A desert  with four mines would help compensate for the less population, that's for sure...logistics are expensive though on deserts, generally only useful in the long term, not short term...

Indeed. I just think that Ironclad really took the easy road of generalizing the factions a bit too much because they found it hard to balance otherwise.  A game where advent start on a desert and Vasari start on Volcanic would be quite interesting (Yes obviously I know how to compensate for lack of crystal: spawn a neutral mine at the homeworld and add a capture neutral mine ability to phase missile turrets so that they can hold it indefinitely). 

Other things that could have been done to spice things up: make advent labs cost 3 logistics instead of 4 (note that all labs were 3 logistics in Beta).

These are by no means suggestions to be implemented right away, but rather ramblings of a crazy fool who dares to think about what might have been   Balance is a hard thing and takes lots of work. I certainly understand why things went the way they did.

Just fix the guardian and domina and everybody will stop complaining. Advent are actually tough if it weren't for all the channeling bs. 

Haha. I'm sure we'll find something else to complain about.

Fixing the domina won't provide that much of an impact for early game advent, so most multiplayer games will mostly not be affected.

The guardian just needs a tweak, and adding phase missile reduction to the shield ability would make the advent at least able to stand longer against the vasari endgame fleet.

Both fixes truly are more endgame.

Early game economy is still quite weak, and both the TEC and vasari usually get a substantial economic boost over the advent.

This economic boost in all reality is EXTREMELY important.  The random maps tend to favor vasari by having plenty of neutrals in the center of the map, giving vasari a powerful early game economic advantage.  This neutral advantage is easily maintained against other races and is a spam war against other vasari players.  This is why the online community is starting to shift to more balanced custom maps provided by dirty sanchezz and crew.

The TEC can quickly eco up, so that leaves advent with little early game economy options. 

To even research basic tier 1 homeworld population upgrades the advent have to waste 400 creds 25 crystal on desert planet population upgrade, that in most cases is a pointless waste of credits...

This would be all fine and dandy if the advent actually started with their true desert homeworld. 

Then you have "resource focus", an almost pointless, inefficient and relatively useless upgrade that seems to do almost NOTHING to benefit your economy considering its cost.  There is no justification to build the labs to get this ability.

I just started playing as vasari again and when I face advent I just laugh....I faced Dead Rat, (he was advent I vasari), the other day and he got 5k feed 10 min in and still couldn't really dent anything I had to offer.  He tried to dent it, but he learned that upgraded vasari starbase with 2 health upgrades and 1 weapon upgrade will beat up the advent fleet far more effectively then you might think.  And people wonder why when I play advent that I don't waste the fleet engaging any vasari starbase unless I know that I have the killing power to take it out fast enough to have few losses...Advent to maintain viability cannot face an early battle of attrition, which is another severe weakness of the advent military.

He SHOULD have been able to have an actual advantage with that sort of feed.  Give TEC OR vasari that kind of feed and you will be facing either a very strong fleet or a very strong starbase.  Give advent that sort of feed and you make it so they can compete.

That is why this race is broken and NEEEEEEEDS an early game economic advantage of some sort. 

The game I mention is just one example, If you like i'll start compiling all the instances of advent failure to be effective when in fact they should be quite effective.

In response to the progenitor convo earlier:

Advent suffer a major lack of logistics slots that a progenitor can alleviate quite nicely.  If you go progen you had best get a halcyon ASAP to provide you with air cover.  A high level progenitor is quite nice, but in all reality it is the worst of the 3 colony capitals because it does NOT have an incapacitate ability, and therefore cannot effectively chase off/destroy a sova carrier in conjunction with the rest of your ships.

They should really consider buffing the Revelation. Its disable abilities/interrupt could render embargo, and scramble bomber useless and give the advent enough time to build a fleet to counter rushes. 

Its sad how the most telepathic race is not the master of ability disabling/interrupter due to anti-matter costs, face target and channeling. 

The revelation and mother-ship should have been the 2 most powerful caps for them.. Why follow the general pattern that the other races follow in-terms of all carriers being the most powerful ships. 

Yes, I would say a buff to the revelation's speed to allow it to catch up to enemy capitals to make it a true counter would be quite nice.  As it stands carriers can be well micro'd to avoid being disabled and therefore the revelations abilities are useless against them.