Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Progeny Resonant

HP: 6 (+1/+4)

Aim: 75/75/80/80 (+2/+5)
Mobility: 10
Damage: 2-4 (+1/+2)
Will: 80 (+10/+20)
Initiative: 30

Psi: 40

Alert Actions: Psi Domain.

I've never seen an Alert Resonant move or Hunker Down, but Resonants are uncommon enough overall it's possible that's just me having a moderately unlikely RNG streak rather than an indication they can't do those when Alert. Maybe they only bother if your agents are flanking them once they've moved to their initial positions and I've just never managed to have that circumstance occur, for example.

In any event, Psi Domain is very much their default Alert action, so time to talk about Psi Domain.

Psi Domain
Turn-ending action: All allies with damaging psionic abilities in a large radius around the Resonant gain +1 damage to those abilities so long as the Resonant remains alive.

Some points you might not intuitively expect is that Psi Domain benefits the Acolyte's Psionic Suplex, and can actually boost Verge's damage with Mind Flay if you Puppeteer a Resonant, which is a pleasant surprise. More straightforwardly expected is that it benefits the Sorcerer's damaging abilities and Psionic Bomb on Codices, but I'm still explicitly noting them for clarity's sake.

I'm actually not sure Psi Domain has a range limit. It's possible it does and it's just large enough it rarely crops up, but it's also possible it's just plain map-wide. Its visuals certainly aren't clear, with it pulsing out an effect that goes quite far and fades sufficiently gradually relative to its speed that it's difficult to tell where the pulse fully fades away relative to the game's grid system.

Also note that Psi Domain stacks. Resonants are only sometimes encountered 2 at a time, and I'm not sure 3 in one Encounter is actually possible so it doesn't come up much, but for one thing there's no weirdness akin to how Shieldbearers in XCOM 2 being unable to stack shields can produce unexpected outcomes.

In any event, Psi Domain is a neat idea that... doesn't work out particularly well. Even though the Progeny are The Psionic Faction, they don't actually have a good array of psionic offensive abilities; Acolytes, Codices, and Sorcerers are their only units with actions that count. You might expect Resonants to benefit from other Resonants using Psi Domain (For one thing, they visibly get the Psi Domain buff when it's applied, and most units don't; I suspect the game just checks if a unit has more than 0 Psi Offense for whether Psi Domain affects them), but they don't have damaging psionic abilities, and Psi Domain only adds damage, and only to abilities that already do damage. Acolytes at least show up regularly, but Psionic Suplex's damage is a delayed and readily-interrupted effect, so often you're getting to waste two unit's turns for the price of one, while Codices are rare throughout the Progeny Investigation and only show up in small numbers and Sorcerers only show up late in the Investigation and always in small numbers. I've had more than one run where I'm pretty sure I actually never had a Resonant show up in the same encounter as a Codex or Sorcerer!

Shrike forces making guest appearances doesn't exactly help; they have exactly one psionic unit of their own, and Shrike Necromancers don't have any abilities that do damage directly, so when Shrike forces are showing up that's just plain a reduction in the already-low rate of potential beneficiaries for Psi Domain.

As such, Psi Domain only rarely has a real chance of doing anything other than wasting a Resonant's turn, which is unfortunate given how much they prioritize it as an action. The Progeny really needed to be a bit more heavy on direct psionic offense, or have Acolytes have a more immediately threatening action. Honestly, even just having Psi Domain be 1 action point instead of turn-ending would be an improvement, simply because it would reduce the consistency of it being a waste of a turn.

It's too bad, because as a gameplay mechanic the idea is perfectly sound, and thematically I actually like the idea of psionic cooperation being a game mechanic, but Chimera Squad didn't stick the landing.

Hopefully XCOM 3 will come back to the idea and implement it more successfully.

Soul Siphon

Turn-ending action: The Resonant sacrifices 2 of its own HP to give an ally 4 HP. Requires standard line of fire to the target.

Soul Siphon is sufficiently undertuned I'm not sure what would really be a good use of it. Spending a full turn for a net increase in enemy HP of 2 is a very poor trade, and the Progeny don't really have good recipients for making the HP transfer more valuable. That is, donating HP to an Armored unit could result in the HP going farther and so potentially be functionally a greater net increase in the enemy team's HP, but the Progeny have the worst access to Armor of any of the game's factions; only Brutes have even a single point of Armor, and... it is, in fact, just a single point of Armor. Nor do the Progeny offer any more unusual mechanics to extend the value of donated HP.

In practice its primary implication is that if the player Puppeteers a Resonant they can heal an agent while hurting an enemy (the controlled Resonant) without costing the player resources or agent actions. (Assuming that Puppeteering a Resonant was kind of an incidental side effect rather than the actual goal, mind) And it's kind of mediocre even in that situation.

Not helping there is that Soul Siphon cannot be used if it would kill the user; in theory it would be nice to have a Puppeteered Resonant spend its last turn of Mind Control on Soul Siphon to take itself out while giving an agent some HP for free, but in the unlikely event you get a Resonant on 1-2 HP while Mind Controlled, nope, that option isn't available.

The AI does try to use Soul Siphon to save units that are slated to be killed by damage over time, so... that's potentially annoying? I think that might be the only circumstance they use it in, though, and it's easy to go through an entire campaign without it ever coming up.

At least it's not harmful to the game design the way Psi Domain's situation is.

Psidet

Passive: When the Resonant is killed or KOed, there is a 50% chance that it releases a psionic 'explosion' in a small radius around it. Organic units caught in this 'explosion' perform a Will test, clamped to between a 5-45% chance of actually Panicking.

This ability actually has no name or icon in-game, and in fact won't be displayed if eg using the F1 mod to check a Resonant's details. The name I'm using comes from the unused Sectoid ability in XCOM 2, while the icon I'm using is of course the Psi Operative's Fuse ability.

Also, I suspect the Resonant's Psi Offense stat is used as part of this, but can't be sure, and similarly can't be sure of specific numbers, given how hidden and RNG-based the ability is. In particular, I can't be sure whether it adds a flat bonus to the 'hit rate' the way these games are fond of doing with psionic abilities. It's not terribly important in practice, at least.

Aggravatingly, your agents are still able to respond to Panic by chucking a grenade at your own forces, just like Panicking soldiers in XCOM 2. The only good news is they seem to have a preference for chucking them at civilians, which isn't as terrible for the player. Still bad, mind.

Do note that Psidet can in fact affect your enemies. This rarely crops up as the blast radius isn't very large and enemies tend to be spread out further than said blast radius, but it's something to keep in mind if a Resonant happens to end up close to one or more other organic enemies. Taking out the Resonant may bring additional benefits after all. Just... don't count on it, given how much RNG is involved. On the plus side, no enemy in Chimera Squad is both susceptible to Psidet and capable of chucking an instant-damage area-of-effect attack, so enemies Panicking is far less likely to backfire than in XCOM 2.

Overall, Psidet is interesting mostly for appearing to in fact be an adaptation of the cut Psidet behavior in XCOM 2. Within Chimera Squad itself, its odds of doing anything are low enough I've had runs where it never mattered at all, and indeed its odds of triggering and then provoking Panic are sufficiently low it doesn't even meaningfully discourage taking out Resonants with melee. Like yes optimally speaking you should avoid risking Psidet catching your agents, but unless you're just obsessive about taking out Resonants from up close, it's entirely possible to be very careless about the point and go multiple runs without it backfiring.

It's also one of the more poorly-communicated abilities in Chimera Squad, even before considering its unreliable nature occludes it further. As I noted earlier, there's no ability popup when it triggers; all that happens is that the Resonant has a burst of purple energy stuff pulse out when they go down, and this is easy to write off as purely a general part of their death animation, or to think it's supposed to represent Psi Domain ending. Even if potential victims are in its radius when it goes off, no popups occur to suggest anything tried to happen unless it specifically succeeds in triggering Panic. And even there, the only feedback is 'this person is Panicking now'; the game doesn't actually inform you why they're Panicking.

Which in turn means when it does trigger, it's easy to be left absolutely baffled as to why somebody Panicked all of a sudden, not realizing the Resonant has a passive ability that is why.

So for Chimera Squad's design, it's... very much not ideal. Probably would've been better either being cut, or being made a lot more reliable so it both actually mattered and was more learnable. That is, if it always triggered and always forced Panic (Instead of doing a Will test), even if it still lacked popups and so on, a player would be reasonably likely to fairly quickly guess that Resonants going down was the cause; if every single time you charged in Cherub or whoever to finish a Resonant resulted in the agent Panicking, it would only take three or so times to become pretty suspicious.

It's overall so rarely relevant it's not a big problem, but it's certainly one of Chimera Squad's more poorly-designed elements.

Subservience

1 Action point: The Resonant targets a friendly Sorcerer. If the Sorcerer should take damage, the Sorcerer will Deflect it, and the Resonant will be instantly killed instead.

This is literally the exact same ability as Thralls have. This includes points like...

... the animation being misleading and making it seem like the Sorcerer is the one initiating the ability rather than the Resonant.

The mechanical implications are similar as well, including the part where if you don't understand what's going on it can be a pretty significant obstacle, but if you do understand what's going on it's generally just making things easier for the player. Indeed, it's actually a bit worse about this than with Thralls, since Resonants have more base HP; Cherub shooting a Sorcerer and instantly killing a Thrall isn't necessarily meaningfully different from if he shot the Thrall directly, since his Pistol can already do 4 damage to their 4 HP and so instantly down them. A Resonant's base HP is high enough that only your Shotgun-wielding agents can potentially one-shot a Resonant 'out the box', so killing a Resonant via Subservience is far more likely to be effectively an increase in your damage output relative to shooting the Resonant directly.

Nnnnooot ideal design.

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Narratively, Resonants are interesting to me for how they flout a truism of pop culture I've always found strange; that psionically adept individuals/species/etc are generally never subjected to psionic control by others. To a certain extent I get it, as there's a bunch of logistical questions raised by mind controllers mind controlling mind controllers (Among other obvious headaches), but it's something that's usually not justified at all; that is, fiction rarely actually says 'the mind controllers are immune to mind control themselves', but rather just conspicuously never has nobody ever get around to trying to do so even when a situation arises in which it would be an obvious thing to try. This is janky in general, but 'naturally psychic' species in fiction are often presented as being more naturally open to psychic influence in a manner that makes it particularly unbelievable that they never end up psychically compelled by others.

While Chimera Squad doesn't go into detail of what is going on with Resonants, it pretty clearly implies something like mind control is happening. One dialogue scene that probably every player of Chimera Squad has seen (because Verge is part of the Tutorial squad) involves Verge explaining to his squadmates how the Progeny's Sectoids are 'thinking human thoughts', and he uses a nice metaphor to communicate how strange an experience it is, where he says 'the cats are barking'. So there's a pretty clear implication that Resonants are psionically brainwashed or dominated or something, where the Progeny have their human psychics imposing thought patterns onto Sectoids that aren't really how Sectoids naturally think.

It's too bad this 'the cats are barking' thing doesn't seem to have gotten representation elsewhere. Resonants use the standard Sectoid animations and audio cues pulling from the XCOM 2 presentation, and while I like those being retained, it could potentially have made for a really great Unsettling Realization if Resonants actually swapped out some of those for more human styles of acting/responding. Like if they didn't respond to injury with the Sectoid injured hissing audio and instead made an angry grunt or something. Though on the other hand if the game didn't actively draw attention to it I suspect most players wouldn't notice, or worse would notice but interpret it as an error instead of something Deliberately Off.

In any event, this is all interesting, and in conjunction with Thralls and the Sacred Coil plot bits in regards to hybrids seems to imply the Progeny are first and foremost just going after easy targets that are relatively open to being psionically influenced. I'm not 100% sure this is the intended implication and would be particularly hesitant to assume the inverse implication is actually intended (ie the fact that Vipers and Andromedons aren't in the Progeny's unit list probably isn't an implication they're unusually resistant to psionic influence or anything), but it fits the facts reasonably well and Chimera Squad's approach to worldbuilding/storytelling seems to be pretty heavy on 'this makes obvious sense and we don't feel a need to explicitly spell it out', so I'm more inclined to suspect that this is an accurate read than I would be with a lot of games.

The fact that Resonants are so support-oriented is also interesting to me, in that it could be meant to tie into all the prior, where Resonants being support-focused psionics and in the Progeny are related instead of coincidental. That is, it would make a kind of sense if Sectoids who are talented/skilled/experienced at cooperative sorts of psionic experiences are more vulnerable to being psionically infiltrated/influenced/dominated than Sectoids who are primarily skilled at the more offensive or controlling applications. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a complete coincidence and the devs were just thinking in terms like 'it would be interesting to have a psychic unit that supports other psychic units, and obviously that should go on the psi faction', but I do have to wonder if this is intended. Or if it's not intended but later materials recognize it as a natural possibility and then run with it, which would be functionally the same thing from an outside perspective.

Even if all that is me reading too much into things, it's still a pleasant surprise to see a story actually have a psionically adept species falling prey to psionic control themselves. It shouldn't be a surprise given the Ethereals ruling over everybody automatically implies such a thing, but that doesn't stop so many other stories, so I'm pleasantly surprised anyway.

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Next time, we start in on the elite Progeny forces, starting with the most 'generic' one; Sorcerers.

See you then.