Subverters are quite difficult to counter if they're used well.  Obviously if you can just kill them with strike craft from a distance, or charge them with light frigates and bring them down, that's preferable.  However, a good player will back up his subverters with a balanced fleet.  There simply isn't an easy way to get at them.

Light frigates upgraded to bring down their antimatter reserves can be very helpful, and any defensive support cruisers that can buy you time to bring down the subverters are well worth the effort.  Otherwise, your only real option is to try to keep your fleet spread out so the subverters don't get too many targets inside their area of effect.  This is most challenging for Advent since you want to keep your fleet close together to benefit from a Progenitor/Guardian combo, but for TEC it isn't that hard.

Back in Vanilla (when I was a noob) I had a Vasari AI use subverters with distortion to amazing effect.

I was playing as Advent and it was late game so I was seriously teched/fleeted up. I was so eager to smash some Vasari skulls together and jumped a 1500+ supply fleet to where I knew their fleet was. I was expecting a bit of a slaughter and... I got one... but not on the side I expected. I couldn't understand why so many of my fleet weren't doing anything. All those glorious illuminators (on their dazzlingly bugged throne) were just sitting there! My caps looked like they had decided to have a bit of a picnic and had invited all the peaceful Crusaders for a bloody tea party.

Luckily when I was playing my early games I usually saved it before leaping into a game deciding contest so I was able to reassess. For the rest of that game I rarely attacked a grav well that had over 10 subverters stationed in it.

when do you build a third capital ship and what should it be

i used to go halcyon-progenitor-rapture but i read that the halcyon is generally better than the rapture, now im not sure

Halcyon-Progen-Halcyon or Halcyon-Halcyon-Progen or Progen-Halcyon-Halcyon, basically rinse and repeat Halcyons and Progenitors (think 'spam' in the spam-baked beans-spam skit in Monty Python). Rapture is pretty good but for the concentration aura to be effective I believe you need the drone hosts close to the Rapture. Vengeance is really only useful on a Radiance with Animosity running. On the other hand a high level Revelation can be devastating as you spam Reverie and can lock down two caps almost continuously. Radiance is a one trick pony (though detonate antimatter is a good trick). Still in my first six caps (if I get that many) it is often three Halcyons + 2 progenitors. Progenitors rock with guardian shield bubbles. Moreover, malice when used with ruthlessness can be very very good.

The Rapture is definitely the best support capital ship in the game (not saying much; the other support-type capital ships suck), and it has some great abilities.  The Progenitor and Halcyon are definitely better overall, but as a third capital ship a Rapture is a great choice. 

I personally think Vertigo is the most underrated ability in the game.  Extremely dangerous if you can level this guy up, since it's going to more than half the damage of the affected enemies.

when is a good time to get culture?

i find that i usually come to a point in the game where i realize that i don't have any culture and hastily try to build it

Darvin3, I've also run into the problem with ships on the empire tree not maintaining the normal order. I found that this was due to activating/deactivating a mod without a restart of sins. The mod I was running was the Equilibrium mod. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the heads up; that probably explains it.

Well, if your opponent gets culture operational, you'd better plan on getting it soon, yourself.  It's sometimes viable to try and kill the enemy culture generators or station capital ships to resist enemy culture, but those are short-term solutions to a long-term problem.

Other than that, it's really about picking a time when you have some spare money to spend.  Unless you're Advent, culture can be really inconvenient to get and it's easy to let it slide completely.  It's just about finding a time and place where you can afford to pay for it. 

Updated RAting for CS:

1) Skirantra

2) Progenitor

3) Halcyon

4) Kortul

5) Rapture

6)Sova

7) Akkan

8) Jarrasul

9) Radiance

10) Marza

11) Antorak

12) Vulkoras

13) Dunov

14) Revelation

15) Kol

What's the best way for advent to implement culture? drop culture centers or go to the SB upgrade? does this mean heavy shield upgrades as well (guardians are common, but progress further?), or does that have no effect on shield mitigation? any point to offensively grabbing culture centers w/o the same tier tech upgrade (other than possibly making opponent spend money on countering it)?

Culture upgrades can be risky in that it limits your defensive abilities later on...however, they can also force your enemy to build more culture centers and less trade ports/factories...

In general, I find that culture SBs are only useful if the nearby enemy planets are asteroids...since asteroids can only have 3 logistic structures, being forced to build extra culture centers can limit your enemies ability to extend their trade route or have factories on the frontline...planets with more logistic slots won't be hit as hard...

One level of evangelization node is very useful on your front line SBs and shouldn't hurt you very much. Your damage output is via meteor control anyways. I often build 3 defensive, 2 mass disorientation, 2 meteor control + 1 evangelization. The exception are if there are dogfights early enough before I can get meteor control that require a single weapon upgrade slot. Evangelization nodes + temples of communion can help make your conquering planets easier. I mean is there anything more annoying than glassing a planet and you can't touch it due to hostile culture?

which factions strikecraft are better overall?

which factions fighters beat each other 1-on-1?

it appears that advent has more squad members but weakest individual ships, vasari has the least members but best individuals, and tec is in the middle

i personally prefer vasari since their health makes them less vulnerable to flak bursts/telepush and they have phase missiles

The best way to compare the factions' SC is to do a squadron v squadron comparison...

In general, TEC have both the worst fighters and worse bombers...even though they have more HP per individual craft than Advent SC, the overall damage of TEC SC is rather pathetic compared to the other two factions...

Vasari have the best bombers...while technically Advent bombers do more raw damage per squadron, Vasari bombers have phase missiles which, when upgraded, makes them far superior to Advent bombers, especially against capital ships...

Vasari and Advent are almost identical in the damage their fighter squadrons can do...however, Vasari fighters use phase missiles, which makes them better against ships...

In general, Vasari have the best SC...they unquestionably have the best bombers, and their fighters are just as good (if not better) than Advent fighters...if you take into account the HP of each individual SC, Vasari SC are a lot harder to shoot down as well...add on Repair Cloud and late game Vasari SC can be near to impossible to kill...

In terms of the balance of health and damage, they're mostly the same.  The biggest difference is that Vasari use phase missiles for both fighters and bombers, which gives them a tremendous advantage when attacking frigates, cruisers, capital ships, and starbases.  The only place they're weaker is in fighter vs fighter, but this isn't actually as important as it may seem, since Vasari also has the best flak for bringing down enemy fighters.