I have come to an idea to make a serious of guides, after I have stumbled on a thread in discussion section, by Immortalits. It showed to me, that there are still new people coming to sins, and that they could make a use of a more deep guide, explaining their "most beloved race". This is second guide in the serious, first one was on TEC, and can be found here: https://sp.zhabite.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1768819566

I will also try to prevent crossings, with already existing guides, aka Grimms guide or Goafans (which are really great guides, even if a bit outdated.) Especially for brand new players without any idea of the game, the Goafan's guide will be most useful, as my guide will not explain "how to build a ship", but rather how to use it, to become a good player.

P.s. Accepting any peace of advice, or missing information, or propositions, etc.

P.p.s. Check out my youtube videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS9uvcxDL3ZoJGrDkY3bdfg
and the "Ultimate Balance Mod"
https://discord.gg/8Xa39mb

Or rather not so first, considering you are a part of a Vasari armada, arriving from far away outer space... whatever the lore says, the game starts pretty much the same for all of the races, and Vasari are no exception.

Your first capital ship will be for free, and probably the only capital ship for quite a while, so choose wisely. You have 6 capital ships to choose from, and in opposite to TEC, all of them can be useful, but some are just not as useful as others.


The most basic and easiest pick is the so called "egg" or Jarrasul Evacuator. It is a colonizer capital ship, which in general is much easier to use, than colonizer frigates, due to much better antimatter(am) regeneration. It also has some neat abilities, including extra damage to 1 target, or jump drive disable to entire fleet, or even draining a planet for resources.
All in all, a nice, and balanced choice.

There is also a Kortul Devastator. Well he does not really stand to his name, as he is not as much about devastation, but more about being an unkillable dreadnought. Useful to some degree, but due to lacking firepower, it's usefulness is limited against human players, while somewhat better against ai.

Other 4 captial ships are all legit openers, but their set of abilities deserves to be explained more thoroughly, since they require a bit better understanding of the game, and we are only on the road there.

Do not build them. Please.

I see you are stubborn... well, than listen:

Vasari frigates have the toughest hull, shields, strognest weapons, on a per ship base. However On terms of resources, and per fleet strength, they are the worst. Any battle you try to win relying only on them, will be a lost battle. However sometimes you have no other choice, and you are forced into building a fleet to win time, for your more cost efficient ships/strategies. So let's go!

Jikara Navigator: This is your basic scout unit. However it has a major difference to TEC or Advent, an advantage. It has the ability to claim neutral mining facilities in uncolonizeable systems. This way you can get those as soon as you find out about their existence, and in general, it is much easier to keep those under your control with fast scouts, rather than with slow and expensive colonizer frigates. Capturing the neutrals requires somewhat intensive apm, because the uncolonizeable systems usually have a few ships protecting those, and to maximize your income, you should not send more than 1-2 to those gravity wells. Therefore you will not have the firepower to kill the pirate ships. (But it is even good, as those pirate ships will later protect your neutrals from enemy colonizer frigates. Note: If there is your scout and enemy colonizer frigate, pirates will always prioritize enemy colonizer.)

So how to apm - claim the neutrals? You should send 1 scout into the gravity with neutrals you want to claim. Que movement commands for your scout in a triangle around the entire gravity well. This will be just enough to get first 60 antimatter, and claim 1st neutral. If you can keep an eye on your scout after this, in order to make another triangle, until next 60 am regenerate, otherwise you have high chances of losing your scout.

This sounds like a micromanagment hell, however if you actually master it, it will be the strongest economy boost, in early game, compared to any race.

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Ravastra Skirmisher: By game logic, this was meant to be your main fighting vessel... However in truth, it is so cost inefficient, that there is literally no situation, where you should build them. To give you a feeling how bad it is - if you have 10 Ravastras (70 fleet supply) facing 17 disciples (68 fleet supply); There will be 7-8 disciples left.

Ravastra Skirmisher has 2 researchable abilities. Interference is a niche ability, which finds no use in 99% of battles, and in the rest 1% it is insignificant. While Reintegration does make Ravastras somewhat better off, however 12 hp/sec regen is not enough to withstand focused fire. And since it disable engines and weapons, it reduces your firepower. At best, this ability will make your Ravastras have cost efficiency of a disciple. However to research this technology, you will waste so many resources, your enemy will simply have much more ships.

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Kanrak Assaliant: This is your "LRF" - or long range frigate. A counter to enemy light frigates (cobalts/disciples). Their cost efficiency is under question compared to other races counterparts. However for Vasari conditions, they are pretty good. Their main difference, is that you can research them with just 1 military lab and therefore get a decent early fleet of Kanraks. (while TEC require 2, and advent 3). Extremly usefull, if you can research the phase missile research, in case you face advents. Despite all those upsides, they are hardcountered by a spam of corvettes - which is currently the most used ship overall.

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Karrastra Destructor: This is your siege frigate. It is good to bomb enemy planets, but very bad for anything else. General rule of thumb, is that you should build capital ships to bomb enemy planets, instead of those very costly frigates. But in some limited cases, just keep in mind, there are those ships.

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Junsurak Sentinel: It is your flak frigate. Fires in all 4 direction, which is good to deal with fast targets, such as corvettes or strike craft, but due to negative damage multipliers, is really useless against anything else. Also note, that despite being a counter to strike craft, and actually killing them, if Sentinels face swarms of fighters, you will be able to kill those for experience, however you will not be able to drain enemy firepower, as they will be simply rebuilt.

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Jarun Migrator: This is your colonizer frigate. But not only! It poses a unique ability to construct starbases, with apropriate technology. And starbases are the most cost efficient early game investment for Vasari. More on it in the starbase and META section.

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Tosurak/Sulsurak Corvette: Strongest corvette 1v1, but weakest in terms of fleet supply and cost efficiency - perfectly fits into Vasari frigate section. However they are not as bad as Ravastra Skirmisher, and since other races spam corvettes in most of the games, corvettes are often the only response to counter that. So build them, if you have no other means to fight enemy corvettes, but keep in mind, that you will need more resources to keep up the battle.

Their special ability is useless. Reduces enemy hull/shield (respective to the race) regeneration by 10% per stack, up to 5 stacks. Which is nothing, since even capital ships regenerate only few hitpoint per second.

Do not bui... Oh wait - Actually do build them!

Lasurak Transporter: Or rather fighters/bombers Transporter. This is the most favourite ship in the late game, when AOE damage becomes unbearable, you need to fight from a distance. Vasari squadrons are the lowest in numbers, but have the best hulls and guns. Their bomber squadrons use phase missiles, which make advent ships melt.
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Stilakus Subverter: A very handy support cruiser if you know how to use it. But using it is hard, so until you get to advanced stuff, skipp this one.
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Severun Overseer: This is your healer. It is much stronger than it's Advent or TEC counterparts, as it provides instant repair, instead of one overtime, and therefore many overseers can heal one target, while only 1 hoshiko could heal 20 hp/sec to your titan. Severun requires a lot of micro managing, in order to make it work at 100%, but for a basic start, you can use them on auto cast, and it will still be useful.
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Skarovas Enforcer: Now this is a shiny ship. While rest of the Vasari smaller ships remain under big question, the skarovas enforcer is not only toughest heavy cruiser, it is also the most cost efficient. If you like big guns, go for those!
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Sivuskras Ruiner: This is your mine layer. Use those around your inactive (under construction) starbases, or as protection fields, to place your carriers in. Or maybe to hide a nearly dead capital ship in it.
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Voruntak Envoy: This is your envoy. Use those to get better relationships with others, and eventually sign pacts.

First of all let me speak of an amazing technology "Phasic barrier". It is accessable early into the game, and makes your structures phase out, any time they are attacked. Even skilled players struggle to destroy those structures, making your enemy either waste a lot of time, flying in circles between structures which phase out, or leave them be, and save you them, should you be able to retake the planet.


Trade Port: Provide you with credit income. Repay their costs in ca. 15 minutes. (Or 25 minutes if you play on normal speed settings) The income per trade port increases with longer trade routes. Note that sometimes it is better not to build trade on a specific planet in order not to break your long trade line. Trade ports on the same planet do stack. It generates trade ships, which if destroyed, reduce your income for 25 seconds.

All races get the same yields for their trade ports. Vasari get their trade later than Advent and TEC, only in tier 4 of civic research. However Vasari can get stronger trade in a long run than Advent, as they have technology which boosts the income from trade ports. In truth, Vasari have the same boosts to trade as TEC - the only issue is that TEC get their trade much earlier, and also have pervasive economy, which gives them 20% of global spendings. So you will be always behind the TEC economy.

Media Hub: This is your culture building. Use it to increase your income (10% near capital, up to 33% at distant colonies), or to deny your enemy possibility to colonize planets near you. If your culture is strong enough, you may even overthrow enemy government, making pushing into enemy territory easier.

Or you could use it, to increase your damage by up to 15%, with apropriate technology. However it is costly, and should be considered as a neat boost, rather than reliable source to overpower your enemy.

Matter Processor: This building is often ignored even by skilled players. People ignore it, mostly due to complicated calculations it requires, and time-investement needed, to find a perfect spot for your matter processor. But if you play Vasari right, you will have an overflow of resources anyway, and therefore the yields of this building will drop by half (due to pirate market 50% selling malus). There are still some niche situations, when to use those. For instance, it requires only 3 civic labs, while trade ports require 4, which sometimes is a big difference. Or you could have a bad spawn, without a possibility to establish a trade route.

For you to understand when this niche situation happens, a quick recap, how matter processor works: Refinery can boost income of mining facilities. Each mining facility can operate with 3 refineries max. Refinery send their working ships to adjusted systems as well, so in general, you will have 3 refineries, per 4 planets at the most. You may spread them as you like, as neither social, nor industrial upgrades affect the yields of it. However keep an eye, that you do not cross them once you reach a limit of 3, as this will be wasted resources.

It is worth noting, that refineries boost income of "neutrals" even more than from your own planets.
The exact calculations are very long, and would not fit even into such long guide like this, but a rule of thumb is, once your refinery can reach 15+ mines, it is better to build it, than a trade port, even if you have industrial specialization.

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Missile Platform: Do not let sins wiki, or ingame tooltip confuse you! While it say the damage is 20, it is actually 40! And once phase missiles are researched, those 40 dps may ignore shield mitigation, giving it a firepower of capital ship, at a cost of a corvette!

Furthermore, at tier 2, you can research "disruptor nanites", which will stop any regeneration of a target for 60 seconds. This is a must have, as it gives you a massive advantage in multiple cases. In simple hand to hand combat, this will make enemy titans, capital ships, and starbases, more vulnerable, as they will not regenerate. In situations where you fight an enemy starbase, with your own starbase only, 60 seconds without regeneration will win the battle for you, even if the starbase flies out of the range of the turret. And finally if your enemy goes for some sick strategies, like rushing your homeworld with Marzas or Vulkoras Desolators, denying antimatter regeneration will make your homeworld last 4-5x time longer, in order to bring in a fleet, and destroy those capital ships.

Another intersting usage of this platform, is to destroy enemy capital ships without cover. If enemy desides to bomb your asteroid, lets say with an akkan, but does not bring any fleet (or the fleet pushes further into your territory), you can sneakily place 1-2 turrets around your roid, and shoot the capital ship down. Many people fall for this trap, as they do not consider 1 turret a major obstacle. But even if you do not manage to destroy the capital ship, ships often warp in with 0 antimatter. Denying regeneration, will make your enemy waste extra 60 seconds, to wait for the effect to end, and than 60-80 seconds to regenerate the antimatter.

If playing against ai, you can build 5 turrets in a close area, to maximize the damage. Ai will send all of his ships (but siege ships if he has those) towards the turrets. If he destroys 1-2 turrets, you can rebuild them during the fight. It is highly cost efficient, even if you are overwhelmed. This way, you can stop an entire fleet with just 5 turrets, and a few replacements of those.
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Hangar Defense: Consider this a support cruiser. It lacks it's own firepower, or abilities to kill enemies off, but it provides you with an ability, for other ships to act more freely.

I am talking about phasic trap ability, which has to be researched. Without it, there is no reason to build hangars, as they are really bad. With the said ability, they can phase out up to slightly less than 30 enemy squadrons for 60 seconds. Phase out means, making them invulnerable as well, so it is more of a time buyer.

Your hangars may run out of am, and than you will not be able to use this ability anymore. Or your enemy could simply ring so many squadrons, that even 5 hangars, will not be able to phase out enough of enemies.
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Regeneration Bay: Another "weak supporting cruiser". It allows you to regenerate 15 hp/sec for 20 secs for just 20 antimatter. Which makes it most am-efficient, but battle-inefficient repair, compared to other races.

If you have 2 fleets clashing without focus fire, a repair bay will be better off, than other factions counterparts. However even ai likes to focus fire, and in those case, you want as much repair on your high value ship, as possible.

It is also annoying to repair titans with repair bays, as they will take minutes to do so. Overall it is better to have 1 repair bay, than not to have one, but compared to other races, it is not as crucial.
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Phase jump inhibitor (PJI): This structure slows down enemies, trying to jump OUT of your gravity well by 7 times. It synergizes with Vasari other stuff quite a lot. You access it in tier 2 military tree, which is very early, and with Vasari having most important stuff, in first 2 tiers, you do not need to build any more of costly research labs.

Strategically phase jump inhibtor will rarely make enemy fleets stuck at your planet, giving you free fire (as most of ships do not have any weapons at the rear), but simply scare enemy off, from even thinking to jump to your planet.

Combine those with Vasari starbases, as they can move around the gravity well, and punish anyone who dares to jump in.

If however your enemy dares to jump to your system, and than retreat without destroying PJI, you may use gravity warhead from your Jarrasul Evacuator in order to stop the ENTIRE fleet from jumping out. Note that you cannot target the gravity warhead at titans, however if a titan appears to be in range of a frigate or a cruiser you target, even the titans engine will be disabled.
This combination makes it the greatest titan killer out of all.

And finally there are Vasari Rebells, who can make enemies suffer with PJI. In tier 4 of military research, Vasari Rebells can upgrade their PJI to have an ability which will slow the jumping speed towards the planet they are placed in, by 50x. The only problem is that this ability does not trigger on auto cast properly, so you will need to have a pji on a hotkey, in order to enable the ability, when you need it.
This slowdown may be used either to rapidly upgrade your starbase, bring in reinforcements, build some defensive structures. But my most beloved one, is what I call "dirty mines". (More on this below)
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Nano Weapon Jammer: This is another "weak support cruiser". It increases weapon cooldown of 25 ships max, by 30%. It comes very late into the game, is pretty costly, and the effect is questionable. If you are sure, your enemy will not dive in, to your missile platforms, you may go for it, but otherwise, do not waste your money on it.
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Phase stabilizer: Unique building allowing you to connect any planets WITHIN 1 STAR SYSTEM with a phase line. Can be used defensivly, to protect a wide empire, or offensivly, if combined with the Kostura cannon.

An ability to call in "remnants of the dark fleet" can be researched. This ability is more cost efficient
than building ships in usual way, however since you cannot chose ships coming in, it is a questionable tactic. Mostly useful, if you lost all your ship factories, but need reinforcements.
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Kostura weapon: Unlike other races, this superweapon does not make your enemies tremble by itself. However it serves another, maybe even more important mission. Once the salvo of the Kostura weapon hits, it establishes a phase stabilization point for next 3 minutes. If your fleet sits on a planet with another phase stabilizer, you will be able to strike deep into enemy territory.

Most useful with Vasari Loyalist, who can jump from one capital to another, eating them with strip to the core, ignoring direct contact with enemy fleet.

Generally you need only 1 Kostura weapon. However if you are up to some sick strategies, you could get 4 of those, and focus fire enemy planet one by one. This will be useful, as 4 Kostura weapons should be enough to destroy all structures at the planet, including enemy super weapons.
However this strategy is questionable, since you could save the money for 3 superweapons, and build a fleet instead, with which you would simply jump in, and destroy the targets in conventional way.

(This is a continuation to Vasari Rebell PJI strategies)

If you make your dirty mines work, you will annihilate enemy fleet in a single go. Make sure to have a capital ship or a titan in the gravity well, to gather the experience.

So how to do it?

There is one thing, you require luck with. Rest is skill. From luck modifier you need a phase lane between you and enemy which is medium or long one. Shorts will not work, or will not work properly.

1) Research Sivuskras Ruiner
1.1) Research phase jump detection
2) Do NOT build Sivuskras Ruiner yet
3) Build a 3-4 PJI on a planet your enemy will probably attack.
4) Research the technology to slow down incoming ships by 50x
5) Set your PJI to a hotkey so that you can manually use it
6) Build 1-2 frigate factories at the planet which will attack
7) Let your enemy think the planet is badly fortified. (E.g. unupgraded starbase, no or only weak fleets near)
8) Wait for enemy to jump
9) The moment first ship jumps towards your planet use first PJI to slow them down (Use only 1 for now, as the abilities do not stack)
10) Imediatly begin construction of 2 sivuskras ruiners.
11) Once they are built, tell them to fly towards the enemy ships (by right clicking on the ships heading towards you. This way, your sivuskras will head to the position, where enemy ships will warp in.
12) Once in position, begin the mine laying
13) Do not forget to cycle through your jump inhibitors to keep enemy ships slowed down. It is better to use second charge before first one expires, and lose 5-10 seconds, than give even 1 second of free jump to your enemy.
14) Continue laing your mines.
15) When the enemy fleet approaches the final section of the phase line, retreat your sivuskras. Mines need activation time, so that you will not lay any new ones anyway, but saving ships, is saving resoursec.
16) Deactive mines auto-explosion.
17) Let the entire fleet warp in. It would be perfect, if the slow down expires and you do not cast the next charge even if you have one. You need all those ships in one place.
18) Once the entire fleet warps in, enable all the mines.
19) Enjoy the entire fleet, including capital ships being destroyed.

Vasari's technology is really a sweet topic. As much Vasari do not rely on early game fleet spam, they do rely on early game technology spam.

Vasari Technology tree is much more straight forward, than that of TEC. You do not get confused by seemingly similar upgrades on the same tech tier level, so there is no need to explain in which order to go with them. Simply research what you use right now, and in order it comes in the tree, starting with the cheapest ones.

TIER 1

If you plan on fleeting, get Kanraks technology - they are really good.

If you do not plan on fleeting, but rather sb rush - get hit points as soon as possible. The hitpoint upgrade is more useful than that of TEC or advent. There is a little confusion, about it, since this technology boost hp regen as well. Tec/Advent get the hp regen, and hp boost equally strong, while Vasari do get more of hp, than hp regen. If the % are added up, than Vasari may seem weaker, however in actual battle the regen does not play any role, especially when it is about tiny %, what matters is the initial hp, when the battle starts.

If you have a fleet with many missiles, get the phase missile research, otherwise do not. 1 Weapon bank on your capital ship with missiles, or even a few missile platforms are not worth this investment.

Regeneration bay is a nice supporting structure, however you do not need it this early into the game usually.

Fortification Specialists is a technology I never understood at times I was playing against ai. Well... now I do understand it, but it is rather useless. It reduces the cost of planetary hp upgrades, and increases the speed of those. This may be somewhat useful, at a stage TEC players get Novaltih cannons, but until that point, it will simply cost more than you save from it.

Vasari Rebells also get 5% extra damage from their titan research to ALL weapons. So if you are planning on enhancing your offensive capabilities get this technology first.

TIER 2

PHASE STABILIZER - shut up and take my money. If you play against ai, it will not be useful until later phases of the game. However in games with human players, who will simply bypass your fortified frontal world, and raid your unprotected planets & hit your economy, this is a must have. But it will also scare enemy off, from attacks, giving you much more freedom.

Corvettes - somehow they ended up in tier 2, for such a technologically advanced race as Vasari. As mentioned before, they are the weakest corvettes in the game, however sometimes you have no other option but to counter enemy corvettes.

Hp upgrade in tier 2 is somewhat dissapointing. You lose your edge over TEC/Advent opponents, and hull repair gets favoured over hp increase.
However it opens you the "reintegration" technology, which gives Ravastras Skirmishers 24 hp/sec regen, and your heavy cruisers 36 hp/sec. Really useless in early game, since Ravastras Skirmishers are highly cost inefficient, and questionable in late game, as 36 hp/sec on Skarovas will be somewhat inefficient to survive the heavy firepower.

Disruptor Nanites is a cool ability, if your enemy went for several capital ships, or starbase rush. While this ability works against frigates and cruisers as well, those are disposable and require no antimatter to function properly.

"Remote Assembly" is the technology which allows you to establish starbases with your colonizer frigates. This is the most valuable technology in the entire technology tree, as Vasari starbases are insanely cost efficient. People rush this one as their first technology overall, in order to lock down chocke points and than peacefully colonize a larger piece of cake.

Vasari Loyalists get their own 5% damage boost. Just in tier 2, from the titan research.

TIER 3

Unlocks carriers, which is important, if you succesfully locked down enemy with starbases. Enemy will most likely go for bombers, so getting carriers with fighters is a must have, not to lose your ground.

Basic crew training does not come in usage, up until into the late game, when you have high income, and get a capital ship fleet. Getting this technology too early, is not important, as it costs a lot to upgrade capital ships levels, and while you have only 1-2, they will level up on their own pretty easily.

If you plan on a pure carrier+fighter fleet, which is the most common, and easiest to micro manage late game fleet, you can also increase your fighters dps.

At tier 3, there is finally some diversity to chose from. Antimatter/Shields/Armour.
From this 3, I recommend to prioritize armour, as it boosts your effective hp, at a rate of 1 armour = 5% hp, and since Vasari rely more on hitpoints than on shields, armour will give you more total hp. Also there is an extra bonus, if your shields go down earlier, your hp regen will come into play earlier as well - so you get more total hp, and better hp regen.

Later I would go for shields, as Vasari rarely have antimatter depleting abilities, unless you are jumping from system to system a lot. After shields, getting antimatter is still important, as it will be useful if not for capital ships, than for carriers, who require it to build strike craft.

You may research a mine layer, which will be highly cost efficient against ai, but rather inefficient against a human player, unless you use some tricks.

Colony pods - this is more of a lore technology. It provides you with tax income from your starbase, which will be less efficient than the trade upgrade. It will take somewhat like 30+ minutes in order to repay you the resources, so by all means, you will be able to find better places to invest the money.

Phasic strike is a unique technology for Vasari Rebels. It increases your damage by 15%, upon enetering enemy gravity well for long enough, for a battle to finish. A nice boost, but Vasari Rebel do not rely on fleets, until very late game.

VL get a slight boost to their capital ships acceleration from the titan research.

TIER 4

Charged missiles is a somewhat unclear technology. While the idea of AOE damage is clear, the actual in-game implementation may surprise.
This technology gives allows your Kanraks to deal extra 15 damage against 4 other ships, and 12 damage against 3 other ships for Sentiniels. This comes at a cost of slowing down the turn rate to 25%, which will make you highly vulnerable against microed corvettes, however if they are not microed, this ability will excells against them.
Now to how the damage works. Your Kanrak fires once in 6 seconds. The 15x4 damage will be applied once in 6 seconds. Once the missile hits an enemy frigate, a beam will go out of it, towards another frigate in a very close range, and than onwards to third ship, and so on. This beam delivers 15 damage upon impact.
Overall it gives you extra 60 damage per salvo, or 10 dps, which does look strong (as base dps of a kanrak is 13), however it is spread across 4 ships, where each ship has 1-2 hp regen. So unless you can mass enough Kanraks in order for multiple beams to hit the same target, the ability will struggle to overcome the regeneration of ships.

Severun Overseer serves as a highly efficient repair cruiser, however it lacks antimatter, so you will probably need to scuttle them every time they depleat their am reserves.

Hp upgrades are on par with TEC/Advent, but still worth it, due to high hp on Vasari ships.
Armour upgrades are more useful, if you are currently in active combat, as hp upgrades need to regenerate first.

Assault deployment is another must have technology, in case you still sb rush your enemy. It increases the speed a starbase builds in hostile gravity wells by 50%. Your starbase will still be constructed slower than that of an enemy, but the difference will not be that dramatic.

Bidirectional jamming is unique to Vasari Rebells, it upgrades your PJI, and allows you to slow down incomming ships by 50x.

TIER 5

Unlocks further ship prototypes, and minor upgrades to those. Most notable is your heavy cruiser research.

Get even more shields, and maybe antimatter later, if you lack it.

Frontal deflector shield research for your starbase. More on it in the starbase section.

TIER 6
You can make your scouts ignore jump inhibitors. Which may be important if you do not have 8 civilian labs to see all enemy ships jumping, as Vasari lack scout upgrades to give overtime vision, so having those with higher survivablity is a must have, to keep an eye on your enemy.

A few weapon upgrades. But as always, protective upgrades are more valuable than weapon upgrades, as every ship uses hp, armour and shields, while it may use other type of weapon.

Vasari Rebels get an extra shield upgrade, along with shield mitigation increase. This is the only shield upgrade you should prioritize over the armour upgrade.

Another armour upgrade. This time however you only get 0.5 points per research, yet your ships become faster.

Starbases can get the phase stabilizers.

Vasari rebells get an extra shielding technology which should be prioritized, as it increases shields by 15% and shield mitigation by 2%, which is massive, compared to rest of the upgrades which give you 5% boosts.

VL do not get the extra armour or shields, like VR, but they do get a 100% boost to hull regeneration. Overall it is a weak technology, even if it sounds like a lot. As even a fully upgrade starbase will regenerate extra 10 hp/sec (or 40-50, if shield mitigation and armour are taken into account), which will not be a life saver.

TIER 7
VR may enhance their phase missiles furthermore, by 10%

Both Vasari factions can increase their starbase survivablity and damage output. However at this point, your starbase lacks aoe damage, and acts like a big tough warship, which does not use fleet supply, but lacks mobility.

While VR get 10% to missiles (which have nearly no use, but in sp, due to counters), VL get 20% boost to fighter damage. And since most common VL fleet consists out of pure carrier spam, those 20% will be very handy.

TIER 8

Kostura weapon research. Allows you to establish phase stabilzation points at other planets, in order to jump across the system.

VR get a massive armour boost. 3 armour and 15% hp, equals about a 30% hull boost, and should be researched as soon as possible.

VR get extra hp? How about extra 40% damage on your heavy cruisers (which are the strongest ships in their class across all races, even without it)? A worthy upgrade if you went hipster way, and have built a fleet of skarovas enforcers instead of carriers. However it has a very limited usage, as if you face TEC, with their red buttons, you will simply have no way to disable the red button.

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TIER 1

Improved salvaging is worth getting, if you plan on scuttling more than 1 object. It's an extremly cheap technology, which pays off pretty quickly, and the reduced scuttling time, may have a stratigic use, in order to deny your enemy experience (should you be about to lose a starbase for example)
Btw, it is a prerequisite technology from the tier 3,

You can get phase detection already! Not a mandatory technology, however it's cheap, and allows you to relax a bit, as you will not need to keep an eye on your planets as much, since you will get an audio notification, anytime enemy fleet approaches.

Full terran lockdown should be however prioritzed from this list. It gives you extra 2 credits on your homeworld, which is quite a lot, this early into the game.

TIER 2
Resource extraction - pretty straight forward, always worth getting, sometimes even more important than the terran population, if you managed to capture neutral extraction facilities.

Vasari are the only race, which have the technology to boost population growth. Sounds fancy, but usage is questionable. As with Vasari you should prefer using the industrial specialization over the social one. (With the exceptions of your homeworld and oceanic planets & maybe ice planets.) Ofcourse tihs technology will pay off, but early on, you lack resources, so unless you see several oceanics, I would not recommend getting it.

TIER 3

WRECKEGE AUTO-SALVAGE (in caps because this technology is BIG).
Often ignored even by skilled players, or simply not understood, this technology provides you an amazing economy boost. The tooltip is missleading, so let me explain what it actually does.
Whenever you destroy anything, you get 15% of cost, of what you have destroyed. And you do not need to have a capital ship even in the said gravity well. This money is untaxed. So the longer the game goes, the stronger this technology becomes.

More resource extraction.

Phasic barrier, which insanly protects your buildings. More on it in the building section.

If you have a multi star map, Vasari get access to interstellar jumps earlier than anyone else.

And ofcourse your culture hub, for extra 10-33% of economy boost.

TIER 4

Finally trade ports!

Bombing survival increase is useful, if you have social specializations and enemy has Novaliths. Otherwise skip it.

Selective Phasing is an amazing technology utilized by literaly noone. It allows your Jikara Navigators to enter "stealth mode", where they cannot be attacked, but also cannot move or fire. It costs 3 am/sec at lvl 1, and 2 am/sec at lvl 2. Best left on autocast, as with how ship behaviour works, enemies will approach your scout fire a bit, scout will enter cloak, ships will fly away, scout will decloak, regenerate a few am, until enemy ships come back, cloak again, and so on.

Volcanic population research is laughable, especially since the industrial specialization will cut the population. Do not get it, even if you have 10 volcanic planets. The only situation you may consider getting it, is if you are a Vulcan.

Damage bonus in culture is a more effective boost, than general weapon upgrades, however with Vasari you barely cover your own territory with culture, so this potential will often be wasted.

TIER 5

EVEN MOAR RESOURCE EXTRACTION & 15% trade port boost

Gravity tolerance allows you to jump out earlier from the system. Saves up time, especially if you are chased by enemies, or need to relocate fast. A neat bonus, but should be researched only if you are already swimming in resources.

Phase Tunneling allows you to jump between 2 systems with phase gates. Even if they are at different parts of the system. BUT not if they are in different star systemS.

Schock and Awe - srsly just get a culture hub. The only strategic use, is if you are very late into the game, jumped to enemy's homeworld with kostura weapon, and need to repell enemy culture faster.

Ferrous population increase - srsly? As if volcanic population was not enough... pls skip it. It will take hours to pay off.

Raider Xenophobia (from manipulation tree) - will reduce pirate attacks, should you be playing with them.

TIER 6

Molecular assembly, almostly doubles the construction speed of structures. A worthy combination with bidirectional jamming, otherwise just a neat bonus. Get it if you have nothing else to do.

Phasic Transmission allows you to get extra 15% of ships. Really cool!

TIER 7

MOOOOOOAR RESOURCES (&credits). Also it is worth noting, that despite Vasari being a resource heavy race, they get just as much yield boost as TEC or advent. And actually it comes later in the game. However the early boost, and easier access to neutrals, give them a jumpstart.

Optimized construction reduces resource cost for everything by 8%. Even if you swim in resources and lack credits, it is worth rushing tier 7 for this technology, should you be fleeting up.

Increase speed while flying via jump gates by 40%. Really useful if you are flying far away, in order to execute hit and run tactics.

TIER 8

I SEE YOU - or the more boring name "Highly attuned sensors". Allows to see ALL ships jumping with ftl drives. Even if you did not discover the galactic map, you will see ships flying everywhere in empty space.

Summon dark fleet - already discussed it above. A worthy for role play, and theoretical cost efficiency, not so much in practice, as you cannot choose ships.

VASARI LOYALISTS

ATTENTION: "Jump stabilization" technology at tier 7 is bugged. In theory it should half the damage your ships get when jumping out of a gravity well with enemy starbase. However it is reversed, and gets applied not to your ships, but to your enemies (!). So you end up not only paying for a high level technology, but it also helps your enemies... This is true of version 1.94, so let's hope it will get fixed soon.
(Thanks to "Nightstar" who discovered this bug)

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Resource savings by 8% at tier 7? How about credits savings by 8% at tier 3? - Enslaved labour technology in the manipulation tree.

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Establishing trade lines, in order to repay them in 15 minutes, so that you can get a second trade port in total of 30 mins? How about simply eating the planet, and getting 30-240 minutes ahead of your enemy?
- The sttc (strip to the core) research line starts up with the "civilian evacuations" technology. This gives you 3.5 credits (at fastest game settings) from every capital ship you own. It is still better to get a trade port, if you want to get a long lasting economy, however with Vasari loyalists, you want ot be on the offensive all the time. So it is a nice addition.
- Next is "mobile rulership". Somewhat useless in normal games, as if you lose all your planets, you are usually dead anyway. However with capital victory enabled, even if your capital dies, you will leave, until you have at least 1 titan/capital ship/starbase.
- Next 2 technologies give you 1 military ( and than 1 civilian) lab per capital ship you own. This way, you no longer need to waste, or even have logistic slots assigned to the labs.
- And finally in tier 8, you get to the "strip to the core." More on it, in the specific section, but the general idea was stated above. It jump starts your economy, giving you a massive advantage.

And the few final toping on the cake:And the solitary path technology providing you with 75 fleet upkeep, if you are allied only with other Vasari loyalists. Note that being not alligned with anyone, does not count for the boost.

Dark fleet beacon has only 1 level of research. After compliting it, your phase stabilizers will get 3 abilities. To summon a combat/support fleet, or a capital ship. Combat fleet costs you 3300/700/430; Support fleet costs you 5000/1025/980, and capital ship will cost you 2010/270/170. Combat fleet will save you 40-50%, support fleet 30-40% and capital ship 25%. However keep in mind, that those are abilities, and their cost is not reduced by your technology, or local planets bonuses. So the actual savings may be less.

Furthermore you cannot control which ships are summoned. In combat fleet you will get a few Skarovas along with kanraks. Maybe a few other frigates in quanteties of one.
A support fleet will give you a combination of carriers or severuns. The entire fleet may be a carrier fleet, or a severun fleet. So you cannot rely on it, for carrier spam only. Capital ship is chosen randomly.
(Opposite to Vasari Rebel, you cannot waste resources, as you require hard caps of fleet logistics. The ability will be inactive, should you not have enough of it.)

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VASARI REBELS
Returning Armada - This ability can be used at the phase stabilizer. It somewhat differs from the one VL have. It costs 2500 - 150 - 500, and brings in frigates and cruisers. At lvl 1, you will mostly have frigates like Kanraks, and at lvl 2, you will have more cruisers, like carriers or skarovas. At lvl 1 you get fleet worth of 40-55 logistics (note that you need to have free logistic slots, or otherwise you will waste resources for nothing); and at lvl 2 you get 60-75 logistics. At lvl 1 you save about 10-20% of the ship cost, at lvl 2, you save about 50-60% of the ship cost. At lvl 2, you could use it to get either a fleet of carriers/heavy cruisers, and scuttle the rest. You will still be more cost efficient, than building conventionally. However as this ability can be used only once in 10 minutes, it is not a very reliable source of reinforcements.

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All for one - gives you 10% damage boost per ally in the gravity well. Somewhat situational, and requires a lot of cooperation. However in a 5v5 situation, it would give you up to 50% damage boost. But this is probably most suited for new players hanging out with their friends, stomping computers, simply because it will result in higher cooperation between players.

Shared network allows your allies to use your phase gates. Most needed, if you face a Vasari with a kostura weapon, utilizing the hit and run tactics. If your allies can jump back and forth as well, this will nulify the nomad vasari efforts.

Friendly jump telemetry reduces the cost to jump to friendly gravity wells from 100 am to 0. Neat!

STARBASE MOBILIZATION - CAUSE MA' GUN IS BIGGER.
- Allows you to jump your starbases between any 2 points having phase stabilization. Most useful, combined with Kostura superweapon. This way, you will be able to bring to enemy homeworld not only your fleet but also a giant starbase. Upon jumping the starbase will receive a serious debuff, but it is still better than beginning a construction of a new starbase.

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Diplomacy is often ignored in multiplayer. No one feels like wasting fleet capacity for 5 corvettes, in order to get a few envoys. While this may be true in early game, where every ship counts, such logic becomes laughable when you have 100 corvettes.

There is not much secret to diplomacy. You build envoys, get the extra 4 technologies to boost them, and send 1 per planet. It is important, as 2 envoys on the same planet do not stack. But 2 envoys at 2 planets stack their impact.
Researching technologies for envoys is worth it, as it will help your ally with little boosts, but also save the fleet capacity, everyone is so concerned about.

All of this "enormous effort" is for the pacts. Not much secret to those as well. However keep in mind, that you can sign your pacts, only with 1 ally. And if you sign your pacts with other Vasari player, only 1 of you needs to research them. However if you find a non-Vasari player, you could benefit from Vasari pacts, and Advent/TEC pacts as well. So you better fight over your xenophoby, and make some diplomacy with the xeno scum aliens.

Anyone can read the pacts by himself, as tooltips are helpful, yet let me summarize it a bit.

1) Resource pact at tier 4, boosts your and your allies resource extraction by 10%. It also boosts the refinery income by 15%.

2) Pricing Pact, also at tier 4, reduces the market prices by 10%. Do not know why is it a thing, since Vasari struggle for credits and not for resources. But I guess, it is neat to sign this pact with a TEC guy, who has 500/10/10 income per second.

3) Phase Drive Pact allows you to jump earlier, and charge your engines faster. The later is especially important, should you be caught by a jump inhibitor, as instead of ca 50 seconds, you will jump out 10 seconds earlier.

4) Tactical Pact at tier 6 is a very tiny bonus. It affects only tactical structures, giving them a bit of dps and hull. Still better than nothing, I guess.

5) Pulse Pact increases rate of fire by 10%. Or in other words, gives you 10% dps. However it is unclear if it affects all guns or only pulse guns. Testing required.

6) Armament Pact at tier 8 doubles the dps of your capital ships and starbases.

Kortul Devastator: This is a very powerful battleship. A good choice for late game, not so good for early game however. It's power surge will allow to survive any focus fire from early game, however for this very reason, no one will focus fire it at all, until they get a big fleet. Meanwhile it's own firepower is rather weak, to make any difference on the battlefield.
It's second ability "jam weapons" makes it perfect for late game, as it effectivly jams weapons on ALL enemy strike craft in short range. With 2-3 Kortuls you will be able to completly disable all enemy strike craft, while your own will be killing them off.
Disruptive strikes will drain antimatter from enemy ships, and increase cooldown on their abilities. This one will also disable any channeling abilities, however as it has a % to trigger, you may roll it too late.
Volatile Nanites is an aoe ability, which can 1 shot an entire fleet, if used right. However it is rather hard to perform, as you need to set up a chain effect where ships will explode one after another.


Skirantra Carrier: This is your carrier capital ship, most useful for bomber spam, as it does not use antimatter to build them. It also may deploy extra bomber squads for short duration, however it requires a lot of antimatter, which will be depleted after 1-2 uses. Furthermore it is a tough choice if you should use that antimatter to activate a fleet wide regeneration, which however will also deplete your am at the same rate. While microphasing aura may boost the survivability of your squadrons. While it's ultimate is somewhat pathetic, as it creates 4 copies of selected frigate/cruiser.


Jarrasul Evacuator: As mentioned previously a very nice colonizer capital ship. It creates 2 worknig drones, instead of one, which allows for rapid defence construction, should your newly colonizer world be under attack. Gravity warhead will prevent enemy ships from jumping out, and nano-disassembler will do considerable damage to enemy ships. It's ultimate will allow you to deal massive damage to the planet, in return for resources (metal&crystal only)

Anotrak Marauder: A supporting ship which is a musthave for late game invasions, as it drastically increases the speed of your fleet, and makes them immune to jump inhibitor, should you need to run. It may also phase out ships, and increase build times at enemy planets. And it's ultimate allows it to establish phase stabilization point, in order to retreat quickly or bring in reinforcements.

Vulkoras Desolator: Your siege capital ship, allowing for much faster planet bombardments. However it lacks any other objectives, as the phase missile swarm does very little damage to very few ships, and even if leveled up, it's ultimate will deal only a moderate damage to 1 ship, however even with the healing effect, vulkoras often die quickly.

Rankulus Battleship: This is current "meta" ship. A very strong supportive capital ship, capable of boosting early starbase rushes, and which is even more important, it's assault nanites allow you to counter enemy sb rushes. It's combat swarm is however somewhat pathetic, compared to other nanites. Just as the ultimate, which reassembles ALL nanites in the gravity well, creating one big combat nanite. It is not worth getting the ultimate, as other nanites will outperform the new big nanite. As main problem of the ultimate nanite is too much hp, too few dps.

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• Use "focus fire" only against tough targets. The game engine will avoid any overkills by it's own, as long, as you do not tell your ships to "focus fire".
  
  
• If you are using Skarovas or god forbid Ravastras and you are chasing enemy capital ship, make sure you micro them. It is not hard. Just tell them to fly in the same direction, and than tell them to attack the ship once again, in a short sequence. This way their speed will be reset, and they will not overfly their target, for next 10 seconds. Repeat it, once you see, they are about to overfly the cap once againt.
  
  
• If you have a Skarovas fleet against a corvette fleet, and your enemy is flying in circles around you, instead of leaving your Skarovas on autofire, tell them simply to fly in the direction, corvettes will be soon. Ships do not need direct orders to attack, to shoot their weapons. They need simply to face with their guns a target, and so, by simply turning your Skarovas in the right direction, you will be efficiently shooting at enemy. While by telling to shoot at corvettes unfortunate enough to be infront of your Skarovas, they will begin to freak out, as corvettes are fast, and change their position.
  
  
• If you face a corvette fleet with a Kanrak fleet, you are better of retreating. Leave corvettes to your starbase. You may however try to fight corvettes at early stages with Skirantra carrier's heal, and discharging missiles. However this can be performed, only while enemy corvette fleet is under 60 ships. As the corvette number grow, the balance will flip in their favour.
  
  
• If you have a big Junsurak Sentinel fleet, but your enemy no longer has corvettes, but instead lf (light frigate) or lrf (long range frigate), use the same trick, people use with corvettes. Junsurak is one of the few vessels, which has firebanks on 4 sides, so putting them behind enemy ships, will avoid counterfire, while you will still be able to shoot, and maybe even make all 4 firebanks to fire, instead of regular 1-2.
  
  
• While spamming corvettes, keep your fleet monogamic. And while fighting, try to focus fire, low life targets. If you cannot do a full depth micro, due to too many clicks needed, just make your corvettes flying in infinite circles around enemy fleet, and it will do the job. And keep in mind that you are faster. If you do not like this fight, disengage. Especially if enemy brings massed flak. Try to split his forces into flak and non flak. It will be easy against medium skilled players, as they will not be able to keep their fleet grouped, since all ships have different speeds. So you could pull his cobalts out of the flak fleet, shoot down a few, while flak follows, disengage, repeat.
  
  
• 95% of late game fleets are pure carrier spam. But it is not only about pumping more carriers, it is also about not letting enemy titan one shot those. So upon jumping to a battle field, make sure you spread your carriers at big distances. At best in smaller groups of 3-5. If that is too hard for you press "I" on your keyboard. This will group your units in the empire tree into bunches of 10. Now you can tell your carriers to spread out in groups of 10.
  
  
• If you went for Skarovas Enforcers spam, do not forget to get the healing technology from tier 2. It will make them unkillable against mediocore players who do not focus fire.
  
  
• While 70% damage boost on Vasari Loyalist Skarovas does sound a lot, if compared to TEC rebels, who get only 40% to their kodiak damage, TEC rebels also get 30% dps from savage thrills, giving kodiaks same dps boost, as VL Skarovas, as long, as they are at offensive. While TEC loyalist get 60% at defensive. So do not overestimate your Skarovas.
  
  
• Vasari Rebels get only 30% damage on their Skarovas, however combined with other bonuses, they can get even higher dps. Phasic strike will give extra 15% (however only for 1 minute). Every ally in the gravity well will give additional 10%. And since Vasari Rebels do not eat their planets, they have easier times, spreading their culture, providing further 15% damage boost.

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Kanrak Assaliant: You may get those at tier 1, which in theory is a massive advantage, however the problem is, that everyone else get the direct counter (corvettes) at tier 1 as well. Compared to other LRF Kanrak is not cost efficient, as it costs a lot, gives enemy a lot of experience for kill, while has only mediocore dps. Their researchable ability from tier 4 is not useful unless you get such a giant fleet of Kanraks, that it actually hits the same target a few times.
The only way Kanrak is cost efficient, is if you face an advent player and have phase missiles technology at 20%. However that will cost you a lot of resources to tech up, draining your actual fleet power.

Lasurak Transporter: Just split your carriers if you face aoe (like titan). And let your enemy fly from one corver of the gravity well to another one. Also it is worth microing your strike craft, as their target prioritization is somewhat meh.

Stilakus subverter: This supporting cruiser is mostly useful against advent with it's ability to decrease shield mitigation, and increase phase missiles penetration. If used at a ship with maxed mitigation, it may increase actual damage by 30-40%.
But stilakus subverter has even better usage. With researchable upgrades it can disable groups of corvettes, frigates & cruisers in an aoe area, with a diameter of a radiance capital ship. Most effective against corvette swarms who clump up in a small area upon striking a target.

Severun Overseer: Really good at fast healing. However with Rankulus battleship, who's supporting nanites do the same job, severun have somewhat a secondary role, only in scenarios where you actually need a very rapid repair. It suffers mostly to lack of am regeneration. Usually it will get 4-5 repairs out, but than sit like a duck, without dps, and am. However those 4-5 repair salvos will give you 1000-1250 hp, within 16-20 seconds, which makes it the most rapid repair ability in the game.
So if you are fighting in your gravity well with frigate factories, and let's say your titan is focused fired, a constantly working factory will give you enough severuns to keep your titan alive.

Skarovas Enforcer: The strongest HC in terms of cost efficiency. Also it excells in practice, compared to other HC, as it continues the tradition of Vasari fleet, being lower in numbers but tougher. This gives Skarovas excellent survivability against aoe abilities (but still not hard enough to survive the strongest aoe)
Furthermore Skarovas can get the repair ability which will disable them, however in fleet fights, with their high armour and shield mitigation, the 36 hp/sec, turn into 130+ hp/sec repair. Skarovas also have the ability to slow their targets down. It is a handy ability, but somewhat inferior to the kodiaks speed up.

Voruntak envoy: While it's abilities are really mediocore, an expert has to know of those. Voruntak envoy has 2 basic abilites. The first is invulnerability, and second is "goodwill" which increases relationship. It also has 3 researchable abilities, giving it 5 totally. Third ability gives the planet a 20% boost to mining and 20% to ship construction (really a tiny tweak). Fourth ability allows the planet to regenerate 6 hp/sec (rarely useful). Fifth ability gives the planet extra 1000 hp.

The abilities themselves are really weak, however still worth researching, as they provide extra relationship boost, so that you end up needing only 5 to get to 18 relation points (from 10).
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Other ships require no expert explaining as their are either too simply, or should not be built at all.

Compared to TEC, Vasari capital ships synergize only a very tiny bit. So getting a maxed capital ship fleet, without regular ships is not all that good, while still a viable option.
Furthermore Vasari capital ships have most of their guns in frontal bank, so you do not need to care much about placing your capital ship right, in order to increase the dps.


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Kortul Devastator: While Power surge is tempting, Kortul is very though without it as well. And since most of players assume you have power surge, they will not prioritize Kortuls, before other capital ships. Meanwhile, investing ability points into "Jam weapons" is a must have. As it allows you to nulify any carrier spam, leaving your enemy with a titan and a few capital ships, while you devastate him.

Skirantra Carrier: Has a very limited use to a few niche situations, but shines in those. Most notably it can heal your strike craft, in order to achieve air superiority. Ofcourse 2-3 Kortuls would prevent any damage done to your strikecraft anyway, which is why it is a niche.
Another niche situation, is if you make an early game fleet, instead of rushing starbases. A fleetwide repair will make your ships about as cost efficient as enemy ships, however you will still be having problems.
And lastly you could get 4-5 early Skirantra carriers with bombers only, and bomber spawn ability. Level up to lvl 3 (or even 4 if you can afford that), get as much missile upgrades as you can, and voila, you have 30 bomber squadrons with phase missiles - a deadly fleet for any advent opponent. Even their titans will melt under this spam. Once they counter react with fighter swarms, dock your bomber squadrons, once you reach 50% of squad size. You do not need your own fighters, as it is still pretty early into the game, and the docking - repairing - undocking strategy will be more than enough to kill enemy capital ships and titans, while 5 capital ships will have enough bombing power to take over planets.
If timed correctly, this rush will allow you to consume the entire territory of the said advent player.

Jarrasul Evacuator: Nano-Disassembler is a powerful tool for rapid colonization. Most effective used at planets with 3 planet bombers. Even at lvl 1 it is capable of killing neutral siege frigates. Your task is to use this ability on 1 of the siege frigates, than immediatly order to colonize the planet. Once the planet is colonized, construct 1 turret at the location of neutral siege frigates. First siege frigate will go down from the ability, while 2 others will die to your capital ship.

To compare, with akkan you need to kill 2 siege frigates before colonizing the planet. Which saves you a few minutes. Furthermore, once your turret is constructed, it will open fire at other neutral ships, giving your capital ship more xp, while it kills all the siege/lrf frigates.

This ability is very useful after the colonization phase as well. Use it against enemy capital ships, starbases and titans, to deal massive damage and reduce their armour.

At lvl 6, you gain the "Drain Planet" ability. It deals 1350 damage to the planet and gives you 450 metal&crystal. This is a very effective ability in order to push (as normal planets have just 1500 hp), but is also a great economy tool. If you stumble on a planet with a starbase which protects your enemy from losing the control due to bombardment damage, you can "farm" indefinetly resources out of that planet.

Antorak Marauder: Phase out hull ability is good not only to keep a ship in spot, but also messes up with orders given to it. If used at friendly ships, under focus fire, all enemy ships will retarget, which may give just enough time to run away. If used at enemy ships, enemy ship will "forget" it last order. This is extremly annoying for a player who tries to run away his capital ship, but each cast of the phase out hull, his ship disobeys that order, and goes berserk mode, attacking the armada, while all other ships peacefully retreat.

Rankulus Battleship: Micro your support nanites. They have a bad habit to slow down, shortly before they are in range of the target they are supposed to heal. Which if combined with the target moving away, will result in a "benny hill chase" act. Higher levels of heal nanite, will increase the heal, and armour buff.
1 assault nanite can easily kill 1 turret. However if enemy is trying to get a starbase up, send all assault nanites to kill that sb.
1 combat nanite is worth of 1 light frigate, however other nanites are worth a few frigates at the very least, so do not get combat nanites unless other nanites are fully upgraded.
Do not skill or if missclicked, use the "reassemble" skill. If will reform all nanites into 1 giant fighting nanite. However this nanite will not be able to heal, nor it will have a damage multiplier against structures. As for it's damage, it will be really low, while it's hp will be increadibly high.


As a joke, I have built 16 rankulus, spammed as many nanites as possible (all 3 kinds) and transformed them with reassemble. The result was a giant nanite, with 16k hull and 12k shields, but only about 100 dps. Therefore this nanite could not really kill any structures, or capital ships. And since this nanite lasts only 180 seconds, it makes it incredibly useless.

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Orkulus Starbase is the only starbase which can fly through the gravity well, and for VR, even to other systems. It is also the most cost efficient investment for Vasari early into the game, as their fleet loses any battle of any match up, against other races.

New players may be confused by how competetive players rush the starbases at minute 5, or even hate it. But why would not they, considering what I said above.

Orkulus starbase starts at 3000 hull and 2000 shields, with 149 pulse gun damage. Which gives it a firepower of 15 light frigates and health of 10, at a cost of 10 lf. Does not sound that impressive, however with how shield mitigation works, 1 big target, is often superior to many small targets.

It is worth noting that any starbase, including Orkulus starbase builds, and upgrades slower in hostile gravity wells. It takes 150% of time in neutral gravity wells, and 225% of time in hostile gravity wells. There is a technology in tier 4, which boosts construction rate in hostile wells from 225% to 150%. However as you see, even at 150%, if your enemy counters your starbase, with his own, he will have a major advantage.


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Now to the upgrades of the starbase:

Orkulus Starbase can upgrade it's weapons 3 times. 1st upgrade will give it 73 dps of an antistructure weapon, which is highly effective against other starbases or tactical structures. Not so much against fleets. 2nd Upgrade will give it phase missiles wtih 130 dps and very high range. Third upgrade costs more than usual upgrades, and will boost your damage by 20%.

Orkulus can upgrade it's hull 4 times. First 3 upgrades represent equal steps in terms of extra hull,shields, regen, etc. Fourth upgrade costs more, takes more time, but is also a more significant boost.

Orkulus can upgrade up to 14 strike craft squads, with 3 upgrade levels. However it is more cost efficient to simply build carriers. So do not use it, unless you are desperate.

Orkulus can get 1 point in trade, in order to establish a longer trade line. It costs more than a trade port, and gives you 0.7 of income of a trade port.

Enforced Loyalty will prevent you from losing the planet from bombardment. But not culture!

Colony pods will give you a little income from population. Get it if you are bored, otherwise, it will take ages to repay.

Debris Vortex unlocked by rapid reintegration technology, in theory regenerates 12 hp at lvl 1 and 18 hp at lvl 2 per debris consumed. In action I did not see it work properly, if debris was already flying there, but maybe this simply requires more testing. However even if it works properly, restoring 18 hp per destroyed ship does not sound like much. And it is not. Not even really worth getting, when it is a huge battle, where ships die not only against the starbase.

Frontal Shield deflector reduces the frontal damage by 100/200%, at lvl 1/2 respectivly. To make it more clear, as stats work weirdly in sins, at lvl 1 your starbase will take 50% damage, and at lvl 2, it will take 33%. A useful bonus if you have slots left, but should be considered a support slot, as if you micro your sb, you will face only about a quarter of enemy forces with frontal shield deflector.

Phase stabilizer arrays, allows you to create a phase stabilization point, like your phasee gates. However the cooldown exceeds the duration, so use wisely.

So let's say you managed to place a starbase, and enemy fleet engages it. What to do? Simply leave it be and hope for the best?

Faith is for Advent, and you are a commander of technologically advanced, human size, insects. So show it to them!

1) Your Starbase has it's guns equally spread across all 4 sides. But if enemy focuses it, only 1 side, max 2 sides will fire at him. So your task is to make all 4 sides fire, and therefore quadrippling, or at least doubling your damage output! To do so, tell your starbase to fly into enemy lines, and make sure you have enemies around your starbase all the time.

2) If your starbase faces much more it can take, increasing damage is good, in order to die as a hero. But why not live as a hero? To do so, you will need to keep your starbase on the move. The easiest way is to make shift orders, for it to fly back and forth on the same short route. This will give you time to time fire all banks, but more importantly force enemy ships to turn around. And ships hate that, due to sea space sickness. Furthermore, you will have a chance of them overflying your starbase, which will make them spin even more. And while they spin, you will simply upgrade your hull, as any extra point to the hull, will increase your current hp, proportionally to the maximum!

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3) There are 3 categories of enemies. 1st is the bruteforce. Your enemy tries to overwhelm your starbase with direct firing ships, like cobalts, or disciples. 2nd is the evasive strategy, where your enemy builds carriers, which will bomb your starbase from afar. And 3rd, enemy own starbase.

If you have a fresh starbase, without any upgrades, each type of enemies, requires own upgrade path.

3.1) With the bruteforce you need to put all points you can into hull upgrades. Your first weapon upgrade will be useless, and you will not make it until third. Should you happen to have the frontal shield technology, hull should be prioritized nevertheless, as in combination with point 2) you will survive much longer. Only after you got your 2nd point into hull, you may consider getting weapons, at your own risk.

3.2) Carriers are very annoying. Your starbase is slower, so that it cannot catch up with them, and it cannot shoot at strike craft. There are 3 possibilities of how to react. If you have a frigate factory nearby, pump out a few carriers, while upgrading hull at your starbase.

If you happen to have no frigate factory, or not even the required technology for carriers, upgrade your starbase with fighters, should your enemy utilize bombers only. If he however went for fighter support or fighters only, go for 1 point in hull first, than go for strike craft.

Or if your enemy took you by surprise and you cannot get carriers in time, and the upgrades will take too long, scuttle the starbase. It will give you a bit of your resources back, and deny enemy the experience. Do not forget to retreat your capital ships, as they will be the next target.

3.3) Now this is interesting. Enemy tries to counter your starbase with his own. Even with faster construction technology, he will have a 1.5 speed superiority.

3.3.1) Let's start with Advent. There is nothing more stupid to counter Vasari sb with Advent sb, as advent sb are weak in general, but especially weak against Vasari sb, due to their anti structure damage upgrade. Even if you do not have the technology and have to wait 225%, simply get 1 point in weapons and begin the assault. Should your enemy be stupid neough to continue upgrading his starbase, get 1 upgrade in hull points. This will be enough to kill 1v1 an advent starbase.

3.3.2) TEC are a bit more complicated. Their starbase cannot move, however it is the toughest and strongest out of all. Considering that both sides will continue upgrading their starbases without any pause, you have a very little window to kill it in 1v1. You need your starbase with 1st weapon upgrade ready, at the moment enemy starbase finishes constructing. If you get it even 10-20 seconds later, you will never mak it 1v1, and will need a fleet killing the starbase. If you have no fleet nearby, just move your starbase furtheraway, and set it to local engaging area. As you will not be able to kill the starbase, you will at least scare your enemy.

3.3.3) The sweetest topic, Vasari starbase against Vasari Starbase. Generally, it is nearly impossible to win with your starbase in a hostile gravity well, even with the 50% speed up from technology. You should always get 1 point into weapons first. And than 1 point either to hull or to missiles, depending on your current situation. Overall, the only scenario, where your starbase can win, is if, you had a bit of time advantage, until your enemy noticed you, and than, when both of the starbases were ready, you went for 1 weapon upgrade, and your enemy for 1 hull upgrade. As the hull upgrade is so much inferior in terms of 1v1, that even if he gets the weapons as his next point, you will achieve such a superiority, he will not be able to recover.

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The timing is your everything. You need to know which upgrade takes how long, in what kind of gravity well, in order to win with your starbase, or scuttle it, before it is too late.


The table above tells you how long an upgrade will take in different types of gravity wells. The first number is for the first (anti-structure) weapon upgrade. The second is for everything else (including the second weapon upgrade, excluding the last weapon and hull upgrades, as those take a bit longer, but are rather irrelevant in terms of timings)

With the speed upgrade, your upgrades will take as much time, as in neutral wells. From the table it is clear, that without the technology, if both starbases construct at the same time (which already involves a major time superiority, as your construction takes 225% longer), even getting 1 anti structure weapon will take only 3 seconds less, than getting hull and anti-structure weapon.

So even if your enemy is stupid enough to go for hull first, you will not get any kind of superiority from that. So if you see your enemy constructing a starbase, without you having either the speed technology, or an already built starbase, begin to scuttle it.

All of the above was more of generic talk about orkulus being alone. However a good player will bring more to the battle.

Let's start with the "Meta". Currently most favorite playstyle is to rush your enemy's homeworld with a Rankulus capital ship lvl 3 (bought upgrades) and a starbase, without colonizing any worlds. You also scuttle your capital ship factory to get a chunk of resources, and logistical slots for 2 military labs. This way you catch your enemy at the time he has invested his first money into social specializations and mining facilities at his roids, and therefore has only a limited fleet.

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You skill 2 points into repair nanites and 1 point into assault nanites (the red ones). Your repair nanite will allow you to nulify the dps of 20-30 light frigates, while your assault nanite will either destroy frigate factories, or hangars with bombers.

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You can get up to 3 nanites, while on your way to enemy homeworld. This way your starbase will have an instant heal from 3 nanites. Do not leave nanites as sitting ducks with autocast. Your enemy will often focus fire them or even if not, they may chose to heal your capital ship, or each other over the starbase.

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Also repair nanites have somewhat stupid behaviour. If you try to heal a moving target, they will decelerate a few units away from their maximum range, and will not accelerate, unless the target gets far away. If you do not bring the nanite closer to the starbase manually, you will lose at least a few hundred, but more likely over a thousand hp regenerated (or thousands if battle goes for long).

Bomb enemy homeworld with your rankulus capital ship. It will not add any major firepower to help the starbase, but will slowly kill enemy homeworld which has tons of health, but more importantly you will kill his population, draining his income.

Do not forget to get first 2 hp upgrades from the technology tree, but better all 4, if you can spare them. Though the first 2 are way more important.

Once your starbase is upgrading, it will take a few minutes, until the upgrade is finished. At some point you will stockpile more than you can use. Send a colonizer frigate to the closest roid, at your hw, and begin to build your economy.

This is pretty much it. If you want to see how it looks in action, go to the "Rankulus+Orkulus Meta Replay" section. In it, there is the replay where I am facing one of the top 5 current players, where he gets a lot of resources from his ally, yet I manage to kill him within first 20 minutes of the game.

While the Rankulus Meta, is a Meta, it does not mean there is nothing else.

Before patch 1.94, everyone would build corvettes only in any kind of situation. However with 1.94 we got a major nerf to corvettes, most notably their damage against structures has been halfed. Therefore people will rarely use corvettes against your starbases, and if they do, you will simply farm experience on it, and drain their economy.

Instead people do build light frigates now. Light frigates have pretty high dps, and are dangerous to your starbase. And here comes the support fleet. The main idea of it, is that while Vasari fleet is highly cost inefficient and dies fast, this does not apply for the heavy starbase. And since Starbases are very feared early into the game, they will be focus fired, while your fleet will have the opportunity to shoot down enemy ships.

As I already mentioned, your enemy will be building light frigates to kill the starbase. Which is why you need a ship which counters lf - Kanrak Assaliant. It is researchable at tier 1 of the military tree, has few hitpoints but a lot of firepower. Therefore, anytime your enemy is not shooting at them, you are golden. And since a starbase is always more intimidating, than a bunch of frigates, this will always be a situation.

To boost this combination even further, you could get the Skirantra Carrier. With it's heal ability it will slightly increase the survivability of the starbase, and of your Kanraks, should they be prioritized at some point.
Also should your enemy build Kanrak's counter - corvettes, he will effectivly reduce your firepower, however at a cost of his own capabilties to destroy your starbases.

Also watch out for Marzas. Their passive ability allows them to 1v1 a newly built starbase, even if you upgrade it's hp. So when you get 25+ Kanraks, it would be often wiser to focus enemy Marza instead of cobolts. As your starbase should be able to deal with cobolts, once it is constructed, but it will not be able to deal with Marza.

Also even if you simply scare of Marza from your starbase, that will reduce enemy dps by about 100, or 10 cobolts. So do not get upset, if enemy Marza tries to run, it's better for your starbase.

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Now, if you hate being original, and just want to go the easy path, you can always go for a corvette spam support.

Yes, your corvettes are the most cost inefficient, out of all corvettes, but they are still corvettes... and even with the 1.94 nerf, corvettes are still easiest to control, utilize, and have very good stats. But at least it is the path of the least resistance...

Overall with the corvette spam, your main goal is to distract your opponent, to raid him. Since he will probably have a fleet of light frigates, you will easily outmaneveur those. Once the actual battle starts, you have no need, to fight the main fleet, as it is dangerously powerful. You can simply fly to the backlines, and snipe the frigates from the reinforcement. If he chases you, you will get more room to build a starbase. If he doesn't, you will simply have a really good k/d ratio.

The following replay can be opened in game version 1.94. It shows a match up between 2 top 5 players of the current sins competetive players.

I am on the one side, playing as Vasari, and utilizing the Ranklus+Orkulus Meta against Matheus, playing as advent.

As steam blocks direct links to mediafire, you will have to go to my youtube video, which is a vasari game, however not relied to the said meta. In the description the first link will be the orkulus+rankulus meta replay: https://youtu.be/QNJI4aR5xTA

Obviously it was a succesful sb rush, as otherwise it would not make much sense to post it here. However it was a really interesting back and forth battle, as Matheus received 23k worth of credits feed in first 20 minutes, while I got none.

He began recieving his feed, even before I went into aggression. This happened because a player ShoNuff, prefers to feed straight away the best player, instead of getting a good economy, when he is in eco spot. (I consider it the right strategic decission. This let's him to "chill out" during games, while the best player beats other team)

Anyway at min mark 9, I went to sb Matheus' homeworld. It is pretty late, however I would not be able to do so, as he would simply snipe my sb constructor. With a few tricks, and deceptions, I made him believe my constructor was flying other route, and than retreating, while the real one flied around.

This strategic move splitted Matheus' forces in 2, allowing me for a safe passage to his hw. Now my play was not perfect as well, as 1) I used only 1 colony frigate, while you should go with 2. It is a bit more expensive, but saves you the risk of loosing them too early. 2) I did not get enough support nanites before jumping. I got only 1+, while you can get up to 3.

Despite those flaws, I achieved to put the starbase at Matheus homeworld. Utilizing the support nanites to repair my sb, upgrading the technology for more hp, and assault nanites to destroy the hangars, I managed to get my sb running.

Note that I do not go with my sb for hangars, but let it run in circles, to decrease damage done to it. With assault nanites, I did not get the 1st weapon upgrade on my starbase, so I wanted all weapons being fired at ships only.

Also note that I micro my supporting nanites, instead of leaving on auto repair, as it wins me a lot of time, on every repair cast.

"If you see a Vorastra, run" © Sun Tzu

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Vorastra is accesable for Vasari Loyalists only. It is a massive ship, boosting their main focus, on raw fire power, and nomadic lifestyle. While it's raw dps does not stand a chance against Ragnarov in a 1v1 combat, and it's hp is nowhere near to Ankylon titan, Vorastra titan is considered the strongest titan out of all.

This is due to it's fleet damaging/consuming abilities. So let's take a look at them.

Micro Phase Jump, allows you to jump across smaller gravity wells in one go at low levels, and across big gravity wells on high levels. It is not a primitive direct damage ability, like Explosive shot, Ragnarov titan gets, but it may be way more useful, if used right.

First of all this ability allows you for faster traveling across the planets, which gives a decent boost, should your titan being constructed on a distant but safe planet. But it will more importantly allows your titan to jump in and out during combat. In case your enemy has spammed carriers, you can jump on them immediatly as the battle begins. Should they splitt, you will kill 1 group, and than jump on the second group. Should your titan be heavily damaged, you can always jump back, and go for repairs on your planet. There is no ship, which can chase Milenium Falcon Vorastra.

Desparation's tolltip is helpful but does not tell you everything. It gives your titan aoe damage, on ANY attack it does, in a range, around it's target, equal to the length of a Radiance capital ship. All ships in that range, will suffer 10→20→30→40 damage at respective levels. With 12 weapon banks you will create 12 blobs with this damage around them. Most notably, this affects corvettes, which makes it a unique titan ability, allowing Vorastra fighting of swarms by it's own. (Sorry for saying this. It was used to be like this, but Vorastra no longer has AOE against corvettes)
But this is not the end. Desparation also gives you a Weapon cooldown boost of up to 15%→30%→45%→60%, which will make your spash damage occur even more often. Aaaaand it will give you 30%→45%→60%→75% damage reduction. To get the maximum boost, your titan simply needs to be hit 10 times, however out of comabt this ability fades out very quick.
Also note that with how damage reduction works in sins, at lvl 4, your titan will take not 25% of damage, but rather 60%.

Deploy phase stabilizer is a supporting ability, which allows you to spawn a phase stabilizer. It could have been a worthy pick for strategic reasons, if not for the insane cooldown of 1200 seconds (20 minutes). So you are better off simply by getting an extra kostura weapon, or a starbase with phase stabilization, or even Antorak's marauder lvl 6.

The Maw allows you to eat enemy ships. So now you can eat, planets and ships... see the quote above :)
At level 1, you can however eat only 15 ships, and gain only 50% of their cost.
At level 2, you can eat 30 ships, and gain 100% of their cost.
While Maw cannot target corvettes, if they happen to be in it's way, you will eat them as well.

And obviously there are hull, weapons, and antimatter upgrades. Not much to explain here.

Abilities skilling path:

As Vorastra Titan can be used in many ways, there is no 1 clear skill path for it's abilities.
The only must have pick, is at lvl 1, you should get 1 point into micro phase jump and desperation. Micro phase jump is used for survivability. And while hull upgrade could be used for that too, it is nowhere close, to the micro phase jump. While Desparation is a necassary skill for killing fleets, and cleaning the pirate base.

After that, you are free to create your own skill path. You want to go nomadic, at lvl 2 of titan, you can go for phase stabilizer already. You want to throw it at enemies as soon as possibile, max jumping&desperation with hull and weapons.

I personally really like throwing 1 point at am regen, at lvl 2 of the titan, postponing the weapons upgrade, as I do not see my titan 1v1 enemy entire fleets, at low level. But rather gathering the experience up until level 5. And for my titan not to die, extra am regen, may be necessary for an early micro phase jump. Not to mention it cuts the cooldown by 15%, allowing me to jump much more often. Which, if I am chasing my enemy, will be a much better dps improvement, than from the weapons upgrade.

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Strategies

Make enemy suffer from desparation. However do not go extrmly aggressive until you reach level 3 at the very least. Your titan is a good escaper, but it is not really tough. And while you will not lose it, having it on a constant retreat, will not help it gathering xp.

When using Micro phase jump to retreat, first turn your ship into the direction, where your planet is, and only than jump as far away as you can, from enemy fleet. This way you have a much better control over your titan's health, and also bait your enemy into following you.

If you are sure that your titan will not need the micro phase jump to retreat for repairs, until next cooldown, you could use the micro phase jump to jump behind enemy ships. This way, they will have to slowly turn around, giving you extra free kills.

When group jumping with Vorastra you often have to micro your Vorastra to jump seperatly or at least from far away. It is so big, that it often gets stuck in other ships, and cannot turn. While other ships are already in position to jump, will not move, to give that space. So your ships may be stuck for minutes, giving your enemy all the time to prepare.
Same applies for retreating.

When bombing planets, Vorastra also glitches, and cannot decelerate, to turn and begin the bombing. It will continue flying around the planet, as if it was it's satelite. Maybe it is also no glitch, but simply the Vorastra's crew honering the 2nd space speed, while bombing of the planets is not worthy of their time.
However you may trick the crew, by ordering a full stop, and than to bomb the planet.

Your titan is the ultimate fleet killer. Even corvette spammers tremble against high level Vorastra. So keeping it alive is much more cost efficient, than getting an extra offensive cruiser. So providing about 10 severuns, which will solely heal Vorastra, is a nice investment. Even if severuns are focused, you can consider each severun as an extra bunch of life, since that fire is not directed at your titan.

While Vorastra does kill carriers efficiently, if you have no fighters, it will die to bomber swarm to easily. So even if you went for capital ships fleet/non carrier fleet, make sure you have at least 1/3 of enemy bombers, as strike craft.

Vorastra is good at killing multiple targets, but is weak against 1 single tough target. So you will have to get a fleet of your choice, capable of killing starbases, titans, capital ships. It could be 16 capital ships, could be 60 carriers, could be 60 HC, or even your own corvette spam. However keep in mind that TEC players have red button on their starbases, which will annihilate any non-capital ship in a very big radius, even with maxed hull and shields. And you have no way to interrupt that ability.

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As much as it pains me to say it, Kultorask Titan is the weaker brother of the Vorastra Titan. Both titans have somewhat mirror like abilities, yet in action the Kultorask titan is much much weaker, and is worth getting, only because it does not lose experience upon death, which makes it a big chunk of flying-shooting metal, with a few supporting abilities.

So what's are the actual abilities?

1) Nano leach will heal your titan and restore antimatter, by draining it from frigates/cruiseres nearby. It scales proportionally to the amount of ships around the titan. At lvl 2 of the ability, it effectivly nulifies any light frigate damage, for 20 seconds, every 60 seconds. At lvl 3 long range frigates, and at lvl 4 even heavy cruisers.

However your weakness remains bombers/fighter swarms, and corvette spam. And since no one uses frigates/cruisers in the lategame, but ai, if you are facing a human player, this ability will be mostly useless. If it is corvette spam, your titan will die in 1-2 minutes. If it is strikecraft spam, your titan will survive longer, especially if you have strikecraft of your own.

A somewhat neat strategy is to fly Kultorask titan into enemy carrier swarm and activate nano leach. It will not heal your titan much, nor will it do any major damage to enemy carriers. However it will also drain their antimatter, giving you a massive advantage, should you have your own carrier spam.
In action, even 1 succesful nano leach will be enough to achieve air superiority.

2) Nano remit, restores hull of all friendly ships in range, at cost of titans own hp. Sounds also as a neat support ability, however even at lvl 4, it restores only 300 hp every 45 seconds. This is far from enough to keep even Skarovas enforcers alive, if they are under heavy fire. And since you have to sacrifice a bit of titans hp, it may be the final blow, since titans are often focus fired before rest of the fleet.
Only situation I see this being used, is when you have spammed skarovas enforcers, enemy does not focus your titan, and is using some aoe abilities, like ragnarovs explosive shot. And even than, this ability will not overpower the aoe abilities of other titans.

3) Gravity pulse is another supporting ability. It affects only frigates/cruisers and synergizes with the Nano leach. If used without nano leach it will sligthly slow enemy ships and sligtly decrease their dps for 35 seconds. If however used with Nano leach, it will completly disable enemy ships for 5 -> 7 -> 9 -> 12 seconds.

If combined with nano leach, it is a neat ability, in order to prevent enemy ships from jumping out. With jump inhibitor, this abilit will keep all frigates/cruisers permanently in the gravity well. If combined with gravity warhead lvl 2-3 from Jarrasul Evacuator will also allow you to keep enemy fleet indefinetly, until you have antimatter.

4) Dissever is the ultimate ability, which deals an aoe damage to all frigates/cruisers around. Also synergizes with Nano leach for extra damage for a total damage of 1500 -> 2150. The only problem is that Ragnarov titan can reach same aoe damage at lvl 3 -> 5, instead of 6 ->8 for Kultoras. Which furthermore illustrates, how inferior Kultorask titan is, in hand to hand combat.


Ability skilling path:

As it is already obvious, that Kultorask titan, is a big supporting ship, you should prioritize the skilling path according to it. I recommend going for Nano leach + hull upgrade; switching with Gravity pulse + antimatter upgrade. Grab the ultimate once you can, as little aoe damage is still better than none. Do not go for Nano remit at all, as it is really pathetic. Do not go for weapon upgrades, unless your only choice is weapon/nano remit.

Do not forget that antimatter upgrades decrease cooldown on your abilities.

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Strategies:

Kultorask titan has a very limited use. It does not give you any real offensive capabilities on it's own, so that you always need a fleet. A good fleet. For a good fleet, you need economy, so do not try to rush titan, before you have a decent income. Since you cannot eat planets as your cousins, nor you have credit income from capital ships, your main strategy is to fortify a bit, and get maxed economy, only than get into fightings.

Use bidirectional jammig, for dirty mines, and overall slowdown of enemy pushing attempts, while you are getting economy output. However do not overinvest into your starbases too much early on, as they do not scale well, and will postpone you from getting economy.

Once you have stable economy you should get your titan out, with either a carrier fleet or skarovas fleet. Do not get many capital ships, as the technology to do so, is way too expensive, and will also prevent you from getting levels on your titan.

As mentioned above Kultorask titan synergizes with the gravity warhead from Jarassul evacuator. However for that synergy to work, you need to make your enemy run, which will be a difficult task, as this must be performed by your fleet only.

Kultorask titan may not be focused fire as much as other titans are, as it is not so dangerous, however it will be focused fired for reasons of it's high cost. Keep it safe.

Getting economy with Vasari is somewhat a lottery. If you overinvest into economy, enemy will simply bypass 1 starbase you have put, and kill all your planets, as you will not be able to put a starbase at every single planet, while also not able to build an effective fleet to stop enemy.

However if you find this golden middle ground, where you can get the civilian research labs, this is the to do list:

1) Get as many neutrals, with your scouts, as possible. It is the most effective economy boost, allowing you to overrun even TEC economy.
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2) Send 1 capital ship in one direction, and 5 scouts + 1 colonizer frigate in the other direction, to get as many planets as possible.

3) Use nanite disassemble on your Jarrasul Evacuator, for rapid colonization. However do not leave it on autocast, as it will be used against frigates which you are already firing upon, and this is not the most efficient way.

4) Grab the extra population on your terran, as soon as possible. (to lvl 3)
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5) If you have captured neutrals, get the mining technology immediatly, otherwise it can wait a bit.

6) Get culture for extra 10-33% economy boost at tier 3. Also get extra mining. And if you are Vasari Loyalist, get the enslaved workers, for 8% credit discount on EVERYTHING.

7) Do not get trade ports, until you are safe from any breakthroughs. Going to tier 4 is expensive.

8) Once you get trade ports, build a chain out of them first. 1 per planet. Only after that, max out the logistic slots, and than industrial specialization.
8.1) Best planets to max trade are vulcanics, ferrous, barren, deserts, terran. In this order.

9) Sell your resources at the private black market. Not the one at the top right corner, but one in the pirate menu. You can set up the prices to 100%, instead of 50%, and therefore double your economy! Just watch out, as those resources have to be actually bought by someone. So if no one buys metal/crystal, you may waste the resources you have put on the market.
9.1) Usually if you face Vasari they will not buy resources. Other races will. TEC will buy a lot of resources. Also if playing with ai, it will always buy a lot of resources all the time. (at higher difficulties)
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10) It is better to grab the 8% resource discount from tier 7 civilian tree, before fleeting up.

11) Scout planets for artifacts, especially before fleeting up. Planets may have different bonuses from 5%-30% ship discount. Or even several at the same time!

12) Use your starbases with trade upgrade, to make trade lines even longer.

13) Vasari have a unique technology which allows to grow population faster. It is worth it, if you have several oceanic/ice planets nearby. Otherwise it does not make any big difference.
13.1) Going social upgrades with Vasari is viable, but is definetly not their main economy powerhouse.

14) Once you fleet up and bigger battles begin, get 15% in wreckege autoslavage (tier 3). It will give you 15% of cost of any ships you destroy, but if the ignored taxation is taken into consideration, it goes up to 60% at maxed fleet. A tool even more effective than pervasive economy TEC are so proud of.

• Control your construction frigates. Those tiny bots, which do all the hard labour. Send them to the place, you are planing to build your building, in order to save the time, for that constructor flying there. This is most relevant when you are making rapid research of the repair bay, as your capital ship is under fire, and while nanoseconds do not matter, 10-20 seconds may matter.
  
  
• If your enemy builds starbases, do not try to break through the lines, unless you heavily outperform him. If it is a stalemate, better invest those resource into income, wait a bit, and overhelm your enemy.
  
  
• Sign pacts! Those will boost your income considerably. And the envoys needed for pacts, will boost it even further.
  
  
• If you are Vasari Loyalist, you do not need any of this pathetic trade economy, everyone is talking about. Do not even research trade ports. Better get the technology for credit income from capital ships. It will not be as powerful as trade port, in terms of income, but who needs income, if you are leaving this galaxy anyway?
  
  
• If you are Vasari loyalist, you do not even need research labs. At tier 7 of the civilian tree, you can make every single capital ship to coutn as a research lab, both in military and civilian.
  
  
• At tier 8, as Vasari Loyalist you can research "strip to the core" or sttc. More on it below. But shortly, this is what allows you to completly ignore conventional trade, and be a nomadic like race.

STTC is the ultimate and unique ability for Vasari Loyalist faction. It allows you to completly break the balance of the map, and established forces, and break through any lines.

Shortly - it allows you to eat planets for vast amount of resources, which outperforms regular means of economy by a giant margin.

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The actual amount of resources gained from sttc cannot be read from the ingame tooltip as it lies a lot. First lie, is the basic amount of resources. The one displayed is about 3-4x lower than the real amunt of resources you will gain. Second lie, is that the already low amount of resources from the tooltip gets reduced by your fleet research. However in truth, the income from sttc is not taxed. So it does not matter if you have 0% tax or 75% tax, as you will always get the same amount of resources for specific planet types.

Different planet types have different yields. Some planets are better left as they are, some planets are amazingly effective at being eaten.

STTC allows Vasari not only to get incredible economy boost, but also to deny enemy planets, you cannot keep under control, aka scorched-earth policy. Leaving nothing for your enemies to take.

For beginners: do not eat asteroids and your homeworld. Eat everything else.

For people willing to know more about the mechanic, I have extracted some data from the game files:

*Time advantage is the amount of minutes VL gets, compared to conventional trade port economy. The resources are converted to credits at rate 3x, which is rather conservative, so the actual time advantage can be only higher. The first value is if you have untaxed income, the value in brackets corresponds with 75% (max) tax.


Note that some planets give you less resources, but are higher in terms of time advantage, as their trade yields are worse. For example vulcanic planets give one of the highest yields, however they are lower, as they are also the best trade planets. Or desert planet gives much more resources than asteroids, however it also provides a much greater trade income, which makes scuttling deserts, just as efficient, as scuttling asteroids.

Scuttling your homeworld, does not give you higher yields, which is also why scuttling your initial homeworld is a bad idea. However scuttling a world, which is currently your homeworld, will take extra 160 seconds.

Do not forget to recolonize scuttled planets, for mining facilities.

Also note that the time advantage has been calculated for fastest game settings. Should you be playing on slower settings, the amount of resources gained from sttc remains the same, while trade income is reduced considerably. This makes sttc insanely op with lowered game settings.
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The most common use for STTC, is to rush this technology, completly ignoring trade economy. Sttc as many planets, you have colonized as possible. Pump out a fleet, get kostura cannon, and rush enemy unprotected home planets. Once you sttc even 1 enemy homeworld it will give you 13400/6700/3350, which is more than needed for a titan, while denying enemy his main planet.

You can either focus on the enemy, you have started with, eating his planets, or continue jumping back and forth to different sides of the galaxy, avoiding direct combat.

And do not forget, that time is on the enemy side. Unless you manage to sttc more planets, you will soon be outnumbered.
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If you have multiple enemies to jump to, with your first raid, picking the right target is very important. First of all, look out for the strongest player/ai. Killing them, will kill the spirit of enemy team. If there is no obvios best player, or you are afraid of the said player, you will have to prioritize based on race.

Usually at the time of your first nomadic raid, no one had time to prepare their homeworlds. So you should prioritize a TEC player, as TEC have the best capabilities to counter your raids. Their starbases are extremly tough once upgraded, their defensive hangars are extremly effective at shooting down your bombers, their safety override protocols will deny you the ability to get a skarovas fleet, and their economy will allow them to build starbases at every planet.

And I am not even mentioning double starbases for TL.

So killing TEC before they can fortify is very important. After you have raided all possible TEC, watch for Vasari players. They will try to use the same strategy, but if you kill their economy earlier, you will get the needed edge.

And finally you can go for advent. Even if they have heavily fortified by this point of time, they have the most pathetic defenses against endgame Vasari, while also have the worst economy, so that they will not spam defences everywhere as TEC would.

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If you are crazy about timings, you may begin sttcing before the research is done. As abandoning the planet takes 60 seconds, any time you spend abandoning the planet will be deducted from the amount of time needed to sttc the planet. So in theory you can save almost 1 minute, which may actually be worth of 1 planet in some situations, however be careful, as if time it wrong, you will simply abandon your planet, and will have to recolonize it first.

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Based on feedback from "Trolik" I was convinced to include his opinion:
"If you are going for sttc rush, eating your homeplanet is just as important as other planets. As the sttc rush is an all in investment, there is no reason to keep some passive economy."

From myself I can add, that if you have untaxed income, your homeplanet will give you the sttc amount of money within 20 minutes. However if you sttced other planets, you will probably no longer have free tax, so that your home planet will repay the sttc amount within ca. 30 minutes.
Which in terms of "time advantage" from the table, is even worse than eating an asteroid. However the raw resource amount will give you a nice boost to a bigger fleet, in order to sttc even more planets.

Overall it's a question of going "all in" or keeping a tiny bit of your economy still going on. If you know that you will not be able to sttc enemy worlds at easy, than it is worth eating your hw. If you however can find a weak player, your homeworld is a very rich world.

P.s. should you sttc your hw, do not forget to relocate your homeworld via planet specialization. It will give major income boost to that planet, and also will prevent you from loosing allegiancy

As Vasari rebel fan, you must by crying now, thinking "how unfair" it is, that Vasari loyalists have such op abilities, which by far outpass the extra hp upgrades, or even the "dirty mines" tactic.

Well it's not all that bad.

*) VL rely on sttc, VR rely on economy. And if played properly, you can outperform TEC economy, up until they get to pervasive economy. But than you will get the wreckage autosalvage, equalizing your economies, while having a much better late game fleet.

*) Your strong economy will be needed to construct not only the most powerful fleet in the galaxy, but also to get "flying starbases". And by flying starbases I do not mean the pathetic in gravity flying, VL have. I mean hyperspace flying starbases.

At tier 8 of the civilian tree, you can "mobilize" your starbases, which allows them to travel between 2 planets with phase stabilization. If paired with Kostura canon (which requires 8 military labs, or 16 labs totally) you can even send your fully upgraded starbases at enemy planets.

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Now weak VR would upgrade 1 starbase, get some kind of a fleet, and jump on enemy.

Strong VR will get multiple starbases, and "rain" them on enemy. Your fleet is overall weaker than VL fleet. Your strategic potential is also weaker. However you can get "unlimited fleet cap", by sending starbases everywhere. If combined with phase stabilizations on the sent starbases and jump stabilization from the civilian tree, you will get a phase web, which will allow you to safely raid different planets. Even if you are heavily outnumbered, you will simply jump to another planet, at other side of the galaxy, while your enemy will be either stuck, fighting your starbase or will have to suffer the penalties for jumping out of a gravity well with a starbase.

If he kills your starbase, just get a new one out. With proper economy, you will be building starbases faster than they will destroy them, which will allow you to rain more and more starbases at enemy, up until every planet has a fully upgraded starbase, and even if your fleet is still weaker, they will lose territory.


If you raind your starbases at TEC, you may encounter same problem, as VL encounter with their sttc. However if VL completly get stopped by TEC fortifications, your starbases can safely dive into enemy fortifications, destroy all the structures, but TEC starbase, and dive out.
This way, while not achieving a complet supremacy in the said gravity well, you make your enemy lack logistical slots, and once again you will achieve map control.

The main meta for VL has been summarized in the Orkulus - Rankulus Combo tab. At least the early game part. The said rankulus combo also works for VR, however VL have a much swifter transit to their sttc meta (also described above). As VL do not need massed trade, or even steady economy, they do not suffer as much, from ignoring early colonization, and therefore can easily kill 1 player, and than transit to eating enemy planets.

Also VL have much better yields out of killing enemy homeworld, as terran planets are the best planets to eat, while VR would require a lot of time to set up the trade.

Alternativly to the Rankulus rush, VL could go with Jarrasul Evacuator and put the sb at the chocke planet. Colonize planets around, for big sttc. This gives better yields from sttc, however does not kill 1 player early on.

After the sttc VL usually get their titan, and either a carrier spam, or carrier spam+capital ships spam, depending on how many planets they sttc-ed. Skarovas can be spammed, but only if there are no TEC enemies around, as Vasari have no abilities to disable the safety override protocol (big boom at TEC starbase).

VL like spamming carriers, also because their fighters get extra 20% damage boost from research, compared to VR.

VL mostly try to avoid heavily fortified worlds, as those slow them down, and they need to eat as many planets as possible.

Vasari rebels may utilize the orkulus+rankulus combo, however it is not recommended, as they require a full going on economy for their future expansions.

And beyond raiding with Kostura weapon, starbase rain, and dirty mines, VR lack strategic use.

Don't get me wrong, VR are not an inferior race. There is just no obvious "Meta", as this is a pretty balanced race.

Only extra piece of advice I can give at this point, is that you should research the technology for phase gate sharing with allies, if you face a nomadic VL. Put a starbase with phase stabilization at every homeworld, and coordinate your moves with your allies.
This way, even if VL could eat more planets, than any single player can hold, you will easily combine your forces to stop VL.

07.12.2019

Crossed out the phrase which stated that Vorastra can target Corvettes with it's AOE. Thx "sb=noobnoob" for pointing out that I have written it. It was a mistake I made, as a player who has been playing since rebellion v1.0 but that ability got nerfed long time ago. So no AOE here.