It's incredible that good counters haven't spread already, there are numerous people using them. Just look around.

The honest answer for advent is that there is not much.  Caps die easily to vasari bomber and assailant spam.  If you are close enough, scout and disc spam do work still if you do it right.  Carrier cruisers can be used to snipe caps if you can surprise them with it(IE hold them in reserve out of the well until the skirantra take decent damage and then jump them in to finish them off).  Bad thing about the carriers with your own bombers is they will pull out phasic trap on defense and totally negate them.  Illums do ok until they pull out a SB then you are screwed.  You are still going to level up their caps with them though(assailants are 20exp, illums are 2 or 3 times that).  TEC admittedly have it easier with better focus fire LRMs, more hull, and hoshis.  The only good part is if you survive to get repulse and then you can slow the caps down long enough to kill them.  They still outrange with bombers and assailants and phase missles kill the guardians sooner than one would want.  Advent is uphill the whole game against vasari though if its played halfway decently.

[_]-Greyfox

Admittedly it has been months since I've played/updated my copy, but if bombers are the only thing giving your enemy an edge over you( i.e you have strategies for taking down everything else that doesn't rely on strikecraft) then simply make every squadron into fighters and negate strikecraft altogether on both sides.  (May requre 5-6 Light Carriers if you have only 1-2 low level caps in your fleet to add to SC.) They'll do crap damage to most ship types if you manage to take out all bombers and have fighters left, but at least you won't have to contend with bomber swarms screwing with your strategy.

Again, this is only viable if you do not utilize strikecraft in your core strategy, and some game mechanics may have changed in the time since I last played.  If you do choose to use it, some players in the past have recommended putting all squads in a tight area and set them to hold position so they wipe out anything that gets near them, place them in the path of the bombers and adjust as needed.  Holding position seems to make them able to fire faster, apparently, and with them all in one spot are able to vaporize weaker targets like bombers, scouts, and colony frigates.  (LRF too if I remember right, but I'm not possitive or it may have changed.)

The down side is if they have flak, your fighters are toast if you let them get in range, so remove those first and keep them down.  Squadrons are taxing in the micro-manapartment, unless you just use them to add a little chaos to your strategy and let the computer choose targets for you.

Theoretically, it is also possible to "Trick" your opponents into wasting the Antimatter required for making the squads, by spreading out your attacks over 5-6 of their mid level ships, giving them insentive to use their repair ability often. (Forgot what it's called)  Best used when you are on defense and able to call reinforcements faster than your opponent can get their to the battle, as you will lose ships faster than them until they can no longer repair.

Lastly, I cannot remember if the abilities work on cap ships, but if they do, the TEC Cobalt's Sabotage Reactor and the Advent Light Frigate's Steal Antimatter would also work extremely well.

-Twilight Storm

Carrier capitals are too powerful and Skirantras are the worst offenders.  Phase missiles are absurdly effective compared to other upgrades and come far too early in the technology tree.  Plus they then fit onto fighters and flak as well- ever had a capital taken down by Vasari fighters?  When Vasari have the most durable strikecraft and in the ridiculous numbers produced by Skirantras, they combine fleets with their starbases far too effectively.

However there is little hope for any kind of balance patch to fix the game.  Firstly the game has never been remotely balanced, we whined for ages about the bugged illuminators which took six months to fix and killed a lot of interest, but there's stuff in the technology trees that has been rubbish as long as the game has existed.  The Skirantras are just the latest in a long weary line of poorly considered additions and attempted refinements.  Stardock and Ironclad have just never put enough effort into the game, they say count the patches, but look at the content compared to the needs.  Secondly, even if at this late stage there was a wholehearted effort made at a beta balance patch, there aren't the players to support it.  Even the most experienced players seem to be of the opinion that the game can be balanced using their 5v5 experience, and it just can't.  5s are rubbish games almost always decided by being stacked or on drops. 

Nearly 3 years into this game and there's still no agreed 1v1 map for testing balance changes.  There is a grand total of one set of replays that I'd recommend for balance, the Star vs Tyr replays, which are outdated.  Any serious discussion of balance demands a replay.  I'll say this for Leisure Suit Vasari, on his balance thread there was at least a replay, even though and somewhat incredibly he wouldn't admit to being in the game that showed the situation he described.  It's amazing to me, when that one was of the few pukka efforts this community has managed to discuss balance, that the Skirantras were then given the huge buff that Leisure Suit demanded and which we had exposed as not being shown to be necessary by the game he was referring to.  But then when was the last time anyone from the development side discussed the game with players at all? 

I don't know why I bother any more.  A long, long time ago, this game had a huge amount of potential.  The mechanics are still fun, in terms of the physical act of playing.  The game side of it is poor and has been for at least half the life of the game.  If there is ever a proper beta patch then I'll make an effort to support it with enough 1v1 replays for a discussion.  Until then threads like this are just venting.  What are the counters to disinterest?

I couldn't agree more.

Seleuceia and I did some experimentation this summer with a balance mod, and tried a bunch of different approaches to fixing this issue.  Some worked well, others had unintended consequences.  I did find one change was extremely effective not only at keeping capital ships alive but also making other types of capital ships competitive when compared ot the carriers.

What we did was we changed their move speeds, so different classes of capital ships moved at different rates.  The carrier was the slowest capital ship (its speed was unchanged) and therefor the least able to withdraw and kite.  This makes sense, since the carrier's abilities already allow it to more easily avoid getting in weapons range in the first place.  It also means other capital ship types can catch up to a kiting carrier capital ship, which means a carrier cap can't just spec itself with bombers and expect to whittle away any other capital ship variety while it kites.

The speeds we chose were:

Battleships - 600
Support - 575
Siege - 550
Colony -550
Carrier - 525

Currently the colony capital ship moves at a speed of 475 and all others move at a speed of 525.  By comparison, the LRF has a move speed of 500.  I find the slow move rate of colony caps to be one of their greatest liabilities and relegates them either to the center of a massive fleet or far away from any major conflict...

Tweaking fighters surviveability would be nice but I think that scramble would still need nerfed.  It can simply put out way too many bomber squads to effectively thin out.   Phasic trap needs tweaked too.  Vasari has other issues certainly which have been beaten to death with no good result(eg. a developer change)

[_]-Greyfox

All u crying advent bitches STFU.

U had no problem when lums were making HC dmg without any upgrade and 20 lums could level vasari sb with 1 hull upgrade. Vasa rnt even in 10% as overpowered as  advent were. Your problem is Vasari has an answer for your every trick. True, but the cost most , they have many week spots. Stop beatching already and learn , adapt, use best what other races has.

I know Grey nothing i write wont change your mind, cause u have " nerf vasari" implemented to your dna  and even if ill do to u what i did to gandalf when he was singing your song, that is kicked his ass  , me advent, he vasari wont change it.

But to other people: its not true, vasa isnt overpowered. All depends of the map. If vasari has tons of neuts nere him, sure, he is invincible, but if there isnt any or there is little, Vasa is defencless like a baybe and u can  simply outspamm him

Comparing the current strength level of Vasari to bugged illuminators isn't exactly favourable.  The vast majority of people here were celebrating when the illum bug got fixed.

Grey now u talking no its it cause i say so.

I made 1 hard argument, and u simply ignore it like it doesnt exist. U dont read cause u dont have to or u ignore it cause u have no response?

Sins has many abilities that might seem overpowered like metero storm + dissorientation on advent sb. No counter if u get in range, or u get pushed in range.

Scramble bombers is strong from lv3 cap. It gives vasari some advantage, some replacement for lack of spammin abilities that advent and tec has. I can understand its hard to change your playstyle   habit but if u dont adapt, u get beatten. I can  tell u at least dosens of players r counterinf scintras very effective and i dont see then screaming on forums like u do.

Like i sad, i bet even if me as advent win with u as vasa u wont change your mind, so stop talking about beeing special and arguments, nor inteligence.

Another topic: vasari isnt bugged. Vasari works as they were program to work, no sicret extra damage no extra armor, shield, no magical teleportation. u may say some abilities r overpowered, but i say every race has something thats overpowered like meteor storm, or pervasive economy or..... REPULSE Funny haw u all focus on vasari abilities especialy u Grey

Sins is so ql cause everything has a counter. everything. even scramble bombers. U just didnt unlock it yet, Your main problem is your focus to  win against scintra in air, witch is hard. Ill give u a tip , try something else or ask Aquia for help.

I bet u wil bring an argument about a price of the counter. Here we r hitting the hot spot. Cause vasari  generaly costs 30-50% more then other races , so if u need to spend some more to counter,  u r just matching vasari expences.

Here we r toughing another hot spot, cause everything turns about cash. Haw do vasari get that extra + 30-50% to match advent and tec spamm. answer is : neutrals. So like i sad, and will say again, everything depends of the map

But i have great idea for u lets merge all 3 races into 1, so everything will be equal, no weeknes, no pros, also lets remove all  upgrades, leaving only some abilities, so we will have pure spamm.  lets create such a  comie nirvana, everything equal. i hope u will enjoi it (sarcasm off)

PS, when i was talking about lums i wasnt thinking about u. I know many more notorious lums abusers then u mostly among DT

PSPS i hope its not too rational for u

Meteor and disorient have many counters.  Mainly it is to not engage directly and use bombers which guess what....2 or 3 skirantra do that nicely even without carrier cruisers or building a SBas minds here says.  2nd is ant-AM abilities such as on a kortul.  Radiances block it too with detonate AM.  Repulse isn't OP.  Assailants and javelis outrange.  The afforementioned bomber spam outranges.  Phase missles make them not that difficult to kill.  I did not see any point in your rambling mess of text, quar.  Only thing there was is something about neutrals being important to vasari which is obvious.  It is not often that a random map does not have enough to support a vasari.  The thing is that most of the games now have 6 or 7 or 8 vasari in them that fight over neutrals and still the vasari manages in general to overpower other races easier.

[_]-Greyfox

We touched on spamming already and discovered they equal in cost so they can be spammed equally.Something you forget to consider between these 2 is that kanracks grant you a war without enemy caps which for advent is huge.Advent needs caps to augment there fleet to win.This is on equal eco footing.Skirantra can heal your ships whereever they go which is a soft counter to ilum side beams cutting damage in half.For advent to survive they must invest in repair for caps.

You cant compare those 2 tecs.Meteor is espensive because of all the labs and then you have to buy it on sb.That credit tec for vas is pretty good cause it effects everything in game.Reduces caps by like 300 credits.Buildings labs all ships.Its actually can be worth it.

lol seriously?So getting 4 labs which you would have anyway and researching this to disable 40-80 bombers which would be the entire fleet(all advent has to deal with a sb) is not cost effective?Dont get me started with tk push.It doesnt work against sc.Its range is to low and you cannot push all sc before at least some of the hit your cap.2 skirantra at lvl3 = what 40-50 bombers by themself lol.4 lvls of pm ups forget about brniging haly to the game.

Wrong.You can get subs out mid game and you know why?Because they are infinitely more useful than meteor mid game and late game.Why you ask? Because they can go anywhere and kill fleets.Stop fleets from retreating.All you need is 10-15.Add mines and you dont need much damage dealing ships at all to kill any size fleet.How is meteor being stationary and near impossible to even use on a skilled player even stack up to subs?

Seriously quar try playing advent against skilled vas and see how useful tkpush is against 2 skiratras and all your other tricks you think work.Post up the replay and I wont say no more about it.Show how you can use meteor to win games lol.

lol that game had nothing to do with what we were talkin about.You talk about how good ilums are and tk push yet when you played me you didnt use them once in game.You ran your caps from my fleet the whole game and when you did get close I killed it easy.All tier 0 units except a few flak.Why do I want to play a race where all I can do is spam scouts all game to beat someone.When all advent can do is spam scouts and tier 0 stuff to win I would hardly call balanced.How do you think it would have turned out if all i did was invest in tier 0 units as well?I had 6 levels of pm.By the end of the game I could have had subs to but I quit because my team lost not because I did.I would have subbed your gaurds and your fleet.

PS this cheese strat is not new or secret been around for long time.