Phoenix Point: Soldiers

Main: Phoenix Point

Early game

To start with, it's not optimal to have a pure A-Team. It will end with the ship with the A-Team missing out on action that is going on at the other side of the globe, while having nobody expendable in their ship. If you spread your A-team to all your ships, they will all see combat, and survive longer, not being required to take risks expendable soldiers can take.

The early game is from the start of the game up until you manage to have your 2nd aircraft. You are avoiding combat with all human factions, since missions against them is almost certain death for several soldiers, since you have no resources or time to build even the low tech equipment you start with, since your industry is busy building the first car and second aircraft.

Most missions are against Pandorans in melee range or with pistols, or with raiders after you get the Scarab.

Mobility is not an issue, since you can't afford to move in any other way than all hugging each other. If you split up, solo soldiers get mindcontroled and it's over. And you can't spli the group in several squads as that puts them at risk of getting overwhelmed if all enemies attack one group while the other are too far to help out.

Group is six soldiers:

• Sniper
• Sniper
• Heavy
• Heavy
• Assault
• Assault

You want a Scarab ASAP so you can do missions where you will confront humans as soon as possible.

Future bench warmers gets builds that will make life easy during the transition between early and midgame. Then they go sit in the base waiting for haven defense missions.

Soldiers with extra ordinary personal perks will have the longer game in mind, not taking risks and avoiding abilities that are only good in the short run.

Snipers

Start of early game

• The snipers are pure vanilla. They don't need any additional class or fancy personal perks. Just focus on getting the first three abilities for 10+15+20 skill points. Having received them, save any SP for the 2nd class.
• If they have Sniperist, DON'T ACTIVATE IT. Paying 25 SP and losing four will is not worth the extra damage in the early game.
• Strongman won't help them early game either, so no point wasting Skill Points on that before activating their secondary class.
• Early game, you will have issues building armor for everybody, so let the snipers go in with no armor once you unlock ships with more space for more than six soldiers. Keep them far away from danger, using the other soldiers to prevent the enemies to get close to them. Break line of sight if there is a risk involved.

End of early game

Sniper assault

• For the final stages of the early game and start of the midgame, you want to take a future benchwarmer and turn him into a sniper assault. Give him the first three sniper abilities and the two first assault abilities. Then get 12 will and put rest into strength to increase his health points. When the user gets underwhelming due to improved Pandorans, bench him and bring him only for heaven defense as an expendable.
• Until they get sniper rifles, Pandorans shoot with the assault rifle they have on their hand, with very low accuracy. Having a free shot back at them is nice. Being close with a sniper rifle makes it more probable to get a kill.
• With Quick Aim and an Assault Rifle, you get four shots in one turn. You will need 9 will to quick aim three times, and with the last AP go overwatch thanks to Extreme Focus.
• Personal Perks: Biochemist - early Pandorans have barely any will, so chances are good that they will freak out after two bursts if they don't die. During early midgame, they can help out by shooting at high HP melee Pandorans to capture them in order to turn them into food.

Pseudo Assault: If you get the trooper build, you don't need to spend 50 SP on the assault 2nd class. So you don't get Dash and return fire, but you can instead spend 75 SP on WP and strength. Or increase speed from 14 to 20 and you are always dashing for 0 WP. With Trooper, you get even more accuracy and damage, making for a really deadly early game unit until it gets benched.

Pseudo heavy build:

• Strongman - your sniper just turned into a heavy that has +50% aim and can shoot twice per turn! Get the first three sniper perks, and the last one as well for more damage, don't get a second class, get enough strength to carry a minigun and extra ammo, a sniper, (no melee!), heavy body and leg, a sniper helm and a medikit. Maximize will. Then put rest into more strength for HP. You got a long, mid range and melee murder machine that is hard to kill due to all health and armor.

Future consideration

• An invaluable asset for the late midgame is the Infiltrator sniper with the Sniperist personal perk. With the Infiltrator lvl 7 abilitiy, he does about double damage, taking down a soldier in heavy armor in one shot. One of this snipers is well worth a handful of expendables. Perks:
  • Primary: Sniperist - increasing the damage to one-shot-one-kill levels.
  • Primary: Thief - making sure Pandoran snipers wont see him. They have double vision, so you want this build to have 70% stealth.
  • Secondary: Cautious (to be confirmed).
  • Secondary: Reckless (to be confirmed).
  • Secondary: Bombardier(to be confirmed) - with a heavy body, he will be able to shoot rockets that deal 160% damage with 120% range. This will lower his stealth, so take more care.

Heavies

Start of early game

• You want two Heavies during the early game so they can together go collect hard to reach objectives. Doing it solo is just asking to get mind controlled with nobody to free him. They can start the mission by both jumping on a Hight that has been reasonably scouted, in order to see further ahead, or they both walk to a far away lootbox, pick it's contents and then both Jetpack back to the other four before they get swarmed.
• The Heavies main use is not their weapons. It's War Cry and Melee. The heavy weapon has very expensive ammo, so use it only if it will do they job of two normal shots. The third ability requires grenades. You will be able to afford grenades toward the end of the early game.
• The heavies will buy time for the other four soldiers to finish of units getting close. They will also be able to bash enemies that get too close much more reliably. Simply War Cry, and move back, have the snipers take out the ranged enemies and see the melee units move forward to you and end their turn in bash range. The +50% bash bonus with a heavy weapons hurts. Make sure to not under estimate how far the enemy can move, or you will get hit hard.

End of early game

• After having built the Scarab, build a second set of Heavy armor.

Heavy/Assault:

• This can be a future S-Tier build with the right personal perks.
• Dash and jumping adds a lot of mobility. War Cry adds safety.
• Melee, shotgun, Heavy weapons give a lot of flexibility
• Grenades free from the backpack with extra range
• Inspire gives WP to everybody.

Perks:

• Primary: Close Quarters Specialist: Gain shotgun proficiency with +20% accuracy and melee weapon proficiency with +20% damage
• Primary: Quarterback: 25% bonus grenades range and +2 speed
• Secondary: Resourceful: 25% bonus carry weight and +2 strength
• Secondary: Reckless: 10% bonus damage dealt and -10% accuracy - even harder melee and grenades

Sub optimal builds:

• You can get the above sniper/heavy build without the strongman perk, but then you pay 25 instead of 50 for heavy weapons proficiency on your sniper (no aim bonus, no +2 strength!), but you do get melee proficiency as well. And you will need to have a heavy with no abilities until level 5. If you do spend the 25 SP on the first two heavy abilities, then I fear that it will take so long for your heavy to get going that he won't see much action until its time to sit on the bench.
• Strongman: above sniper build, but you do get the Aim bonus.
• Heavy with Sniperist is mediocre. No Aim bonus from snipers 3rd ability, less will and he already has heavy weapons. But a low aim sniper shot is better than your heavy just looking at the distant target holding his minigun.

Future consideration

• Thief: dual as Infiltrator, hardest hitting explosives in the game... not counting cheesing with a pre-damaged berserker/infiltrator

Assault

Start of early game

• The Assaults will provide reliable overwatch fire with a wide cone, be able to Dash to meet new threats and provide two shots per turn without WP use if they don't move.
• There are a lot of personal perks that make them useful for the mid and endgame, so you won't have any issue finding recruits with promising personal perks. Unfortunately, they all have shitty stats on the highest difficulty, so don't mentally assigned them to your A-Team unless they have two or three perfect personal perks.
• Dash is great and should be activated on all assaults. The rest of the abilities should only be activated if they enhance the build they are going towards, or if they are future bench warmers.

End of early game

• See Sniper/Assault above
• See Heavy/Assault above

Future consideration

• Strongman: Terminator build, with Berserker as secondary class.
• Sniperist: Long range terminator build

Classes (NOT UPDATED)

Classes

	Assault	Sniper	Heavy	Berserker	Infiltrator	Technician	Priest
Assault Dash (10 SP). All other skills are useless until you get to dual spec. Close Quarters Specialist: dual as Heavy Strongman: dual as Berserker Sniperist: dual as Berserker Trooper: dual as Infiltrator Healer: dual as Technician	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Sniper Early skills (45 SP) enable accurate high damage from long range Strongman: dual as Heavy Sniperist: dual as Infiltrator	Assault/Sniper Trash: Mediocre at best, don't waste early game SP on this.	-	-	-	-	-	-
Heavy Melee (10 SP), War Cry (15 SP), high armor and Jet Pack. Close Quarters Specialist: dual as Assault Strongman: dual as Sniper Thief: dual as Infiltrator	Assault/Heavy S: Close Quarters Specialist: Dashing 170% melee (base skills), Rapid Clearence (30 SP + Speed + WP) Grenades (40 SP + strenght), AP (25 SP) and WP (25 SP) to allies.	Sniper/Heavy A: Strongman: +50% accuracy (base skill) and 2nd minigun burst (base skill + WP) with loads of extra damage (30 SP + WP). Free pistol overwatch (base skill). Inspire (25 SP).	-	-	-	-	-
Berserker Shows up early game. With the first three skills (45 SP), they do well if played correctly. Close Combat Specialist: dual as Heavy Strongman: dual as Assault Sniperist: dual as Assault	Assault/Berserker S: Strongman: Terminator build S: Sniperist: Long range terminator build Both above builds require 120 SP to get their core perks going, and then some for stats. The more SP you dump into this builds, the better.	Sniper/Berserker Trash: "king of the trash tier builds".	Heavy/Berserker B/A: Close Quarters Specialist: Not spectacular. Base ability of both Heavy and Berserker, so can start spending SP early. Combination gives shredding grenades. Potential for growth.	-	-	-	-
Infiltrator Won't show up until mid game.	Assault/Infiltrator S: Trooper: Best scout, Sneak attack with Rifle for 160% damage. Deploy Decoy (15 SP), Sneak Attack (30 SP)	Sniper/Infiltrator S: Sniperist: 175% sniper rifle with Sneak Attack (30 SP)	Heavy/Infiltrator S: Thief: Sneak attack (30 SP) with Boom Blast (20 SP) explosives for 150% damage. Not sure if Inspire (25 SP) triggers on worms, well worth it if it does. Otherwise, not sure if explosives will mostly only soften up or actually kill in combat. Decoy (15 SP) with heavy armor.	Berserker/Infiltrator Trash. Slightly better with Sniperist, but there are better builds with that perk.	-	-	-
Technician Won't show up until mid game.	Assault/Technician B: Any	Sniper/Technician C: Any	Heavy/Technician B: Any	Berserker/Technician B: Strongman C: Any	Infiltrator/Technician C: Any	-	-
Priest Won't show up until mid game.	Assault/Priest A: Any	Sniper/Priest Trash	Heavy/Priest A: Any	Berserker/Priest C: Any	Infiltrator/Priest B: Any	Technician/Priest A: Any	-

Mid game

Strategy

The strategy is to have a group that projects firepower in a cone in front of them.

• An infiltrator Snipers that shoot twice per turn at long range
• Grenades to remove cover and armor when they start to close in
• A berserker that can use an assault rifle to shred armor twice on enemies closing in
• One assault infiltrator in front that projects decoys and returns fire that brings down enemies close to death
• A heavy sniper that kills them off, triggering Inspiration while doing so.

While this happens, you want two flexible and mobile units that can take care of any unforeseen events and secure flanks. They should be able to deploy turrets to secure flanks, shoot sniper range, assault rifle range and heavy melee, the two of them being able to ambush and close in on anybody avoiding the projected cone of engagement through maybe some building at the side. Maybe an assault infiltrator so they can daze with a heavy melee hit, or assault berserker that can deliver three melee hits after a dash. Have them have a sniperist perk or Trooper perk for versatility.

Finally, you want somebody that can heal and give AP where needed, maybe an Assault priest or assault technician.

Skill points and team assignment

Optimally, you want your A-Team to engage in as many missions as possible to maximize their stats through gaining SP. Problem is, if you put them all in one team, they will probably start suffering casualties, and they soldiers with the right perk aren't easily replaced. Also, missions become a lot easier with a car in it.

So optimally, as soon as you get more than one attack squad, split up your A-team and let the soldiers with sub-optimal perks take the risks. Don't feel bad about losing xp by having ground vehicles. The vehicles take the place of lower tier soldiers, and them losing XP doesn't matter much. The main thing is that there should be enough missions to have multiple ships occupied full time with them, while you have other ships for exploration and trade.

Armor

On the toughest difficulty, you recruit soldiers without armor. Creating armor takes a lot of time and resources that have a lot of competition from building ships, weapons and facilities. So you won't have enough high quality armor for all soldiers unless you are willing to delay other vital objectives. So how to do the best of having soldiers without armor?

• Let A-team snipers in low quality armor or unarmored do tough missions with lower tier soldiers taking the lead in heavy gear. Bring a lot of Medikits, as long as they are at top health, they won't die to one shot. Do this missions in 8-man ships, bringing a vehicle, so 2-3 A-team snipers and 3-2 lower tier soldiers
• Let front line A-teams take easier missions with lower tier snipers un-armored.

Front line assault

For the mid game, a great front liner is awesome. Thsi is the first one that will take fire, so optimally:

• He should have Return Fire, so it's an assault.
• He should be in Heavy Armor. But not necessarily be a Heavy class.
• The heavy armor comes with high accuracy malus, so you want a Sniper class to bring in +30% accuracy for long distance return fire.
• On second thought, there is going to be a lot of mind control, panic and broken limbs when exposed. So Bererker is a must have for a secondary class.
• You want a gun that can hold a lot of shots, with good range.
  • Deimos AR-L, Synedrion Laser Assault Rifle, has 32 range (independent rifle has 17, Phoenix rifle 25) and has 60 ammo, almost twice as much as the others.
• A lot of health will ensure survival, so pump a lot of SP into strength.
• As an assault, he will be able to to self-heal directly from the backpack
• As Berserker, he will get 25% less damage from enemies within 10 tiles. Bring a shield in case it gets crowded.
• Bloodlust will increase return fire damage.
• Neither speed nor will is of importance here, just pump strength after the core perks.
• Add a Fury-2 rocket launcher on the heavy armor. Explosives will soften up the enemies, and this unit is a good spot for shredding armor and removing cover. Berserker ability increases this. Note he won't have proficiency to use it.
• Personal Perks:
  • Main: Farsighted will make sure return fire triggers. Without it, fewer return fire will trigger, and without that, much of the focus of the build goes to waste.
  • Secondary: Trooper will increase accuracy of return fire.
  • Secondary: Cautious will further increase return fire accuracy.
  • Bombardier: Proficiency for Rockets. Will not help grenades.
  • Bonus: Healer will make self-heals more efficient, and give +4 WP with farsighted.
  • Bonus: Quarterback adds range for the grenades.
• New Jerico heavy body armor has -8% accuracy, legs have -4%.
  • Synedrion sniper helm has +10% accuracy
  • New Jerico sniper helmet has +9% but has 18 armor instead of 14.
  • New Jerico heavy helmet has 33 armor, but -7 perception instead of +7, and that matters for Return Fire. Also -4% accuracy.
• Fill backpack with grenades and medkits.
• This is not the Terminator build, even though it has the same dual classes. This build disregards speed and will for strenght, and does not value Sniperist or Strongman. However, if you get a Terminator build with the above personal perks on the other two per slots, then build it for speed and strength and have the soldier have this role until the reaches maturity as terminator.
• What if you get a heavy with those perks? He will do good initially. With Melee and War Cry, he will kill those that walk up to him with his heavy weapon bash, war cry so they don't have any AP for actual attacks when they reach him. Walk forward, war cry, dash away, walk away. 5 WP.
  • 50 SP of the first two abilities, 50 SP for 2nd class, 60 sp gained from leveling to 4, 40 for taking all four abilities, rest gets pumped into strength. When sniper fire and psychic abilities get into the game, this unit becomes a bench warmer.

Inspire Finisher

One of the main issues during the midgame is that your units will be drained of WP, and you want to replenish them in order to keep key abilities such as decoy and second sniper shot per round to keep going. Priests take a while to get going, and it might take a while before you get one good enough to bring with your A-Team. The alternative is to have a Heavy that gets all the kill shots and uses Inspire to give all allies 1 WP per kill. The unit will be getting two WP per kill, so he should also have a good way of spending that.

The easiest way to do that is to have the heavy kill with a sniper rifle and stand in central spot at the back and finish of units one at a time. The main goal here isn't to kill with one shot, but to get the finishing shot. So you want the entire team to prepare the battleground to have the heavy finish off everybody. For that reason, the main goal isn't to hit hard, but to hit accurate, and be able to either relocate and shoot fast, or to be up high undetected and shoot over the entire map.

Weapons of interest for this build:

• Synedrion Laser Sniper Rifle - 63 range, 15 ammo, 3 AP
• Phoenix Light Sniper Rifle - 51 range, 7 ammo, 2 AP
• Grenade launcher, 25 base range, 2 AP, 1 with Boom Blast

For this build, neither the melee or the War Cry of the heavy will be of significance, since you want him to stay safe and focus on finishing of units, not being the front line risking being damage and forcing to retreat, resulting in mass WP starvation. Boom Blast might be useful to get two enemies with one hit if they are close to each other. Rockets might also be good for that, although expensive. A grenade launcher is more affordable.

Are there better builds than a straight up Sniper second class? You can acquire sniper rifle proficiency through a personal perk, but you would then loose out on the +30% aim on of Snipers. That can be mitigated by also picking up the Cautious personal perk for +20% accuracy -10% damage. So what will the other class be if not sniper?

• Sniperist - Gain sniper rifle proficiency with +25% damage and -4 willpower (the lowered willpower is tolerable since you don't need a high max)
• Cautions - 20% bonus accuracy and -10% damage dealt
• Bombardier - Gain mounted weapon proficiency with +20% range and +10% damage (increases rocket range from 25 to 30. 42.5 with Boom Blast.)
• Thief - 25% bonus stealth and +1 speed
• (Grenadier perk works only with grenades, not the launcher nor rockets)

Having this high reliance on grenades and a preference to be on a central location without being spotted makes infiltrator as good pick. With an infiltrator as second class, you get to boost up your base attacks with +50%, but we have already established that damage dealing isn't the main function. However, boosting grenades and using them to start a fight is another story.

• Lead the initial assault with a long range stealth rocker using Boom Blast (The Action Point cost of grenades and other explosive weapons is reduced by 1 and their range is increased by 50% till the end of the turn) it your scout spots them before they spread out.
• Then when they get closer, long range stealth grenades, using Surprise Attack (Attacks from behind gain shock value equal to 3 times the damage dealt) throwing the grenades behind weaker enemies in order to have them do nothing for a turn.
• Blow up cover for only one AP per grenades
• If you get two worms close to each other, a grenades will get both of them.
• if you got a single assault able to feed AP, he can throw as many as six grenades on a single turn. If there a lot of enemies, that can be used to kill a large pack.

Using Boom Blast will dent your WP, but it will be refilled when you start finish of units with the sniper rifle. When it's time to finish them off, if there are fewer of them, then the light sniper rifle can shoot twice at a slight aim disadvantage. Are there alternatives to the sniper rifle?

• Synedrion Laser Sniper Rifle - 120 damage, 63 base range, 15 ammo, 3 AP
• Phoenix Light Sniper Rifle - 90 damage, 51 base range, 7 ammo, 2 AP

The Synedrion laser rifle has 12 tiles more range compared to the 51 tiles of the light sniper rifle. That's an increase of 23.5%, but it will cost 3 AP to use. those 3 AP can be combined with a Decoy or Boom Blast. The best alternative to consider would be the assault rifle with the best range:

• Synedrion Laser Assault Rifle - 30*6=180 damage, 32 base range, 60/6=10 shots, 2 AP

Now, the Sniperist personal perk gives more damage, but no higher accuracy. Trooper does give +20% accuracy, so that increases the assault rifles base range from 32 to 38.4. That only 75% the range of the light sniper rifle, and 60% the range of the laser sniper rifle. Even with the Trooper perk, assault rifles are not a better alternative.

Vanish with high stealth/accuracy gear isn't as good as with a heavy armor on the front line, but still useful as a dump for all the extra WP. And spiders can provide be used as expensive decoys or in order to secure your flank.

So this unit will provide:

• Turn 1: Run forward with a high Perception scout. Find the enemy cluster. shoot them with a 170% range rocket that deals 112 (160%) damage, dazing some of them for 336 points (112*3), causing them to have a delayed charge. Use the other 3 AP use Spider Drone Pack (Deploy 3 Spider Drones with one action, 2 AP). Move with last AP
• Turn 2: While they are dazed, Rocket Jump to a suitable location. Navigate the three spiders.
• Turn 3: Activate Boom Blast and use the Grenade launcher to shoot two 175% range stealth grenades that deal 75 damage (150%), each dazing for 225 points and knocking down cover. (Another rocket or using a mounter laser costs now 0 AP)
• Turn 4: If combat is ongoing, and there fewer of them, throw down a decoy and kill one with the laser sniper rifle to give 1 WP per kill to allies, all 7 of them, on top of the two he gets for himself,
• If there is a need to re-locate, Vanish will provide that and renewed stealth, followed by more grenades or sniper rifle fire
• Finish off two units per turn with a light sniper rifle

This build does not need a lot of speed. Nor does it need benefit much from extra strength other than making the decoy more durable (doesn't increase grenade launcher range - not confirmed). However, do max out will:

• Jet Jump (2 WP)
• Boom Blast (5 WP)
• Deploy Decoy (4 WP)
• Vanish (3 WP

Could this work with any other Class? Assault? Up front, you lose out on the stealth bonus, +50% stealth damage from grenades, spiders, daze from back attacks and decoy. Instead, you get:

• Ready for Action: Reloading and inventory actions do not cost any Action Points
• Rapid Clearance: Recover 2 Action Points for each enemy killed, until the end of the turn

Assaults are able to pick up grenades from backpack instead of using a grenade launcher. Odin grenades have 16 range at 20 strength, increased to 20 with Grenadier:

• Grenadier - 25% bonus grenades range and +2 speed (works only with grenades, not the launcher nor rockets. Base range of Odin Grenade is 16, increased to 20 with this perk.)

That is still less than the 25 tiles of a Grenades launcher, but with Boom Blast, you get to throw four grenades per turn instead of two. The Grenade launcher has 10 grenades using one slot, while each individual grenade takes a backpack slot. The grenade launcher does 60 base damage, instead of the 50 that a normal grenade does. So you get less damage, less range and less backpack space, but you get a free ready weapon slot to use something else on. But I didn't find anything else useful to equip instead for this build. Each grenade launcher shot costs 1.4 tech and 11 materials vs 1 tech and 10 materials for a standard grenade.

Only other useful ability seems to be Rapid Clearance. With this, he can:

• Throw two grenades from the backpack and then keep shooting with the light sniper rifle for as long as he keeps killing enemies.
• Start with 4 AP and use Rapid Clearance, spend 3 AP for the laser sniper rifle, go down to 1 AP, get a kill, back to 3 AP and then kill again. You got two shots from the laser sniper rifle for 5 WP. A sniper would have spent 6 WP for the same feat. And chances are, you still have 2 AP left, usable with the light sniper rifle or maybe some grenades.

Late game

To do

According to that guy on reddit

Classes

	Assault	Sniper	Heavy	Berserker	Infiltrator	Technician	Priest
Assault	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Sniper	Assault/Sniper A: SDS+Farsighted+Healer B: Any Trash: Sniperist	-	-	-	-	-	-
Heavy	Assault/Heavy S: Close Quarters (+Quarterback) C: Any	Sniper/Heavy A: Strongman B: Any	-	-	-	-	-
Berserker	Assault/Berserker S: Strongman S: Sniperist A: Any	Sniper/Berserker Trash	Heavy/Berserker B: Any	-	-	-	-
Infiltrator	Assault/Infiltrator S: Trooper A: Any	Sniper/Infiltrator S: Sniperist A: Any	Heavy/Infiltrator S: Thief A: Any	Berserker/Infiltrator B: Sniperist Trash: Any	-	-	-
Technician	Assault/Technician B: Any	Sniper/Technician C: Any	Heavy/Technician B: Any	Berserker/Technician B: Strongman C: Any	Infiltrator/Technician C: Any	-	-
Priest	Assault/Priest A: Any	Sniper/Priest Trash	Heavy/Priest A: Any	Berserker/Priest C: Any	Infiltrator/Priest B: Any	Technician/Priest A: Any	-

Colors

S-Tier: Superhero colors

• Hair: 10
• Primary Color: 14
• Secondary Color: 12

A-Tier: Yellow and black are natural colors for danger

• Primary Color: 10
• Secondary Color: 13

B-Tier: Generic Security guard collor

• Primary Color: 10
• Secondary Color: 6

C-Tier: Pure black, hides in shame

• Primary Color: 10
• Secondary Color: 10

Trash: Pure purlple, just like toys

• Primary Color: 15
• Secondary Color: 15