There is a limit to how fast loyalty can decrease. If you want to neutralize a planet with the Deliverance Engine, you need to stagger the shots so that each new one hits as the previous one's effect fades. After only a few hits it should flip.



If red is your color, that means that your culture is stronger there than anyone else's, and it is spreading towards the other nearby planets.

Advent is powerful even without it. It's best for spreading your culture bonus and eliminating the enemy's culture bonus just before you attack.

With their culture research the Advent get higher Shield Mitigation levels, which means your ships don't take as much damage.
The Vasari get higher damage outputs and the TEC regenerate antimatter faster.

The advent gun isn't worth the resources it takes to build once you factor in it's research, tactical planetary upgrades and own cost. I typically build one so I can expedite colonizing a planet as a luxury item. Defeating a planet with your culture is a pointless gesture when you factor in the time it takes to get the job done.

For instance, let's say you build 10 Deliverance Engines and stagger all of them on a planet 1 minute apart. I'd have to fire up a replay, but the last time I did just that it took me 3 complete cycles to get the planet. One properly level'd cap ship stationed in the now dead planet and you can chuck magnifying glasses as 'roids till you puke and the enemy gets it back...congratulations! You get to start all over again. In that same time TEC can destroy 5 planets per cycle. Vasari can completely devastate an enemy fleet size be damned with a few well timed guns and proper fleet balance.

If you're planet hopping you'd be better off building/scuttling Broadcast structures on your front line as it moves. I'll take a steady 20 culture/sec any day.

Sure you can use it to neutralize enemy culture as a 'close support' weapon but so can the Vasari, only they get a few seconds of stun effect to boot, oh and if the Vasari has 4 or more of 'em life sucks. You simply can't beat the Novalith Cannon for pure enemy suppression, it's hard to fight when you're broke. Don't even get me started on a comp stomp combined with the Nov either...oh look the enemy is running away just as I get here because I blew their planet to space junk.

The shield mitigation bonus is completely moot if you properly balance your guardians/motherships and subjugators... you simply don't care where you fight.

I'd see a use for it if Advent culture meant something ala TEKs foreign sabotage, as it is the only use I've found for it is speeding up planet hopping or saving a planet I forgot to build enough broadcast towers on.