What about "seventh tier researchable" didn't you understand?  I don't want it anywhere close to the start of the game.  Besides, if you look at it from a lore standpoint, the Advent aren't going to have this sort of thing until after they've been fighting the Vasari a long time.  It's not something they'd have by default.  PM's are the most advanced weapon type in the game bar-none.  This isn't something to help the Advent in the early game at all.

As for making them cheaper.. Copied from the entity file for your pleasure:

basePrice
	credits 525.000000
	metal 110.000000
	crystal 120.000000
slotCount 7.000000

 That ain't that much.  If someone wants one, they save a couple extra seconds to buy it.  It's price is still well low enough that it won't have a major impact whatsoever.

Besides, if you want the Guardian (which Advent players do), they will get their hands on it.

As for fixing the Domina, it's a given, and one that I'm working on myself to rework into a usable unit through modding.  When I finish it and other units, I'll publish it to the modding section, but I'm not done yet.  The Adjudicator is being a particularly stubborn unit to fix, but I don't want to go into why here...  Regardless, the reason that the Advent are weak early on is that they need so much effort to get going.  I mean, it's not really hard to get three military labs up.  Two at your homeworld and one at the asteroid so you can get LRF, but the problem arises when you need to rapidly colonize other types of worlds such as Volcanics or Ice worlds.  As a result, they are handicapped by not being able to do so or by having to purchase extra logistics slots to get the researchables.  This is, to my understanding, the primary reason why the Advent get behind early on.  This is amplified later through the lack of an ability improve things like TP's and whatnot.  In the end, the Advent suffer a weak economy and get steamrolled by the superiorly funded TEC.

If you want to buff the Advent early on, buff their Disciples or Seekers such that they would be viable in combat until convenience allows for Illuminators.  In my mod, I do buff Disciples slightly for this reason, but you are welcome to disagree with me.

On the other hand, the other way to make them better early on is to make their capitals damage fiends.  If you drastically increased the DPS output of capitalships, particularly the Radiance, Rapture, and Revelation (supposing of course a series of fixes to everything except Provoke Hysteria), you could make them dreadfully powerful monsters capable of fending for themselves more easily and thus not requiring as much frigate input which could be thrown into the economy instead.

Now, in defense of Goa, you have to understand that Dominas and Guardians are entirely dependent on when you want them.  Neither is so high up that you can't get them early, but they are high enough that by passively researching you won't get them until mid-game at which point you have plenty of resources for the Guardian, making your argument moot.  The Domina on the other hand, if fixed would drastically improve mid to late game endurance of capitals in Advent fleets.  So yes, he could have been nicer, but you did overreact.

What about manners did you parents not teach you?  I'm not a child to be chastised. People in society get so miffed when someone defends themselves because most(85%) have a death wish and therefore see no need to defend their worthless(as they see it) selves.  I am not one of those people, so many of you (i'm thinking 85%) will consider me strange.  Many things in my life have led me to this decision and I'll stick by defending myself about my right to defend myself until I die.  This is no empty group of typed words, I live my life this way.  Its actually quite nice, because you don't settle for bullshit and instead you start to acquire things that are real.  Like real friends, like really helpful assets, and like really hot women.  I recommend EVERYONE try defending themselves at all possible junctures in their lives because its just damn fun to do.  If you want to see what i'm talking about, watch a movie called "fight club".  Maybe we should start one, as I for one enjoy a good natured fight.

Anyways, back on topic.

Adding tech will likely be unlikely so you can throw that idea out.  The devs haven't changed much existing tech in years, really.  I wouldn't be surprised if they keep that trend.  It would be nice though!  Adding a small amount of phase missile block to guardians that then can be upgraded at tech level 7 would both be a fair and interesting way to go about it.  In this way the vasari early cap snipe can only be reduced in effectiveness, not destroyed.  The point is to not take away from anyone's enjoyment.

The fixed price of a guardian is quite a bit actually, as losing only 6 is greater then the cost of a capital ship.  The cost is such that it makes the guardians slow to acquire in the early/middle game for advent, making them VERY difficult to acquire for an advent player that didn't start in an eco spot or had time to eco up.  Considering advents poor efficiency with logistics slots and other costs, they will always be at a big disadvantage switching to trade ports when compared to the other races. 

Disciples already are already the best cost(including fleet supply cost) for dps of the LF's, so they probably won't be getting a buff anyways.  Also, its more FUN to increase fleet protection in the early game with an active counter.  Increasing the counters of this game will increase the fun one has in learning it, and the fun one has in playing it.  

Personally I have no problem defeating TEC players early on, as the advent tier zero spam currently is very strong(just ask New Player ).  I would like to have a few more OPTIONS as to my opener to be effective.

As for increasing cap damage, It would be interesting to test, I really enjoy the Distant Stars mod.  Advent ships need balanced survivability for their cost, it feels like they survive a direct focus fire for FAR less time then other cap ships in the early game.

Be sure to make a nice big forum post, i can't wait to check it out for myself, good work man!

and people defend him when he is the antagonist bringing in the negativity into this entire conversation. I broke down what he did, its not an over reaction to call a person on their BS when in fact they are spewing it out of both ends.  My hands are clean and I haven't yet insulted him or his mother!  Yes, you can spew BS out of both ends and still be a decent person, go to LA to verify this.

when I typed "what about 'seventh tier' researchable didn't you understand," I was actually laughing.  I suppose an emoticon could have made it more clear, but that was more of a poking gesture than being sardonic.

In regards to losing Guardians: yes, six, so that means that you could equate that cost to approximately a capital with 4500 hull and shield (actually probably more like 6000 because they do have some hull).  That isn't that bad when you think about it.  That, and their abilities are just as critical to your fleet as a whole, so I still don't think it's really that much for what you get...

I mean, we could buff their health, but I don't really want to go there.  I'd rather buff their damage as that would only affect the early game.

Domina Modding: Oh, it will be.  I'm reworking/rebalancing approximately a quarter to a third of all abilities in the game to get them up to par.  There'll be lots of room for comments and complaints in that thread lol.

I'm sorry you took my early responses as being rude, that was not my intention. I have not been trying to shut this discussion down, I just didn't agree with your position. Just because the people are dissenting doesn't mean they are attacking you or the debate. I have never said that was all the advent needs, I want their capitalships buffed as well. Also I am open to the idea of giving shield projection a PM block or damage reduction buff so that it still does something even when the guardians run out of shields.

As you say this is a discussion, thus you admit persuasion is your objective. If you really did want to persuade me, I said you need more evidence than your experience. I'll give you some data, free of charge, which has made me a bit more sympathetic to your idea.

Support Cruiser Cost per Fleet Supply

Resource    Guardian    Domina    Hoshiko    Cielo    Overseer    Subverter

Credits          75               100          87.5      70.8        64.2           80

Metal            15.7            20            7.5       4.16       15.7            16

Crystal          17.1            20           12.5       15         14.2            16

If you would have posted this, I would have agreed you have a case. The Advent have the most expensive support cruisers, and ironically the Domina is easily the most expensive of them all. The Guardian is about equal the the subverter, which is probably where it should be as they are the only cruisers with AoE abilities and thus should be the most expensive. Compared to the TEC support cruisers yes, the guardian is over priced. But as they all have single target abilities in my opinion it is justified.

That is exactly what I've been doing here friend.

I am willing to ignore this contradiction and move beyond this little dispute if you are. I disagree with your opinion that guardians should have their costs reduce. I ask that you respect it, and I will respect yours.

GoaFan77- Your post convinced me if nothing else.

This chart makes it fairly clear that the Guardian is pretty appropriately priced. I personally favor the addition of a secondary PM block /Resistance with Shield Projection. To me this makes sense from a lore standpoint as the Guardian is supposed to be more or less the most advanced shield technology in the galaxy and at the same time I think this is a logical step to balance Advent vs Vasari without tipping the delicate Advent vs TEC balance.

If anything, this chart highlights the EXTREME need for changes to the Domina. The most immediate and obvious changes are for perseverance to become omnidirectional and non channeling. In exchange for these improvements I would be willing to see the duration reduced to 30 or even 20 but only 20 if the AM cost was reduced to 100. The effect could stay the same and you could still have the level 6 research requirement. This would go along way toward balancing Advent. They would have a support cruiser with a very formidable healing ability balanced against high AM and Research costs. 

Suppression is a niche ability at this point for sure but it's not really a balance issue. If we wanted to keep with the Advent motif of synergies, I had the idea that Suppression could lower mitigation against beam weapons. This would allow for Ilums to pair with them and actually be somewhat viable again but in a controlled manner. From a lore standpoint, you could think of this as a secondary effect from the crew not being able to actively manage their shields since they are in thrall to the Domina. This could be kept forward facing and channeling as a limitation to the new buff.

Just a few thoughts. I would really LOVE a truly balanced game where truly different factions are all fully viable. I hate to reference it, but the original king of balanced RTS was Starcraft. It proved you could have races with VASTLY different play styles and strengths that were all extremely well balanced.

The research i'm referring to was a bit more in depth then a simple calculation.  I'm talking quantifying military advantage here, not some misleadingly simple logistics to cost ratio.  But now I know, that insta persuasion involving you involves some spreadsheets of easily calculated information. 

Sareth's persuasion spreadsheet:

Vasari are the best race to fuck you over.

                                  TEC                    Advent                                                       Vasari

Sexual Intercourse     Good Lay!     Mind fuck me mommy!       Total sexual experience, Nanites screwing

                                                                                                          every cell, individually. 

Condescending and insulting still, but even less subtle. Your posts are getting worse.

I will admit, however, that you come up with some quite interesting and highly-polished bullshit to attack people with.

So far your responses to counter-arguments have generally consisted of:

"I'm awesome and obviously know more about what I'm talking about than you."

Ignoring counter-arguments

Insulting the poster without actually addressing anything they're saying.

Also, why the hell are you telling me you're not using another account? I didn't say you were.

And yes, I am just mean and spiteful.

The correct term would be qualifying military advantage as there are simply too many differences to quantify them.  What Goa did was quantify a certain segment of it.  Slight difference in spelling, huge difference in meaning    

Now, please kindly stop spewing profanity across our nice clean forums.  They're new.

In all seriousness though Sareth, you really are taking this way to far.  Now please stop victimizing yourself and shut up about Goa and the others toward which you show animosity.  Goa's said he's willing to drop this, but your post clearly demonstrated that you aren't.  I would really recommend you change this.  This argument is derailing an otherwise decent thread.  I may not agree with the idea behind it, but at least let's have a civil discussion.  Goa said he wanted some data supporting your points.  It's not that he didn't believe you necessarily, it's just that whenever someone challenges the status quo, it is their duty to prove why it should be.  Laws are reviewed by committees.  When in court, the prosecution must provide proof, not the defense.  When you challenge the status quo, you must show why you should change it.

Now, you can use inductive or deductive reasoning to do this.  Inductive is what you did where you saw that the Advent were weak early-game and decided to buff the Guardian as such.  Deductive is generally more highly regarded as it starts with evidence and ends with a claim.  This leads to stronger arguments which can be more persuasive.

Now for the topic we are supposed to be talking about...

Now, in this case, the Guardian is either too expensive or not.  Obviously decreasing the cost of Guardians will necessarily buff the Advent as a whole race.  Is this needed?  I say no.  Later in the game (such as when they are unlocked), you should have little trouble purchasing them and they work very effectively.  Late-game, the Advent is demolished via Vasari PM's.  I have no problem with this being a definite weakness, but it should be nerfed a bit through the use of SP having a researchable or something to that end enabling it to protect nearby ships (which makes sense because now the missile has to go through two shields instead of just one) by somewhere around 10% at the maximum level (though the numbers could be debated elsewhere.)

Also, at the same point in the game, a much more glaring flaw in the Advent comes to light: the impotence of the Domina Subjugated.  It is very expensive for little functionality.  As such, it is in serious need of a buff.  Like I said before, I'm working on this myself and will publish it eventually.

The main point you are ultimately asserting is that by cheapening the Guardian, we will make them more accessible early-game and thus improve the early-game Advent.  I disagree with this on the grounds that the Guardian IMO is too far up the tech tree.  IMHO, the best way to buff early-game Advent is to buff their DPS on capitals.  The Advent are reliant on them anyways, why not buff them?  It makes sense logically and balance wise.  In the end, capitals won't be used for their DPS, but they are at the beginning.  Making them so that they always win in a pure DPS fight (no abilities) against other capitals IMO is the best way to go.  This gives them more power and resistance against other units without directly buffing the economy, something I still want the Advent to have more difficulty with (and I love the Advent btw).

In the end, I believe that this DPS buff would accomplish your goal without changing the other game stages.

^ Agreed

 

Ditto.

Not really sure why Sareth is so hostile lol. I mean, why so much anger when we have such a great game to play? 

I could quantify and qualify the races against each other all day long if I actually felt the need to. I crunch statistical, financial and calculaic ratios for a living and most of the folks on here come with some kind of computer programming background so they probably could as well. Frankly, though, I am perfectly content leaving the spreadsheets at work.

I am a relative newcomer to the game (been playing about 9 months) but realistically speaking, its on the order of common knowledge that the Domina and Revelation are the 2 Advent ships in most need of re-working. I respect the idea Sareth put's forth that greater availability of Guardians would help Advent, I just don't agree with the reasoning. If you have the infrastructure to produce the size of fleet which can take advantage of Shield Projection, the financial resources to unlock all of the prior Shield Upgrades and the Guardian itself, I really fail to see that you would have difficulty buying this ship with said infrastructure. At that point, I just don't see the cost being prohibitive in any way. The numbers just don't add up.

I am a relative newcomer to the game too. Indeed, many more of the Advent's ships other than the Iconus Guardian need a reworking/buff; as you mentioned, the Domina Subjugator and the Revelation Battlecruiser are in desperate need of a reworking/buff, and the Advent's early game viability needs some work too.

Ah well you can berate me for being hostile, but it is in fact others who brought the hostility to the thread and therefore I fight them for bringing it into the thread, something they deserve to be fought for.  I defend myself with a no holds barred approach whether it be physically or mentally, its my personal choice that has proven to have effective results.  I don't attack the contradiction, instead I attack the personal attack that comes along with the contradiction(its right there in every thread, the first being the worst, as the first poster wanting to take the thread in a direction where it will be bogged with negativity showing utter lack of respect for my post),  Whether this attack is implied, intentional, or unintentional.  If it was not meant to be intentional, then the writers should think more about what they write so their writing matches their intentions.

I highly disagree, and this is why.

Thought experiment, advent do get moderate to large cap ship dps boost.

Newer Advent players take their ships to the front lines of a fight much sooner while their health stays relatively the same making them closer to enemy focus fire and therefore more likely to die FASTER then they currently do(after all most learn via AI).  This would be a way to encourage players to close range with enemy ships with your cap ships that would weaken advent vs both the TEC AND the vasari, since both of these races have popular, dangerous colonizers with warp disruption capability AND cheaply(logistics slots) acquired LRF.  So in essence this idea would mean that the advent become a weaker race in the beginning then they already are. This would provide a little more staying power against a spammed defensive fleet while advent caps are bombing a HW, or great for an initial clash between economy players in the middle of the map, and slightly better against a vasari starbase plopped on an advent HW. Those aren't bad advantages, but if you wanted to nerf early vasari starbase early advantage you would equalize the time and effectiveness of their extremely effective and extremely quick to build first weapon upgrade to make it more balanced. 

Also The smart  advent player still would keep their easily killed sniped cap ships out of harms way (making their dps boost all but irrelevant) because there is no real increase in their capital ship's defensive capabilities, which outweigh DPS concerns from a military standpoint by a LARGE margin.

Okay, well since you insist on remaining off the rails in your own thread, I'd like to recommend to all others that posts regarding argument be ignored henceforth, so hopefully we can have a civil discussion.  

So, aside from those already mentioned, does anyone have any suggestions regarding the improvement of the early-game Advent or comments on those already suggested?

Okay well blatant thread takeover here, i should take your advice and just be a happy little forum user.

But i'm not particularly happy with your subversive ways, so instead I'll call you out for being a conniving little bitch.

Get off your high horse, it smells of shit. 

Proof that I'm still on track.

You said:

I don't really believe you at all.  I take what you DID write WHEN you wrote it and how it came across to me.  I think that you are reasonably intelligent and therefore because of this I throw your "writing error" into the Bull shit category.  Its a convenient mistake that you can fix later on, which makes it all the more subject to scrutiny.  Also from your previous writing you have an understanding of how to present yourself and therefore are also not making an error out of lack of understanding in this area.

Thank you but i've already made that offer.

I provide you with a good response to your increased capital dps for advent and you fail to respond after I have entertained your idea.  You are the person not desiring a conversation on the topic.  I berate you at the start of the post because you attack me in subtle ways, but an attack is still an attack.

Since you edited your response, I'll edit mine...

I'm sorry that you feel the way you do.  I really didn't mean it to be taken as you did.

I sincerely wish you'll realize that I wasn't trying to attack you, but I doubt you'll believe this and declare it once again to be a pile of profanity (insert whatever words you feel best describe how you feel about me).  I'm sorry you are so untrusting of others.  I'm sure it sucks, but please understand that the majority of us really aren't out to get you.  I know you'll have a response to this, but that doesn't change the sympathy I have for you.

Please provide something to add to the actual discussion about DPS for cap ships since your idea was brought up as a possible answer. 

Edit:The thread never lost focus and people were still contributing good ideas.  As you might have noticed I retain my focus throughout the thread.  IF you can provide a response that does not involve personal attacks against me then likewise I WILL RESPOND IN A SIMILAR GENTLEMANLY FASHION.

 Edit: thank you for your sympathy, but it is not needed.  you don't feel sympathy for a dog that defends itself against another dog fighting over a bone do you?  I Don't accept the sympathy in the manner that it was given (via condescending tones in the writing).

I honestly have no idea what specific numbers would be needed.  I can calculate them later today, but for now I need to do a project for my CS class.  I suppose ultimately what you'll want to do is make sure that their directional DPS is higher than the forward (all) DPS of a Marza.  That's a starting point, though I'd like some feedback as far as where to go from there.

Well I don't ask you to calculate them, but you do have my goodwill in doing so.  I play advent regularly in multiplayer as advent and I am very good at exploiting every small advantage that I can. 

I am certain I am spot on about the dps increase being more irrelevant in general fleet actions.  In the early game advent capitals need more staying power against the vasari kanrak spam.  You have no real hope of bringing in support cruisers like both the vasari and TEC can do easily enough to support your early capital bomb on a roid/HW (therefore making you less of a threat due to lack of attack capability).  More effective abilities and/or easier to acquire effective support cruisers in the early game would go far to allowing the advent to support their offensive action with something OTHER than pure spam.

Also, given the logistics to cost information provided above I will provide a good counter argument to that data.

Since guardians will provide the LEAST effective cost per military effectiveness with its starting ability, and maintenance of the strength of an advent attack depends highly upon the progenitors antimatter intensive use of shield restore(and the cost of the antimatter to jump in to attack), the advent fleet will have a little short term staying power against a fleet coming in to defend the homeworld.  Naturally long term the enemy fleet will win if they have the appropriate defenses, but it gives the advent cap ships TIME to retreat before they get sniped by this returning force.  TIME is what advent caps need to survive, and the guardian gives it to them.  Early guardian use(which would necessitate a reduction in costs in the unit, since developers don't really modify the tech trees) would mean that the advent fleet should have the reasonable ability to increase the early game staying power of their capital ships when compared to other races. 

In that fashion, given the costs to get guardians, and the cost per unit of guardians with an account of their military effectiveness, the guardian should be the CHEAPEST cost in resources per logistics slot of any of the support cruisers.  It makes no sense for the developers to want to limit large groups of guardians when they are already a balanced unit in everything except cost.

By reducing guardian cost you don't need to make any capital ship changes, which saves developers a headache.

Since spamming guardians earlier would help advent attrition rates it would allow the advent fleet a better capability to face a heavy LRF spam as well, and since their value militarily requires a lot of micromanagement, positioning and timing you would be relying on player skill to balance out the effectiveness of the guardian.  So any player not playing perfectly will actually have a less effective fleet, while compared to hoshikos which require little to no micromanagement, or overseers which are extremely effective when micro'd, you won't have an imbalanced guardian if you reduce its overall per unit cost.

Well, as someone who plays the Advent in MP (I just do SP), what would you recommend (percentwise)

That's the million word question isn't it? lol.

Guardian rebalance would be a better use of your time, but its your time.  I'll help you out with setting up a test on guardian viability.

I would start somewhere along the lines of thinking of reducing the logistics slots/per resource cost to about here and work from there:

Resource cost per logistics slot

Resource   Guardian  Guardian reduced cost  Domina    Hoshiko    Cielo    Overseer    Subverter

Credits         75                   60                 100          87.5      70.8        64.2           80

Metal            15.7                  8                   20            7.5       4.16       15.7            16

Crystal          17.1                  4                   20           12.5       15         14.2            16

I expect it to be a little extreme of a cost reduction, but then thats' the fun of balancing and what devs get paid for.  I think this would help the guardian's unit price to offset the large cost of the shield upgrades.  If it fails to do this then a further price reduction is in order, maybe something around 55 credits/7 metal/4 crystal.

I lowered crystal requirements since advent are the least likely to develop a strong economy outside of an eco spot.

The point of success would be to do a spam test on vasari and advent close quarters and determine via experience whether or not the advent fleet gains enough benefit from increasing the durability of their capitals to give them increased time to escape. Also your fleet shouldn't have very many guardians at all.

Honestly a better way to balance would be to just do a hard reduction in cost for the advent shield technology as a racially unique feature.  This would be a much more elegantly simple way to approach the problem, but then I'll reiterate that the devs don't approach editing the research trees that often, even though in this case it would be beneficial.

To test advent fleet attack capability, try an enemy homeworld and see how long a group of 30 javelis frigates take to wear down the capital ship (standard effective dps group in multiplayer) with guardians and without, using a progenitor, then a halcyon, then a double halcyon or a progen halcyon combo (4 common multiplayer start combos).

Then time how long the advent fleet can survive without manuevering and then you'll get a good idea of where to balance.

So your data chart should look something like this:

Seconds to die either from 14 kanrak assailants+ space egg lvl 2(colonize + armor reduction/and or warp prevention)

or 30 Javelis Lrm Frigates + akkan lvl 2 (colonize and ion bolt)

Times are in seconds of survivability, also keeping a tally of the cost of the ships in question would be helpful. Progenitor would know colonize + shield restore and halcyon would know extra fighter squadron and attack speed increase.

Capital ships     No Guardians(control group)  Guardian 1   Guardian 2   Guardian 3   Guardian 4  etc.

                      Halcyon                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

                            Halcyon x2                                                                                                                                                                   

                   Progenitor                                                                                                                                                          

                   Progenitor + Halcyon                                                                                                                                           

Bleh formatting isn't workin right.                                            

There are quite a few more variables, the only thing we are really going for is to determine the effectiveness of guardians being able to support an early advent attack or defense using their capital ships against known effective quantities.

Also, showing the total cost of going guardian and spamming a few of them when compared to other fleets.

Guardians don't have to be super effective at helping the fleet early on, but they do need to be good enough that they can immediately begin to help capitals survive the early game snipe.  Vasari sniping will still be effective, but perhaps it might take a few more kanraks, and I believe that a vasari fleet when facing a progen + guardians + repair platforms at the advent Homeworld should be able to hold off 30 kanraks from destroying a capital ship for a long time.  Considering vasari advantage being able to build a starbase in a grav well as a decoy to DPS the vasari still have a large advantage and are therefore just getting a small reduction in capability, meaning the advent capitals can stand up to them better so they don't have to constantly retreat for self preservation.

try 300% on all cap ships and go from there, would be interesting and my counter argument to buffing cap dps becomes less effective the larger the DPS boost(yes i'm trying to make your test successful at the cost of my own position).  It very well could mean that a significantly large damage boost would give the advent capitals the something extra that they so need so as to justify their protection early on by buying guardians the normal way at the normal price. 

I'll try the damage boost upgrade first off since it's faster test and get back to you when I finish.

Level 10 Radiance with no abilities but 300% damage output defeated all 30 LRM's in 2:40.  Without the buff, it took 5:10.

This is largely because during the test with heightened damage, the Radiance spent significantly more time turning to bring it's weapons to bear.

Would this be sufficient do you think or not?  I suppose as far as survivability goes, shields/hull could get buffed slightly, but I'd be hesitant to do much more than a 10/15% increase.

Modify the game is the easiest way to reduce the guardians.

I'm talking about multiplayer, mods aren't so popular in that scene for numerous reasons, and honestly the changes made for balance don't effect the single player population to much as the AI is relatively easy to defeat using starbases.

Volt & Sareth,

Don't you guys think that buffing the Advent Cap ship damage by 300% is an overly brute force solution to the problem with more long term balancing issues than it fixes?

The issue really isn't Guardian's cost and really isn't Advent Cap ship damage imho. The issue is that Kanraks come into the game very early and PM spam is disproportionately effective against the shield dependent Advent, yes?

I would not advocate moving Kanraks back in the research tree but I have consistently been a voice for adding PM resistance to advent shield upgrades. This would reduce the number of times that a PM ignores shields and bypasses mitigation. I think if early upgrades added PM resistance, this would go a long way towards balancing the Vasari vs Advent Rush Strategy.

I would also advocate a similar modifier such that when Advent fight in their culture, they not only have higher mitigation, but an increase in PM resistance as well. This would not nullify the advantage of PM which is one of the main Vasari advantages which they do need as they have a very costly fleet, but it would temper it in the early game.

Let's remember that the developers did intend for Advent to have a certain early game weakness to make up for their late game synergies and uberness. That being said I agree that the Advent late game power has been nerfed quite a bit and could use some assistance especially in the survivability aspect.

Sareth and I seem to be on the same wavelength as far as a need for a buff to Advent durability. He would like to see it in the form of cheaper Guardians. I'll admit it would probably have a net positive effect but again, I see it more as a brute force solution to the more subtle problem of PM. I think addressing that problem more directly would result in a more balanced and elegant solution albeit it is a matter of opinion. I would propose that my solution would not affect the current delicate balance between TEC vs Advent while making cheaper Guardians would greatly shift this balance.

I know that some would argue that TEC vs Advent is not in fact balanced with TEC being an effective early game steamroller but I would submit again that the Dev's intended this as TEC struggles to put forth overwhelming fire power in the late game.