Geoscape

Geoscape / Strategic Layer

The pace in Phoenix Point on the Geoscape is very fast: on any day you can do any number of missions with the same squad, and as you assemble more squads, you will do even more missions each day. The war against the Pandoravirus can be won within around 2 months, and in that time you can do a hundred tactical battles, or even more. Chances are you will never press the fast forward button.

Time is the most important commodity in the game not only because you are running against the Doomsday Clock, but also because you need time to explore the world, acquire resources, build facilities, manufacture items, research technologies, etc.

You also want to be always doing those things that don't cost any resources, like Exploration, improving diplomacy rating through Special Missions, Scavenging ops, and Research.

When considering on what to spend resources, such as whether to Activate Bases, Build or Repair Facilities in them, Manufacture Equipment or Vehicles, or Recruit additional operatives, you should bear mind that you want to invest in that which allows you to do more in less time, and that means fielding a second team with its own aircraft as soon as possible (and later a third and possibly a fourth): you can do twice as many things in the same time with 2 teams.

Recruiting

There are several ways of getting new recruits, besides your initial team of 4. And, while we are on the subject, losing one or even a couple of these recruits in the first missions is not a big deal, they are easily replaceable (their equipment less so, however, and you will lose it if they die on a mission requiring evac and you don't pick it up manually).

Having said that, if you are finding the combat too difficult you should definitely restart at a lower difficulty. The difficulty curve in PX is actually pretty good (at least for the first half of the game): the game starts easy and becomes harder.

- Recruiting from Base. After you complete the Haven Recruitment Protocol research roughly every 3 days you will be presented with a choice of 3 recruits

- Recruiting from Havens. After you complete the Haven Recruitment Protocol research you can hire recruits at Havens

- Rescue Scavenging missions

- Certain text adventures in LOIs

Bases

You don't have to build anything right away in your starting base and you will probably want to spend the resources elsewhere, most likely to activate a second base sooner rather than later.

Remote Base Activation

Once you complete the Phoenix Point Archives research you will be able to remotely activate any of the 17 inactive Phoenix Point bases, which appear on the Geoscape as .

You can activate the bases remotely: you do not have to travel to the base with an aircraft and you can activate bases that are outside your reach.

Hovering with the pointer over each base provides information on the facilities currently there, which of them are damaged and how many spaces to build additional facilities are currently available:

This sign missing pic means that the facility is damaged and in need of repairs.

Activating the first base costs 330 and 60, and activating each new base costs increasing amounts of resources. The formula is initial cost (so 330 or 60) + number of previosuly activated bases x increase in cost ( 60 or 10).

For example, activating the 4th base will cost 330 + 60(3) = 510 and 60 + 10(3) = 90, while activating the 10th base will cost 330 + 60(10) = 930 and 60 + 10(10) = 160.

Bases in areas covered by the Red Mist are infected and after activating them you will have to complete a mission to clear the infestation (during this mission the Pandorans will focus on destroying facilities at the base, so the faster you dispatch them the less damage the base will suffer).

By activating a Base that has a Satellite Uplink or building it if it doesn’t have one, you can discover new POIs.

This is essential for building POI chains to distant or remote locations, or ‘bridges’ between North America and Europe or Asia, South America and Antarctica, and sometimes South East Asia and Australia.

In fact, there are 3 bases that you should probably get on any playthrough - the one in Groenlandia to bridge America and Europe, the one in the bottom tip of Southern America (Tierra de Fuego) to access Antarctica and the one in Alaska to bridge East Asia and America.

The pro-strategy for discovering many POIs quickly that every experienced PX player knows is to advance ASAP to Supportive diplomatic rating with all the Factions, as once you achieve Supportive status with a Faction all its Havens (around 30) will be revealed to you (see Diplomacy).

The main reason you want to activate bases is to scan the surrounding area using the Satellite Uplink facility to find POIs and Pandoran Bases (see the War Against the Pandorans). However, you also want them as resting points for your squads (see Stamina) and to build or repair facilities.

Buildings

Some things to bear in mind about buildings in Phoenix Point:

- The effects from facilities are cumulative, e.g. each Living Quarters replentishes 2 Stamina per hour to each operative at the base, so 2 Living Quarters will give +4 Stamina, and 3 Living Quarters +6 Stamina to each operative. Same with Medical Bay (that heals +4 HPs per hour) and the Training Facility (+2 Experience points per hour).

Experience points unlock levels, which give 20 Skill Points (SPs) and access to skills (more on that in Character Progression).

- The operatives receive the benefits from the facilities as long as they at the base, regardless of their condition (so an injured or a tired operative will continue to gain XPs from the Training Facilities at the base), or if they are assigned to a vehicle (as long as the vehicle is at the base).

- Research Labs and Fabrication Plants shorten the time needed to research and to manufacture, respectively, so you will research twice as fast with two Research Labs, and manufacture twice as fast with two Fabrication Plants, but you can only research one technology and manufacture a single item at a time.

The above means that to maximise the effect of Training Facilities, Living Quarters and Medical Bays you may want to have them all at the same base. Particularly, you may want to have a bunch of Training Facilities at a single base where you keep your troops during rotation, together with at least one Living Quarters and a Medical Bay. You will want to have Living Quarters in other bases spread around the globle because its the only way to recover Stamina, but as health can be restored with a medkit, Medical Bays are, in fact, optional.

However, there is no reason to group Fabrication Plants or Research Labs together, as their utility is global.

- The one must have been building at any base and which you should build ASAP if the base doesn't have one is a Satellite Uplink. Research Labs, Fabrication Plants and Living Quarters are nice to have, and as mentioned above you will want one base with a bunch of Training Facilities, where you put in rookies to train them to make new squads/draw replacements for casualties (this is generally referred to as "stables".)

- All bases come with a Generator (which is necessary to power the facilities: you only need one per base), a Hangar (repairing aircraft is largely unnecessary, as they can only get damaged during a text adventure, but sometimes you may want to repair land vehicles), and an Access Lift (allowing you to evac from a Base Defense mission). When activating a new base that has damaged facilities, as a rule it is unnecessary to repair the Hangar or the Access Lift, if they are damaged.

- You are unlikely to ever need more than one or two Stores among all your bases.

Research

Just start with the only available option. Always be researching something.

One important idea to bear in mind is that tech progression in Phoenix Point is mostly horizontal: most of the stuff you will research will be different, not necessarily better. One of the most effective weapons throughout the game is the Hel II Cannon (HC), which is one of the starting weapons.

However, there is some verticality - some items are actually just better (for example, there is a 2.0 medkit) - and also the new different items open up new tactics.

For example, the grenade launcher, or the shotgun, while not replacing any of the starting weapons, are not less useful because of it.

The more Research Labs you have, the faster you will research. Please note that the Mutation Lab and the Cybernetics Lab (if you own the Blood & Titanium DLC) also count as Research Labs for purposes of speeding up Research pending check

Researching is key to progressing the story and winning the game, so eventually you will want to have many research labs (at least 7 or 8) as the latter research takes quite a bit of time.

You also get a lot of buffs from faction technologies (like massive boosts to the output of facilities, including research labs, but also buffs for tactical combat, such as resistances/immunities to certain damages) and researching Pandorans provides resources and damage buffs against them (the autopsies the former and the vivisections the latter).

You can reverse engineer Factions' weapons and armor in your possession to be able to manufacture them (and ammo for the weapons).

When it comes to reverse engineering items, be aware that:

1) The process destroys the item you are reverse engineering.

2) You will obtain the tech anyway once you reach 50% with the faction (see Diplomacy for more).

Manufacturing

You can build vehicles, armor and equipment. Some equipment, like ammo and medkits can be made instantly. Everything else takes time. On rookie and veteran difficulty levels recruits recruited at Havens (once the Recruitment Protocols tech is researched) will come with their own armor and weapons, but every 3 days you will have the option to recruit between 1 and 3 “naked” recruits, and you might want to build some basic weapons and armor for them. You can also acquire recruits through special scavenging missions, and you will want to replace their low quality weapons and armor (not least because you can’t manufacture additional ammo for their guns).

As to vehicles, you can build a Scarab, which in the early game is very powerful - it has a lot of armor and shoots devastating rockets. However, you can also acquire ground vehicles on special scavenging missions and given that scavenged vehicles cannot be converted into resources, perhaps it’s best not to manufacture them to avoid wasting resources.

In addition, a vehicle occupies half the slots in the Manticore, meaning you can only bring 3 soldiers on a mission. The main problem with that is that soldiers gain SPs per mission (the amount depending on the difficulty level), so you want to bring as many of them as possible and the Scarab and other vehicles take too much space.

Sooner rather than later you will want to build a second Manticore, to field two teams simultaneously. Or you can just steal a craft from a Faction – see Diplomacy below.

Shröedinger's bag: inventory in Phoenix Point and teleportation

At least as of the time of this writing (September 2020), items in Phoenix Point are instantly transferable to and from an operative's inventory to a common inventory, regardless of location. An operative midflight somewhere in South America can drop all the items he is carrying to the common inventory and another operative midflight somewhere in Siberia can instantly equip it.

Therefore, it is entirely possible to share the same set of equipment between 2 or more teams at the price of excruciating tediousness (there is no unequip button, nor role templates to quickly assign the equipment to another operative).

This is known as "equipment sharing" and many players refuse to make use of this teleportation property (or at least claim so in public, including this author) (and I really don't share equipment between my squads) (except when I really need to) (or want to).

Diplomacy

There are three factions that have an attitude rating with the Phoenix Project and with each other. You can achieve a 100% (allied status starts at 75%) with the three factions even as the three of them are at war with each other.

You increase (or decrease) the rating by completing mini text quests on the Geoscape during exploration, depending on your response to certain prompted choices, defending havens from attack (see Pandoran bases for more info), destroying Pandoran colonies (you get +5 rep with all Factions for destroying a Nest, +10 for a Lair and +15 for a Citadel) and stealing/raiding/sabotaging at the havens.

When you reach a certain threshold (24, 49 and 74), the faction gives you a special mission, and you cannot increase your rating beyond that until you complete it.

This means that you should complete all special missions ASAP.

Once you reach 25% (supportive), the faction reveals to you the location of all of its havens. At 50% you become aligned, and the faction gives you for free (i.e. instantly researchable) all the technology it has researched so far. At 75% you are allied and you can research faction technology that the faction itself hasn't researched yet.

You can also trade at the havens and get new recruits, after researching the corresponding technologies.

It used to be that raiding (to obtain resources produced at the haven), sabotaging (to obtain favor with the other factions), or stealing (to get faction research, or a flying craft) from havens dramatically decreased your rating with the haven (preventing you from trading with it) and with the faction. However, now you only experience a minor penalty with the faction for attacking it and major boost in reputation with the other two factions, so the more you attack all factions the happier they will all be with you. It sure is a crazy a world out there!

You should particularly be aware of how warring with a faction complicates obtaining its technologies. To steal technology, you have to assault a research district, where you win by activating 3 specific tiles. It is entirely possible to do this in one turn without firing a single shot, these missions being all but broken. However, what you get is the next technology in the research tree of the faction. So, for the first raid you will get the weapons tech, for the second the armor tech, and so on and so forth. Even if you have already reverse engineered all the factions weapons and armors, and want to get some specific research (like something that provides a major boost to the output of some of your facilities) you will still go in the same order, getting research that you don't need.

You can do these tedious missions one after another to harvest experience and SPs until you get all the tech researched by the faction up to now, or reach the aligned status with the faction (50% rating) and get everything for free at once, and keep getting new research as the faction obtains it.

You can go the entire game without attacking other factions and become allied with all of them, regardless of the relations between the factions.

Grand Theft Helios

A favorite tactic (some call it exploit) is to steal one or two Helios from Synedrion in the first week (why Helios? Because they are fast!).

The number of things you can do at the same time are limited by the number of planes you have, so having more planes very early on greatly accelerates your progress.

You can use the extra aircraft to Trade (engaging in Commodity Arbitrage to obtain unlimited resources), or to explore the Geoscape and do tactical missions, once you get a second team going. (If you savescum you can explore the Geoscape without any risk - just save before each exploration and reload if it turns out to be an Ambush)

The diplomatic penalty for stealing is not really an issue, as you can easily offset the negative rep by doing sabotage missions on behalf of Synedrion. (And if you need to offset the penalty from the sabotage missions, just do more of them against other Factions: because the rep reward is much higher than the penalty, the more sabotage you do against all Factions, the happier they will all be with you.)

Pandoran Evolution

At the start of the game there are only melee Pandorans with little to no armor: the Arthons (aka Crabmen), the Tritons (aka Fishmen), Fireworms and Mindfraggers (aka facehuggers). The Pandorans evolve very fast, so chances are you will be receiving your first intelligence report on Pandoran evolution within days. (missing pic)

How does Pandoran evolution work?

- Pandorans evolve in 3 main ways: new types of creatures (for example Chirons), new specialists within the type (for example, Arthon Tyrant, wielding an MG and a Shield), and new improved strains of specialist (for example, Arthon Tyrant Alpha).

- The variations between the different specialists of the same creature type and the different strains within each specialist are expressed in their names, descriptions, stats, weapons and mutations.

- The descriptions are mostly for flavor, the stats follow the same rules as those of humans (see character stats ), and so do the weapons (see about weapons).

As to the mutations, some of them are actually skills or abilities available to human characters, like return fire , while others (like Triton's Pain Chameleon) are unique to Pandorans.

- You will only meet in the field Pandorans that you have previously seen in the evo report (the only exception to that is the Chiron you encounter in the first Anu mission on Legend, which is described as "The Source of the Infestation").

Though the evolution is always producing more and more dangerous Pandorans, in the field you will meet both higher and lesser evolved strains.

The enemies on a given mission are deployed according to a budget, where each Pandoran is worth a certain number of points, and the more evolved types are more expensive. The game "rolls" the Pandorans that will appear on the map initially and also each reinforcement, so you can get a few "expensive" Pandorans, many "cheap" Pandorans, or a mix of the two.

I think the Pandorans are mutating/deploying to counter my strategies!

Nop, unfortunately it's just chance (or RNG, in the parlance of our times) and our innate desire as humans to explain it as something more meaningful.

There are currently some random variations in the Pandoran evolution, so the creatures you are seeing in this playthrough will be slightly different from the ones you will see on your next one.

Also, there are plans to bring some reactivity to Pandoran evolution in the future.

The War against the Pandorans

You will see a red blob of mist near your first base Phoenix Point and another one somewhere on a different continent. They grow and new blobs appear. Inside the mist and hidden from view, Pandoran structures (or bases) will appear. At first, Nests, then Lairs and finally Citadels. They will launch attacks against Faction Havens and eventually active PX bases.

It goes thusly:

Every once in a while, a Haven, usually inside, or close to an area covered in Mist, will get attacked by the Pandorans. The attack will have some numeric value, and so will the defense. If the defense is higher than the attack, the attack will fail even if the player doesn’t come to the rescue. If the attack is higher than the defense, the attack will succeed unless the player sends a squad and wins the haven defense mission.

A successful haven defense mission has a chance of revealing the location of the Pandoran base from which the attack was launched: if the Pandoran base is within the scanned area of a PX base or a PX base was attacked, this chance is of 100%. If not, it's 50% on the first successful defense and 100% on the second successful defense to an attack send from that base. The player can then send a squad to destroy it.

If the player procrastinates, the base will evolve to the next stage (a Nest will become a Lair, a Lair will become a Citadel) and will continue attacking nearby havens and PX bases.