Newbie question regarding factions

So here's the situation. Myself along with a handful of friends have recently started playing Forged alliance. We generally play 5 FFAs or 3v3s depending on how many people we have online.
We play at a very non-competitive level. Other than one person (who is generally more RTS savvy than the others), none of us are very aggressive and as a whole, our game styles could be considered decently passive (especially in the free for alls, as it seems at least to me that overly aggressive early game can be detrimental late game when playing FFAs).
My main question is this: in this kind of setting (as compared to the much more aggressive competitive setting) what would be a very brief description of the pros and cons of the different factions? Basically, I'm trying to decide which faction to focus on. I've tried all of them and have certain beefs with each, but as the game is very deep there are many aspects that I haven't been able to address or look into. I'm not looking for an in depth comparison as that's definitely not practical but I'm mainly just looking for a few pros/cons without the lens of competitive play attached.
Thanks in advance for anyone who responds.|||Basically you want the best 'Turtle' faction..
I would say the UEF do pretty well in this regard:
1) Shields are a good size.
2) They have engineering stations that can support shields, repair units/structures and assist factories. The only other faction with engineering stations are the Cybrans.
3) They have good artillery options
4) They can even shield their naval bases and units with the T2 Shield Boat
The Cybrans shield options are both expensive and time consuming, as well as being inferior in most cases. They do however have the advantage of Stealth units and what-not.
The Seraphim have the strongest shields (I think) but I really hate how their Anti-air options suck (no tracking), especially for T3.
I'm not really all that familiar with Aeon heh.
Hope that helps|||Rather than simply a turtle faction, it's more just without the extensive T1 harassment. People still play decently aggressive but you don't see the commanders and extensive amounts of T1 units roaming around the map. Rather than purely defenseive, it's more of a slower style of play. If that makes any sense.
The easiest way I could make a comparison is if you look at balance while disregarding most of the T1 differences, as rarely does anything happen before T2.|||Aeon get Paragon. If they can turtle long enough to get one up, and then properly exploit it with massive amounts of build power building arty and GCs and whatever else you like, it is game over in their favor. That is if you know your opponents are timid and won't gang up on you when they see your paragon is being built.
They also have the next best shields after Seraphim, and I prefer their TMD to that of other factions. The GC is a great ground experimental as well. The only drawback is no engineering stations, but that can be solved by simply spamming tons of T1 or T2 engineers.
Don't spam restorers, or you'll encounter a lot of hate from folks calling you a "resto noob"|||Yeah I've been trying Aeon recently and I like their feel (though I don't rush a paragon). I do like Cybran but I always feel that, even if I play aggressive and take advantage of their strengths, possibly allowing me to take out one person, there will be someone else who simply teched up and will have the advantage over me. Combining that with the fact that they don't have mobile shields ends up with me being somewhat unable to mount a strong offensive against someone who is really turtled in and ahead of me tech wise (as I was offensive early).|||Cybran are very good in the early game.
You stand a good chance of beating your opponents within 30 minutes or so. Any longer and you will probably lose.
The monkeylord is a very quick, cheap and powerful experimental early in the game.
UEF are a really good turtle type faction. Great sheilds, T3 point defence, Support Commanders with fantastic sheild bubbles. Good T3 artillery. Kennels drones for rapid fabrication.
Seraphim are OK at this too.
Aeon are generally good throughout the game though I dont rate their sheilds. (Although they're still WAY better than cybran sheilds!).
Dont be afraid to share engineers with your team mates.
I play Cybran mostly, but rather than build cybran shields, I will always get a UEF or seraphim engineer to build their shields instead.
A great little tactic is 5 x Cybran Bricks and 1 x T2 cybran mobile stealth in a UEF T3 transport ship. Put together a couple of these and you can do some serious damage to someones base, and they often dont see it comming until it way too late.|||UEF & cybran are the easiest to play. If you’re playing relatively passively, then UEF for sure. They have the best combo of point defences & shields (plus have the only t3 point defense). Aeon are the skill faction, only use them if you’re confident in your ability to manage all your troops, all the time. seraphim I dunno, never played that much with them coz I don’t fancy too many of their units.