So.. what are Vasari about?

Vasari are about owning large maps thanks to phase gates.

I also like the Vasari's repair ability (bottom of hostility) because it adds a lot of longevity to your little skirmishers.

That resource gathering boost all-in-one is great, especially combined with Enslaved Labor.

Vasari aren't very popular, but they are quite effective.

So if the map isn't large it sucks? That's the feeling i already had before posting

they are not bad it all. their main cap ship (first one in the list) hits like a truck and once you upgrade armor is very very hard to kill with strong armor and high armor regen rate. Group of few of thise with couple carriers behind them for repair and fighter cover can easily take down anything in very short time. Marauder cap ship helps to move faster and lets you bring reinforcements directly to your location. I am not too impressed with missle capship vasari have. My standart force combination usialy 3 main ships, 2 carriers, 1 transporter(one with colonize and warp disable), 1 marauder. Only use fighters for cover against bombers, fighters only. When full group concentrates on cap ships of enemy, they go down very fast.

Another thing they are good at are their cruisers. Enforces are evil. With good amount of armor, very good regen rates and high absorbtion, they are hard to kill and require not as much babyseating as other races. They hit hard as well and have healing ability so they survive quite well.

Last but not least, early cost reductions and ability to salvage enemy ships (3 empire labs) help with rapid expansion.

Their missile ship.. yeah. Sounded good with the hitting mutliple target ability. I though it'd be good against frig swarms, but it's definitely not. That ability sucks.

And what do you mean "bring reinforcements directly to your location"?

Not to forget Assailants with AOE upgrade, which unlike TEC, can always be firing AOE based missiles. And ofc the much overlooked support cruiser with the distortion field ability, which can disable entire fleets of frigates for 30s. and that's with 1 ship, add 4 or so and enemy frigates wont ever be able to move, regen, fire.. let alone escape. All the while your assailants are burning them down with nice AOE damage.

The vasari battleship is my favorite out of all the capitals, the power surge skill at level 3 is quite a sight to see in action, giving 75% reduced cooldown to weapons and 225% increased regeneration rate.

The Vasari are actually quite powerful if you use them right. Their battleship is, I would argue, probably the strongest in the game - though a Kol would stand-up well against it.  The Vasari aren't huge traders (they get trade later than the other two races), but they're able to drive down costs and get upgrades to resource production (which you can then turn into credits). Their ships tend to be stronger than the other races (and more expensive as a result), but require more considered use than the TEC (but less than the Advent).

I think they're good in any map, but because of their trade shortcomings, they will do worse against a TEC player on a smaller map since it takes them longer to ramp up.

Level 6 ability of Marauder is to stabilize space. Meaning you can have ships jump from system with Space Stabilizer to location of your marauder directly instead of going over multiple jumps.

They have a lot of neat things that equalize their lack of trade. Resource upgrades are bundled into 1 tech. Cost decreases are great. Tier 3 empire upgrade to salvage cap ships really helps. Most fights are over once enemy cap ships are down, so if you concentrate on those, you get nice chunk of free resources back. Level 6 ability of colonizer cap ship gives you drain planet. More free resources. I played few short games with them and never felt them being poor.

Very important is to push for trade ports and processors early though when playing any race.

I think its quite nice, at level 3 it does 600 damage to 7 random targets within the radius (5000) for 90 antimatter and with a cool down of 15 seconds.

Vasari missile ship has only 1 squadron (once it gets to level 6 i think), his regular damage is nothing to brag about comparing to other ships...etc. I find that Carrier is a lot better, it does less damage by itself, but hosts 4 upgraded squadrons and repairs your fleet. I just don't see any reason to take that missile ship over carrier or extra tank. Having 3 extra bomber squads easily overweight loss of firepower and repair cloud is way better then that cluster missile ability. I expect at least 2 good abilities from Cap ship. Missile one does not really have another going for him except cluster missile. Maybe if siege beam ability was a missile platform i would have different opinion... Its really a bummer considering on how sexy missiles are from Vasari.

Kicking ass. Taking names. Making a list. Checking it twice. Rooting out dissidents and torturing them to find out who's naughty and nice.

The Vasari advantage is mostly in its capital ships. The Kortul devastator is amazingly powerful, at level six doing something around 70-80 damage per hit with its pulse beams which combined with the cooldown ability makes it own. I took down two Advent cap ships with one of these, the advent also had the advantage in number of support ships too.

I don't believe they are weak at all. The main battleship does plenty of damage, and can counter the advent swarms with weapon jamming. As already mentioned their support cap can become a mobile phase lane which gives any ships on your own worlds with a phase stabilizer a one-jump reinforcement pool.

Also their weapons are fairly good at bypassing shields. (Many missile upgrades) Just as well their ships have many ways to disable or weaken enemy ships. Subverters can disable multiple ships at one time making them useless in a fight. While lowering their armor. I actually found the Vasari to be quite versitile in combat. Sure the advent have swarms or strikecraft and what-not but the Vasari battleship can simply disable all strikecraft weaponry making those swarms useless for a time. There are other strats to use, you just have to delve into their tech trees and discover them.

The Kortul devastator if you level it up, but it's weak as hell early on.
The carriers healing is nice, but it's nothing compared to shield transfer on tec or the advents mothership ability.

I understand with the carrier it can still fire while you use it.. but fuck, that doesn't matter when ships are getting raped.

I played a really long game trying out alot and I just didn't find the caps very useful compared to tec or advents.
They're pretty good early on, but later in the game it seems to make it very hard to keep a single cap alive like you can with the other races.

What I DID find good is a shitton of enforcers and assaliants. The assaliants seem better than lrms to me.
But eh.. i'm having trouble liking vasari.

I had a pretty good first experience with the Vasari; once I researched the ability to get free stuff from blowing up other peoples' ships, and once my Evacuator hit level 6 and got the ability to steal resources from planets, I was rolling in resources. I really couldn't spend the stuff fast enough to keep up with the rate I was gaining it. I played that game using solely their capital ships (for the achievement), so trust me when I say that their cap ships are entirely capable of holding their own. If you form the capital ships into a fleet they all support each other very handily with their abilities, resulting in a fleet that moves fast, hits hard, and repairs itself. The only time I ever lost a ship was when I took out the pirate homeworld and a huge swarm of pirate ships were focusing their fire on one of my ships. I rolled both the pirates and the TEC without a single frigate or cruiser. (This was on the small map at medium difficulty.)

Vasari are about mobility, keeping your units alive (almost all of their cap ships have some sort of defense, bar the marauder and the evacuator). they start out initially a bit stronger than the advent or the tec, but become weak mid-early game. when you hit mid game however, where everyone begins solidifying defenses and reaching the mid-tech levels they become very powerful, phase gates combined with midlevel damage and defense upgrades makes piercing and hitting the vasari's weak interrior damn near impossible, and if they get a high level antorak, phew, you're screwed.

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.