Can someone explain the difference in the races please?

These are biased from my own playing experience, so please take this advice with care.

TEC:


Pro:
-easy to access imo
-good economy since you get trade stations with 2 research stations
-very cheap LRM frigates
-great repair units
-Many armor researches for durability


Con:
-Don't really excell at anything
-Arguably the worst strikecraft of any faction
-Culture effect not THAT useful



Advent:

Pro:
-Strong shields/shield mitigiaton bonuses make Advent ships very durable
-Best culture spread rates of all factions, good defensive bonus
-Trade stations in ressource mode can seriously increase ressource income of planets near your empires homeworld.
-Good earlygame strikecraft
-Faster research than other factions

Con:
-Bad armor tech
-Ships generaly are on a higher tech level to research
-Heavy cruiser ship needs a seperate weapon tech
-Vulnerable early on due to discipline vessel being one of the weakest ships.
-Not so great "ultimate" researches


Vasari:

Pro:
-Powerful military & support ships (LRM at tier1)
-PHASE MISSILES
-Scout can capture neutral extractors
-Combined extractor research techs
-Most powerful strikecraft late in the game.
-Higher fleet cap with research but...
-Phase stabilizers

Con:
-All ships have a higher support cost (usually 2 higher than other factions)
-Extremely high crystal costs for researches/buildings etc.
-Harder to get economy rolling than other races since trade stations come at tier 4

Kinda nit-picking, but I really thought that all the races heavy cruisers had different weapons than the rest of the fleet.

The Advent use plasma, which only some other cap ships use. The Vasari have that weird wave beam thing, once again only other caps use. I think only the TEC Kodiak uses the same weapons that the flak and some other ships use.

I think that might be for the best though, as it kinda keeps players from spamming them as easy.

Other than that, I think that you were spot on about the rest.

I think the vasari siege frig uses the sickle of death too.

Except the darned things are so cheap its easy to build swarms of them and just overwhelm through sheer numbers.

Any weaponry on capital carriers, colony ships, and siege frigates is so largely pointless that it may as well be ignored. They should never be using it unless something really went wrong somewhere.

The Purge Vessel and Destra Crusader are the only Advent non-capital ships which use Plasma, and the Karrastra Destructor and Skarovas Enforcer are the only Vasari non-capital ships which use Wave Cannons. The TEC have an advantage in that their Kodiak uses a standard-fare Autocannon, cheap but weak.