im wonderin

The Advent are overpowered no matter it be SP or MP. The problem is, its more obvious in MP because of the stress the gamers put on the actual factions/units/capabilities. When you face an AI the AI is pretty much set in a pattern that doesnt seem to deviate when the player changes tactics. Nor does the AI think ahead or even properly counter player actions. So its harder to see the Advent being overpowered in SP.

This is not the case in MP where players exploit the slight differences between units and use things like spamming to overcome each other. Instead of building up to a balanced fleet like you would in SP. The MP counter each other with spam against spam until both sides are forced to balance out their fleets in an attempt to outmanuever each other.

Just late game?  Advent is the strongest faction period.  TEC actually has a fair shot at beating them early game, and Vasari have a fair shot at beating them late game.  However, TEC are dead in the water if the Advent gets to high level technology and fleet, and the Vasari are going to have a major fight on their hands to survive till the late game.

No, the AI plays Advent horribly.  In fact, I recall someone did some tests on the AI and found the AI is by far the worst with Advent, by such a massive margin that setting the AI's race to Advent is like lowering its difficulty level by one.

There are lots of reasons for this, but they primarily come down to three causes:  illuminators, capital ships, and scouts.  The illuminator is a powerful ship that forms the backbone of just about any mid-game Advent fleet.  For some reason, the AI neglects to build enough of them and as a result its entire fleet lacks enough damage output to be seriously threatening.  As well, it tends to build illuminators much later in the game than a human player, which gives you a lot more leeway to counter them.

Capital ships and their abilities need to be chosen wisely, especially for Advent.  The AI picks its capital ships and their abilities randomly.  This means there's only a miniscule chance that the AI will pick the right capital ships at the start of the game.  By the way, the Halcyon and Progenitor are currently regarded as the dominant first capital ship choices for Advent.

Finally, there's scouts.  Most people make the mistake of ignoring their potential as combat unit, even though they have a perfectly viable attack and are extremely cost-effective.  Advent in particular gets a lot of mileage out of their scouts (Vasari less so, but their scouts have other uses).  It's not uncommon in multiplayer to see fleets of 30 or so scouts in the early game.  The AI refuses to use them as combat units.

The AI doesn't take advantage of everything the advent has to offer and use it to optimum effect so any perceived imbalance is moot against the AI.  Most would say advent is the strongest race but each race has its own advantages, strengths and weaknesses.  The big thing is learning what those are and how best to exploit them.  Playing and learning in multiplayer is the best way to learn what is effective and what is not.  There is something to be said for playing a game or 2 single player though just to learn what abilities are there.

[_]-Greyfox

thanks guys. great advice. is it possible to jump into this game's multiplayer once i learn the basics of single player, or should i be proficient in single player before i make the leap into online?

and on an off note, about how a TEC should be able to beat advent early game, i started a game today with me, a hard TEC, and a normal advent. the 2 AI's started right on top of each other basically. but anyways, everywhere my scouts went within their little area of the solar system, the normal advent was kickin, punchin, stompin, shreddin, however you wanna say it, through the TEC AI. the TEC started coming to me for help, but i saw how bad he was gettin his a$$ packaged and handed back to him, so i didnt want to get on the advent's bad side just yet, before i had a worthy fleet and defenses.

is that how most advent/tec games play out online? (between the AI's, excluding me)

You know, that's a really subjective call.  It really depends on how much experience with other RTS games you have, how quick a learner you are, and your own expections of the gaming experience.  It's very difficult to jump into multiplayer without taking your lumps.  One way or another you'll be the unknown newbie who everyone is reserved about playing with, and you'll often encounter players who vastly outclass you.  It's just the reality of the situation. 

I think if you know all the units and what they do, and have a general feel for the pacing of the game you can probably give multiplayer a shot.  However, it's up to you to decide when you're ready to make that jump... because very few people pull their punches online. 

This can happen, but a good TEC player shouldn't fold unless there was something else working against him.  My bet is that the hard TEC AI invested all its money in trade ports and prioritized siege frigates as its main combat force.  The Advent AI probably prioritized a disciple swarm and completely slaughtered the TEC which essentially had no defenses. Unfortunately, the AI strategies are not context sensitive, so you may see one build a huge fleet on a multistar map (useless, it can't get to the enemy) and another build trade ports right next to its nearest opponent (also worthless; they'll be destroyed LONG before they even pay for their own cost).

The biggest difference is that AI's do not know how to regroup.  They will get their units slaughtered rather than consolidating back into a single powerful fighting force.  Worse, they don't build repair bays, which means damaged units remain damaged and don't recover.  Perplexingly, they love to build turrets, but then will sally out and fight you outside of turret range, which makes those turrets completely worthless.  All these things together mean that the AI is an atrocious defender and once it starts losing it very rarely can turn things back.

As a counter-example, I made a big screwup in a TEC vs Advent matchup and lost my capital ship while the Advent player advanced on me.  I fell back and even abandoned my homeworld (he had very little bombard capability, so he actually ended up leaving it intact and I reclaimed it later) to get some breathing space, but came back with heavy cruisers and hoshikos and pushed him out and back to our original lines.  An AI would have lost the initial battle and then kept losing its units rather than consolidating and building them up, preventing any chance of a recovery.  A human player like me knows how to give ground, regroup, and then counter-attack to retake the lost ground.  If he gets siege frigates to bombard, he's weakened his combat fleet, if he doesn't he can't exactly take down those planets very quickly.

Just so you know mp is played with all settings to fast with quickstart and no pirates.Also normal fleet sizes.So get use to the speed and be very aggressive.Defences are a last resort sort of thing in mp except for repair bays as darvin says.Keys things in mp are scouting out your opponent and know what ships counter each other.You need to know when to go civic labs and when to go military labs.Also learning how to use cap ships is important.Keeping them alive and using their abilities to get the most benefit.It will all take time so dont let some people turn you away from mp.

hmm. ok. ive played starcraft and command and conquer online so i think im about to try my first multiplayer map today.

and you said they play quickstart? another thing im wonderin about..... i saw someone say somethin about "dont encourage advent bias, dont play quickstart" haha. what was that about?

The only thing I could think as to not playing quickstart is the case of vasari.  With normal start(no quickstart), the vasari have a very early game advantage in the rush because they can build long range frigates with 1 military lab while advent takes 3.  It also help vasari that they can get neutrals early with scouts so they can get an early economic advantage compared to the other races.  Quick start nullifies that very early advantage by giving the advent player the capability to get 3 labs up earlier.

[_]-Greyfox

Some people claim that Advent benefits disproportionately from quick-start.  There's no question that it's easier to put up 3 labs near the start of the game and bring out illuminators.  However, in the same breath TEC can do this with hoshikos, which is arguably even more dangerous.  It's also true that quick-start has also made the "2 of each" start viable, a setup that greatly favours TEC and Vasari but not so much Advent.

I argue that Vasari still hasn't lost the advantage of needing only one military lab for assailants.  The thing is, I can get two civic labs and spend my third lab on assailants.  I now have access to ice/volcanics and I have my LRF.  For TEC, you'd need 4 labs and for Advent you'd need 5 to do this.  Yes, Vasari have lost some of their advantage as a result of this, but it hasn't completely disappeared.

The big ticket item is that they've lost their long window of opportunity to claim and hold neutral extractors with their scouts.  It used to be that it would be a LONG time before players could afford to send colony frigates abroad to compete with the Vasari for these resources.

I suggested no quickstart games as a counter to Advent.

I've played many Entrenchment games without quickstart- and even some with pirates.  However any game without fast speed is generally assumed to be for new players only- possibly useful as a smurf repellent.

Illuminator spam is dangerous because the ships are bugged for extra damage and were too strong anyway, how they evaded a nerf in the last patch was a matter of some incredulity.  Quickstart makes early Illuminator spam, a species of cheating, much easier.

I haven't ever seen a Hoshiko rush, whereas Illuminator spammers are common.  Hoshikos won't force a cap ship out of a grav well instantly if there are a dozen or more of them.  I'm not sure what early Hoshiko spam would achieve, perhaps Darvin has encountered an interesting new tactic?  They are not normally massed until after heavy cruisers are available, because they would deprive a fleet of too much firepower.

However, the main point is that the Advent scout/disciple rush off no labs at all is deadly, and quickstart speeds it up too much.  More time for scouting helps, as then your constructors can build your home extractors before your labs.  As Darvin said Vasari need the time to claim neutrals, as their scouts are not useful for defence.  But secondly, Advent used to have a credit problem very early in the game and quickstart removes this. 

Finally, if you try to play with normal start it will be the Advent players who whine and/or leave- always the best test!  

Nothing special, just add hoshikos to an otherwise balanced TEC fleet.  The enemy has to add a lot of disciples to counter this, which means fewer illuminators.  Getting the Advent to cut down on the illuminator presence (especially since you already have hoshikos) means they'll have trouble taking down your capital ships.

Oh, and for the record, scout/disciple with Halcyon is MORE deadly on normal-start.