They have incredible armor and the Marauder is the most fun out of all the capital ships. It's perfect for hit and runs, and it's speed boost makes it move like a frigate and makes frigates move like fighters.

Also, phase missiles can skip shields, and Subverters add a 25% bonus to that. You can kill battleships while they still have 1000 points of shield strength.

really, did I forget to mention capital ships assassinations?
vasari are the king at assassinating ships.

Stealthy, owning lots of planets, and making pirates piss scared of them.

In overall damage their main battleship is the only one with more than decent damage, however, the vasari ships have a lot of abilities that compliment each other. Using a single cap, or multiples of a single type for that matter, does not work very well. The dreadnaught is not too powerful on its own but its main weapons are phase missiles that end up dealing a decent amount of damage after a few levels. So if you mix in the support cruisers (subverters namely) then the damage potential increases greatly. Not to mention that subverters and the support cap can completely disable ships (and the cooldown matches the duration so you can chain it and freeze them until they're toast). The caps ability does render ships invulnerable, but it is good for keeping enemy caps out of the fight until the other support vessels can be dealt with.

Yes I do like their sheild peircing missiles alot. That's what I meant about the assailants.. Upgraded they snipe cap ships sooo well. But those upgrades take a long time and cost a lot.

But i'm not impressediwth their caps compared to tecs or advents, but maybe i'm missing something. :/

And the phase lane building costs 300 crystal. D: So I never got to really use them, kept having to spend that on ships.

Just avoid Grindstone as a map. =p

I've noticed that Gateway tends to be brutal to Vasari in that Xi (the un-occupied star system that everybody fights over) never seems to have more than one volcanic planet, but can have 2-4 ice planets >=/

hmm, even in small maps where I can only get 4-5 planets(including asteroids), I tech up to phase stabilizers and build 2-3 within 35-45 minutes of the game start (matters how aggressive the other player/s is/are) and decide to get dark armada or not and usually would within the next 15-20 minutes and start the proper vasari endgame. (yes Im trying to minimax it a bit, but not take too many risks)

just to make it clear, since many people underestimate dark armada, the 2nd rank can summon 48-60 supply per stabilizer (usually a mix of skirmish, enforcer, assailant, carrier). Make 4-6 gates across the empire (can be done on small+ maps) and every ~7 (usually have to wait for the 250 mana) minutes you can get over 200 supply worth of ships (if you arent at you current supply cap), now this does take long to setup, but many games go on for hours.

Don't underestimate Assault Specialization. It deals 60-180 bonus damage every time you hit a module.

The thing with phase stabilizers for me though is they take so much tac that I can't see setting them up on my front lines where my hangers and repairs go.
They seem to only work when you're already winning the game.

After doing really well with advent, I'm trying to play the Vasari.

They don't seem that fun. For example, before I started I read some decent things about them. They're able to create their own phase lanes, making them move where they want to. They're able to fire missiles past shields, and can lower the credit cost of most things.

When I tried to do these things in game, I found that the phase stabilizers were very deep into the tech trees, and cost quite a bit. They were one hefty investment. I found that the missiles bypassing shields was not as useful as I thought it would be, even with 7 or 8 frigates, since their bomber swarms only have 3, compared to the advents 7 or 8. And finally, that cost reducing upgrade was so expensive to reach 2/2, and for only an 8% reduction, that I don't even know if I broke even.

Combine this with the fact that their ships cost so much, you'll usually only be attacking planets with your cap ship and 4 frigs. After the first battle, you may have had to micro one back to retreat, leaving you with 3 until he repairs. Meanwhile, the Advent have 5 or 6, and it's just a rape-fest.

That's because you learned to play Advent. Vasari are COMPLETELY different.

Yeah I don't know, vasari are a little bit weird to play. Men, I can draw so many parallels with Supcom right now, Vasari being Cybrans and Advent being the Aeon.

hmm are you implying that the bombers are identical and the only difference is number per squad, this is incorrect.

without extra buffs (e.g. vasari influence, aura from advent/vasari caps..etc)
a squad of vasari bombers do 17 damage (if it uses real) or 18 damage (if it uses rounded integers)
a squad of advent bombers do 17.84 damage or 21 damage.

I agree that vasari have a really bad early game, unless theres a few of the capture able extractors around (vasari navigators can make the extractors) and on the most balanced maps I've seen (random is far from balanced) this is not the case.

I once lost 50 cobalts to a lvl 6 kortul's volatile nanites. At fist I though I'd scuttled them all by accident but the replay showed otherwise That thing is lethal against frigates in formation. This was in beta 4 though so it may not be so powerful now.