To the Veterans of Phoenix Point: Year One Edition,
Is it possible to counter the doomsday clock indefinitely? Or will the enemies simply keep growing to a point where they’ll simply overwhelm the resistance?
Is it possible to reduce the number of player-controlled havens to only one and continue to eke out an existence by defending the sole haven and raiding the nearby enemy (Pandoran) bases?
Not forever. It can take a long time before the clock expires, even if one does nothing. Starvation will eventually win out. @MadSkunky did a test. Hopefully he can share it again in this thread.
TL/DR:
This veteran difficulty campaign lasted more than 1 year and 3 months and Anu has inevitable won the faction wars.
Because there are a lot of patches since then it can be different in the current build, but I believe something like that is still possible.
Of course, it won’t take that long at higher levels of difficulty.