After a great many hours playing Stars in Shadow, I began writing faction primers to introduce players to the core elements of playing that faction.

My background is in the design and development of tabletop games (predominantly board games, card games, and miniatures games), but I'm also a big fan of turn-based strategy PC games and of 4X games in particular. The Stars in Shadow developers have done an exceptional job creating unique and compelling races and a faction guide is one way I thought I could celebrate that success.
I've broken the content down into the eponymous four Xs - Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate.

The Phidi are a stunningly unique faction with extreme strengths and weaknesses. They are not the ideal faction for one’s first playthrough of Stars in Shadow, but they contribute greatly to its replayability. One could make the case that the Phidi are the wealth faction or the diplomacy faction, but I believe they’re actually “The Trade Faction,” using high income and diplomacy side-by-side to ensure their success. Let's take a deeper look at each of their four Xs.

When it comes to exploring the galaxy map, the Phidi have no outstanding strength or weakness. Their Scout ship design has low cost and low upkeep, allowing them to explore as quickly as desired, and their high income allows them to support numerous outposts without a noticeable impact on their economy. On the other hand, they cannot colonize as many planet types as other factions, so sparse planetary settlements force a greater reliance on those outposts for exploration.

The Armed Merchant ship design can also be used as a capable scouting vessel. It has a built-in Warp Lane Amplifier and can be equipped with a Deep Space Scanner. Outfitted similarly, the Armed Merchant chassis scout is more expensive to build than the Scout chassis scout but less expensive to upkeep. It also requires a Space Station (or other orbital construction module) making this a less attractive option early on when every Space Station is needed for expansion rather than exploration.

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Exploring the tech tree is just as important as exploring the galaxy itself, though the Phidi have a unique relationship with research once we dig beneath the surface. Phidi population units each produce the standard 0.5 science, their empire produces the standard 5 science per turn, and they get a 30% discount on techs from the sociology field. Sociology isn’t one of the most common tech fields, but 30% beats many other races’ 20% discount, so things are still fairly equal at this point.

The Phidi faction-specific techs are Mercenary Exchange and Coral Blooms. Mercenary Exchange is a starting tech that unlocks their ability to hire mercenary ships from factions with whom they have a trade charter, a facet of their gameplay that will be discussed further in the Exploit section. Coral Blooms are a late-game (if ever) terraforming option with a steep research cost that offers a slight population capacity increase versus island terraforming.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Phidi research is the option to ignore ship weapon and system technologies entirely. They don’t start the game with a single weapon technology, setting them apart from every other faction. They instead begin the game instead with Market Theory, pointing players once again to their role as traders. While this is one possible way to play the Phidi, it means the player is 100% reliant on mercenary ships and on their factions’ technology tree. Researching a few choice military technologies allows the Phidi to manufacture a few ships of their own and to enhance the performance of mercenary ships.

The weird relationship Phidi have with technology doesn’t end yet, however. They also gain rather erratic benefit from techs in the Planetology field relative to other factions. They gain far greater benefits from Bionomics, Habitat Domes, Arcologies, and Orbital Mirrors than others, but they see far more limited gains from Atmosphere Generation, Terraforming, and their faction terraforming tech (Coral Blooms) than other factions. This means Phidi players should typically shoot for Habitat Domes as early as feasible but then work on other areas of the tech tree before investing too much further in Planetology.

Phidi colonists are exceptional, but they come with some potentially frustrating limitations. First the good news: their economic bonus is a game-changer that works hand-in-hand with their early access to markets. Not only does it allow more rapid development of their colonies, but it also gives Phidi players the option to develop fully functional colonies at a reasonable pace without ever building a factory. Most colonies should still build a factory, but smaller population-cap planets with specific bonuses (such as Mineral Rich or Precious Metals) can be effectively developed without ever spending time and/or production on a factory.

Now for the bad news: Phidi colony sites are more limited than any other faction. Most factions require Habitat Domes to settle three of the planet types. Phidi also need Habitat Domes for desert, steppe, and arid planets. On top of that, even some habitable planet types have low population capacity and low fertility. Phidi players should prioritize island and garden planets with an honorable mention going to ocean planets. Despite their low fertility, ocean planets offer relatively high population caps.

As noted earlier, the Phidi can afford to build more outposts without worrying about upkeep costs. They’ll often have little choice in the matter, however, since desirable planets may be few and far between.

The Phidi can find a good use for any neutral race save the Viscid. So-so races like the Lummox and Algorians are like gold to the Phidi. They vastly increase the pop caps on certain planet types and can colonize new worlds if loaded into colony ships. Even the Scavengers turn their otherwise-unattractive planet into one with real potential. Faction races are no different. Though they should be mindful of the diplomatic consequences, gaining new population types from conquest or slavers can be a huge benefit.

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The push for rapid expansion to find suitable planets will quickly bring the Phidi into contact with other factions, allowing them to interact via the diplomacy interface. Fortunately, they have the most favorable “Initial Impression” scores of any race in Stars in Shadow. Unfortunately, they may incur a reputation penalty due to their weak (or nonexistent) military.

Just as importantly, contact with more factions means access to more mercenaries once they’ve established trade charters with those factions. It may even be necessary to hire some mercenaries earlier than one would like in order to negate the “weak military” diplomatic penalties.

The two listed strengths of the Phidi are "Merchant Princes" and "Mercenary Armies."

"Merchant Princes" refers to Phidi colonists producing 2 Gold per turn instead of the usual 1. This seems innocuous on the surface but it has a big influence on play style. Phidi players can purchase more planetary upgrades outright than other factions. They can also purchase and maintain mercenary ships or even entire mercenary fleets.

Additionally, the Phidi homeworld starts the game with a Market, providing even more income, as well as the unique Opil Crystals special, providing one point of diplomacy each turn per market on the homeworld. This gives the Phidi a head start when it comes to building diplomatic relationships to increase trade routes, supplement their research, unlock mercenary fleets, fly further out among the stars, or even form an alliance.

"Mercenary Armies" refers to the custom “Mercenary Exchange” interface in the Phidi Diplomacy menu. The mercenary exchange functions almost identically to purchasing mercenary ships from Marauder minor factions, but it allows the Phidi player to purchase ships from any faction with whom they have (or have ever had) a trade charter.

The mercenary ships use the default loadout of a given ship design using the highest available technology from the Phidi tech tree plus the highest available technology from the other faction’s tech tree. As noted in the Explore section, this gives the option to ignore ship technologies entirely, but it’s not typically the most efficient option. Choosing to research certain ship technologies can help mold the mercenary ship designs although doing so still involves auto-builds, so the ships will never be as optimized as designing a ship of your own.

Taking advantage of the strengths the Phidi faction has to offer provides a player with options. They should focus on forming trade charters with other factions, but their options multiply from there. They can use those trade charters as a means to ignore entire branches of the tech tree, as a supplemental military force, or merely as a means to negate “Weak Military” diplomacy penalties while they build up their fleets.

The Phidi have two options when it comes to exterminating their enemies, building a fleet and buying one (or, most likely, doing a little bit of both).

Phidi ship designs are, for the most part, not so hot. Their two carrier designs are excellent and the Torpedo Destroyer is a solid little ship, but most other hulls are decidedly subpar. Their Cruiser in particular lacks the offensive or the defensive strength one would want out of the hull that forms the backbone of other factions’ fleets.

The Armed Merchant, oddly, can serve as a highly efficient and cost-effective military hull if the Phidi colonies are able to pump them out fast enough to cover the inevitable losses. Supplemented by a few powerful mercenary ships, a Phidi fleet built around these innocuous “merchant” vessels can be quite potent.

Look for a quick path technologically to a solid medium hardpoint weapon (missiles, turbolasers, etc.) to set up your Armed Merchants as the backbone of your military. They’re not amazing, but they’re cheap to keep in the air, and with enough of them, you can get the job done.

As one might expect, Orthin mercenary ships can often be a good way to go, because mercenary ship builds are based on the pinnacle of technology between your two factions. If your own military technology is up to snuff, however, plain old “good hull designs” are your best bet. Human and Yoral Light Cruisers packed with your best technology can show other factions’ what’s what (even if those “other factions” are Humans or Yoral that have fallen out of your favor).

It's impressive that Stars in Shadow continues to see occasional updates, which led me to muse on what I would change about the factions in some magical fairy land where I controlled what came next. The Phidi are another faction where there really isn't much.

With all the underwater imagery, I’d love to see Ocean planets become high-fertility for Phidi. No one else makes good use of them, and it would make a lot of sense for the faction whose advisers look like they’re literally in water. I really don’t see that overpowering the Phidi, especially considering the steep uphill battle they already face when it comes to habitable planets.

I could also see an argument for improving Coral Blooms or at least making it a much easier/earlier technology to obtain. It really doesn’t offer much of a benefit versus Island planets, and it has one of the steepest research costs in the entire game.

Once again, though, there’s really not much worth a second look. The Phidi are an amazing, asymmetrical faction that are a ton of fun to play once you have the basics of Stars in Shadow well in hand.

• July 26, 2020 - Guide uploaded
  
• September 29, 2020 - Exploit section updated to cover Opil Crystals special
  
• October 19, 2020 - Minor tweak to Exploit section to mention the Torpedo Destroyer