When selecting the next area of research you currently know in advance what the bonus effects of that research will be prior to starting research, the game would be more enjoyable IMHO if that bonus was hidden until research was complete.
(Anyone who really wanted to know in advance, would be able to look up this info via a game guide which I’m sure will appear after launch)
As someone who doesn’t like to have to search for information outside of the game, and finds the unnecessary obfuscation of mechanics pointless - I disagree.
I would go further - I’d like the benefits to be somewhat randomized from pools of relevant outcomes.
There used to be a nice thing called UFOPedia. I miss it a lot.
e.g.
TFD one
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/TFTD
1994 Xcom
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/X-COM
Hope we will build one!
That’s a fair point - The info could be in game somewhere, or even in a manual.
One way or another, people who want to look up bonus info can still make an active choice if that info is available in a location other than the research screen.
However people who don’t want to look at that bonus info in advance have no choice if it is on the research screen.
There will be one in PP:
To elaborate on my statement:
PP should not show what each research benefits are only if the intention of the game is for you to not have these information. As it is a strategy game including multiple playthroughs, that also includes making sure that metaknowledge isn’t negatively impacting the experience.
If a system, like the one suggested by @TrappyZZ was implimented; making research titles a guide as to what we could unlock but not a guarantee - then sure, not showing exact results of the research we are about to undertake would make sense.
As it is now, with research tree granting pre-determined boons, I expect navigation of the research tree to be part of core gamplay loop where player persues research options which would help PP to deal with their current situation. To make such gameplay rewarding player must be able to make decisions while being able to weight usefulness of each individual research. That means either stating what exactly the benefit of each available research will be (like Paradox games), or writing discription more faithful to the theme (because who knows what pursuing certain reseach will reveal exactly?) while at the same time hinting at the resulting gain with enough clarity for the player (like FiraxCOM), that they can make informed decision based on “flavor text” alone.
If such information were not disclosed it means either: game expects you to stumble blindly through research and succeed, making research a random-award-kinda-an-affair 
and making consequential playthroughs undesirably easy due to an ability to conciously manipulate an element of game with unaccounted for meta knowledge.
or
Expects players to have meta knowledge by either failing campaign before, or searching for information in outside sources, which I fundamentally believe to be a bad design.
Putting necessary information in a seperate place (like Phoenixpedia) is just bad UI design.
That’s the long vertion. For anyone who cared.
EDIT: P.S. Phoenix Point screenshot - all rights reserved to UV channel, as watermark suggests 
I know that before playing Long War, I dissected UFOpaedia for a long time and kept it open when playing.
So there must at least be an equivalent somewhere, if it is on the internet it is better because you’re not forced to be in the game to read it. Both even better.
I really don’t want to do like now and try and find formulas to the damage done by bash, body slam, … how acid, virus damages work, … paralysis, stun, …
Where for me i’d give away the tree immediatly, at least for the tech part. If i were an engineer and i need to build a portable railgun i will know that i need better material and more knowledge of superconductivity to make it and if my soldiers see aliens using lasers i want to make my hands on one of them and be able to replicate it
Doing an autopsy is obviously giving an advantage figting this kind of alien, were not to be able to tell my sniper where their brain and heart are
From a gemer viewpoint, and i consider myself a power gamer from DOOM times, you either change randomly the tree every game or not knowing in advance will have a surprise effect only the first time you play, after that will only be an annoyance.
When you really start to play, at high difficulty level, you will have written on a sheet of paper the tech tree, not to waste time in lore related stuff, so there is no reason not to have it in the manual; with a SPOILER warning for those that like to play it easy but following the story
But that advantage could come in many forms, at the moment it’s 10% extra damage regardless of where you shoot an alien, and regardless of what gun. A bonus giving just your sniper an opportunity to discover and target a weakness on an alien would make a lot more sense.
I like the idea of a randomised bonus that you don’t know in advance, it doesn’t necessarily need to work this way for all research, but where relevant it could even be weighted:
60% of the time you get a standard bonus.
30% a higher value bonus instead of as the standard.
10% you really got to learn some useful information from that autopsy, giving both bonuses to the team.
It makes sense that research along the lines of autopsies could work this way.
For other areas, especially those that drive the story, the research could remain the same in all cases.
More RNG ?
More randomness? isnt there already more than enough?
No thanks
There is a fair number of middle ground options between fully predetermined research results and random benefits.
I would favour a middle ground solution where I get a sense of anticipation when im researching something as I wait to learn what benefits my research results bring and then work out if and how i can make a practical application.
Anyways, i now expect the phoenix point science to be a bit of a boring aspect to the game with little or no interesting benefit for most of the projects. Probably research is a necessary chore to get to certain points where there are a small number of progress critical outcomes.
I second this, although I’d add a couple of tweaks.
1: As someone else mentioned, if the research is purely tech related, then you should at least know roughly what type of tech will be unlocked. For example, researching alien grenades would obviously tell the player that explosive capabilities are the thing that will benefit but it might be grenades or grenades AND rockets.
2: Once the game has registered that an account has researched this in a prior playthrough, it should just show up in subsequent games.
The reason is that I’m not at all fond of having to write this stuff down on pen and paper or to have to constantly alt-tab out to check a webpage.
So yeah, it’s just an idea to add mystery for the first time a player unlocks a specific bit of research. I like the first experiences to have as much ‘discovery’ as possible.
Agreed! I remember from the original XCOM, the suspense of finding out the research was part of the fun from delayed gratification waiting for the research to reveal it’s findings.