the units do not apear instantly.

The units take some time to phase in, from wherever they were at.

Sometimes its hard to notice they have arrived. I've had this happen to me several times playing as Vasari. I would use Dark Armada several times and not notice the units arrive in the system.

Its still nearly useless anyways. I only get it because theres nothing else left to get.

Afterall whats the point of having backup emergency units that cost quite a bit and take a while to arrive when you can play it like I do: keep a small fleet in your home world, with all your planets linked by phase stabilizer nodes, and just move the fleet to the planet thats under siege. I can move my ships to the planets in trouble faster than the dark armada could ever hope to get there.

Vasari have a tech point that gives +15% fleet capacity, or some such so basically its like having 1 more upgrade in fleet logistics that TEC/Advent don't possess, I just keep a squadron thats the size of that bonus capacity in my system and have it be my emergency protection via the phase stabilizer nodes.

check out this thread...this has already been discussed and there are some good points in this thread.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/334551

RA is still a great thing to use, depending on what type of game you are playing, the map size, and what your ultimate strat is.

It's not useless, it's a game winner.  But it is rather hard to pull off against non-AI opponent.

here was one of my posts in that thread...

This is usually the case in larger maps.  Once you have it researched to level 2, you get 7-10 ships per use.  Usually I get 4-5 Ska Enforcers and 2-3 Lan Carriers. 

Let's add those prices up.  for each Ska Enf it costs 150 met/110 cry and for each Carrier it costs 160 met/140 cry.  So, if I get 4 enf and 3 carriers, that is a total of 1080 metal and 860 crystal for each one bought seperately.  By using RA, I have successfully re-inforced my fleet in just a few seconds for a very small fraction of the price than building the ships individually and then having to wait a certain amount of time for each ship to build.

Other pluses are that you get an instant phase gate between any planets that have the Stabilizer in.  Also, you can use RA for each Stabilizer.  For instance, you have 4 Stabilizers...you can use each one in succession...1, 2, 3, 4, and have an instant small fleet of 28-40 ships and also with a great balance of ships in that small fleet.

At some point, you are gonna tech up to 8 labs any way, you just might do it a little quicker to get to RA, if that's how you choose to go.  I think that it is way worth the effort in the long run on a larger map.  And the money you save to use it for a re-inforcement of your fleet, instead of building 7 individual ships will soon pay off the difference of what it cost to get to have the ability to use RA.

Hope that made sense.

Plus, it usually takes about 5-10 seconds for the entire "summoned" fleet to arrive once you use the RA ability.  They can come in at any point of the grav well where the PS is located.  Then you jump the small re-inforcement fleet to your outer ring of planets that has another PS and you have re-inforced your fleet in less than 1 minute.  It will take you way longer than that by re-inforcing through the building of ships individually.

Plus, you can get ship types that you haven't even researched yet by using the RA ability.

Yes. But to get most out of your RA I advise also researching Military techs to increase the power of your summoned ships

Yes, that is obvious (a fully researched military tree will make the enforcers damn near un-beatable).  I had a fleet of about 40 enforcers, 10-15 carriers, an egg, 2 devastators, and 1 skirantra that took out a fully loaded TEC fleet.  Don't remember his exact numbers...but was something like 6 or 7 caps, about 30 carriers, about 15 robotics, about 25 LRMs, about 10 command centers, and about 30 or so Kodiaks.

When the battle was finished, he lost everything and I had lost my Skirantra, 1 of my devastators, lost all but 2 of my carriers, and maybe lost about 10 of my enforcers.  I tore him apart.  Don't know if he was micro-ing or not (I was).  When there are 40 enforcers (that are fully teched-up) attacking one ship at once, it only takes one round of attacks to take that ship down.

So, in the first 60 seconds of the battle, he had lost all of his command centers, and all of his LRMs.  By the end of minute 2, I had taken out 1 cap and also about 7 or so Kodiaks.  By the end of minute 3, another cap and another 10 or so Kodiaks.  By the end of minute 5, all Kodiaks were gone and he had 2 caps left and most of his carriers were still in the battle.  Another 3 minutes and he was completely obliterated.

The only reason I made the point I made earlier about getting ships that you may not have teched-up to yet, was to state that if you spend all available resources to get to the RA ability 1st, then you haven't trained to get the enforcers, etc...and using the RA ability will give you those ships...even if you haven't learned them yet.

Hmm. I dunno. Atleast 10 mins passed on my asteroid planet, and after 3 dark armada attempts, none showed up. I used it 2 times on another planet where my main fleet was at... and maybe I just didn't notice them. Do they use the planets rally point? Maybe they just got shuffled into the rest of my fleet. still doesnt explain the asteroid missing dark armada fleet though.

And you are 100% sure you had available fleet capacity???

You should have about 100 supply free before using mark 2.

Make sure you have fleet cap available.  Also, the ships don't pop up at your phase stabilizer, so if you are zoomed in to the phase stabilizer, waiting for the ships to appear, they won't, and you'll miss them.  Instead, they appear at the edge of your grav well.

And if you had a fleet there already that was a created fleet, then your summoned ships will automatically join that fleet and fly to them.  An important point, when using the 2nd level of RA...make sure you have at least 100 open fleet capacity (for each one that you use).