Disclaimer:

This guide is for advanced players (you played lots of 5s before, you know every tech & ships of every race and you have good enough apm to control vets effectively).

I will not provide a lot general advice that applies to every race, it will focus on strategies, build orders and fleet composition of Advent Loyalist in 5s and the rest of my divine insight.
(most of the advice could be applied to other game type too).
most of fleet compositions can be applied to AR too.

THIS GUIDE IS OUTDATED AS PFP ABUSE IS BANNED IN 5s PLUS A LOT CHANGED I'M JUST TOO LAZY TO FIX IT

Finally cosy up and have a good read.

Races:
First letter:
A: Advent
T: TEC
V: Vasari
2nd letter
L: Loyalist
R: Rebel
X: Both or either
ex: AL = Advent loyalist. TX = both TEC factions.

Ships:
LF: light frigate.
LRF: long range frigate, ex: illums, lrm or kanrak.
VETS: corvettes.
HC: Heavy cruisers.
Flak: defense, garda, sentinels.

Capships:
Prog / Progen: AX colony capship.
Egg: VX colony capship.
A-AM cap: anti-antimatter capship, so Radiance, Kortul and Dunnov.

Fleet compositions:
RCR, fleet composed of a Rapture, carriers and 5-10 guardians with repulse.
Capship fleet, self explanatory, fleet made of principally capships.
Trans fleet, same thing but for advent only with Mass Transcendence so capships are lvl 4 and level up faster.

Positions :
Agro, Eco, Suicide, double.
You should know these, otherwise read Grimm's guide.
True agro, like agro but there is no other ally after your enemy.
Sequential agro, like agro but there is an ally on the other side of your enemy.
Sequential suicide, like agro but if your ally is useless you are doubled.

Techs :
GU: Global unity double tech, small amount of free culture on every planet + 5%x2 max allegiance on your planets.
PFP: Planet for planet + 25% dps + 10% range on ships when you lose a planet, for a fairly long time.
FU : Fury of the unity + 20% dps on full allied culture.
MT: Mass transcendence double tech, free xp to lvl 4 on capship +25%x2 xp on titan and capship.
AC: Ancient retribution, +10% dps (not squadrons) + 5% range + 2% shield mitigation. (Calling it AR would be confusing)


ST: savage thrill TR tech 4 civic, 35% ish extra dps when they are bombing you.
RB: red button, big boom rage quit.
Civic/Military, Civ/Mil: I'm referencing research labs.

Other:
N fleet supply, Up to what fleet supply you have researched, 0 being without any tech.
sb: star base, can be use as a verb to build a star base or a noun.

You find yourself to be agro position, congrats you have the best race for this position, time to win it. Your first cap ship choice is extremely important because if you pick anything else than progen, you lost a big part of your advantage in most match ups, so trust me and pick the progen. Also build scouts, at least as many as you have lanes on your hw, so if your hw goes into 4 directions, build 2 extra scouts and probably a colony frigate if you have a lot of lanes.

0 fleet supply, Disciple or Corvette.
Now it sounds stupid, but corvette is the safer choice by far, hear me out, if you go disciple, you gamble that:
A) you are not getting rank rushed.
B) that there is no neutral to contest.
C) that you are not going to expand everywhere.

Explanations:
(A) The best way to win against the rank rush vs Vasari is that the migrator never touches your hw, disciple will never be able to snipe the migrator >20 vets easily will do the job.
(B) It is a lot harder to establish map presence with disciples against corvette, if your opponent is skilled and opened corvettes, unless the neutral magically spawned as the choke you will not be able to hold it.
(C) Your opponent fears your might and is turtling, worry not, just expand everywhere get full of cash and finish them later, the problem LF are super slow compared to corvette and you will have a harder time keeping balance between the front line and the colonisation.

Now you are colonizing 1-2 planets, you have a dozen vets; you are researching your first fleet supply and you scout your opponent. Chose your own adventure below:

VasariX:

Rank rush? Snipe that/those migrator(s)!

Snipe the migrator ? congrats go to nr 1 otherwise read below

You didn’t snipe the migrator, a sb is building on your planet, don't bother fighting it you can not possibly kill it. So you are in a little bit of trouble, but you are far from dead, send your progen on the map colonizing, use your vets to kill constructors, make sure any migrator is sniped and planet bombers for sure, if they sb everywhere they colonized, send your vets to a close ally, if possible, if not their enemy eco is always a worthwhile target, get culture up in the center of the map and play for containment, try to snipe any migrator possibly going to your allies/eco player.

Nr 1

Vasari anything else / you sniped the migrator: Good news, you have the upper hand and if you don’t ♥♥♥♥ up you should win, Vasari is really weak against AL.

Phase 1)
Now you want go up to >40 vets then disciple, always replenish dead vets. With your vets you will contest neutrals, kill any migrators spawning and ideally kill constructors, if you got a close map and you are fast you can perma kill a Vasari of any skill level quite easily with this.

At all time your fleet should be significantly stronger than theirs to keep map control, A) they probably starbased 1 to 3 planets and B) their ships are worse so even if you invest a lot in eco you can have a superior fleet at all time.

Your progen will either be used aggressively (bombing not starbased roids or hw for culture denial/pop damage) or completely gone to the middle of the map and colonizing, your progen should always be doing something it is completely useless defensively.

Phase 2)
Get culture, if you have control their hw with much stronger fleet, your culture will kill them. You need 2-3 temple on an adjacent roid/planet to counter the base culture push of 1-2 capital ships. If they managed to get culture up, you can still kill them with culture! You just need star bases now and the +60% culture spread and your capships on their hw, for that you need to make sure your fleet is stronger than theirs. If you have one of the planets adjacent to their hw, you can almost always do it.

Didn't win?)

Now if you were not able to finish the game with culture, it happens, it should not but it can happen if they get feed, they have exceptionally good map etc. Sometime vas will simply not be completely defenceless.

You can simply brute force, >100 disciples will do the trick. You will need all 30% damage upgrade + AC+ PFP and ideally a progen with shield regen, if you got GU do the extra mile and get FU will probably be an extra 10%-15% dps, you can also add halcyon for extra dps, if the enemy have a sizeable fleet, you can add some guardians with repulse if they have a small fleet and the star bases isn’t well upgraded health wise, focus the sb first, if the sb already have maxed health upgrades attack the fleet first then the sb. Only push once your fleet supply is full or almost full!

Late game/ high eco game (both side getting sizeable feed):

Go for rapture carriers (fighter) repulse (called RCR) instead, advent always win the carrier war because of the rapture and repulse if you are way under fed compared to your opponent, Halcyon will allow you to win even if you have way less fighters, if you are winning the carrier fight Halcyons will not help that much.

Also put bombers on any capships (they are free fighter baits)

if you still have your starting progen it is mostly useless at this point, and you rather have the xp on the rapture so send your progen go do something else. (a lvl 7 rapture is basically one extra carrier every 3 carrier you have in the aura)


General advice points:

Your vets are more cost effective than their vas counterpart in vet/vet so you should ALWAYS have map control it is key to winning this matchup.

I did not put enough emphasis, but your culture is extremely strong vs vas and that how I win most of my AL vs VX fights. Your vas opponent will struggle and look everywhere for logistic slots that do not exist.

VX has no good aoe so in general advent ships are strong against them.

Your titan main purpose in this matchup (if you ever get it) is to slow the star bases down, I’m not kidding, it is insanely useful for that and will give you a lot more space to maneuver your RCR around.

A mid game VR will be extremely hard to push on so win before that (the VR PJI is the real problem), if you can’t, feed your ally a kostura, if you have no vas ally, good luck.

If you are sequential agro make sure to keep vets on the other side of your opponent to prevent any migrators ruining your ally day, it's the main matchup where true agro and sequential plays very differently.

You should almost always fight with pfp and in allied culture past early game. (it’s like a 50-70% damage difference on snipeables between allied culture and enemy) You have the strongest culture you have no excuses for not fighting in your culture.

If hangar/carriers and mines are already researched it can be useful to deal with a solo migrator going to your hw if you don't want to send your fleet after it.

Fleet compositions:

VX-AL counter
On the left the vasari fleet, on the right what counters it.

Vets-Vets optional malice
LF-LF
LRF-Vets
LRF+FLAK – LF+vets optional malice on LRF

Late game:
Alright here is the base line you want is what I call it RCR for Repulse Carrier Rapture.

It will deal with anything but capship fleet and carrier fleet especially well. Does also extremely well vs mass heavies. Now it is vulnerable to titans now (sadly not affected by repulse since the 1.96 update), kanrak with range, or microed subverter.

Vs titan you want to add a couple radiance with MT if you can
Vs kanrak with range, I just suggest adding more guardians, since they are very slow you should be able to kite very well.
Vs microed subverter (very few top players can pull that off), well you can't rely on guardians anymore for anything really. Your carriers can be stopped to a crawl but will continue firing! (squadrons won't be stunned) So in that case you need a solid MT fleet so support it.

General tip : vs phase missiles (kanrak/bomber/flak?) you want to be fighting in your culture with upgrades at all cost! it is an INSANE difference.

Alright you scouted a TL opponent, but that is not enough! The capship and stating fleet comp is important.

Standard play I will reference in the next sections 1 fleet supply of vets then 2 civics culture then 2nd fleet supply (counter what they have) while getting 3rd civic and pfp, the standard advent build.

Akkan + vets: Tough match up, play standard, hit pfp and kill them. (you should hit pfp before they reach militia) you will have a hard time keeping map control unless they turtle, if they turtle you should get map control and eco up.

Akkan + small vets + LF/tech: best answer by TL in my opinion, you need to be super careful with your progen, you have to get map control early and effectively, snipe anything you can, keep neutral control and try to prevent them from teching up higher, eventually you should overwhelm but you need to be very confident in your micro.

Marza + vets: Tough match up, be extremely careful with your progen, the bigger the fleets the better for you, so don’t be aggressive, try to hit a good pfp timing until then use the defender advantage to make any push for your opponent extremely costly. If you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up and the Marza reach lvl 6 you need two radiances +1.5 per Dunnov (round down) , yes two to counter a single Marza and good micro, alternatively if you have repulse researched already it can also do the trick. So yeah, do not let it reach lvl 6 by simply not being aggressive, taking way better fight. Scouting is essential and do not bother with map control if they have similar vets amount. (If they are very pushy get 2nd mil for repair)

Marza + Lf : They are a noob or trolling, just play standard and win.

Corsev +LF + Vets: Another tough match up but it is VERY different, but not too hard, to fight the
Corsev you need 1-2 Radiances and possibly repulse depending how much time you have. Contrary to the popular advice I recommend doubling down and getting a lot of vets around 50 ish, it will force your opponent to stay at home until they build 1-2 hangar per planets, then send half your vets to an ally or other opponents and the vets you keep are only there to snipe planet bombers or easy reinforcement, the moment you scout Corsev you lvl up your forward roid hp, and get turrets (you will need 5 mil labs protected by turrets), eventually you get synergy + repulse until then do not build fleet, also send your progen to the middle of the map its not useful until you want to fight WHICH YOU WANT TO AVOID AT ALL COST UNTIL YOU ARE READY. You will quickly realise something, Corsev will take a year to bomb out your hw, your vets will pick off at reinforcement even more if they transition into lrms to take out your turrets and your turrets with synergy will prevent them to touch your labs / factory, PFP(it a little ambitious so it depend on map or feed for pfp), Repulse illums (you have 5 mil labs remember) radiance progen (bring it back for the fight) will deal with the Corsev + Lf easily, you just need to get there in one piece. You never want to fight close to the Corsev with vets. Just do not panic. (Do not focus the capship at any point)

Corsev but really close: if you spawned really close to your opponent and manage to snipe their constructor on their roid, you can get a winning position easily! Start spamming LF with all your might send your vets to kill constructors, bomb the roid with the progen and your LF should easily win the fight, sniped the boarded ships of course and you should be able to win that fight easily as the corsev will only be level one or higher lvl with no fleet. If there is almost no fleet just make sure you don't get boarded.

Dunnov: I never seen it by someone half decent but just send your progen on a colonisation mission and take map control. Otherwise play standard.

Sova: They are a noob or trolling, just play standard and win, also extremely easy to snipe.

Kol: Either a noob or a certain Russian trolling, in doubt, flame them in chat and do not forget to get a radiance at some point before they reach lvl 6 otherwise play standard.

Marza x2 + vets: Hopefully the capship bug will be fixed by the time I am done writing this, either way get map control and fight at either the end of your 1rst, 2nd fleet supply or a pfp timing and you should krush it easily. Your progen is so vulnerable I recommend going 2nd military (for repair of course before civic)

Corsev + Dunnov + feed: You can not beat this, take map control with vets, harass opponents, enemy eco, maybe relocate or turtle as hard as you can, maybe sb up? You will never be able to fight it, you will need a lot more feed to ever push that than they need. You would need 3-4 radiance to fight it directly, either way the goal is the same as usual, get repulse to push the capship away from the fleet and make them believe in magic.

I will just state the difference between TR and TL to save time and sanity.

Akkan + vets: You can get map control this time and be more aggressive (the vets won't instantly lose you the game if you fall behind), try to hit PFP before savage thrill, if you do, fight on their side of the map and you should win on the spot.

Akkan + lf/tech: Though matchup they will not get vets in this case, so your vets will have more mobility, once again hit pfp before they get savage thrill and fight them on their side.

Marza + vets: easier matchup than TL, your progen is more vulnerable when defending the early pushes but on the other hand you will do better when pushing. Like everything with TR get pfp before they get savage thrill and fight them on their side of the map. Marza 6 is way less dangerous than the TL Marza 6, it can be dealt with only one radiance or even none if you are confident.

Corsev: Hardest matchup of all of them, the semi turtle of vs TL will not work. Finish your first fleet supply of vets to keep them at home then get a radiance asap, fight with progen radiance vets then disciples, don't slip up on the micro or you lose on the spot. The micro is easier than TL because your radiance will actually catch the Corsev at some point, try to hit pfp and win or bust trying.

Corsev + Dunnov. Good news your vets will be more useful to snipe constructors/labs, bad news the moment they hit ST you lose. You will need 1-2 radiance, ideally 3 but you can't afford it unless you get feed. Get enough vets to keep them at home until hangar then straight into LF and get pfp and try to win on disciple vet progen radiance. Repulse is always useful if you don't think your pfp push will work / you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up.

I won't explain every variation but here is some general fleet compositions you want to hit.
In general if they are TL avoid pushing unless you are way stronger.
if they are TR it's the opposite, fight them on their side at all cost.

Early game:

Lf/vets will fight their tec counter side quite fine and will win vs low supply of flak/lrm, (malice on lrm).
now they transition out of it.

Tec has a couple choice mid game fleet against advent,

LRM spam with akkan:
So annoying to deal with, but all you really need is a ♥♥♥♥ lot of vets with pfp, one of the few composition where repulse won't be that useful. RCR is an alternative too with tons of gardians but we are talking about 100 + lrms other wise just get vets. Finally malice + 2-3 discord will also deal with lrms just fine, if they have nothing to disable your discords.

HC spam, RCR will deal with it just fine, add about a 1:1 fighter bomber mix in that case.

TX vet spam, as long as you are not caught with your pants down malice + whatever should deal with it, otherwise 2-3 discord will also deal with vets for sure.

TR titan + supporting fleet. Annoying to deal with, Corvette spam in general will do fine against the titan but what if it is supported by a corsev or Kol/Marza 6 or something similar, then it's time to whip out the MT fleet of 6-8-10 caps, around half of those should be radiances, the rest in discords and one rapture if RCR, depending on your fleet composition 1 halcyon will also be useful disciple or illums really benefits from it.

Cap fleet + HC, MT+ tons of illums and guardians (try to micro the clones forward), kill the capital ships first then repulse the HCs out of range. Other wise MT + RCR will work too!

Your opponent suddenly has star bases everywhere with RB, who could have seen this coming.
So you need MT fleet for sure, but also need a dps dealer you have 2 choices.

Disciple or illums.

Pros and cons

Disciple have cheaper tech, stronger single target dps vs sbs (per supply), neutralise hoshikos, repair platforms

Illums, resist aoe, more expensive tech, snow ball harder, better dps vs fleet (per supply), similar single target dps (per suply) against capship or titans, make clones that tank damage and make it impossible for the opponent to know you real amount, much less vulnerable to lrms.

No need to remind you to get PFP AC FU every related dps wise before pushing.

Now you need 3 radiance for the sb for rb + 1 per dunov + extra if you are going to lose some to lrms, Put all your radiances on the same control group that only have radiances you can use the cool down of the previous radiance to time the next one. If the starbases is going to the be quickly killed (not upgraded) you only need 2 radiance per sb.

Now if there is 2 star bases with rb you need 6 radiance + 1 per dunovs + an extra one for the first dunov, set up 3 control group, one for 3 radiances, one for another 3 radiances, and the rest of the radiances on the other one and micro away set the third group of radiances on dunov denial.
A lvl 7 radiance with the first ability maxed is worth 2 normal radiance because it triggers faster than the cool down, so a single one can control a star base.

So yeah if you stagger your auto cast you won't even need to micro them.

Now what happen if your turteling tec opponent has more sb with rb and dunnov and lrms in a system that you can possibly counter, well you beg an ally for 1-2 akkan lvl 6, if you don't have a tec ally A) how? B) nothing else to do than make a balance complain to the dev at this point short of sacrifing tons and tons you will never be able to push. Go help your allies and turn that into a 5v1 later on.

Why didn't I mention carriers and HC here,
let's start with carriers, advent squadrons really don't have a lot of hp so they are very vulnerable to the kol/halcyon, to give you an idea, they have between 2 and 3x less effective hp than their Vasari counter part. So because of that it's just simpler to ignore carriers against a good tec opponent, they also have less supply/dps by far.

As for Heavies, well there isn't really a reason to build them, they have similar dps per supply against most targets (once you factor in weapown type), their techs only really affect them, finally they have really bad range and a useless ability. So if you build HC you basically give up on the clones and research the damage tech only for them. Their only advantage is they survive aoe way better but since you should have 6 ish radiances at this point, corsev or titan aoe shouldn't be too dangerous.

This can be the most intense match up of all the ones on the game.

There are two kind of skilled AX players,
APM monsters: Wing, sometimes feng, other chinese players.
Tactics and tech: Cattle, Schlong, sometimes feng.

APM monsters, they will use progen vets get a pfp timming and take you out of the game in 15 min.

Tactics and tech, they will use everything Advent has to their disposition, mines pjis, illums, wail, repulse. Often they have weird starting caps, any combinations of: radiance halcyon rapture revelation discord.

What are you, my dear reader, you are a wannabe apm monster, let me teach you the way of the force.

To fight progen vet AL, you need to be better at it than your opponent, there isn't any viable counter to it. Let me explain, if you go disciple early, you lose map control, you lose neutrals, you lose your pfp planet and then your opponent will go disciple to finish you. In this matchup every resources count every action count your apm are extremely valuable, you need to spend your attention very selectively.

Here is the general path you want to follow extremely closely,

A) If you scout progen vet, scuttle your cap factory, you will need the slot.
B) At the end (around 20 left) of your 1rst fleet supply you build a civic lab somewhere (if you are under pressure hw is the best spot), get fleet supply 2, spam more,
C) around the end of your fleet supply 2, you build 1-2 civic lab (if you have feed/opponent is far, it might be wise to get culture first, if not get pfp first)
C2) If you traded pfp planets (you both killed the krosovs of the other) skip any of that, go 2nd mil lab instead and now disciple is more viable !
D) follows C) Now it should be clear who won at this point, if not spam more vets and keep scouting, slowly tech your way to repulse.
D2) follows C2) around 40-60 disciple with malice will nuke any number of vets so if your opponent continued spamming vets you have a big advantage here since map control lose value if pfp planets are sniped.

Now how long does it take to go from A to C, if you both have feed maybe less than 5 min of sweaty micro, my fights vs wing are extremely intense for example because we both draw all the feed and the whole game is at stake. The player with the most feed at high skill almost always win in AL vs AL since turteling is very hard to execute and AL snowball really hard.

You lost your progen, A) how could you, so many advent lives lost B) Do not panic, as long as it wasn't for free you are probably fine, if you traded it for 20 ish vets you can still win. Set up your pfp timing as usual and one advantage is that you will have 50 extra supply of vets ! Use that to take map control and if you hit pfp earlier than your opponent you might be able to snipe his progen for cheaper than he sniped yours!


Versus tactics and tech players, get map control with vets, transition into LF get a pfp timing and you should win. Be careful of 2 discord, discord / progen, your vets will melt, and your disciple have a short time span, consider getting 1 radiance before your pfp timing and you should be fine. In every case you are trying to hit before they get repulse out (5 mil labs) scout well.
Either way, since you have vets and they do not, you should snipe any pfp planet early on to make sure you keep the advantage. If your opponent has pfp on their ships, you ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up hard.

Vs illums vet's is fine vs flak illums vets LF with pfp will do the trick.

Now everything of the previous section still apply but,
A) You don't need to snipe pfp so vets are less useful.
B) You will learn to hate wail so you need to win before wail.

Now you want to play progen vet and transfer into disciple if your opponent is doing the same and kill them as a early pfp timing, use your vets to deny constructors as much as you can to delay wail, you should be able to get pfp before wail is ready.

You ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up version a)
It looks like wail is ready, you couldn't kill them, now you need to chill back and make sure you don't get wailed, turtle up on the side and eco up, eventually feed a TL or TR ally for novas then push with pfp and repulse, you might need carriers if they have repulse and then it get messy, either way you absolutely need nova and possibly an akkan for range.

You ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up version B)
Your pfp planet got sniped, and they are eventually getting wail, you should eco up in this case and consider it a stalemate for now, identify all wail target of your opponent, try to find a new pfp planet in the middle of the map, get repulse and wait for novas.

Your team doesn't have a tec player alive? congrats, you will never push this, better eco up and hope to turn it into a 5v1 later.

Generally disciple beats corvettes, illums beat disciple and carrier beat illums, capships/disciple beat carriers, and disciples/illums beat capship. Also add repulse in the mix and it's a mess.

You will also be fighting for culture and pfp planets, watch out for wail if you are against AR.

To win against advent the best way to do it in general is mass disciple/illums repulse or trans fleet disciple/illums repulse, carriers are too easily countered by halcyon, illums kinda work but they are more expensive so it depends if you have the economy advantage or not. There will be a section a bit lower on how to build a proper MT fleet. You need a bit of carriers to kill repulse or illums with range and akkan help, its hard and a pain to push in.

Finally RCR with MT and mainly radiances works, often it's the best but it requires huge investment and hard to transition into. If you are eco for example and start from fresh go into that. If you already have 90 LF maybe not the best time for it.

One big difference of this match up is that vets disciple generally do not beat LRF FLAK because vets are too weak to malice, if the opponent has a decent amount if illums + malice vets do not even counter them anymore. So what to do? Get a radiance of course! or tech up to HC but we don't do that here.

In this matchup, starting mid game having an ally akkan will be an extremely big advantage but it requires to coordinate with an ally so you know, can not always have it.

Turrets with synergy are pretty good tools to lock down some essential parts, if you add pjis with mines, then you are golden, 2 pji + mines on a roid for example + 20 vets near by will require your opponent to give up around 20 vets himself to just get through there without losing everything. Same thing for you, if you want to pass a pji + mined roid, you need to sacrifice ships that will stay behind to kill the mines. If you or your opponent has repulse its really changes everything and those encountered becomes super dangerous for the escaping side if they don't have repulse themselves.

A sb with meteor/disorientation + repulse is... hard to engage in for every race, the only way for you is carriers (for killing the guardians, don't even try the starbase) or a ally with akkan ( that is a common theme in this guide I know), carriers can be countered ish by 2-3 halcyons basically you need to stagger your bombers in wave to kill their guardians if they have factories on that planet you should probably give up and wait for help, Akkan will always help tho, with all buffs your illums will have more range than repulse. Another trick to use is a guardians with shield bubble and put vengeance on it, the sb will take insane damage back and sometime it is the only way. Finally using your own star base on the edge of range with meteor might help you push.

A Tec trying to push your sb with meteor/dis + repulse can do it easily ish with lrms akkan ogrov, it will be a battle for who dies first between ogrov to meteor or the sb. If your opponent isn't on top of their game you can try to repulse ships inside the sb area and yeah if you can get them spinning absolutely everything will die for almost free.

Vasari will have insane trouble to push into your sb, they will need to build their own sb and even then it will take them hours to do anything and a couple of high lvl rapture will completely lock them down.

If anyone is building carriers to kill your sb you can flame them in the chat, you can easily counter it with halcyons and raptures with vengeance.

In general avoid buying damage upgrade on star base it does little damage and there are almost always better things to get.

Couple things to consider for a good MT fleet, It is a support fleet, and should counter as many fleet compositions as it can for the price.

Now here are some points of advice.
A) it's not because you researched MT that you need every caps. 16 caps is extremely expensive and often overkill.
B) Often it is pointless to try to counter fleet with your capships, you already have way better ships than most of your opponents so focus your fleet on the purpose you built it for
C) Radiances are the meat of any MT fleet, you want to be able to counter every cap ships star bases and titans.

2-3 Halcyons are more than enough to make you immune to squadrons (only get more than one if you need to defend against squadrons, if you are going RCR DON'T MASS HALCYONS SERIOUSLY)

1-2 discord one with fracture the other with lethargy. They are very optional.

1-3 progen, in general it is alright but malice fall short later in the game, while shield regen get much better, ideally you still have your starting Progen. If you don't have a high level Progen a couple low level ones also do the trick.

1-2 Raptures, one with aura and one with vertigo

1-2 Revelation, can provide some usefulness to snipe caps, speed up your own abilities and one lvl in the scouting ability. Both of them with Guidance, it really really help your radiances.

everything else in radiances which you generally get first.

Now some compositions will be better than this in some situations, but I think nothing does a better job than this as supporting your dps fleet and being able to counter almost every op ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the other race can pull off, also works really well with RCR.


How to use RCR:

Repulse: main use : delay/prevent their fleet from touching your carriers
secondary use: seperate fleet / capships / titan to make picking them off easier / with lower number of radiances

Carrier/rapture YOU DO NOT WANT TO SPLIT YOUR CARRIERS, I have seen that mistake so many time. You almost never have too (maybe vs titans if you are out of radiances). Also make sure the rapture stays near by the carriers.

Now bombers or fighters. In general fighters THEN bombers. Vs almost anything. You do not want fighters only, you do not want bombers before fighters, and you especially don't want bomber only.

Now when to get bombers and why.

You want bombers when:

A) You can afford beam upgrade, before that you are much better with your laser fighter.
AND
B) You have complete air control, considering your fighters are the best in the game, you have the best anti squadron ability on capship and you went for carriers only it should happen quite naturally.
AND
C) There is a lot of flak frigate/heavies/capships/titan,.
OR
D) You need to kill halcyons/kols/ mass kortul

You do not want bombers when:

A) You are fightings LRF or Vets without supporting capships(kols/halcyons) / low amount of supporting capships and you want to kill the fleet before the caps.

Why to get bombers ? A lot more dps vs caps/titan/sb and WAY better attack vs fleet in general. Your fighters will go chase a lone fighter/bomber of the opponent instead of killing 5 frigates in one volley.

How to engage vs kols / halcyons / kortul? If you can seperate their cap with repulse, always good!
beside that you want radiances to disable them, then one/two shot the caps with bombers. 1:1 radiances always work but you generally don't need that much. Finally, be sure to pack extra raidances vs dunnovs/ radiances /kortul?/titan.

It is pretty micro intensive but vs anyone but a top player, you can kill almost any amount of fleet supply without losing more than 1/2 caps / 1 dozen of guardians. You will almost always kill their caps faster than they kill yours.

Finally be careful, bombers are worth a LOT of xp, losing squadrons for free will level up their stuff really fast.

Some ships are more useful in some match up here is my rating for each.

Corvettes: A+ early game C+ late game (every matchup)
Best vets cost effective with malice,

Disciples: A+ against vas, A- vs tec and advent.
Best LF in the by far for dps and your best ship against sb but often they a lot of support to reach their full potential. Also completely counters hoshiko repair platforms, novaliths, etc. Strongest LF ability by far, with docking boom / temple of am / am artefact they will become infinite bank of antimatter, fun fact if you team up with a vasari, with overseers, unlimited healing!.

Ilums: A+ against advent, A vs tec C vs vas, will do an okay job against vas if you are stuck with them but never build them in the first place against vas, you literally don't need anything else than lf and carrier vs vasari.

Flak: C+ As a whole, can be decent in some situation but in general you have better options,

Carriers: A++ against vas, B vs tec, C vs advent.
Generally completely useless vs advent if they have MT fleet and before that they are only there to snipe guardians, they are uncounterable for vas with repulse. For tec until they can get kols up its alright, once kols are up they a lot worse and you need to kill the kols before your carriers are good.

HC: B+ vs tec B for the rest. Generally worse than illums or disciple for almost every situation.

Solanus: C+ extremely situational, should avoid in general.

Domina: C+ extremely situational, should avoid in general.

Guardians: A+++ Its a must in every matchup and of the few prototype worth rushing.

Titan: B+ vs vas C+ vs the rest. the slow down / damage down aura is insane and the whole point of that titan, lvl 6 can be useful but you will never get it.

Planet for planet, fury of the unity, ancient retribution all make your fleet way stronger and are very important. FU is less useful against advent.

Repulse is a must for sure.

The 60% extra culture is insane and will allow you to crush opponent culture.

Late game, shield mitigation / culture upgrades / cannon is insanely useful.

The allegiance speed for opponent does not work at the time of writing the guide, but it should be fixed soon the devs said.

The 33% extra research speed can be useful if you have nothing researching in civic and 40 things queued up in military.

GU is a must even in agro positions and synergies pretty well with FU principally when fighting in the middle of the map. It pays itself pretty quickly too.

Coward submission is pretty funny and sometime is extremely useful but most of the time it doesn't do much.

Star base culture, can kill opponents by itself, for the price it is insane. It will also give you an huge tactical edge in some cases, synergies pretty well with the 60% extra culture.

MT, generally useful and works on titan too for the xp bonus, even more useful if you have capships that aren't lvl 4 yet.

Dps tech, usually get at the end of the corresponding fleet supply, (get laser 1 at the end of your first fleet supply) if you get feed and can't produce ships quickly enough get them before, in almost every game will you want maxed out laser.

Shield tech, you need the first 4 to get repulse so you know always get them too.

Now health tech, it doesn't do much for your actual fleet vs fleet. A little better vs aoe. One thing it does well tho, is increase your progen tanking power until you reach repulse and that is insanely useful, so i recommend getting the first one before your pfp timing when you push, it will make your progen harder/more expensive to snipe.

Armor tech, generally useless, so expensive and slow, but can be really worth it if you get armor pact up with tec! so keep that in mind.

Bombardment damage, i don't think I would ever recommend getting that.

The disciple ability, extremely useful, almost always a must as soon as you scout support cruisers/carriers.

AM tech, expensive and slow, situational can be worth it.

Beam range, only get against advent to kill the guardians with your illums.

Mines, can be useful usually to tech up when you need them.

Synergy, useful for turteling or locking down some roids.

Carrier mine control, can be useful, tech up when needed.

Temple of Renewal very very useful mid/late game, you rarely need the upgrades, you almost never see it in game.

High efficiency jumps, a must if you have a MT fleet or aggressive carriers.

Divination repays itself in a couple planets, pretty good and you should almost always have 3 civic as AL, type of things you research right after you took control vs your opponent and you are just cleaning up.

If you feel overwhelmed by the game I suggest training and adding more control groups/hotkeys to your setup. Most of the strats I described in the guide were based on my play style so you need good apm.

To micro vets you want to move command them constantly in the middle of the enemy vets, if you are a micro god, set up multiple control group so you can move them in a smaller area.

Microing LFs against vets is fairly straight forward, don't chase the vets and keep the LFs facing where the vets are, if vets are getting in range, malice them. If you also have vets yourself, keep them right in front of your LF, so everyone get to shoot at the same time. If you have a low amount of vet don't fight with them they will just die for almost free compared to your LF.

If you have trouble with your decision making process and this guide wasn't enough to help you get good, get a pro player friend to analyse replays with you, there is often a lot that you think is fine and turns out to be terrible, it's hard to realise ourselves what can be a mistake and coaching really help. You can also watch replays of top players and see how they react.

Map control is insanely important in all matchup, if you can have it, you should definitely go for it every single time, and use it to advantage yourself in eco and fleet.

Your ability to judge how strong a fleet is and who is losing before you are actually losing ships is pretty essential, for that its either experience, or quick math with armor types, either way its worth to know the common armor types.

And finally deciding how you convert your advantages between fleeting harder and eco is a really hard skill to develop and also a question of play style and I'm not sure I can provide decent advice on that.

I won't tell much here, because there are better players to teach you that and there are already some decent guides on the subject, but in general avoid trade get only what you need and feed the extra. Also be aware of all the different ways you can eco.

In general if you have an opponent TL eco, you want to get population on your hw quite early, like 10 min mark, just in case, and go for sb on your hw quite early too! If you don't have any TL opponent/ no chance of getting novaed, focus population as well but you can be less paranoid with sb/health, terrans and ocean are the best, then desert and ice are decent. Do not forget the sb 30% allegiance upgrade, and pacts ideally with tec. Their envoys are also insane for your own population economy as well. With the new social pop growth you resist nova quite well, better than trade even but you need to make sure to not lose the planet, so pop the sb everywhere you have social on if there is threat of nova.

Couple tricks: Giving planets to a VL ally and then taking the dead roid can be really beneficial, if you are going for mining only it won't change much and you will feed your ally couple hundred thousands for free! For example, getting novaed on your hw and you lose it, just give it to a VL, you fed him 50k for a planet that wasn't worth much anymore! then you get back the dead roid that should still make lots of money from it.

If you lose your capital for any reasons you need a new one ASAP since your whole economy is a factor on allegiance and without a capital it drops slowly to like 25% everywhere, often the best place is around the middle of your empire.

How much is metal and crystal worth? In a normal 5s, Crystal is almost always worth around 5 credits each. For metal it really depends but I would say around 3 credit average. Keep that in mind for the metal/crystal extractions tech and if you ever go for trade port with resources.

Advent bounty get a 1 civic lab tech that gives 25% bonus so if an ally is already fighting its a way to a) feed 25% extra credit B) without the feed tech!. Just be careful to not over do it and your ally wont be able to collect it. When playing with outlaw dlc you get an extra 25% too that stack!, in general it's very worth it starting midgame. Also keep in mind that feed is taxed on the receiver but bounty isn't!
So late game with dlc, at 75% taxes bounty feeding gives more than 6x more resources than normal feeding, if they are fighting!
It is also true for non advent, always keep bounty on opponent past midgame it's huge!

Finally I don't personally recommend going for trade (not ressources spec) ever unless you have the trade artefact. If you have a garbage map for social/mining eco, just go kill the opponent eco, you will have way better roi that way.

Tough position and it depends so much on whether you are getting feed or not. Your goal is to be able to hold 2-3 planets safely. Your starting capship can also be a radiance when suicide. Start with 20-30 corvettes (you can skip that if radiance but I would still open vets) to make sure you aren't dying to rank rushes, skip the colony frigate if progen. Then go all in LF, build 2-3 turrets around your factories if the enemies are close. Your ideal goal is to fight one fleet at a time. If you are getting lots of feed often build a third frigate factory to help pumping out light frigate.

The usual goal, try to get pfp and crush one side really bad they start building star bases, it should give you a lot of time and hopefully your team can win in the mean time.

if you get to the mid game alive, repulse should give you all the time in the world to survive.

Finally let say you are a mediocre player compared to the rest of the lobby, one thing you can do is send your progen STRAIGHT ACROSS (don't colonize anything). Get 2 civic and feed EVERYTHING you make to your top agro ally. Don't colo anything until you are in relatively safe territory then you want 2 roids, first get hw on one of them, then 5 mil lab a factory and support an non advent ally with your progen and repulse both tec and vasari synergise extremly hard with repulse, so that way you can be very usefull on even like 100 fleet suply, so you won't drain your team economy too much.

Here, I will just talk about my hotkey setup, it has been a highly requested section.

Q W E R T
A S D F G

Are for grid that means that W build LF when a factory is selected, or Q is for building a radiance. Or W is for casting malice when a progen is selected, basically each key represent the icons the grid.


Z is for selling metal on the black market
X is for selling crystal on the black market
Ctrl,shift those to change the price (mind you side effect is that shift + something also increase by x5)

C to open black market, so I can know when to adjust.
Shift+H for scuttling, because shift-S led me to disasters because I use S for other things.

Ctrl + number to create control groups
number to use that group

I usually use 1 and 2 for production, 3 for progen, 4-5 for harassing vet, radiance control groups etc.

f1,f2,f3,f4 are military civic defence and fleet supply tech trees. Poor diplomacy doesn't get anything.

B is for z axis but I never use it in 5s.

I forgot what V is for.

I hope you learned a lot in this guide, or at least a little. If you want me to add a section let me know.

If you feel like correcting all the grammar mistakes everywhere, let me know I will add you to the guide and you can do it directly.

Finally, I'm always down to chat about sins in my dms on steam or discord (I prefer discord).

If you want me to analyse your replays, dm me, I'm sure we can come to an agreement.

Leave a comment if you liked it or learned anything!

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I added the hotkeys sections.

updated the guide for the new update 1.96, and also added couple of important sections like how to play RCR + MT. Eco suicde, MT and agro vs vas section were updated.