.  If only every faction's turrets had this kind of potential if well used...

Is the Economic Unfair AI one of the easier of the Unfairs to play?   I'm wanting to play an AI in between Hard and Unfair; like Hard+1/2 or Hard+2/3.  

No I wasnt. I aplogise. I only saw the quotes of what you said.

a lot of what you have been saying all applies to a larger 1v1 map than this particular player is playing on.

The map is very small, homeworlds are connected by a star and a map chain of, in order from player homeworld to AI homeworld, ice, desert, and terran. each homeworld has an ice and asteroid off to the other side, blocked off by the homeworld.  So total planets are 9, including homeworlds; and each faction basically has an asteroid and an ice all to themselves, then the 3 planets or the sun as the way to the homeworlds.

There is little time to get much up before the computer hits, and we all know hard and insane have a higher income than normal, so to set up a choke point could work, but you need the asteroid at least before heading into the 3 planet string to tech the 2 civ structures and get the ice upgrade. The best bet is probably to take the 2 adjecent ice and the one roid and have scouts all the time telling you where the enemy fleet is. If you can catch them clearing the desert and beat them away from it and take it yourself, you should be in good position.

Knowing the make of the enemy fleet so you can counter it, as well as knowing where they are striking from is the best way to handle this one.

I would also like to say that for a good chunk of the game, the AI only spams Cobalts.  Cobalts!  They are such easy pickings for your Assailants.  So, obviously build Assailants right off the bat, and then get a few sentinels ready for when he pulls out LRM's.

So how fast is it possible to colonize 4 or 5 planets? It seems like its taking me a lot longer than it should- like 25 or 30 mins...

It takes me ~10 minutes, and I'm no where near pro at all.  You should have the cap facility up right away, then due to it being a small map, 2 scouts scouting, and a third scout watching the sun; then build the fleet up.  2 civ labs on homeworld, take the roid, then tech ice planets, take both ice.  Don't worry about allowing the shields to heal on the cap, and also make sure that the capital ship goes into the planet first to make everything agro it; the only things that might switch agro are the LRF and hc, so when some ship in your fleet has agro from the pirates, warp it to the privious planet to keep it from dying.

You could try doing a sova rush because the map is so freakin small as well to make some extra money.

That's exactly what I do but it takes forever for some reason... I think maybe I'm just taking too long to kill of the militia ships before moving to the next planet. Its like the only thing that really damages the enemy is Egg's nano-disassembler, and I have a hard time getting a decent number of assailents out there because I spend so much on the ice tech and assailent tech.

Use nano disassemblers to kill siege frigates, then colonize the planet.  Build a turret (and a repair bay if your cap is damaged) and use it to kill the remaining militia.  Make sure you kill any long range frigates before you send your capital ship away.

A lot of it is scouting before a fight when you can, build units that you know will handle the enemy well.

Doesn't the needed tech on the planets and upgrades absolutely hammer your income so early in-game if you are building a fleet at the same time? I is a noob myself.

Personally, in the situation, I would go with one of each lab on my HW and stick the second civic on the asteroid.  By the time stuff is dead, I will have it researched.

IMHO, it dings your short-term money, but not absolutely hammers.  I found that if you totally out-colonize your opponent(s), short-term you will be at a disadvantage, but who cares--he just spotted you a couple planets.  Now he has to go even it up.  You just have to make sure you don't blow more resources in a losing battle than you make (and he loses).  That may mean you just have to let one or two planets go (that weren't "yours" anyway) while you build up.  Even if he takes the planet, he still has to blow all the same resources on upgrades you did; and now HE'S at the disadvantage.

Now:  that said, that doesn't mean you can totally out-colonize in that you spend all your time & money shooting neutrals while he's out shooting you.