Tips for first playthrough?

[SoulHunterWirriam]

Most people say to switch off the festering skies for the first playthrough since it can become overwhelming. Is there anything else I should look at as a new player?

[Artek [General]]

IMHO you can and should cut off almost all DLCs for the first playthrough minus "Living Weapons", maybe "Kaos Engines" and maybe "Blood and Titanium".
The latter in particular introduces a faction that got a taste for spamming extremely armored soldiers who will quickly test your understanding of armor mechanics and how to counter them.

As for the general tips...

1) You start the game with incomplete squad of, i think... 4 people? Maybe 5 if you complete the tutorial? Unsure. Anyway: get 5th and 6th soldiers ASAP to fill the spots on the plane to maximize your early game combat efficiency.


2) The green naked rookies from "recruitment" tab are cheap, but weak, starting with minimal possible stats. Their primary selling points are being cheap (in a sense that you just hire them for food... but you still have to dress them) AND telling you their talents outright which allows you to find a particularly neat combo early on.
Find and hire best candidates with crazy talents early and then you can forget about those recruits after like week 2 or 3 unless desperate.

Instead you should research Haven Recruitment Protocol (its one of the first research projects you have to complete i think) and hire new soldiers from havens directly.
They come with higher stats (proportional to their level) and come already prepackaged with their own faction gear (Armor & Gun on Rookie & Veteran, only Armor on Hero and naked on Legendary).
The only downside is that they don't tell you their talents until you already hired them. Inconvenient, but not really a problem.


3) A very important mechanic one needs to understand are the Skill Points.
You see: reaching a max Level 7 with soldiers is not really a problem in this game.
The real problem is having good stats.

Skill points are not only used to unlock new abilities, but also to level up stats - including HP, WP and Speed (how far they can walk during their turn).
Your soldiers will receive a decent chunk of SPs when leveling up, but once they stop leveling up (Level 7) - the ONLY source of new skill points to increase stats further are combat deployments.

Basically: the soldiers that will see the most deployments will become your elite soldiers boosting highest HP bars, Will Points and Speed, irrelevant of their actual level.

Your very first soldiers usually will become your elites, your 2nd B-team will be decent enough, but everyone after that are just expendables.


4) Multiple base facilities stack.
2 Medical Facilities at the same base will heal soldiers twice as fast.
4 Training Facilities will fill up your new recruits with EXP real fast. Faster than missions even.
Laboratories and Manufacturing Facilities stack globally.


5) Get a 2nd plane ASAP. You can craft it OR you can steal it. Latter option is 1000 resources cheaper and you can do it the moment you have a full 6 man squad which will save you a week of manufacturing time.
The downside is that this will set back relationships with that faction for a while, which means you will be behind on getting new research projects from them.


6) Tiamat aircraft is the worst aircraft. Its way too slow and can't get anything time-sensitive done ever, not to mention exploration speed of molasses. The only use i've ever found for it is abusing its' extreme reach capabilities to get to places my other aircraft can't get to otherwise.


7) A mechanic that the game never really mentions nor teaches you about - you can send multiple planes to the same mission and deploy a squad from combined units of those planes.
Every mission in the game allows 8 soldiers always and some extremely hard missions allow you to deploy 9. Always pay attention to that: if mission allows 9 soldiers - then you probably should take that offer. Its always story related mission too.

[SoulHunterWirriam]

Thanks for the tips King.

[Mr Knee]

In relation to 6) "Tiamat aircraft is the worst aircraft", at the very very start, even the worse slowest aircraft is quicker than none. But you shouldn't waste time and resources researching and building them (the Tiamat) yourself. If you do steal one early, retire it as soon as possible to slowly do a route between Haven in order to trade.... which nicely moves onto:

8) Trade is important. Havens will usually produce one or two resources (ie, food, materials and tech) and till trade them for a "good" price for the third. Generally you will get cheaper food from Disciples of Anu, materials from New Jericho and tech from Synedrion. Usually buying from these havens will result in a price that is either break even, small profit, or good profit at other faction's Havens. Play attention to the exchange rates at each Haven (the rate stays the same in each Haven but will differ from Haven to Haven) and do a little math.

So for example:

Haven One: 4 Resource A : 6 Resource B
Haven Two: 4 Resource B : 6 Resource A

So trade 100 Resource A for 150 Resource B at the first Haven and then at Haven Two trade the 150 Resource B for 225 Resource A. And repeat.

You will obviously need to work out what pair of Havens offer the sort of opportunities as the above example.

9) As per 2 above, new recruits are squishy. If you need to retreat and exit the mission to save your soldiers then do so - especially early on when you have yet to fill out your first aircraft.

10) Get a second aircraft as early as possible - early on one of the best sources or resources is exploring. Early on there are a lot of "EXPLORE" places that will basically give you a load of food, materials and tech.

11) If you intend to do the Chaos Engine DLC then wait until you encounter a "Rescue a vehicle" and complete. Vehicle + Soldier makes this DLC easier and I tend to chain rush this DLC. Oh yeah, don't use the market until the DLC is done.

12) Not a bad idea to have a couple of training grounds in your Phoenix Point base. This is where your new recruits will usually be dumped and if you can get them trained up a tier or two before one of your aircraft can pick them up then this is preferable. Plus they might as well train up if you need to leave a soldier there to recover from injuries.

13) You don't need training grounds, medical bay and Living Quarters in all bases. Have them in a few bases as recovery basis eg, one in Europe, one in Asia, one in North America and one in South America. Better (ie, cheaper) to have a base with a couple of medical bays in it than a single medical bay in all bases.

14) Generally NJ weapons do the biggest bang, Synedrion are most accurate and Phoenix Point is the jack of all trade performance. This might help in deciding what weapons to research. And early on when your soldiers are squishy, most people value seem to value accuracy - but this is not set in stone in all cases. Anu's weapons tend to have different mechanics so for example they have a 2AP hand cannon instead of a 1AP hand gun or a Viral Gun instead of an assault rifle.

15) Hand guns for all. With exception of the Technician class, all other classes' main weapon needs both arms working to be able to shoot. Your solders' arms are squishy. Arm all solders regardless of proficiency with a hand gun. It only needs one arm to fire and will always enable your solder to shoot back in self defence. And if both arms are disabled, having a functioning weapon is probably the least of your solder's concerns.

16) A solder can use any weapon in the game but if they are using a weapon they aren't proficient in then the area within the aiming circle is 50% bigger. A sniper using an assault rifle might see a few more bullets missing, but early game if you don't have enough sniper rifles then a less accurate weapon still has value. Likewise a solder can wear any armour - so fed up with your heavy missing all the time? A sniper helmet and trousers might work.....

17) Difference between aimed shooting and simply hitting the "SHOOT" button is important. When you zoom in and aim, all the bullets will fly through the two circles (all within the outer, with 50% through the inner one). However, if the Pandorian is running quickly sideways, it is sometimes worth shooting via the "SHOOT" button - the SHOOT button will result in your solder readjusting their aim towards the middle of the Pandorian's chest. For one shot weapons like sniper rifles, ZOOM is the go to.
However If shooting a burst of bullets, you *should* do more total damage with the "SHOOT" option. However, depending on the enemy, doing a ZOOM shot with all bullets targeting at a single body part to disable it might be the tactic. If the Pandorian is running towards you then ZOOM is useful, but if running from side to side then consider SHOOT. Before shooting, zoom in and watch the Pandorian's movement as to how it will move when shooting. And sometimes it is worth zooming out and then zooming in again.

18) You don't need to kill the Pandorian. You simply need to create the situation so that they have no weapons in which to hurt you at which point they will make a point of running away. Don't waste your AP in shooting and trying to kill an enemy who has no weapon or whose bleed damage is greater than their remaining HP - the later will bleed out before they can attack you.

19) Never play Festering Skies DLC on your first game or x number of games while trying to learn the game. And if you do start the rest of the DLCs, I would recommend looking up the starting mission for each DLC and try to make a point of not starting a second DLC until you finish the first. It is very easy to end up starting all of them and getting overwhelmed knowing what missions you need to do and when. And I'd recommend avoiding starting Corrupted Horizons until you maybe have 2-3 fully staffed aircrafts on the map.

[Lotor13]

Originally posted by Artek General:

IMHO you can and should cut off almost all DLCs for the first playthrough minus "Living Weapons", maybe "Kaos Engines" and maybe "Blood and Titanium".

I would say, all DLCs should be turn off for first playthrough