I started the game with a bit of trepidation but also looking forward to the tension between factions. I expected hostilities would translate into raids, stealing resources, sabotaging structures, destroying aircraft.
Then Synedrion went to war against New Jericho.
A Synedrion death squad attacked a New Jericho haven in North America and murdered all 7500 inhabitants. With infiltrators and snipers, the haven inhabitants hadn’t even noticed they were under attack until people started dropping dead left and right. They panicked and tried to run, tried to hide. But Synedrion infiltrators appeared out of nowhere and shot them as they ran. The civilians were herded into the power station, locked in and the generators rigged to explode. Boom. 7500 humans killed.
New Jericho of course retaliated. Synedrion families were hiding in basements, but the New Jericho soldiers just hosed every hole they could see with flame throwers.
By the time Phoenix Project strike teams returned from defending havens from Pandoran attacks in Europe and clearing out a lair in southern Asia, over 30.000 people had been slaughtered across America and Australia. And the death squads were already attacking other havens.
And the leaders send me messages as if we were allies? Where is the option to arrest them and put them on trial for war crimes? Or send in a strike team and execute them? They order the systematic slaughter of children.
I don’t want to play with these factions. I just want to shoot their leaders.
Wow… now that you put it this way… thats really dark.
And what’s even worse is, with that kind of military strength any one of the factions could easily wipe out all the pandoran nests, but they’d rather fight each other.
Phoenix should be playing peacemaker and uniting these folks against humanity’s common enemy, not picking a side!
In 30 hours I saw New Jericho clear out one Lair.
That’s what I see too. Only a few survivors killing each other for stupid principles. No way to be a “tampon” between them, and no way to stop war or slap the leaders.
I have affinities too with some factions, and I though it was some roleplay with this. But it seems you just pick one to - maybe - have an ending with (didn’t finish the game yet) ? There was more diplomacy mechanics in XCOM Apocalypse and UFO Afterlight 
I suppose we’ll get any DLC : 5 patches are already anounced
I get NJ killing off ANU as they in their view are spreading the plague more.
BUT NJ going to war with SYN - the guys that want to live in peace?
OR Syn going to war with ANU after saying they would love to find ways to coexist with everyone
Is it possible to make the factions be at peace? They do have an opinion slider for each other, so if you carefully managed relations, would it be possible to make the 3 co-operate, at least until the Pandoran threat has been dealt with?
Or am I supposed to just pick one faction and delete the other 2?
I get the impression that you are supposed to pick one faction and work against the others, but I have a really hard time doing this since, in theory, we are all supposed to be defeating the real threat.
As a result, I do manage to raise their opinion of me gradually over time, to the point eventually when I get to 50 percent and get access to their research without doing raids on other factions. I takes a long time though.
And then when they go to war with each other and start wiping out tens of thousands of each other I just find it depressing. It’s like, why am I even trying to save you idiots?
It would be one thing if a faction would capture another factions haven, but they dont. They wipe it out, killing everyone. It is horrible.
I agree with others that there should be lines of diplomacy or even military actions that could be done to try to end the wars or prevent them from happening.
I think it should be possible to act as a global ‘referee’ or peacekeeper and convince the 3 factions to set their differences asside until the real threat is addressed. In my opinion it should be possible, if a faction has at least 25 attitude of you, to get extra/different options in dilemmas where you can increase 2 factions opinion of each other. This should be hard to do and it would delay your tech, leading to a more challenging playthrough, but you could get a different, more positive game/ending this way.
Or you could just pick 1 faction and accept all the war crimes (even those should be toned down, I agree). Better dead than red as they say.
我是中国玩家，我也是被这个设计所“激怒”，注册了账号过来发帖。谢天谢地不只是我有这种抱怨（中文的玩家社群也有这种抱怨，但是也有人选择“承认这种设计的合理性”…）。
就我个人而言，我认为这是一种“情感欺诈”。
我们一直认为玩家所扮演的角色是“人类的守护者”-尽可能保护人类免受海鲜（中文社群对潘多拉的简称之一）的进一步伤害，尝试拯救世界。（好的，我承认我受到了“新”xcom的影响）
如何在游戏里表现“保护人类”？通过防御避难所避免海鲜摧毁他们。
而事实？我（不是玩家角色，是玩家自身）所努力保护的人类自相残杀起来，而且是以“摧毁避难所，杀死所有人”这种反人类的战争罪行的形式…
这是对我（玩家本人）努力的嘲讽。
如果是我的游戏水平不行，你（游戏制作人）嘲笑我我可以忍受。如果你给我战胜困难的（正常的）可能性，我愿意付出时间和智慧去挑战看似无解的绝境…可是…你通过这种方式“嘲笑”…
解决建议
1-（最关键，也可能是最简单的）势力之间的战争是夺取避难所，而非摧毁。引入避难所夺取机制（就是改变避难所归属）。
2-（如果坚持人类内战能（不是必然）摧毁避难所）将势力摧毁避难所视作一种战争罪行游戏内容的一部分。如果一方实施过多的战争罪行会遭来“受害者”的报复…包括“确保毁灭”报复（SYN的武器化纳米机械、ANU的病毒武器大规模杀伤运用…NJ…核弹很“纯正”）。
3-玩家角色通过一系列任务避免战争罪行和其后的“确保毁灭”报复（暗杀激进派领袖、确保和谈会议安全、摧毁受害者的“报复武器”…）。
4-在和平时期的外交努力（我觉得NJ一定很希望得到SYN的驱雾技术，可以利用这个作为筹码，让玩家牺牲与其中一方的关系换取双方的关系缓和）。
以上文字会通过谷歌翻译成英文
The following text was translated into English by Google
I am a Chinese player, and I was also “irritated” by this design. I registered an account to post. Thankfully, it’s not just me who has such complaints (the Chinese player community also has such complaints, but some people have chosen to “recognize the rationality of this design” …).
Personally, I think this is an “emotional fraud”.
We have always thought that the role of the player is “guardian of humanity”-try to protect human beings from the further damage of seafood (one of the Chinese community’s abbreviation for Pandora) and try to save the world. (OK, I admit that I was affected by the “new” xcom)
How to express “protect humanity” in the game? Avoid seafood to destroy them through defensive haven.
And the fact? The human beings I (not the player character, but the player) are trying to protect and kill each other, and in the form of war crimes against humanity, such as “destroying haven and killing everyone” …
This is a mockery of my (player’s) efforts.
If my game level is not good, you (the game producer) laugh at me and I can live with it. If you give me the chance to overcome the difficult (normal), I am willing to invest the time and wisdom to challenge the seemingly unsolvable despair … but … you “mocker” in this way …
Suggestions
1- (The most critical, and probably the simplest) war between forces is to take haven not to destroy it. Introduce refuge mechanism (that is, change haven ownership).
2- (If it is insisted that human civil war can (but not inevitable) destroy the haven) consider the destruction of the haven as part of a war crimes in game. If one side commits too many war crimes, it will be retaliated by “victims” … including “ensure destruction” revenge (SYN’s weaponized nanomachines, ANU’s large-scale use of viral weapons … NJ … Nuclear bombs are “pure”).
3- The player character avoids war crimes and subsequent “ensuring destruction” revenge through a series of missions (assassination of radical leaders, ensuring peace talks, destroying the victim’s “revenge weapon” …).
4- Diplomatic efforts in peacetime (I think NJ would very much like to get SYN’s fog-removal technology. You can use this as a bargaining chip to allow players to sacrifice their relationship with one of them in exchange for the relaxation of their relationship).
Hard to know what the Devs are planning. They might have plans to make it so there are more interesting interactions than choose your flag and wipe out the others. Those plans might’ve been dropped in development.
The rushed release and the huge emphasis on faction tech doesn’t make me hopeful.
That wouldn’t make a difference. The basis of the war is that one side wiped out their settlement and spared no one, so the next leaders would do the same (though you can bet there’d be an eternal grudge against Phoenix Point for political assassination). The Synedrion don’t even have leaders, they all voted on genocide. With that knowledge, wiping out the Synedrion wholesale makes some sense.
It seems the war of genocide is based off the fact resources are so scarce that even slavery is not an option. That has happened historically, tribal warfare where every member of the other tribe was killed, often with torture. The brutality of it is meant to work as a deterrent against future wars, no tribe wants to go to war since losing is so terrible, and war is so terrible because scarce resources mean it has to be dramatic.
I’d be interested in this idea being explored. Terror missions between factions should have the ability to temporarily cow them, or at least neighbouring havens. And all out wars of genocide should not occur until hatred is sufficiently high.
I am hoping a bit that faction aggression is so intense because the content from the planned DLC is missing and they use this to add conflict and thus content to the game. But I’ll wait a year until all the new content is added and uninstall for now.
I supported a game on FIG that was going to be about saving humanity from monsters. Not a game about choosing who to commit atrocities alongside.
I too am kind of disappointed about the setting. XCOM was really interesting because it put you right at the start of the alien invasion, it was truly Enemy Unknown. PP seems to be about the second or third invasion.
So, rather than the player learning alongside the characters, the player has to read a novel to properly understand what is going on in this strange new world.
I’m OK with a grim story about warfare, but I don’t like to be tied down and forced to go along with it. Playing peacekeeper, playing all sides, that’s what makes a game about factions interesting in itself. Without that, it’s just picking the colour of your flag and the enemy flags.
Hopefully, the game will be good by the time you come back. You could always play Xenonauts in the meantime.
The issue is that you should play peacefully, that’s where you get all the benefits of the game. Like OP said “And the leaders send me messages as if we were allies?” But can you do that after all the atrocities?
If you pick a side as @Xevious said, you are basically doomed, cause every haven destroyed rises the meter. And at one point, I had NJ attacking all havens, destroying everyone - while being my best friend 100% BFF. This kinda lead to the very red problem https://i.imgur.com/O8Q4gqx.jpg
So obviously chosing a side is not a good option either
That seems very poorly designed and balanced!
I like the theme overall, but you should handle it differently. Like, the loss of a haven would probably mean you lose its help and resources, and that maybe enemy events that increase the mist are more common in that region. It shouldn’t just be a sudden boost.
Also, after a genocide, it’d make sense to take over that haven, and just give it a smaller population and less resources.
I think you should just have a chance to deal with these issues. PP is the smallest faction but I have to run around the globe and save havens from attackers even if they are my friend faction instead of fighting Pandorans - and I wish the game tells me this before I actually started.
A Synedrion death squad attacked a New Jericho haven in North America and murdered all 7500 inhabitants. With infiltrators and snipers, the haven inhabitants hadn’t even noticed they were under attack until people started dropping dead left and right. They panicked and tried to run, tried to hide. But Synedrion infiltrators appeared out of nowhere and shot them as they ran. The civilians were herded into the power station, locked in and the generators rigged to explode. Boom. 7500 humans killed.
New Jericho of course retaliated. Synedrion families were hiding in basements, but the New Jericho soldiers just hosed every hole they could see with flame throwers.
By the time Phoenix Project strike teams returned from defending havens from Pandoran attacks in Europe and clearing out a lair in southern Asia, over 30.000 people had been slaughtered across America and Australia. And the death squads were already attacking other havens.
Are these details actually described in the game, or do you just have a vivid imagination?
Those are unsaid things, that happen when a small group of soldiers wipes out a haven of thousands of people. 
Just the probable cruel reality behind a simple message “haven destroyed”