How to counter late game tec?

Online or AI?

I have fought human players using this strategy 1v1, where on larger maps it is sort of viable. The big thing is that late game TEC fleets cannot beat fully teched out Advent and Vasari ones of equal size, so if at all possible try to lure him on the offensive. Of course if he is any good that will be difficult as he knows he must have those starbases to win.

If it truly is a stalemate, you might have to invest in starbases at every planet yourself to get auxiliary government to wait out the inevitable Novalith barrages. This will ensure he has the better economy but it is quite possible to get a fleet the TEC just cannot handle before then. In particular if you ensure he doesn't get any high level Marzas or titans he will be hard pressed to win any fleet battles. Then its a matter of building lots of bombers or ogrovs and raid multiple planets until you can get a break through.

If its a human player using this strategy though, chances are he's hoping you'll quit before then.

I play vs my friend (his starbase strat was developed playing ai it seems)

I am skeptical regarding the fact that a late game tec fleet cannot beat an advent one (vasari is much more difficult). I am finding they are right on par. Hypothetically lets say a large tec carrier fleet fought a large advent carrier fleet (typical late game engagement right). Both sides have anti strikecraft caps (kols and halcyons). Lets say 1000 fleets worth for each side.

Why does the advent have the advantage in this situation? kols completely wipe advent strikecraft out, wheras halcyons will delay the tec bombers slightly. god forbid the tec have a lvl 6 akkan making his entire fleet invulnerable to bombers and runs around the gravity well while killing your ships. each players titan does some damage, but has to retreat as bomber spam is very dangerous. tec then proceeds to attrition the advent player to death, killing caps etc, knowing full well he is backed by over 100 credits/sec by now and can "Easily" replace losses, wheras advent probably can replace losses but very painfully since they do not eco well.

So basically Im finding tec fleets dont need to decisively "win" a battle, they just need to "not lose" a battle enough times and cause enough damage that eventually the economic disparity between the two sides makes the game unwinnable for advent. 

I like how tec is able to pull off this really unique "win by pure eco" strat through starbases, but it seems uncounterable once it gets going

A good Advent player LATE GAME can tank way more damage than a TEC player can, between guardians, multiple motherships with shield restore and even domina repair on key units. With advent loyalists you also have the Coronata reducing enemy damage. Personally its been a while since I've seen a pure strikecraft battle, so I might be rusty here, but if the Kols are really that big of a problem you can always disable them with detonate antimatter. You might also be able to simply repulse his Kols out of the way until your fighters can do substantial damage to enemy bombers. Or rely on multiple Halcyons to keep the enemy bombers out of formation while you use Illuminators or heavy cruisers (depending on his strikecraft ratio) to kill the Kols or force them to retreat.

Again I have no seen pure strikecraft spam with this strategy before, but the TEC in general have fairly few game changing abilities compared to the Advent and Vasari. One is armistice as you mentioned, the other missile barrage, both of which require level 6 caps which you should do your best to ensure your enemy never acquires. The Ragnarov is also potentially deadly but very vulnerable to flanking tactics.

I see, though I still feel that tec is on par with advent. The reason is that advent has good units like guardians and mothership which are great in battles between lrf/heavy cruisers slugging it out. But because of titans I can really only go bombers to prevent getting aoe'd and advent has negligible defense against massed bombers. Advent synergy cannot work if your key ships die in the first wave of bombers. Often its just attrition from there onwards. At least thats what I've found. It may have been different before rebellion

Well in a very long slugmatch the Advent actually do not suffer from capitalships attrition if you have a level 6 Mothership with resurrection in reserve. It's sadly not a well known strategy but for a late game battle of attrition it can be a vital advantage for them. You can get your Halcyons back at level 10 while your enemy can only train up Kols to level 4.

I won't deny bomber spam is hard for anyone to counter, but I was under the impression that in competitive ICO games it was actually becoming less prevalent as corvettes have become a decent counter for titans and fighters have become more popular.

The problem is I have never seen lvl 6 mothership being used once in pvp. And whats to prevent them from bombing it after wiping the halcyons. I dont think caps matter very much late game as (and I mentioned above) they die fast. 

Also tec is fine with the battle of attrition, especially if they are making you buy back caps. If you are advent and they are tec, they may have 3x your income, excluding pervasive eco. And they are reinvesting most of that to get more $$$ (if they are anything like my friend)

Advent cannot fight these sorts of battle - I am thinking the only way to win vs tec is early game, by overwhelming him before he gets his starbases up. Otherwise late game it really is (I trust I am using this term correctly?) GG

How many heads does a hydra have?

Well you keep the level 6 mothership on your factory planet which is hopefully not in mortal danger. In standard PVP multiplayer yeah its not used much but in this sort of 1v1 stall strategy you have time to get all sorts of things you wouldn't do in a 5v5 multiplayer match.

Oh definitely, they are designed to win by this method. I'm just saying your key to winning as Advent is to inflict much greater casualties on the TEC to compensate for your weaker economy.

That is the ideal thing, though actually the TEC early game is pretty good to. The traditional line of thought is that offensively the TEC late game is the weakest, though I'd welcome some other pros to challenge this view.

Lol what?

Goa - agreed that advent is supposed to inflict more damage to the enemy to compensate for lack of eco. I am just not sure it can do it so late game. Have you fought a battle vs a tec late game and won decisively late into a match?

I have seen mass domina spam work wonders against a late game TEC.

I have seen a tangerine the size of a small child.

Can you ever stop trolling?

Good question. Will you?

Im not trolling. Next question.

If he is spending all that money on defences, that meams he is neglecting his fleet so you should be able to beat him by opening multiple fronts. 

I once ate a tadpole the size of a tiny frog...

More flak is always the answer.