Bunch a questions from a developing noob :)

1) No, the physical location does not affect the productivity of the trade port. 

2) You should definitely leave the guardian shield ability on, but you should turn off autocast when you aren't in battle.  The guardian has a bad habit of wasting antimatter on this ability if an enemy scout flies by.  As for repulse, yeah, it's a little weird and I haven't fully figured it out myself. 

3) PJI's don't stop a fleet from phasing out, they simply increase the "charge up time" by 700%.  They will eventually be able to warp out.  Also keep in mind that PJI's don't affect the entire gravity well.  If the enemy moves far enough away, they can jump out of the gravity well without being affected by the PJI.

4) Population and fortification upgrades are two different things.  Don't confuse them.  Fortification upgrades do increase the hit points of your planets and make them take longer to destroy.  This is a great delay tool and is also useful against the AI, who likes to build lots of siege frigates (humans rarely do this in multiplayer).  The best reason to buy these is if your opponent has a level 6 Jerrasul Evacuator.  The "drain planet" ability deals 1350 damage to the target planet, leaving only a tiny amount of health if it's unupgraded.  Having at least one upgrade to survive this ability is important!

5) When it comes to a battle of attrition, flaks beat strike craft, end of story.  If you have a relatively equal economy to your opponent, you cannot beat a flak-based army with a carrier-based army in a straight fight.  You have a couple approaches here to deal with this situation.  The first is to play hit-and-run.  Flaks suck at wild goose chases, and strike craft excel at them.  However, this leaves you with few defensive options.  The other approach is to change your army makeup; heavy cruisers work very well, and if you have fighters to counter the enemy bombers, they're a great addition to your army.  In theory light frigates counter flak, but in practice long range frigates will annihilate your light frigates before you even scratch those flaks.

6) Add guardians to that mix and you have a winner.

7) I rarely build starbases as Advent.  They're too expensive and your money is much better served by building a bigger fleet.  A smart player will ignore or circumvent a starbase anyways.  Against the AI, mass disorientation and meteor control are excellent abilities, but a player will seldom give you the opportunity to use them.

8) Don't know.  It's annoyingly long, but I believe it's shortened if there's a frigate factory in the system (just based on my own experience, they seem to come back faster)

1. Trade Ports- Theres no real difference to placement, but putting them near eachother makes them easier to protect. Also tradeships will take the shortest path out of the system to their destination, sometimes placement can be important for protection of trade ship purposes.

2. Repulse- You may be getting only a little push if you activate the ability but then order a move for your fleet (with the guardian still selected). This ability is a channeled ability so you have to leave the guardian alone and issue no orders to it to get the repulse for the full 30 seconds. The best way to use this is to keep short ranged units away from your units. It has a variety of applications, but is most useful against Heavy Cruisers, although I have seen a fellow use it to keep illums away from his carriers quite effectively. There are only a few units that can outrange the repulse and still hit the guardian. Personally I turn the shield projector off so they dont waste AM i may need for repulse, and only activate it when charging my enemy.

3. PJI- This won't completely stop any fleet from passing but will slow them down considerably, causing them to take 8x longer to phase jump. Vasari get the best use out of this with gravity mines and the Eggs gravity warhead, which spell DOOM for fleets attempting to flee. Be sure the AOE covers the phase lanes you want to slow escape through, and remember ships can jump out from pretty far from the left or right of a single phase lane. The nice thing is that once a ship starts a phse jump, it cannot stop. PJI make ships just sit there helpless for a long period of time while your fleet or starbase pummels the crap out of them.

4. Planet Pop- There a distinction that needs to be made here. Planet infrastructure upgrade (top far left) increases planet population and tax revenue, while Emergency Facilities (top second to the left) increases planet health. Emergency facilities will increase your planets health, making bombardment of the planet take much longer, and thus, possibly slowing your opponents advance towards you.

5. If all you have are carriers, and all he has are flak, the best way to get rid of them is with bombers set to 'hold position', but that isnt a great option. A better option would be to build 20-30 light frigates to clear them out. Be careful though as LFs get mangled by LRFs.

6. Fleet sizes vary throughout the game but a good spread for advent might be this: 40% Lums; 20% Carriers; 20% Defense Vessels; 10% Guardians; 10% Crusaders or Disciples and at least 1 of every advent Cap ship. It really depends though on what your opponents fleet is comprised of, and what kind of mood you're in. You can use lums as your main damage dealer or you can use Carriers. Out of the two, however, illuminators are much much more difficult to counter.

7.I find advent SBs to be the least useful of the three, but if I DO use one, I use it for meteor storm primarily. Mass disorientation is nice, but is only really useful if you know you're opponent is going to charge your SB head on with his fleet, which any smart player will avoid like the plague. What you can do is use homing mines to narrow exit points around the system and bottle neck them towards your SB, at which point you can throw meteors at them an do some damage. The idea here being if an opponent wants to go through the system with their fleet, its gonna hurt. The other ability worth mentioning is the Culture upgrade, which at level 2 is STRONG AS HELL, allowing you to overthrow an heavily defended enemy sytem without firing a shot, only problem is that as strong as it is, it still takes awhile to reduce planet allegiance to 0.

8. Fabricators- 6 minutes if there are enemy ship in the well, 30 seconds if there aren't.

Illums+Guardians+Aerias+Defense+Holy Trinity=Good Fleet.  These ships are awesome.  Every single one of them is great at what they do.  

Illums are awesome.  They have great DPS if you know how to use them.  It takes microing to get them in position, but once using their side beams, they become a force to be reckoned with.  Oh, and don't forget deceptive illusion.  This essentially doubles DPS by making a second Illum (which has operational weapons btw.)

Guardians soak up damage and are practically mobile PJI's.

Aerias carry three squadrons (and most efficient FS of any carrier) and each squadron has a ton of SC in it.

Defense vessels have six turrets and good DPS.  Flak ships are also good at fighting LRF's.

Holy Trinity:

Progenitor: Should be your first cap every time (unless on Point Blank at which point it should be a radiance).  Malice is wonderful.  Despite its nerf, this ability is still good and can multiply the damage of side beams, Ruthlessness, CB, Vengeance, and many others.  Shield Restore is great for helping out your frigates.  that thing heals 400 shields on anything within its radius.  Keep your fleet in tight formation and this can heal almost all of them at once.  Colonize is also good.  The cost redux is great.

Radiance: Arguably the best direct combat ship in the game.  It has EAA which reduces damage and regens AM.  Wonderful passive.  Det AM is a great anti-cap attack.  Not quite as good as Nano, but it can stop the dreaded MB.  Animosity is good early game for keeping your illuminators alive and when used with a couple Dominas, SR, Vengeance, and Malice, this is not something to be scoffed at.  Top all that off with Cleansing Brilliance.  This is perhaps my favorite ability in the game.  If you want to kill a cap, use CB.  Nano is a death sentence, but CB is the guillotine.  Once you aim CB at a ship, you can feel safe that that ship won't be around much longer.  Combine this with Malice, and you are dealing 75 DPS (or more under certain conditions) to nearby foes.  CB rocks.

Halcyon: Great cap that you do need.  It neutralizes SC.  It takes the damage from FB and the AoE from JW and combines them.  Telekinetic Push is certainly the best anti-SC attack in the game.  Adept Drone Anima is kinda worthless until you get to higher levels at which point it is like adding two more squadrons to your ship.  Energy Aura is great though.  It buffs "all nearby friendly weapons."  In other words, this is a blanket damage buff for the Advent.  At its top level, it decreases cooldowns by 22% which translates into about an 8% increase in damage.  That is very respectable.  Anima Tempest is either loved or hated.  In the right hands, this ability can be used to wipe the enemy from the field of battle.  In the wrong hands, its a waste of 120 AM...  Simply put, this thing will double your SC counts at level 10.  This is a very good ability in my eyes.

Of course, all these things are worthless without a good player commanding them.  Use these ships wisely, and you can take on fleets 2-3 and sometimes ever 4 times your size.  A good advent player is a not something you want to face.  Although I love their synergies and capitals (I absolutely love the Radiance) I find that Vasari fit my playstyle more and as such, I don't use Advent much...  When I do though, I deeply enjoy it.

Great feedback so far guys, thanks for the input.

1. The fortification upgrade makes sense now as a time or delay option. If I feel I am gonna lose a system, I do sometimes sell up to recoup the cash, however I see the point in leaving it there to delay the enemy. The upgrade is the same principle, so cool.

"The Holy Trinity" = Coloniser, Carrier, Bombard Cap ships

(Radiance - Ok, so this thing kicks ass, Ive used it against AI with vengence from the Rapture cap and actually thought that along with the Prog was what the holy trinity was).

At what stage to you rebuild your cap factory to produce new caps? ie, when you have at least 40 illums and 10+ carriers + flak?(I sell mine after building the prog for the logistics slot and cash, is this wrong or simply depends on situation?)

Should I go Sova 2nd cap or Rapture, or is this just personal preference?

I always build the prog cap ship first as the colonise ability with its armor and firepower is awesome. Restore and Malice I love too, its uber usefull.

Rapture Cap ship - Lvl 6 lets you capture enemy ships, can this be used to steal enemy tech, ie capture a TEC SB frigate or do you just steal ship, no specials. It just seems like it could be cooler.....any really effective use for it?

Trade and Trade Ships

How long does it usually take for a trade port to earning money.

Do the trade ships need to go to the next system?

How effective is it too take out enemy trade ships?

Fleet Hotkeys

Is there a button to swap between frigates,caps,HC,etc and strike craft? There is a button underneath the planet icon that lets you do this, is there a hotkey?

Once you get a few hundred games under your belt, do you find yourself using Ctrl + 1, 2,3, etc for indivdual fleets, all at different places, or use this for one big fleet and simply micro other fleets?

Fleet Behaviour

How do people normally set up their fleets?

Should I create a fleet for the illums seperate to the cap fleet? When this happens, all illums nearby will join and adopt new fleet behaviours?

Sometimes groups of ships seem to be moving in a formation? Is this because of a specific setting, or fleet status?Ie I have seen illums form up in 2 abreast in a line and move up and around holding this formation.

Scouts

I build 2-4 at the start, then auto-explore them, more when I can, 1 on cap ship for system scouting, and the others auto-explore.

Is there a way for them to hold a patrol route aside from lots of shift + clicks?

Mid and End Game Strategy -Of late, this is where I fall without help.My micro is getting better

Normally if I can survive the first 10-20 minutes, its all good, expand, fleet up, grow, grow...depending on team mates of course.

Any top ten tips for Mid Game Objectives - Advent Orientation

Having just passed 100 games, im familiar with the basics but have had a few games where I simply stagnate, Im not offensive enough and get taken out. I guess part of me is looking to understand what advents final stages are and what I should be reaching for. Vasari have the phase gate tech, which is great as is their Kostura Cannon thing, but what is the late game OMFG its coming at me advent player supposed to look like?

Ive found that several smaller target specific fleets can be much more usefull than one big fleet, and usually try to create two fleets from the word go, 1 for roids, etc, the other around the cap ship. Any advice for multi-fleet usage?

Massive Amount of questions, happy to hear any thoughts, and as always, keep gaming and having fun!

Hotkeys:

the 10 buttons on your keyboard between "q" and "g" represent the 10 buttons on your display.

The OMFGHS factor for Advent is when you come with your fleet. Advent's speciality is having the most badass fleet in the game, period. Forget the bullshit, just build your fleet and fly around taking out their infrastructure.

@ Fries: We played together recently. Can't tell you who I was or what game it was, but I can tell you it was an epic win for our side.

Didn't know about the q to p hotkeys. Gonna have to use those.

Uhh..  The HT is Prog (colony), Rad (battleship), and Halcy (carrier) and should be built in that order under most circustances.

I personally tend to get the Revalation as my second cap. Reverie is a direct counter to MB. I buy this cap because Advent need a force that can seige. This cap does 50 planet damage with each volley. As sad as it is, until lvl 6 or unless you by seige frigs, this is the best seige weapon the Advent have.

After the Revalation, it depends. Get a halcyon if I have a ton of Illums. Get a Rapture if I'm dealing with an lrf spam (yep, I said it, try lvl 3 Vertigo on an Illum spammer, you lower his damage output by 60%)

For me, I dont scuttle the cap ship factory as Advent unless i know tha im not oing to build another. Instead Ill usually upgrade logistics fo extra slots. The reason why is that Cap ship factories are expensive and having to build another one + getting Cap supply + additional fleet supply often jst takes too damn long. With a Marza at lvl 5 or egg at lvl 6, I wanna be able to get a Revelation or Radiance fast.

Trade ports will start you earning money as soon as the first trade ship pops out, but wont max out for a few minutes. Killing enemy trade ships is supposed to earn you some extra scrap, but Im know its not really a great source of income, and Im not really sure how bad it hurts your opponent.

Unfortunately no, this game does lack a patrol behavior. The best thing I can say to do is give them a nice long list of things to do and check on them every so often. Also, 2 scout can take out the 1 siege frigte floating around asteroids, making it really easy to colonize these with jsut 2 scouts and a missionary vessel. Ill often do this after capturing neutrals with my colonizer to help expand.

Everyone uses fleets a litte differently based on how they like to play. Personally I'll only set up a fleet if I need new incoming ships to adopt a certain behavior like hold position, this way they don't go kamikaze after an enemy starbase/fleet/defenses as soon as they reach their rally point (usually my mothership). Otherwise I just use control groups for specific units like fighters, bombers guardians etc.

The others are right, Advents mid-late game strenght is in their (cap) ships and fleets. But you should also have your culture slowly raping your enemies border worlds.

Also as a general rule for early game, if your nearest opponent is Vasari, upgrade all your ships health to help cut down on ships being destroyed by phasic bypass. Against TEC or Advent though I usually upgrade shields first to increase the power of the motherships shield restore.