Good manual scouting with regular run-of-the-mill scouts probably would do just as well as clairvoyance.  Certainly the latter is far more convenient, but you can get away without it.  If you're going to pick this capital ship first, it's for Reverie, and even then I'd be hesitant since this ability does nothing to stop carrier capital ships (since their strike craft remain in operation).

If you constantly kite with your carrier, they'll never hit you with Reverie.  Even if they do hit you, they gotta stay in range and keep hitting you with the ability.  If they make even a slight screwup, you need only a split second of active time to scramble.  It doesn't really work in practice.

@DesConnor

Unfortunately, I do not have a replay since I tend to clean out files fairly often (Ironically, so its easier to find the files I want).  However, I do remember the game fairly well. 

My ally and the other Advent player were only 3 jumps apart, with just two volcanic worlds between them.  I tracked the Advent fleet and together we hit the opponent's freshly built 2nd capital ship before it joined his fleet.  My ally left a front world planet under attack solely so we could pull this off, and definitely would never had done that if we hadn't known he had a second capital ship on the way.  Later, the Advent player split his fleet, and had his capital ship and smaller fleet guard his flank against me while his main fleet and the TEC player's fleet hit my ally together.  However, with the clairvoyance we knew exactly when this split occurred.  I attacked the smaller fleet after the split but before my ally was attacked.  My ally knew to rush the TEC players fleet before the opposition merged together.  The Advent player hesitated and delayed his attack, sending some of his ships back to attack me while my ally bought himself time to build a starbase and upgrade it.  Both attacks failed (as expected), but my ally lasted much longer because of it.  Since I was tracking the TEC fleet the entire time, I was able to build a starbase in one of his gravity wells yet be certain his fleet would be several jumps away.  The final judgement on my starbase forced him to build his own starbase so that A) he wouldn't lose the planet to bombardment and he would have air support to provide cover for his ogrovs he was slowly building.  Again, my starbase was destroyed, but it forced the TEC player to build a lot of ogrovs far from my ally, and to bring his fleet back.  Even though I knew I'd lose the starbase, it bought us the time to give my ally the chance to build another starbase on his new front line (he lost another planet) and gave me time to build a fleet.

And here is where clairvoyance really helped.  The TEC player was in the best position planet wise and economically.  Further more, their team had a supply pact, so we were screwed economically.  In past games I have built large amounts of carriers, so my TEC enemy had two fleets: one hitting my vasari ally, and a second composed entirely of gardas.  He kept this fleet back from any battles, hoping I'd bring in my fleet of carriers not thinking he had any defense against SC.  Because of this, I just built HCs and domina subjugators.  Without clairvoyance, I doubt I would have known he had that many gardas (somewhere around 90 I think) considering how far away they were from me (and therefore my scouts).

I bought myself time to build up a fleet and bought my ally time to build starbases and delay his demise because we knew where to deal punishing blows early on in the game. 

With the vasari starbases defending my ally, and with the TEC player tying up his ogrovs to fight my starbase in his territory, my ally lasted a long time given the situation.  Since they were so caught up fighting against him, I used a wormhole (somewhere in the Advent player's sphere of influence) to jump into the TEC player's area.  With provoke hysteria I was able to eliminate about 6 or 7 the TEC players planets.  He didn't bring his fleet back because they didn't think I'd be able to take them both on once my ally was defeated. 

After my ally was gone, the TEC fleet came back towards my fleet while the Advent player came to hit my planets.

Since I knew where the TEC fleet was jumping, I was able to avoid him and come back through the wormhole.  Then, I was able to avoid the Advent fleet in his own territory, wiping out his planets and structures using provoke hysteria and lots of HCs.  I saved my original planets because I was able to avoid a battle with both factions, and I was able to do this because of clairvoyance.  Their fleets tried to corner me and hit me at the same time, but I was able to pick them off one by one...and since I knew what fleet composition to have (not the usual carrier spam), the fleets of LRFs + anti-SC were crushed. 

Key reasons I was able to defeat them after these battles:

1) Though the Advent player eventually recolonized his planets, by losing them (and going under 5), they lost their supply pact, so when the fleets were destroyed, they couldn't rebuild them without doing some serious research.

2) I was able to navigate deep into enemy territory, avoiding fleets and starbases, and wipe out the many novaliths that the TEC player built

3) I knew where they were rebuilding and mobilizing their fleets, where they were keeping there fresh capital ships waiting to level up to level 4, and I hit them with small fleets before they accumulated a large enough fleet to threaten them.

Of course, a valid point has been brought up: why not just use scouts?  The problem with them is that they are easily killed my SC, and both opponents had large amounts of hangars in all their gravity wells (to counter my usual carrier spam), so scouts likely would not have made it beyond frontline planets.

In order to do what I did, I also would have needed scouting reports at several planets deep in enemy territory at any given time...not an easy thing to do...

Gentlemen,

     Before I discovered these forums the Revelation was my go-to capital ship.  While I admit that my ideas have been greatly swayed since then, I would like to give a bit of perspective as to why it was this ship that inspired me from the beginning:

     The Revelation is billed as the Advent's bombardment ship, though it is not particularly good at this role before level 6.  As such, I always like using it as my #1 cap to quickly get it there.  The ships abilities, across the board, seem to be exponentially more valuable to my military as a whole at levels 2 and 3; and the ship has decent forward firepower that is focused enough that you don't lose half of it's hitting power by having guns in side and rear arcs.  (The firepower is potent because it is focused)

Clairvoyance: Is a godsend at any point in the game.  It is particularly useful in multi-player, to keep your team from being snuck up on;  and to get real-time information on multiple systems w/o the need for a scout to survive a starbase/minefield/fighter screen.  I like to use it to help coordinate rushes in the early game, monitor enemy fleets without their knowledge in the mid-game, and for coordinating our attacks against back-line assets.  (Particularly scouting where to have my Vasari buddy drop his fleet via the Kosutra Cannon "gate").  All in all, it allows unrestricted intelligence gathering, w/o you opponent's knowing he is being scanned  Very hot.

Reverie:  This ability is nice for multi-cap ship battles as it can shut down that annoying battleship/support ship while I focus on sinking the carrier.  It's ability to remove a Cap ships fleet buffs from the fight for over 30 seconds makes the rest of the fleet quite vulnerable, and is a great interrupt against powerful channeling abilities.  As such, I consider this a Fleet Support ability more so than an attack.

Guidance:  An excellent ability when multiple Caps come together.  Quicken the cool-down on Cleansing Brilliance, Missile Barrage, or Planet Suck?  YES PLEASE!  Even the level 1 version of this power is good if used judiciously.  It can even quicken cool-down on things like Burn Anti-matter, (for rapid-fire abilty disabling), Suppression (For extra disabling fun), Crew Extractor (to quickly cap those neutrals), Domination (My fave use:  My enemy?  My Ally!), and shield Restore (+ Iconus Guardians makes my fleet much harder to kill!).

Provoke Hysteria:  Besides being one of the most viscerally satisfying attacks in the game, (Images of people running amok like Reavers from Firefly; killing and eating each other, burning down everything, etc....) it is the best way to break down a well-built world quickly.  Yes, it lacks the resource harvest of Drain Planet, and the accessibility of Raze Planet, but it's the best answer that Advent have to planetary bombardment.  This expediting of the destruction of high-end planets really lets you stick-and-move, rather than waiting forever to take out a world.

    This brings us back to:  Why make this your first CAP?  My answer:  So my mid-game you have access to this full arsenal of useful ability.  Before level 6, this cap is really incomplete.  For power mix by six I recommend:

Clairvoyance:  1 - It gets the job done, you can see anywhere on the map.

Reverie:  3  -  It will seem to your opponent that he has been stuck for HOURs while the rest of his fleet is either destroyed, or is forced to leave their CAP to it's fate.

Guidance:  1 - 40% reduction is plenty for most purposes.

Provoke Hysteria: 1 - For the Win!  Literally:  You kill planets faster, and make your win easier.

I hope this helps/was amusing,

Ged

A single Revelation with Reverie is capable of keeping two or even three capital ships permanently out of the fight while you deal with their support fleets. Unlike a Marauder, which has to recast the POH after the target is back online (which gives the target a split second to do something, like DA the marauder for instance), Reverie can be cast on a still turned off ship meaning the target isn't going to EVER take an action as long as the Revelation is alive and with antimatter.
Adding this to the fact that there is no way of clearing the Reverie effect off your ship except with POH/Perseverance (i think), this makes Reverie my no.1 anti-cap ability in the game.

When I encounter late game advent fleets, the one ship which I am MOST scared of is a Revelation. Not the mothership, which has to be taken out in order to even think of dealing some damage to the advent fleet. Not the radiance as well, because DA deals some damage and wipes antimatter but then AM comes back and Kortul can still use DS on the Radiance. Priority one has to be the revelation - because with the revelation online I can forget about my caps at all.
DA on the other hand is the biggest threat to .... starbases. Any transy with meteors/disorient or Orkulus with frontal shields/reintegrate simply shit their pants brown when a high-level radiance rolls about. Not a Kortul - DS simply cannot completely defeat a 2,5+ AM regeneration rate of a Starbase. DA, however, easily can.

Hmmm interesting.  I always got it as my 3rd or 4th cap for spy purposes.  Maybe I should move up on its build priority...

your wrong in one thing... reverie does not require the revelation to face its target. (so its even better)

The only issue with this is that:

10 Scouts=20 Fleet Points

Revelation = 50

Just saying, though that does sound like a phenomenal occaison, however, that's why I always have mixed fleets w/ no direct counter, it's not as effective, but it does prevent paper from covering rock, per-se.

Xer0 \^/

Revelation as a combat ship?

Why not a Halycon (the bonus squadrons really kick ass) or a Radiance? You can do whatever you like, tbh, I'm just curious.

Then again, I can't talk.  Ever since my first game, my first Cap. has ALWAYS been a Sova, which isn't all that much when you note the economic benefits of an Akkan or the military benefits of a Dunov or Marza (Kols just suck), but I'm infatuated with the Sova, especially since it was the last ship standing in my first actual batte.

(I was a noob, and did a 1v1 w/ Hard AI on a small map.  I had capped 2-3 planets, and my fleet was about... 1 Sova (Lvl. 3) One Akkan (lvl. 1) and a handfull of light frigates. I also had 5 Guass Defense platforms, and 3 repair stations. Well, the advent invades my homeplanet with 2 caps, each level 5 (I think a Radiance and a Progenitor), 7 Purge vessels, 8 Illums and 20-some Disciple vessels.  After a long, intense furball in which I did nothing but tell them to kill the Purge vessels, they retreated, and all I had left was a level 7 Sova Carrier)

Xer0 \^/

Ah, I see.

You like to play as the Advent, but your combat strategy greatly favors the abilities of TEC or Vasari Caps.

Advent ships are designed with Synergy in mind, one ship negates the flaws of another, so the advent fleet can take minimal damage while letting their naturally high amount of firepower take out the enemy. You, on the other hand, seem to favor destroying the enemy and making them rout ASAP so that you , in turn, take minimal damage.

Anyway, it's very rare that you get a Cap. Ship all the way to level 6 in MP, and it's often safer and more wise of an investment to simply build a Starbase w/ Construction docks (175% build rate... effectively cuts build time in half) or have multiple frigate factories on a desert or terran planet.  In most MP games, if you can penetrate the enemy's territory to the point where you can use Embargo on their Homeplanet, you might as well just use the Sova's SC to kill off any defenses, pop a few Missile Batteries to kill the frigates he's going to make in defense, and then just bomb the planet.  Embargo is a nice ability, and idea, but the fact that you could just bomb the planet and screw over their economy early on kinda negates this.  Any bonus income from Embargo is... negligible, even on Home Planets, (though, I'm sure a Cruel or Vicious AI homeplanet would get you some decent cash, but... your Sova would probably be there all of 30 seconds before the ENTIRE enemy fleet came from all directions...) I mostly use the ability to trap Trade and Refinery ships, then kill them w/ my StrikeCraft.  You get income from doing this (a preset amount per trade/refinery ship) and it reduces enemy income until theyr'e built again.

I'm not a big fan of being a Marauder, tbh, if it's an AI player he's going to build defenses on every one of his planets, making invasion a huge pain in the ass, and humans will often hunt you down with Flak and LRF's. Although, through about a year or two of playing as the Captain of a Sova, I can proudly say that, in the right hands, a single Sova (at least, I've done this) can take down 3 Kodiaks, 2 Flaks, 2 LRM's, 3 Cobalts and 2 Krosovs and come out with about... 10% hull strenth left.  The Sova is, in essence, a one ship fleet.  However, late game this is often negated by the sheer mass of your fleet and the enemy's... when there's over 100 frigates, 10 cap ships and dozens of SC, one little Sova is often best used like a ship of combat: plowing up front, popping Missile Batteries within firing range and drawing fire from more important ships (like Dunov's, keeping other ships alive, or Flak Frigates)

Xer0 \^/

well, he had no carriers and flak...

That, and I micro-ed all my repair bays to keep him alive, and not my frigates.

Keep in mind that this, also, was the bare vanilla, the good old days when Caps started out dealing 70 damage and by level 10 a Sova's front batteries did 30 damage and the side did 270.

I"m fairly sure that the health on them was also of StarBase-Like porportions, so it's not advisable to just spam Sova's.

Xer0 \^/