Maybe I'm just not seeing the danger of the early game illum spam.  I just played a game tonight as Vasari, in the suicide spot, with no roid, dealing with both a halycron rush and a rival vasari player who wasn't rushed competing with me for neutrals.  After a couple quick battles the Advent player had no capital ships, hardly any illums and needed his neighbor (the vasari) to give him a SB to keep me from taking his homeworld after I took his roid.  He even got a small feed.  If Vasari are so weak how is that possible?  I'm not even on the "skill list" in the multiplayer forum and get beat by better players regularly. 

All I did is what I outlined earlier.  I trapped his halycron with a phase inhibitor and killed it.  I killed his progen outright.  I actually spammed scouts to help with the illums.  Even when I didn't have a penny to build a SB I had a colony frigate around which he was having to go out of his way to kill.  Before we even reached "mid game" he had 1 planet probably 10 ships to his name.  

Late game illum fleets with 100+ are IMO almost impossible to kill, but early game is much less of a hazard.  I started with my egg, got rushed and had to pull back to my home world, made as many assailants as I could and a few flak to deal with fighters.  After I killed his capital ships I started building scout to deal with the illums.  Had it been a 1v1 I would of run all over him with the massive income from neutrals which would of all belonged to me and he wouldn't of had his allies SB at his home world. 

Let me make a quick reply before I go to bed. 

I built 2 military labs once I saw I was in the suicide spot.  I will always research off the bat Assailants, Flak, Repair bays, deploy starbase and phase inhibitors.  All I had to do was construct one once I knew I would need it.

I ordered my egg out of the gravity well the second we made contact.  Lots of people lose their caps trying to squeeze just a little more time out of them, I prefer to play it safe. 

A spammer is more reliant of numbers then skill, hence the reason people complain about how spamming "lacks skill".

I killed both his cap ships with about 10-15 assailants, an egg and enough flak to keep them alive.  Low level Advent cap ships are not hard to kill.  Building a second frigate bay at my HW before I needed helped.  I can always scuttle it later if I don't use it. 

He didn't attack with 2 halycron ships, 1 halycron and one progen.  He didn't use bombers he used fighters.  He could of used bombers if he wanted and it wouldn't of mattered because his carrier cap was dead before it would of made a difference.

I knew he was coming by excessive scouting, that is why I had a repair bay and phase inhibitor ready for him.  If someone gets within two jumps of your HW without you knowing it, you need to be doing better scouting.  Not every scout needs to be set to auto-explore, use the shift key and keep a few scouts back constantly rotating through the planets closest to you and your nearest enemy.  Sometimes people will let you keep a scout at their planet, just sitting there.

I got zero feed the whole match.

The Skirmisher and Navigator need generic buffs, but the Enforcer needs something a little more.  It's a fricken heavy, but it's the most expensive of the bunch with little to show for it.  Its attack upgrade is expensive and high level but offers nothing special. 

With that in mind, here's an idea I've been pondering lately:  change the Vasari wave attack upgrade to steal hull points.  Rather than increasing damage, the upgrade makes it so wave attacks will transfer a small amount of hull points from the target to the attacker.