XCOM Class Analysis: Psi

Psionics aren't a class... at least, not in this X-COM.

Nonetheless, I'm lumping an analysis of Psi in with the class analyses, because there are some fundamental similarities. The foundational skill followed by branching skills, underdeveloped as the 'psi tree' is, conforms to class dynamics.


Mind Fray
If successful, does 5 damage to a target and inflicts penalties to Aim (-25), Will(-25), and Movement (?) for two turns. (1 turn cooldown)

Your basic Psi skill.

This is a bread-and-butter skill, able to be spammed against a wide variety of targets. It can be used to reliably one-shot weaker Aliens -more reliably than shooting at them, quite often, and it doesn't use ammo or anything- and can also be used to set up higher-Will enemies for a Mind Control once you've got that. The penalty to Aim it applies also makes it a good option against anything you don't expect to kill in the same turn, reducing the likelihood of them getting any damage out. Since using Psi skills at all builds "psi experience", your troops who have only just tested positive should endeavor to spam it so they can get to more advanced skills, making it convenient that it's actually quite good in its own right.

Mind Fray is also a nice boon to Operatives if you get successful Psi testing before you're done with EXALT... less so if you choose to use a Gunslinger Sniper for the purpose, since Mind Fray isn't stronger than a Gunslinger Plasma Pistol, and is in fact weaker if you also have the Foundry upgrade to Pistol damage, but oh well.

The actual formula for Mind Fray's chance of success takes your Will, adds 50 to it, subtracts the target's Will, and then the final number is your chance of success. So against a 10 Will target (Such as a Sectoid), if you have 60 Will then 50 is added to it to become 110 and now you're guaranteed to succeed in the Mind Fray because their 10 Will only brings you down to 100, which becomes 100%. If you are playing on Classic, you suffer a penalty of -10, and on Impossible this penalty is -20, so you need a bit more Will to achieve the same results. (The Aliens are not penalized equivalently)

Mind Fray cannot be used on Drones, Cyberdiscs, Sectopods, or Seekers. It can be used on Mechtoids, and will actually benefit from HEAT Ammo's damage bonus in that situation, bizarrely enough.

In practice Mind Fray is quite reliable at landing, especially for your soldiers that have benefited from Iron Will on every level-up. Assuming an average of 28 Will gained (for non-Iron Will soldiers), you end up with 68 Will -even on Impossible, in conjunction with Mind Fray's bonus to the chance, that's 98% before the enemy's Will is factored. 25 is as high as the Aliens get outside of Berserkers, Chryssalids, Zombies, Sectoid Commanders, and Ethereals -so if it's not immune by being a robot or resistant by virtue of being melee or a Psi Alien, your average Colonel will have a 73% chance of a successful Mind Fray against Heavy Floaters. (The peak Will Alien outside of the five "actually decent Will" Aliens) If they benefited from Iron Will on every level, the average Will gain is doubled -instead of 28 being the average gain, it's 56.

That's just under 100% against Heavy Floaters. In practice, Will is factored into the chance to test positive, and a player will tend to want to test their highest Will soldiers first to both maximize the odds of a successful test in general and also so that a successful test will get them a better Psi unit. So usually you'll be talking a soldier with high enough Will to 100% consistently get a successful Mind Fray against all but five types of Aliens.

This is without doing anything to boost Will, either. Note that Lead By Example's Will boost does benefit Psi rolls: if you can arrange for your Squad Leader to be high Will, then even poor Will soldiers will do perfectly fine with Psi in combat. Further note that Lead By Example spreads everything -Will boosts from Armor, Mind Shields, Psi Inspiration, Medals... everything. Medal Will bonuses aren't factored into psi, but I'm pretty sure Medal bonuses spread by Lead By Example are a loophole.

Mind Fray is very solid, thanks to how reliable it is and how effective it is when it lands.


Psi Inspiration OR Psi Panic
All soldiers within 4 tiles of the user (Including the user) gain +30 Will for two turns and Mind Fray and Psi Panic are removed (4 turn cooldown) OR forces the target to Panic. (2 turn cooldown)

Psi Panic has the same chance of success against a given target as Mind Fray, using the same formula.

Personally, I prefer Psi Panic. Not because it's all that good, exactly -most of the time you're going to be better off trying to kill a target- but because Psi Inspiration is even more situational than it. Your soldiers almost never Panic unless an Ethereal of Sectoid Commander uses Psi Panic, Mind Fray and Psi Panic are both some of the least threatening things the Aliens that have them can do, and the +30 to Will is generally unnecessary even when trying to Mind Control enemies if you've set your soldier up with Psi gear.

In fact, let's talk about Panic for a moment.

According to this page, which is supposed to be pulling directly from the game's own files, regular Panic works like this (Just in case the link dies at some point):


"If an event happens, your soldier rolls a d100, if the result is lower than the target number he stays cool. If not, he panics. E.g. a soldier with a will of 30 will have a 20% chance to panic when wounded.

(willpower+this)<D100=success

eMoraleEvent_Wounded, 50

eMoraleEvent_AllyCritical, 45

eMoraleEvent_AllyKilled, 45

eMoraleEvent_ImportantAllyKilled, 35

eMoraleEvent_AllyTurned, 35

eMoraleEvent_ZombieHatch, 25

eMoraleEvent_AllyPanics, 45

eMoraleEvent_MutonIntimidate, 30

eMoraleEvent_Disoriented, 45

eMoraleEvent_SetOnFire, 20

-5 on all rolls if the soldier is wounded. -10 if his Hp are below 50%"

Note that some of these events don't seem to actually be used by the game. I'm pretty sure "ZombieHatch" and "SetOnFire" are not actually used by the game, and I'm not even sure what "Disoriented" might be referring to. The post also does not specify how the injury-based penalties stack. I'm personally guessing that what it means is that if a soldier has ever been injured in the mission, they operate at -5 Will, and if they are currently below 50% of max health it's upgraded to -10, but it may be as bad as -5 per time they got shot at plus a further -10 if they're currently below half health, I'm not sure.

In the best-case scenario, though, this boils down to: anybody with 80 Will is incapable of Panicking without Psi Panic being used on them or another external penalty being applied. (eg Mind Fray's Will penalty of -25)

The worst-case scenario... can obviously extend infinitely, but that's only a modest help to the utility of Psi Inspiration, given that it's impractical for a soldier to end up stacking Will penalties from injuries very far. Because they'll die.

I'm also unclear as to the timing of these penalties -if the soldier gets shot, Will tests, and then the penalty gets applied to later rolls, then a Will of 70 is enough to ensure they can't Panic until after they've been injured at least once. (The example the post gives suggests the penalty isn't applied to the very first time a soldier gets shot, but it's possible the poster did not think to actually test the point)

Also, assuming that Intimidate is the strongest Panic-inducer the game actually uses (Which it seems to be), it's even more generous than I'm making it sound: a Will of 60 would be enough to ignore all normal Panic sources.

Also note that the example the post itself gives tells us that a fresh Rookie -whom has 40 Will base if you're not playing with Not Created Equal- only has a 10% chance to Panic when wounded. This means even if you're a fairly bad player you will basically never see anyone Panic ever -you'd basically have to have soldiers repeatedly drop to 0 HP without dying so they stack Will penalties like crazy. Even Rookies taking shots at Mutons will only have a 30% chance to Panic, and if you've gotten New Guy bought by the time Mutons start showing up, they'll be a Squaddie already and it'll be a 24-28% chance. If you've got Iron Will already, make that 18-26%.

So yeah. Panic is very, very rare in the game. So rare it's sort of puzzling that it's in the game at all.

To be fair, Psi Inspiration also clears the Will penalty for an ally having died, but I'd rather just try to not lose people in the first place.

On the other hand, if you really want to Mind Control an Ethereal for funsies, Psi Inspiration is the actually useful skill.


Telekinetic Field OR Mind Control
Until the start of your next turn, within 8 tiles around the user all allies have +40 Defense (4 turn cooldown) OR take control of a targeted enemy for 3 turns. (5 turn cooldown)

Given my negative opinion on Smoke Grenade, you might assume I hate Telekinetic Field and recommend you always take Mind Control.

Nope! Telekinetic Field's +40 Defense is huge, and can easily be stacked with Cover and/or Smoke Grenades to render your units essentially untouchable. Partial Cover backed by Telekinetic Field and Dense Smoke Grenades is actually outside of an Impossible difficulty Muton Elite's ability to shoot without going for the high ground -and every other Alien in the game has worse base Aim. In fact, just Dense Smoke+Telekinetic Field is immunity to most Aliens -only Outsiders, Sectoid Commanders, Sectopods, and of course Mton Elites breach 80 Aim. Furthermore, Telekinetic Field only benefits allies, not enemies, so it can't backfire. It's only particular flaw is that it's centered on the user, which is admittedly genuinely a nuisance.

Mind Control is, of course, impressive all on its own, though note that you can't do anything with a newly-mind-controlled enemy. So you actually only get two turns use out of Mind Controlling an enemy.

A secondary point of interest is that Aliens that die while under your control will drop their gear intact, so long as they weren't killed by anything that prevents Weapon Fragments from spawning. (eg explosives, Collateral Damage) This is particularly abusable in the base game: if you Mind Control a Muton Elite bodyguarding the Ethereal, the Ethereal will pretty much always focus on trying to kill them instead of your proper soldiers, which is great just for keeping your real soldiers safe and will double as a free Heavy Plasma+Alien Grenade if the Ethereal does succeed in killing them. Enemy Within addresses this point of behavior, making it less abusable, and unfortunately the majority of tools that can be used to injure allies will also annihilate weapons entirely... but on the other hand Enemy Within also adds the Electro Pulse, which is an infinitely re-usable exception.

Abusing this is a bit niche, admittedly, as if you're late enough in the game to be Mind Controlling enemies, you're probably done or mostly done collecting Alien gear. Unless you're really loathe to use the Arc Thrower, I guess.

Personally I prefer Telekinetic Field, but that's more because it's useful against all the late-game threats, where Mind Control is useless against Sectopods and requires a lot of work to make reliable against Ethereals. Also the remaquel doesn't end a mission with Mind Controlled enemies considered to be captured, unlike the original XCOM, and in fact you'll have to wait for the Mind Control to wear off so you can shoot them if you don't have indiscriminate attacks available. They even get to act immediately after breaking out of Mind Control!


So that's a bit of an irritating flaw with Mind Control, not to mention a nasty surprise if you don't know about it ahead of time.

Rift
Does a lot of damage in a large area, affected by the Will of the user vs affected units. Strikes a second time at the start of the user's turn, and damages any units that enter the Rift while it's still active. (5 turn cooldown)

I haven't been able to figure out what Rift's base damage is, unfortunately.

Rift is only available to the Volunteer and Ethereals. It's basically a kill button against most enemies -it can't be blocked by a Will test, it can hit a given target twice, it has fairly high base damage, and most enemies have garbage Will so they take nearly full damage. You could also use it as area denial, but this doesn't really matter in real play. It's something you might do in an Unlimited Points Multiplayer game with an Ethereal, basically.

Rift would be more interesting if it was a normal part of the psi arsenal. As-is, it's a big factor in the final mission being fairly easy.
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So, overview.

On the one hand, psychic powers were ridiculous and stupid-broken in the original XCOM. They needed to be overhauled.

On the other hand, the remaquel has removed everything of interest about them. All of it., and nothing interesting has taken its place.

In the original game, psychic powers were notable as the only form of assault that ignored line of fire entirely, and also as a form of assault that ignored Firing Accuracy and Throwing Accuracy. (Stun Rods are 100% reliable, but they require you get in the target's face and so line of fire is a meaningful sort of concept there) Distance, Psi Skill, and Psi Strength were the only factors, aside from being able to see the target. Who could see the target wasn't even relevant -if one of your soldiers spotted an Alien, you could Psi-spam it. If a random Sectoid spotted one of your guys, the Sectoid Commander/Leader(s) could Psi-spam your guys from anywhere on the map.

This made psychic powers very distinctive. They violated a whole lot of assumptions that hold the rest of the game together, and instead operated on radically different rules unrelated to the usual assumptions of the game. The Psi Skill+Psi Strength comparison is unusual all by itself: your soldiers gaining Firing Accuracy is not something where later enemies have higher dodge or something. There is no "my offense vs their defense" except in terms of guns having damage and armor having armor, and these are qualities that the player's forces modify through equipment, not experience. Your most experienced soldiers are only more likely to survive a Heavy Plasma shot to the face by virtue of having more HP. (Unless you are a player who opts to only pass out good Armor to experienced soldiers, but that's a whole other thing)

In the remaquel, Psi powers are... not.

Mind Fray is a gun that has a cooldown and doesn't use an equipment slot, and instead of testing your Aim against their Defense with a few other modifiers thrown in, it's testing your Will against their Will. And okay Mind Fray also imposes some secondary penalties to the target, but A: player forces suffer Will penalties for being shot and B: this tends to be drowned out by the fact that ideal play involves every enemy dying before it has a chance to do much of anything. That you're testing your Will against their Will is only mildly interesting when dealing with Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals -it means that being good at zapping a target with Mind Fray directly implies they will struggle to hit back with the same. This distinction is irrelevant anytime the target is not, itself, Psi-capable, which will be most of the time, whether it's the first Sectoid Commander frying your non-Psi soldiers or your soldiers mind-bulleting Mutons.

Psi Panic is only interesting by virtue of A: normal Panic almost never happens/can't happen to Aliens and B: it's the only way to deliberately and specifically cause Panic. It's basically a mind-bullet that attempts to Panic the target instead of injuring it.

Psi Inspire's primary effect is a temporary +30 to Will. If Psi powers were interesting, this would be interesting, but since they aren't, it isn't. That it clears a few negative effects is... not very interesting either.

Telekinetic Field is basically a Dense Smoke Grenade that's automatically centered on the user, reloads on a timer rather than having per-mission uses, and only benefits allies. This is not interesting. Useful, but not interesting.

Mind Control is finally something that's kind of interesting, in that taking control of an enemy provides you access to tools you might not have access to otherwise, provides a truly disposable scout (Hacking Drones with the Arc Thrower is the only other comparable thing, and it's a waste of a precious resource: Arc Thrower charges), and has secondary implications of large note. Probably the biggest of these is that an Alien killed by enemy fire while Mind Controlled results in you collecting their gear intact, instead of it all shattering into Weapon Fragments: the only other way to achieve this is to capture an enemy with an Arc Thrower, which eats an equipment slot, involves all kinds of risk to make happen, and can only be done a limited number of times per mission anyway.

Rift is basically a Will-powered Poison Spit/Frag or Alien Grenade hybrid minus Poisoning things and ignoring Poison immunity. That's about it.

Note that Mind Fray, Psi Panic, and Mind Control all conform to normal line of sight and line of fire restrictions. You can't even Squadsight them. They are disturbingly similar to regular attacks.

This is pretty disappointing. Yes, psi was a gamebreaker in the original XCOM if you knew what you were doing and screened properly and spent enormous amounts of time into getting elite psi troops, but even aside from how little relevance this has to the real game -if you can do all that you can probably trivially beat the game without psi- the thing about psi in classic XCOM was that it was obviously operating on completely different paradigms from the rest of combat. This made it a really cool and interesting tool -its main problem on a design level was that the math involved was totally bananas and clearly not well-tested in real-world conditions or even thought through very well.

Whereas psi powers in the remaquel are mostly notable, when compared against all your other weird abilities, for the fact that you get them layered atop everything else for free. Even in that regard they're basically just regular level-up skills, but not set by your specific class and on a separate level track. So psi powers are, however useful they might be, really uninteresting.

You go to the original XCOM, and players have paradigm shifts on big Sectoid ships because there's a handful of Sectoid Leaders/Commanders somewhere on the map.

You go to the remaquel, and the psi-Aliens are basically just these things you make sure to as prepared as you can be before you breach their room and try to kill or capture them. The fact that you can't, for instance, Disabling Shot away their offense isn't even that interesting -there's plenty of other Aliens that have built-in weapons/abilities you can't shut down with Disabling Shot. You just plain don't treat a psi-capable enemy as meaningfully different from a non-psi-capable enemy -and there's not really anything that makes psi abilities fundamentally distinct from other psi powers. Sectoids have Mind Merge and Sectoid Commanders have Mass Mind Merge, but the fact that these are psychic abilities as far as the lore is concerned doesn't actually matter, with the extremely specific exception that Mass Mind Merge on the Sectoid Commander can have its cooldown reset if the Sectoid Commander tries to Mind Fray, Psi Panic, or Mind Control one of your guys with a specific Gene Mod. Note that this does nothing to help prove that Mind Merge is a psychic ability, except in a roundabout way.

In summary: Psi in the remaquel is disappointing, with the only good thing I have to say about it being that it's not ultra-exploitable like in the original game.

Next time, we get started on covering the Aliens themselves.

Comments

  1. psi abilities are also significant as a "fleet in being". In other words, they take resources away from the enemy defending against them. There is no question a player has to take into account the possibility of being psy attacked in designing their squad. And of course, the effect of tactical, and strategic surprise. The player is not able to cope very well at all with psi attack until they adapt they learn how to deal with it, adapt their equipment and personnel, and most importantly, their tactics. It is very anologous to the effect of tanks on warfare. For the designer, they are, unfortunately usually designing the game for that " first experience" of a concept, not for the hardcore fan.

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    1. I think you're talking about classic X-COM? Because if so, I did touch on that concept, even if I wasn't familiar with the term 'fleet in being' -'paradigm shifts because there's a handful of Sectoid Commanders somewhere on the map'.

      If you're talking about the Firaxis game, I'm just confused.

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