I've been able to pull advent close quarters vs TEC where the homeworld's were connected.  Spam scouts, take out constructors.  Play head games with them and try to take their early expansion asteroid.  Spam like crazy and cry for early feed.  target the frigate factory 100% no matter what the losses, and then hold his fleet at bay through delay tactics to rebuild forces to pick off the fleet one by one until you can face it directly.  requires a bit of luck, the first person who scouts the other has an advantage, every second the proximity is unknown to the other player increases the other player's advantage greatly.

I got lucky and scouted him a full 30 seconds ahead of him scouting me.  I also got lucky in that he had already built an akkan capital ship which would get cut to ribbons against my halcyon.  i had already spammed a small fleet of disciples and scouts before he started building his forces.  It was close at the beginning, but since i needed feed early my feeder gave me some after i had just taken his asteroid.  after I got early feed it was a shut case as i kept the fact that i was getting fed by occupying harassing his HW's gravity well.  Then I warped in my 10 illuminators to seal the deal.

                I have opened with the Kol several times and won that game because when I make the kol, I make 2-3 colony ships to go in after my Kol and its small fleet go in and clear every thing out, I send the colonies in to colonize and make mining factories on asteroids while my Kol and company are workin on the next nuetral planet.                                                                                                                                                       

Very effective, and I never lost those colony ships or my Kol. It's just faster than Akkan in the beginning because you have to give the Akkan time to colonize when it could be off conquering.

Also, The Kol just soaks up punishment, so I could prob. send it off by itself to terminate nuetral colonies( I prob. wouldn't do that though, just an idea I wnt to try now.)

                 I guess it's the way I play and stratagize. I  also do that so I can move from planet to planet with my fleet without having to stick around on a quonquered planet waiting for it to be colonized. This works very great with small maps too and when you want to get a slightly better start than others, economy wise... just have to play it right.

I would guess that most of you here play SP games. If so kol could work if you can get it to lvl6. As for multiplayer building kol as 1st cap usually means you just signed a death sentence for yourself. 

There is another one. He goes as Sire or king of the kings. But he also thinks that rushing HC is good idea.  

That one can work, particularly if the map is big enough that you can comfortably jump to 5 labs after doing some colonization and economizing.  Of course, don't expect to win with it if your opponent is paying attention, and be sure to diversify.  If you so much as smell guardians or subverters, for the love of all things sensible get other combat unit types.

Pretty much anyone who plays multiplayer has utterly dismissed the Kol as a valid opener.  It's a joke, you will die if you pick a Kol and get rushed because it's so bad in combat.  If you came online, you'd very quickly abandon the Kol as a valid choice.  It can work against the AI, but just about anything will work against the AI, and if you know what you're doing you can get way better results out of other choices.

The Sova can more than double the average damage output of a Kol, which means it will kill militia twice as fast on average (and for less antimatter) and has a much more dangerous presence in combat.  The bottom line is that these guys aren't even in the same league. 

The Radiance is better than the Kol, because of Detonate Antimatter, which is one of the best abilities for dealing with abilities, and it isn't even an ultimate.

Kol vs. Radiance:

Let's analyze a level 5 of each ship (if nothing else, so that each has level 3 of at least one ability)...

Radiance:

Hull = 2200 + 90 x 4 = 2560

Shield = 1750 + 180 x 4 = 2470

Armor = 4.5 + .4 x 4 = 6.1

Shield mitigation = 65 +1.111 x 4 = 69.444%

Kol:

Hull = 3000 + 120 x 4 = 3480

Shield = 1250 + 135 x 4 = 1790

Armor = 5 + .45 x 4 = 6.8

Shield mitigation = 65 + 1.111 x 4 = 69.444%

Looking at just these stats alone (no abilities, cruiser protection, or tech upgrades), Kol clearly is better at surviving...it has better armor, more hull, and more HP overall...however, if we are testing resilience, we need to grant each capital ship its resilience ability...

Radiance:

Level 3 energy absorption grants +6 armor...that brings the armor up to 12.1, which is equivalent to a 1 / (1 + .05 x 12.1) = 62.3% damage multiplier....however, this only applies to hull, which represents about 51% of the total HP, so we could equate this to about an 80.8% damage multiplier overall...

Kol:

First off, let's consider the armor of the kol which is equivalent to a 1 / (1 + .05 x 6.8) = 74.6% damage multiplier...applied to only the hull (which is about 66% of the HP), that is equivalent to about an 83.2% damage multiplier overall due to armor...I'd like to point out that despite having less armor than the Radiance, the Kol still benefits almost just as much from armor because it has far more hull....

Level 3 adaptive forcefield grants 35% damage reduction...though this is dependent on antimatter use, let's assume the kol is using this ability continuously (so damage reduction applies all the time)...this is equivalent to a 1 / (1 + .35) = 74.1% damage multiplier...compounding this with the armor bonus, that gives the Kol a .741 x .832 = 61.6% damage multiplier overall...

By considering just level 3 of each ship's resilience ability, the Kol again clearly comes out as the winner with an 80.8% (Radiance) vs. 61.6% (Kol) damage multiplier...even if the Kol can't use its ability at all, the Radiance then only marginally beats the Kol (80.8% vs. 83.2%) with its damage multiplier...

However, the Kol has more HP overall (5270 vs 5030) so actually when one compounds the total HP and the average damage multiplier, they'll find the Kol to actually be superior...to show this, one would analyze the "time to live", which in general is HP / (DPS x damage multiplier)...for any given DPS, you'll find the "time to live" will be higher for the Kol given the noted HP and damage multiplier of each capital ship...

To sum this up, the Kol is superior to the Radiance (with energy absorption) in terms of resilience even if one doesn't consider adaptive forcefield...while the Radiance has more armor (with energy absorption), the Kol has significantly more hull and has more HP overall...if one considers adaptive forcefield, then the Kol is clearly far superior to the Radiance in terms of survivability...

Now, let us, however, consider tech upgrades...

Advent:

Shields +30%

Hull +30%

Armor +4.0

Shield mitigation +4% (shield bonus)

TEC:

Shields +20%

Hull +30%

Armor +6.0

These technologies result in the following changes:

Radiance:

Hull = 3328

Shield = 3211

Armor = 16.1 (includes energy absorption level 3)

Shield mitigation = 73.444%

Kol:

Hull = 4524

Shield = 2148

Armor = 12.8

Shield mitigation = 69.444%

Damage reduction = 35%

Let us determine the damage multiplier first for each ship (for this, I will assume for simplicity that max shield mitigation will always apply)...our general equation will be:

Damage multiplier = [(% of HP that is hull) x (1 / (1 + .05 x armor)) + (% of HP that is shields)] x (1 - shield mitigation %) x (1 / (1 + damage reduction %))

Radiance = 20.5%

Kol = 22.5% / 1.35 (damage reduction) = 16.6 %

Again, even with technology upgrades, the Kol seriously outperforms the Radiance...

Let us consider the affect of early game support cruisers (hoshiko and iconus guardian)...

The Iconus Guardian absorbs 33% of all incoming damage, putting the Radiance at a 13.5% damage multiplier...the Hoshiko adds 15 hull/s, which we need to equate to DPS...using the inverse of the Kol's damage multiplier, we would find that a Hhoshiko essentially "cancels out" 90.4 DPS....to give some perspective, this is equivalent to about 11 LRMs (considering the damage table of Antimedium vs. capital armor)...

If one considers these support cruisers, at low levels of damage the hull/s is more useful while at high levels of damage the damage reduction from the Iconus Guardian is more useful...let us set up our equation by comparing the "time to live" for each ship...remember, time to live is Total HP / (DPS x damage multiplier)....let us use D to represent DPS...

Radiance ttl = Kol ttl

6539 / (D x 13.5%) = 6672 / ((D-90.4) x 16.6%)

If you do the algebra, you find that D = 531.1 DPS...this means that if the capital ship is taking more than this number, the Radiance + Iconus Guardian is better...if the ship is taking less than this number, the Kol + hoshiko is better...

Since 531.1 DPS is like 64 LRMs, I'd say in general the Kol is in better shape...in a situation where you'd face more firepower than that, you'd have to consider many other thinks like TK push, embolden, and probably a higher level capital ship (which means finest hour and +15 hull/s for the Kol)...

One final consideration is culture bonus...however, if we consider culture bonus, then I think we should assume a defensive situation, in which case I would consider repair platforms to be fair game....

Advent gets an additional +6% shield mitigation, but TEC has a much better repair platform (40 hull/s vs. 30 hull/s)...I'm not going to run the numbers, but the +6% shield mitigation probably would be better than the extra 10 hull/s granted by a repair platform...of course, a TEC advocate could argue that with cielo's embolden and a SB's docking booms, the Kol would be better...Advent could counter argue with a domina's +25 hull/s and a Progenitor's shield regeneration, and TEC could come back with Finest Hour's +15 hull/s 1/3 of the time and a Dunov's shield restore...and we could go on and on and on, not really getting anywhere...

In general though, I think it is quite clear that stand alone, Kol is unquestionably more resilient...even without the use of adaptive forcefield, the Kol is very competitive with a Radiance using energy absorption...I think late game with a full battleball, a Radiance would be harder to kill but any Advent ship should be harder to kill than its TEC counterpart if protected by a battleball...

The last important consideration is the phase missile block granted by the Kol...in a TEC vs. Advent matchup, the Radiance is only going to be more resilient if protected by an entire late game Advent fleet...however, vs. Vasari the Kol would unquestionably outperform the Radiance due to Advent's inherent weakness against phase missiles...

This is not to say the Kol is better overall than the Radiance or is more useful...however, I think it is quite clear the Kol is the most resilient of the two (and probably the most resilient single object in the game other than a starbase)...

Yes if you have economy to support it. but as he plays he never has. Also most moderate to skilled scout and they know exactly what he will do so.... Simple disciple or cobalt spam rush defeats that strategy easily 

Using a level 1 capital ship to completely negate a level 5 capital ship is a pretty good deal.  Two shots from level 1 detonate will clear 240 antimatter, which in practice should leave just about any enemy capital ship on empty.  That's what makes the Radiance good; it works right out the gate and doesn't need to level up several times to be useful in battle.

Agreed; TEC's late game options for capital ships are much more limited.  An Akkan is too fragile, a Sova doesn't bring anything useful to the table for a mid-late game unit, and the Marza remains a niche unit.  The  Dunov and Kol, regardless of their shortcomings, start to look a lot better by comparison.

I always refer to the kol as the flak capital ship. Hard as a nut shell and needs micro-ing its abilities to time many incoming strike craft and take em down. Works best when u have a pair. Otherwise its useless

But they can field a good numbers of bombers along with Malice or Telekinetic Push that kills HC real quick.

The Radiance is useless early game as the Advent since you want to avoid taking action to the enemy until you get a battelball built in order to deal the maximum damage as possible.  They are better later during the middle game as fleet bodyguards useful for using Aminosity to deflect damage from your more valuable ships and stay behind when retreating so the rest of the fleet can escape.