Hi,

I'm a mega-newbie, never played the beta or anything, but tracked the game for a long time. Anyway, started my first game yesterday, and since the TEC seemed like the boring, standard human faction, I picked Vasari, thinking I would move to Advent later.

At any rate, I got my butt kicked. But that's basically irrelevant - what *is* relevant is that I think I didn't understand the Vasari philosophy, what they are good at doing, how they are to be played, etc. For my starting (and only) capital ship I picked that Kortul Devastator, but I noticed it pretty much got it's butt kicked not only by the TEC cap ship I would run into, but also the Advent cap ship. I suppose I (initially) thought that Vasari was a brute force heavy-hitting faction, and that Kortul was a brute force heavy-hitting ship, but maybe I was wrong?

Later, I read some posting on these forums where a guy described the TEC as the straight-ahead, brute force, heavy-hitting type faction, and he basically insinuated that Vasari was more of a raiding hit and run type faction.

Since I should not be worried about trying to master finesse at this phase of the game (I simply want to learn it and feel it out), straight-ahead brute force was what the doctor ordered, so for my next game I switched to the "boring, standard" TEC. I picked the Kol Battlecruiser, and basically made a fleet of those light frigates to accompany it, and I have kicked butt so far. This seems to confirm to me that this faction (or at least this cap ship) is the "straight ahead, brute force, heavy hitting" faction, and that I am using them correctly, therefore I am obtaining results. But maybe I'm wrong.

My question: What are the different factions good at, and how should they be played? Specifically, is the TEC the brute force faction? Is the Vasari some sort of a finesse, raiding, hit and run faction? Finally, I have no idea about the Advent - what are they all about?

Thanks.