Your problem is obvious: You can't have the same strategy every time. There are severals trategies to utalize, and the map is usually the decider of which one to use.  You should get 3 strategies: One for when you are clsoe to opponent, one for when you are far apart, and one for when you are like 4 jumps away and the planets are not too heavily guarded with militia.

You should also keep tabs on what your enemy is doing.  If he goes really heavy into economy, you either do the same, or attack while he has no fleet.  If he is getting military, I don't suggest you go econ, because he will no doubt attack you.

One thing I willt ell you about Vasari, even when going economy you get one Military lab early for Assailants.  Yes there are exceptions like all your near by planets have very little Militia (like 4 ship Ice/Volcanic, 5 ship Terran/Desert).  In those cases you will be fine clearing with just your cap ship.

Yea, i tend to scrap the cap yards, and since i'm still a little new at things, i tend to let the Scout ships grab the extractors automatically when they find them.  I've been grabbing planets and then asteroids, so that's something i can start working on. 

I think you pointed out what one of my major flaws are, and that's the tactical upgrades on planets.  I never really know when i'm going to be bale to expand so i tend to build hangers along the way (at least one, to take care of those pesky scouts that sneak through..by the time it gets to a 2nd planet, it gets killed hopefully).

I'll play another game and upload it...1:21am right now here in Japan so i'll have to go pass out soon.

And nice game earlier, Astax!

What he's hinting at is that even though you might have the crew extractor ability on autocast, a scouting scout (awesome phrase) won't have any AM left to cast it and thus just flies by. So if you want them to grab it you'll have to at least watch them from time to time, disable autoscout and fly them back to the wells with extractors.

Hah, sorry about that...noob moment.  I see your point now, as last night when i *thought* i was recording a game, i realized that they weren't doing a damned thing due to no AM.  Silly me.  I'll have to start micromanaging them to stop at points with metal/crystal nodes to build up AM for that.  Sometimes it's hard though, what with a few hostile ships in the area...wish i could make a few frigates follow the scout around, but i'm not sure if selecting those frigates, and right clicking on the scout, will ensure that they'd follow?

Another noob moment, i started a very good game last night against an AI, and clicked the "record" button, and saved the file  name...however, after the match was done (only 2 hours rather than the usual 6-8 hour matches in a 1v1 normal AI, the recorded match goes for 4 seconds then finishes (saying that the recorded game was finished).  I must have clicked the wrong button, or something...i'm not sure.

But it was a very good match, at least for me.  I didn't upgrade any tactical/logical slots on any of my planets except the chokepoint (there were 2, but one was a pirate base so i put a few hangers there to ward off any strays that might have been ballsy enough to come through it, which they did...to no effect, as their hulls were very low on health by the time they hit my planet.

It was taking to long to go from my 'forward base' to the main choke point (forward base being a planet in a key location to easily get to other nearby planets if the need arose...i was building ships here to send out to meet up with my main fleet, which was out taking planets by force), so i  build a phase stabilizer, and just had my fleet of 15-20 ships run through the 4 or 5 neutral planets to get to the choke point...where i build another phase stabilizer, build up defenses, and then started an "internal cleaning" campaign to take those inside-planets.

It worked out well, much better than my usual game.

I think one of my main problems was the fact that every time it ook a roid/planet, i would end up upgrading the tactic/logic slots, building more structures, and setting up defenses..which ate away at resources.  Maybe that's good for a small map when you're not sure where the opponent is, only that he's close, but in a big map like i played (single star, 30 or so planets) this worked out quite well.

What ships do people recommend for their "forward" fleet (the one that does all of the taking of planets and skirmishes with random players)?  I had the Evacuator (egg) cap ship, about 10 or 11 Assailants, 5 Skirmishers, and eventually got 5-10 Sentinels and 3-5 Destructors (to help take  non-neutral planets...cap ship alone takes too long without the drain planet ability i think).  Anything you'd roll with differently?

Just a funny thing too....when someone sees Drain Planet in action, does anyone else think of the movie Space Balls and think of the quote where they're sucking the planet dry, yelling "SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! SUCK!"?  Maybe it's just me, but i found that hilarious!

Will try to post another game after i actually play one

Sorry (again). So what you're saying is, there's a "crew extractor" upgrade for (all races'?) scouts which allows them to take over resource extractors for your empire without you having to conquer the asteriod? I'm always on autocast everything, I cannot be bothered to manage anything tactical.

Well apparently i can't record games...

Unless pausing in game will stop the recording.

Oh well, those tips above have been awesome so far.

I think what i've been doing at least on a decent small-large sized map where i'm not crammed up against players...

2x imperial research facilities.

Grab research to take over Volcanic / Frozen planets (depending on which i encounter first).

Research Assailants.

Research the Metal/Crystal extraction bonus thingy (Empire tree, very top) twice.

Start the Phase Missile research line.

Research Hangers (and Phasic missiles if needed).

I normally grab the Evacuator just because it has a higher Antimatter pool that the Migrators, so i can chain planet captures.

But so far this has been working great for me   I just need to work out the kinks as far as when/where to build extra weapons/imperial labs, and what research to train at various points in the game.

If you are looking for any advent beginning tips...

1.  Generally, advent is a culture driven faction.  So don't research too much into the military until you have maybe 3 planets or so.

2. As for the first cap ship...probably the mothership is the best choice.  If you don't like that, then I would suggest the Rapture.

3.  As said above, build culture (temples of communion)  If you get upgrades in that, then you have mitigation bonuses.  Also, culture slowly depletes enemy allegance on planets...a passive agressive technique.

4.  Generally, you should be on defense mode until you have good standing of 3-4 planets.  You should be using the beam defense platforms, as Advent is generally the best race at defending their homeworld.

5.  Next?  Go on the offense.  with the defenses you have built up, you planets should be pretty pretty good brick walls by now.

I'm basing my tips on Quick Start Entrenchment games. 

Capital Ship

Plan what Capital Ship you want first and make it your first step.  You shouldnt be hovering over each ship humming and awing over which one you want.  As Vasari, you may want the Mothership since they have scouts for neutral node grabbing while others are forced to buy the colony ships anyways. 

Scouts

Next, get your scouts moving.  Just right click the auto explore and click to get them on their way.  Size of map matters, so you may or may not want to have more of them.  As Vasari, more is always preferrable for medium (20+ planet) maps. 

Know the Map

Make sure you know the map you are playing.  Some consist of 3 planets, a star and 2 worm holes to get to other people and there's absolutely no reason to build scouts or go military path since you need worm hole research to get out.  Scouts would just sit on their ass and waste resources.  Same with building an armada to go kill 3 pirates. 

Ships

On a 'normal' map where you need to do some killing early to expand?  Grab colony ships first if you need them (gets them out for neutral nodes, has the antimatter to move and cap stuff, etc) and then pump out Light Frigates for whatever race until you've capped fleet capicity. They build fast, so just queue them all up and you should still have lots of resources.

Upgrade Path

Military or Civic?  You need to decide early.  However, I feel it's always preferrable to go Military first and get the war machine cranking.  People spam light frigates early.  A quick 2 military research gets you access to the LRM Frigate for most races (Illuminator is 3 for Advent, think it's 1 or 2 for the Vasari).  These are absolutely amazing early on sicne the opponent will be using them and pirates consist of mostly light frigate ships.  This means you destroy them with their perfect counter.  You can put 2 research nodes at your home planet on just about any map without upgrading on a Quick Start. Soon as you get the upgrade to LRM Frigates for whatever race, quickly grab your second level of fleet logistics (shoudl be capped with Light Frigates so far) and then pump otu 10 or so LRMs.

From there, you should be ablet o colonize your nearby asteroid and possibly a terran or desert planet if you're lucky.  On small maps, you can probably win the game with 10-20 light frigates and 10 or so LRM ships, especially if they went civic route for ice or fire planets. 

As military upgrade, you can also get access to hangar bays for advent (one should be enough on homeworld or fringe colony early) and hull upgrades for most races (I think 2 military for TEC gets you access to something like 25% more hp on ships since their 3rd hull upgrades mostly up the hull repair rate from 10-20 and 20-30% and hp only goes from 25-30% over 2 upgrades).  That's a huge upgrade at any time and damn cheap for TEC.  Advent get shields for their early upgrade goodness that will make a huge difference for minimal cost.

Planet Colonization

Once you have 2 military research, you can either go with a 3rd for the star base option or switch to civic for colonization purposes on your asteroid colony.  I typically go civic at this point and once I secure a planet or two, I then add the 3rd military for star base purposes.  If no civic required for my new planets, I probably skip it in favour of either star base (depends on map / resistence I'm expecting) or a 2nd capital ship.

Neutral Nodes

These are vital to early game advancement.  Get colony ships or scouts if Vasari and get them asap.  They have no research required, give around 0.69 resource/second per node and can double or triple your income early on if you score a 3 node neutral or several smaller ones quickly.  There's typically at least one neutral node 2-4 phase jumps from your homeplanet, sometimes closer, so it's more important than your second colony in my opinion since colonies are negative income for 10 mins or so until they finally get upgraded / make back what you spent on the upgrades and defenses/extractors.  Neutrals are free to grab, give xp for the pirates there and instantly increase income with no build times. 

Conclusion

With an army of light and lrm frigates, you should be tops in military strength and easily securing planets / clearing pirates from future planets and have a capital ship at lvl 3 or so and either progressing towards a star base, second capital ship or civic based upgrades, all depending on the type of game, map and how you want to progress.  Longer games (huge maps, etc) should probably prioritize trade and civic based upgrades from here.  Smaller maps should go military for cruisers, like hoshiko repair and carrier ships, as well as a second capital ship.  Small, but with lots of enemy maps should probably prioritize defenses after securing the asteroid and nearby planet and go starbase or hangar bays in leiu of cruisers or civic research. 

Knowing the map and what you are planning to accomplish is important.  Most multi star games should prioritize worm hole or star phase jumps to grab the neutral planets in other systems instead of fighting over fewer gains in a clustered starter zone.  No set path outside of early military building should really be required for anyone.

This is dead wrong.  You will need colony ships to acquire neutrals, but don't waste time and money using them on planets.  The progenitor's colonize ability has a special bonus; for a few minutes after being colonized, you get a discount on all planet upgrades.  This is 20% at level 1, 40% at level 2, and 60% at level 3.  This is a substantial amount of cash, particularly once you start taking bigger planets which require multiple upgrades to get out of underdevelopment.  The cost savings a progenitor offers are so massive that it is virtually impossible to justify any other capital ship as a first choice.

Then there are other factors to consider.  The biggest is that colony frigates have woeful anti-matter issues.  Using them only for neutral nodes means you save money because you need less colony frigates, and you don't have to worry so much about their anti-matter.

Bottom line is that I've never found a good reason to start with any capital ship other than a progenitor.  Maybe on point blank where you really can't send your capital out to colonize the system, but that's the only case I can even imagine.

You wont save all that much money early on with it.  You cant afford to colonize multiple planets nor mass upgrade anything and in smaller maps, will not be able to just throw out mass upgrades to any planet like you are describing.  At best, you'll get a minor cost savings on the pop sizes to get taxes up from negatives and then proceed to either fortify or build your mineral nodes. 

In larger maps, you still wont do this early on and wont be mass upgrading / taking multiple planets back to back until well after you have multiple capital ships, which, again, means you will have the mothership at that point for cheap upgrades. 

You are basically trading a juggernaut capital ship for an average utility that is available in ships (you arent getting just the one colony ship) you will be getting regardless of what capital ship you choose.  This costs you firepower to take down pirates on larger planets and costing you money on ships that die because of the lack of fire power (you blew your antimatter on colonizing and phase jumping, so no shield regen for you). 

Basically, the mothership is a horrible first ship in any situation.  Short game you gain minimal cost reductions since you cant mass upgrade early on and mid to long games you are getting a second cap or more by the time you can do such things and makes the early mothership,w hich has no real lvl 6 ability of any use, simply to save a few bucks early on that gets wasted anyways.  Ill take a lvl 6 radiance and lvl 4 mothership over a lvl 6 mothership and lvl 4 whatever any day and still have just as much money and savings from the upgrades as you do.

Ships will die simply by picking the mothership early.  It's a fact.  It's weaker, you wont be able to use shield restore early on if you are colonizing and you'll lose that 1000 credits just through light frigate deaths.  You arent saving money by getting a mothership until late game and wont be buying enough upgrades with the 20% boost early on to make any impact that isnt negated through need to rebuild ships lost to pirates.  It's benefits are minimal at best and almost any other ship will do better in the long run.  No reason at all to get it first. 

And colony ships can make a couple of phase jumps adn colonize a planet / neutral node with ease.  You aren't on 0 antimatter after one jump and you arent going back and forth or all over the place with the colony ship to the point you would run out of antimatter or have issues with it.  If you are out of antimatter that quick, there's obviously something wrong with your game.

Darwin3 has it completely right.  The savings with the mothership are large and the shield restore is so much better than what the radiance has to offer.  Like I said in the other set of posts that you posted on, there is something to be said on a very small map to having a radiance but anything bigger than 8-9 planets and you are gonna need a mothership.  If you are playing smartly then the militias should be attacking your cap anyways regardless of what it is so you dont lose many of your clearing fleet ships( ie. jumping your cap in first so they attack it first).  Mothership shield restore saves ships and the radiance can just watch them burn.  Animosity is of little use unless you are playing AIs and as i just said the militias should be attacking it anyways because you should have jumped it in first.  Detonate antimatter does little good in clearing militias as only the cobalt militia ships have antimatter and the armor buff with the radiance is only a marginal improvement in tanking ability.

Radiance is good at neutralizing enemy cap abilities.  If you built it for any other reason then you built the wrong ship.  Cleansing brilliance is no marza missle barrage as was already said.  It takes a lot of micro on your part to hit much of anything and not much micro on your enemies part to avoid it.  I could make the case that the halcyon even would be a better first choice than the radiance for its damage increasing aura.  The radiance is a good ship and has its place.  The mothership is just the far and away better first cap.

[_]-Greyfox

This is an interesting idea.  I'm gonna give it a try in my next game.  As of now, I'm a "Mothership first" type of player and I go with the colonize upgrade right off the bat, then a shield, then the second colonize upgrade.  Radiance is always my second choice, then Halcyon then a Rapture to team up with the Halcyon.  After that, depends on how I feel.