Listen to Darvin...  Pretty much what I was going to say...

 

At any rate, get technology when you need it, not before.  When you start playing as Vasari, make sure to get phase gates as they allow a fleet to move from any spot to another.

However, as for advent, make sure you are acquainted with the Holy Trinity of the Radiance, Progenitor, and Halcyon.  These three ships, when used alongside Illums and Guardians (and a few Destras late game) are going to kill all in their path.  Check out Sagewon's ability guide if you haven't already to learn exactly what abilities are good and which ones aren't worth it.

Also, the listed DPS or damage per second is only the average.  You also have to take into account whether the damage is backloaded (deals damage by the volley as in any projectile or missile) or overtime (deals damage by the second as in beams) and the cooldown if you want to know what a single volley will do.  Ie, beam turrets will actually deal about 200 damage per volley, but because of cooldown time, they only have a DPS of 20.  This is generally not terribly important, but I have used it to my advantage occasionally when it comes to critical mass (fleets that can focus fire any target into oblivion in ~5 seconds or less).

No, it is never really worth it.  Trade ports are going to be around late game one way or another, so you will have that researched.  Resource focus is only going to pay for itself if you have 4 resource asteroids.  And since that is rare, its not worth it.  Unless you happen to get lucky and find five ice worlds with 4 asteroids each, don't bother.

I put it below trade ports.  However, it does help with taxes and resource income the according percent, so it is worth it.  Late game, allure of the unity is quite useful because it essentially a +10% increase in tax and asteroid income.  Once you can start putting them in multiple places, they are worth it.  Trade ports need multiple consecutive places to be effective whereas temples of communions only need to be on every fourth world or so...

I generally go Progen>Radiance>Halcyon>Rapture(if I need another cap).  Yeah, CB is a monstrous amount of damage.  I figured it out once and you can potentially deal up to around 10k DPS to each target.  Now, of course this will never happen unless the enemy intentionally lines up their forces, or you get really really freaking lucky with a flanking shot...

The Radiance is a great counter to any capital.  Det AM kills AM, deals damage, and interrupts things such as missile barrage.  For this reason, it is worth it.  Not only that, but it can increase its health and turn damage into AM.

The Rapture is definitely powerful though.  Vertigo is great, as is its SC buffing ability.  Either way, the Rapture is a good addition to any Advent fleet, but the more you use Aerias/Halcyons, the more you want a rapture to buff them.

Also, generally the way I play, I create a primary expansion fleet.  Once I hit the enemy line, I create a second one led by a newly built Radiance.  After finishing colonizing, I add a Halcyon to the Progenitor's fleet and begin loading up the Radiance's fleet with Destras and Illuminators.  I then launch an attack with my Progen/Halo fleet only to follow elsewhere with my Radiance.  My Radiance will push through enemy territory until it meets up with my P/H fleet.  At that point, I start the final push against the enemy.

That is true..  There have been requests to have Animosity reworked to be more effective along with generic buffs to all battleships, and I would love to see malice anti-nerfed a bit so that you get a little more bang for your buck because currently, everyone just gets SR and colonize.  Malice only if you have leftover slots.

You want to get to the next level with Advent?  You've come to the right place.  As Obi-wan said in Revenge of the Sith, "Advent are our specialty."

Here's a secret for you.  You really don't need to build anything but one unit - disciples.  That's it.  Don't need labs, don't need research, don't need anything.  Just need a good econ, and a row of frig factories to pump as many disciples as you can pump.  That will win you the game.  Not just against the AI, even online multiplayer.  They'll beat anything they can shoot at - even heavy cruisers.  Imagine that!  I guess the devs put heavy cruisers in the game just so they could laugh at idiots who bothered to spend the time and effort teching up to them.

If you want total overkill, and are just bored spamming disciples, you can drop 3 labs and tech illums.  Then build nothing but illums.  You won't need to build anything else for the rest of the game.  Works online multiplayer just as good as it does single player.

You don't need, and generally don't want, variety in your unit mix, but for special occassions (say your opponent really spammed a lot of lrm, and you were late with your disciple spam), you can mix in a few seekers - also a tier 0 unit - and that will take care of those nasty wasty wittle tier 1 and tier 2 lrm.  If you really feel in the mood, you can spam halcyon carriers too, because you'll need something to bomb planets with.

I'd recommend sticking with the basics though.  Just learn to mash that "build disciple" button over and over and over again.  You'll have a sore finger the first few times you do it right, but don't worry - your body will adjust.  Just like working out any other muscle - no pain no gain.

Darvin, I really like your idea about doubling up on the Progen and Halcyon, but I'm probably going to give the Radiance a couple more tries to see if she makes the cut.  And that bit about the shape of your empire dictating whether to go trade or culture really made sense.  Great stuff!

Volt, I am definitely going to work the two fleet strategy into my gameplay as the flighty AI can be a pain in the ass trying to track them down with only one fleet.  Thanks for the quick synopsis too... I'll be looking forward to the patch so that the Advent aren't too rediculous.  LOL I was wondering why I had to actually replace ships while playing with the Vasari last night... that certainly didn't happen with the Advent.  And Lord I almost freaked out when I got my first warning about one of my Caps losing it's shields.  Who knew!

Agent, I'll let you know if I get carpel tunnel... although I probably won't be able to type well.

 

BTW if I knew how to give karma, you'd all have it by now.

If you get carpel tunnel, that's means you're playing the advent correctly!

Disciples do lose (quite badly) to massed LRF.  You will need to mix in scouts to get them to work.  The strength of this combo is that you don't need any labs to get it off the ground, enabling you to focus on capital ships or sheer numbers.  In and of itself, the other factions can beat it with higher tech units if they survive the initial attack.

Also, light frigates only beat heavies when they outnumber them (in a command sense).  Two Kodiaks will beat five disciples.  The thing is, after investing a bunch of cash in labs you probably won't be able to get two Kodiaks for every five disciples the Advent player has (since he's just been spamming them non-stop all day).  Once you do have that mature Kodiak fleet, the Advent player needs to move on.

Resource focus allows you to deactive a trade port (it STOPS making credit income, but still counts as part of your trade chain for determining longest chain).  The deactivated trade port will boost resource production in its target gravity well.

The problem is, you either need a very small trade chain or absurdly high loyalty for this to actually be worth turning off the trade port.  That's presuming you researched the upgrades that improve resource focus.

The only redeeming feature of resource focus is that it doesn't have a cap like refineries do, but if you're better off leaving them as trade ports that doesn't make it worthwhile.



The little "thumbs up" button.

Also, I'd really like to watch some videos of higher level people to get better.  I'm a little surprised that this forum doesn't have a dedicated video thread of higher level play.  I know that Ke5trel has a stickied thread with replays but ...

Actually, while i'm on the subject, there should really be a "Critique my replay" thread so that noobs like me can have people actually pick something concrete about my play that they think should be improved.

Also, I can't believe that the strategy section isn't broken down into Advent, TEC, and Vasari subsections so that information is more organized and easier to find.

Ok, now that I got that out of my system, it's back to trying not to suck.  Thanks again for the info people. 

Actually, I've thought about forming a "game review" thread many times.  Someone needs to do it, whether it's me or another person.

If we can get a combined game replay thread going, can we have the replays downloadable from the replay section of this site?  It might have last been used last summer, but it has to be the best place for replays- even some of the most recent 1.041 replays can no longer be downloaded from where they were uploaded, whereas the ones on this site will remain.

I'd start a 1v1 pack with one of Krath's and two of StarPlayer's replays, but 3 doesn't seem enough and it appears that I've missed some of the best 1v1 replays from v1.041.  If there are other suitable candidates can they be uploaded again?

5s replays aren't as useful, there are too many factors other than straightforward faction balance and strategy affecting them.  And 1v1s are at least free of drops!

One aspect of the logistics is not to set up a replay thread when there is a patch about to appear, as no-one could watch replays from the old version....

I'd prefer that the thread be split between 1v1 and bigger team games, rather than beginner/advanced.  There's few 1v1 as it is, they're probably all pro- every error is exposed in 1v1!  If the new style is going to be mildly revolutionary, as has been hinted, there might not be new replays for a while as the top players adjust, unless we organise a specific replay thread- as we should.

No word currently.  With the previous patch, the first hints from the developers that a patch was in the works were 4 weeks before the release.  With Diplomacy development in high gear, I doubt we'll see a patch before Summer.

I retract that statement; we just got our first hint of an upcoming patch, so 4-5 weeks is a good estimate...