I mean vs the AI, not vs a human player.

I'm with Kazgoth15, on this one, Kortul are the best capital ship, in the entire game(As long as you build them up right). The Kortul was so good in fact, that I stoped using the other capital ships for the Vasari, and build only them.

Think of Kortul as the anti-fleet capital ship, and you will do fine.

I play a lot of vasari lately, mostly because I believe they actually stand a chance against late game advent unlike TEC. Generally my play style is as follows.

Immediately build a cap yard, crystal mine, scout and upgrade your population. I always choose the desolator for it's early game AOE (it really really chews up lrm's) and later on because a cap ship generally turns into a siege weapon. (siege platforms is more effective then the passive siege bonus).

Get a colony ship, two metal mines and then another scout. You will need to buy more crystal to grab the colony ship. Use your scouts to search for neutral resources. If the resources are guarded use way points to circle the grav well while getting ant-matter. Sell excess metal/crystal for credits (you will always be short on credits if you get even a few neutral resources).

As soon as your cap ship is made send it to the nearby asteroid and begin clearing. Upgrade population ASAP (rule of thumb is to always do this).

While you are clearing you have time and money to build a single weapons lab and research assailants.

If you have another asteroid close by clear that. If not I get 3 assailants and clear out the nearest terran/desert planet. Additional assailants are constantly purchased and sent to my cap ship. Always send the cap ship in first and wait for him to get aggro BEFORE you send in assailants. Militia kodiaks will attack your assailants so kill them first. If an assailant is taking damage from two or more kodiaks retreat it. After the kodiaks are dead kill LRM's then cobalts then siege then flak. Practice this and you can take a desert planet long before someone who did civi research can get their first ice planet. Research repair bays at some point. If you are going to get hit with pirates figure out where they will go and build one repair bay. If you are busy clearing a planet or fighting an opponent two or so missile bays by the repair bay can take care of early pirate attacks. If you want to spend time fighting the pirates micro your assailants around inside the repair area so that you don't lose any.

Build up assailants to the first fleet cap, and then upgrade to the next tier. You want to constantly be pumping out assailants at this stage. Furthermore, excess cash you end up with (from selling metal which vasari usually have tons of) should be used to build more weapons labs. You need to get to five of them ASAP before doing any other research. Hold off on building assailants when you need resources to upgrade planet populations.

Once you have 3-2 places near your homeworld colonized and built up look for a forward base (desert/roid/terran) close to your nearest opponent. Take it before you opponent can and build 2 frigate factories and a repair bay (before you even build extractors). By this time you should have a level 4 cap (2 in phase missile, 2 in siege platform) and 14+ assailants (depends on how fast you can clear and colonize). You should also hopefully have 5 weapons labs. Research enforcers, the first three hull upgrades, and both reintegrate upgrades. While you are doing that research begin your attack. Focus on killing your enemies frigates with your assailants. If they focus fire on your cap ship fly it in and out of their fleet just often enough to hit your phase missile swarm skill. Retreat it back to your repair bay if it starts taking hull damage. While the attack AND the research is going on start building enforcers at your forward base, but don't send them into the fight and give away your hand. Once you have 5 or so assailants send them in. While fighting at enemy worlds make sure to hit construction drones, ESPECIALLY if they try to build static defenses. Take out repair buildings first. If they have a bunch of turrets then skip that planet and hit another one. If you find a planet with a lot of military labs make sure to take one or two out, especially if you hit the world when your opponent is somewhere else. Lack of military labs means they can't counter you enforcers easily.

Once your enforcers enter the battle (5 or 6) you have two options. If they have carriers for some reason research sentinels and get the AOE missile upgrade. MAKE SURE TO TURN OFF THE AUTOCAST ON THIS ABILITY OR YOU WILL LOSE A LOT OF UNITS FOR NO REASON. Manually turn it on when your sentinels are in position to defend your cruisers (as an added bonus any surviving assailants now doe AOE damage, but manually cast it because like sentinels the autocast on this ability gets them killed).

If your opponent has no carriers then invest in subvertor research, get a sixth lab, and research the disabling ability. Manually chain it on groups of enemies for an easy victory.

If you played correctly you will overwhelm ANYONE who tried to do any kind of civi research, especially in a 2v2 or a 3v3. At the same time your economy will be fine thanks to selling neutral resources and the fact that you've colonized terran/desert planets.

Things to fear as vasari are repulsion, and well repulsion. Actually, that's pretty much all you have to fear. Repulsion will mean that you must use assailants to take out guardians (tough to do) before your enforcers can do anything. Unfortunately assailants are far inferior to illuminators. If you have subvertors by the time your enemy get's repulsion try to disable anything you can to give your assailants time to whitle down his guardians. TBH at this point in time I haven't played a GOOD advent player using repulsion, although I have abused the strategy many times myself so I'm not sure if that will work at all. I've beaten POOR advent players who read about repulsion and must have thought it sounded pretty fun, but I don't consider that to be a good way to learn counters.

Another good strategy is to rush up to returning armada with a TEC player feeding you cash. Build a few Phase gates(connecting important worlds) before doing all the research, mostly to give your phase gates time to build up anti matter (something they are often short of). Build a phase gate at each planet for travel purposes. Then at your most defensible planet build multiple phase gates (planets can hold 3 and roids can hold 2). Skirmishers from RA can be scuttled, as well as transports. Upgrade your fleet cap like crazy, and research the scuttle tech. Spare cash should also be used to build 6 weapon labs so that you can supplement your free fleets with subvertors. RA backed up by subvertors is basically a win against anything except maybe a strong advent fleet consisting of repulsing guardians, defense vessels, masses of illum's, a level 6 radiance and a level 3+ mothership. That would be a fun fight actually.

Thanks so much for the tips, I won a 4vs4 match with hard AIs!

I gotta tell you, I love the Desolators and their swarming missiles so much, I can't get enough of 'em. Watching 5 huge volleys of missiles impact into target gives me so much joy, and then watching another 5 coming right on their tail. They are pure killers..

The only problem is that the Desolator's unit acknowledgement voices are horrific:
"DO YOU THREATEN ME?!?!?!"
"SPARE THE PLEASANTRIES!!!!!"
"SPARE THE PLEASANTRIES!!!!!"
"SPARE THE PLEASANTRIES!!!!!"
"DO YOU THREATEN ME?!?!?!"
"SPARE THE PLEASANTRIES!!!!!"

Ugh. So annoying and childish. Had to decrease the volume and even that wasn't enough. Eventually I had to turn off the sound in order to play properly.

But still, was really a fun game.

I second that..

If these tips aren't on the "..tips" sticky they should be!

Overseers are good.I like to have 2-3 overseers per fleet as they do increase longevity and allow for reaction time. That said.....

Stilakus Subverters share the same tech level and should be your first priority. I like to research stilakus and related spells first before touching overseer as stilakus is a real IMPACT unit. A couple of well placed stilakus hits can really turn a battle to your favor.

Overseers are good for longevity in battle and should not be overlooked. Subverters are ALWAYS first priority though.

well.. his first ability (invincibility?) is just THE counter to any CAPfocus player (and they are a lot!)

in very very large fleet, i even have 2 of them in order to protect all my other CAPs

I started my first Sins game as a Super-Huge FFA, and it started me as Vasari.

From what I understand, Vasari are the only race of the three that can stabalize phase space between its owned planets?
This is key to how I play, though its the only race that i've played, and I'm nowhere near winning the FFA yet.
What I want to know is, how on earth can the TEC or Advent races win a FFA accross 5 solar systems when they can't warp their fleets to where they are needed?

My basic stratety is to take a system, upgrade the planet fully, phase stabalize it, blanket it with phase inhibitors, media/trade/refinery, and move on. Only to ever come back when a foolish enemy warps into a locked down system that I can very quickly hotdrop a ton of caps + sniper frigates onto them. And its usually enough to wipe out most if not all of their capitals if its their main fleet, or completely obliterate a smaller fleet. To the point where anyone that comes into my solar system with a capital ends up losing it while i've got 10 level 10 caps and the rest really high level.

Also people seem to make a big deal out of the returning armada ability? I've got so much resources by now that its more of an annoyance, i had to go through and manually turn off an entire solar system worth of auto-generating portals, and scuttle like 1000 food worth of ships in order to be able to control my fleet build.

But as far as my overall fleet strat goes, I keep a heavy amount of carriers. 6 out of my 16 capitals are carriers and they pretty much keep my entire fleet alive during large engagements. My capital ships hardly ever get into danger, my enforcers may as well be capital ships as well because I don't think ive ever had to replace one. I do lose my long range bombers from time to time but what can you do. Being able to warp them straight to me, or better yet just replicate them, its no big deal.

I did learn something valuable in this thread. I 2 level 10 marauders and I built them so that I could be in a hostile system and warp directly back to a system that is under attack. This did not work for me, and I wondered why till I read this thread, the marauder works in the opposite way, and to be honest thats easily just as cool, cause they can move so fast. You could navigate one to an enemy's home planet on the other side of the solar system while you're using you're fleet.

So basically the Vasari's phase stabilizer structures are the race's main defense, and the marauder is a super awesome offense. Bypass all of the crap and drop an entire fleet on them where it really hurts!