Phantom Doctrine – Basic Tips

A Few Basic Tips

All credit goes to Rufert!

• You only need to send an agent to an informer to start him giving info, agent does not have to stay after the timer starts.
• Agents and items can freely teleport across the globe for assault missions, UNLESS they are training, in travel or undergoing drug treatment.
• The infirmary is useless. Bring agents on missions and use a health pack on them, it’s faster.
• Exp seems to be static for missions, so there’s no reason not to bring a full squad. 
• A lot of perks are useless or borderline useless, extra exp seems to be a static so the extra exp ones don’t give you much at all. If a perk is being vague about what it does, save the game, pick it, see the stat increase/decrease, load and try stuff so you can see the numbers which are inexplicably hidden. 
• Most useful perks are: Actor, hitpoints and increased speed. Hitpoints in particular if you’re on normal or above, as it allows you to knock out enemy agents. 
• Killing a guard or soldier(sometimes doesn’t work with regular law enforcement) Will make any enemy agent on the map eventually come and check. This is useful to lure them out and closer to EVAC. They’ll beeline for where the guard died, and then stand there for 2-3 turns before going back. 
• There is no rush, ever, take your time. (unless you need to flee and are in combat)
• Mousing over an enemy or civilian will show you where they’ll go next turn, if nothing shows up it means they’ll stay where they are. (I’ve sometimes had this bug out and not show me)
• Always do tactical recon if you have the chance. It’ll let you disguise a dude, as well as have full view of the map.
• Upgrades are locked behind progress in the game, if you find yourself only getting “New agent for hire” on completion of things, that means you’ll need to advance the story to get new stuff. It’s a good idea to hold off finishing investigation board stuff until you’re sure it’ll unlock new stuff.
• Having vision of a room you’re wanting to breach lets you select targets.
• Point blank headshot cannot be dodged. Useful for taking out unaware enemy agents if your stealther has too low health to knock them out. 
• Smoke grenades are good money, always be making and selling them, they sell for about 200 profit. 
• Investigation just does the pinboard puzzles for you, it doesn’t add anything beyond that, ít’s quicker and better to do yourself, especially if you want to avoid auto completing stuff before it’ll give you a better reward.
• Call EVAC as soon as possible, it won’t get compromised unless you enter combat. Some story missions won’t let you do this until certain stuff has been completed. 
• In my 59 hours of play I was forced to do combat once, the times it had been forced beyond that it was just a race to evacuate, as such combat perks were not useful for me. And that one forced combat could in all honestly have been beaten by a team of level 1 agents. The game isn’t hard. 
• There is a “best” way to do drugs, depending on what is available to you. When something says it blocks something else that means the blocked thing can’t be injected AFTER the one that blocks it, meaning you are free to stick it in before. As such with some clever planning you can shove more drugs into an agent than it appears at first glance. Drugs also seem to be the only way to increase agent stats. Near the end with clever drug order I had agents with 2 fire points, 5-6 movement speed and 4 action points. Meaning they could run halfway across the map, knock out and dispose of a corpse in one go. Basically a superhuman. You can do this to most agents.
• Don’t be fooled by good stats on agents for hire, almost exclusively look at their perks. Hires are usually full of drugs skewing their stats, you’ll have to re-do them anyway.
• Don’t worry about sleeper agents, they only trigger if you start combat, regular missions lets you bring them at no risk as long as you don’t break stealth. 
• At one point in the game, the introduction of the move hideout mechanic, you’ll be encouraged to move your hideout, and get a new mission. Do the MISSION FIRST, as completing it will give you a huge amount of danger. Following the guy’s advice and moving right away will transfer that danger to your new place, forcing you to relocate again, wasting money.
• Relocating is instant, and teleports anyone in the HQ to the current site, use this to your advantage.