It uses your supply. If you have no supply, it doesn't give you anything...

Normally I get a mixture of two carriers, two heavies, three assailants, and one sentinel.

(generally not all at once, but a mixture of these)

ya, if you use it right... it gives... i wanna say 75 fleet supply worth of stuff.

First level is 45-60 fleet supply.

Second level is 75-90 fleet supply.

Both tiers have the same randomShip weights.

Light - 2

LongRange - 6

Heavy - 6

AntiFighter - 3

Carrier -5

This ability gives you a superb number of units for a very reasonable price.  As has been mentioned, this presumes you have open fleet command for it to fill.  There are three issues it has beyond this:

1) It's very expensive to research, and that's not even considering the cost of the phase stabilizers themselves.  You need at least 4 or 5, if not 8 or 9, for this ability to be worthwhile.

2) You don't control which types of units you get, so it's somewhat of a gamble that you'll get good unit types (Assailant, Sentinel, Carrier) over bad types (Enforcer, Skirmisher). 

3) The Kostura is probably the most effective "match-ender" weapon in the entire game, and it's easier to unlock than this ability, so it's kind of redundant in that sense.

Yeah! I agree with that. I remember getting a capital or 2 a fair while back when I used to use it. Unless I'm mistaken. It was awhile back.

RA never gave capitals.....ever

Yeah, your probably right. I still definitely remember this happening though, perhaps it was a mod. Its hard to remember whats what these days.

ok the more i use this the more i feel that its a rip off, first you need to get both levels of the phase tunneling speed increase, then the ability itself only seems to be viable at level 2, and finally it costs 2500 dollars and 500 crystals (!) to use once (i used to think it spawned multiple ships over time). is it actually less cost-efficient compared to building the ships yourself, especially if you have both slave labor and optimized construction?

@a110: the fixed upfront cost is high and you need multiple phase stabilizers (min 4), but the credit / resource cost is way more efficient than building yourself. It varies but usually it is 2:1 bang for the buck in favor of RA. Still you only get some types of units.

Btw are Enforcers really that bad? I tend to avoid skirmishers but are enforcers in the doghouse to the same extent?

No, it's much more cost-effective than building units.  This is the whole advantage of the ability. 

Not quite so bad since their damage buff, but still a questionable unit. 

Biggest problem is that they don't use phase missiles, which is a big deal late game, especially against Advent.

That is true, phase missiles when upgraded are insane. I just find that enforcers draw a lot of enemy fire, are relatively tough to kill and if I skimp on them, I end up losing too many lrm too fast. But for sure assailants, sentinels, and bombers rule with phase missiles.

On the other hand I have come to the conclusion that illuminators suck early / mid-game, though they do have a place end game with the various beam upgrades. I have found every time I splurge early on illuminators I get my head handed to me. Much better to get drone hosts, guardians and stretch (painful as it is) for destras.

As I've said several times already, illuminators were essentially god last version, and when the bug causing them to deal unreasonably high damage was fixed it was revealed to be a rather mediocre unit in reality.  I suspect next patch will probably buff them.

yeah, Illuminators now need a bit of a buff, they got nerfed soooo hard due to that bug of theirs that when the bug was finally fixed they became worthless

lol Darvin posted the same time I did

so, as advent its better to live on guardians and expensive carriers until i make it tier 5 military and destras? will this also work in multiplayer? what if they get flaks

They probably do need a buff now since Advent is now the least played race online.  But, are the developers even aware of this fact?  Do they even read these forums?  From what I can tell, they have no way of knowing about this and you're the only guy that's really posted about it so far.