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Discussing Psychic Powers


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There were some good points raised in the recent thread about psychic powers. I thought it might be a good idea to move discussion to the balance thread and talk about them.

As I see it, there are two types of psychic power, Sapping and Direct Effect. Sapping abilities drain a particular attribute, such as TU or Bravery. These abilities include Dread and Fear. Direct Effect abilities either impose a morale condition or have some other mind-related effect. These abilities include Beserk and Mind Control. (Interestingly, all psychic aliens with the exception of Psions have a Sapping ability and a Direct Effect ability).

Of the two types, the Direct Effect abilities are the more powerful. Sapping abilities make life for a soldier more difficult, but they don’t immediately debilitate a solider to the point where s/he cannot fight and drained stats can be restored. Direct Effect abilities (when effective) do debilitate a solider immediately and are arguably more effective at rendering a solider useless to the player than shooting at him. Make a solider Beserk, and the player can’t use him. Mind Control a solider, and the player looses a solider and gains an enemy!

Chris suggested that the more potent abilities be LOS and the less potent be more omnicognicent. I would say that all Direct Effect abilities, because of their potential power should be restricted to line-of-sight, of the psychic just as any weapon would and Sapping abilities should be squad sight. A Sapping ability can be frustrating if you can’t do anything about it (I remember complaints about Dread), so by keeping it squad sight there is something that can be done – the player can kill any aliens looking at him.

I would also suggest that Paralyse be brought back. I know Aaron was going to look into it, but Paralyse would make a useful Direct Effect ability for the Psion to round it out, and also act as a “relief” power. By that I mean a power that’s less potent than the normal abilities the psychics have, so when it’s used it gives the player a sense of relief that the AI didn’t pick the more powerful ability. Bosses and minibosses (which is what Praetors and Caesan officers basically are) often have “relief” powers to break up their more powerful attacks, and compared to shooting your own mates simply being frozen in place would be quite a relief!

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EDIT: Change of heart. The more I think about it the more I like this idea.

I'll leave this here, though:

(Note about Berserk: I'm not sure that this actually debilitates your own soldiers*. I'm fairly certain when I've seen it used it's not affected my soldiers on their next turn; possibly it uses remaining TUs from the previous turn. May well be wrong, but thought it worth mentioning in case it makes a difference at all.)

*Other than the corpses it leaves behind, of course!

Edited by kabill
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Reaper Alphas have access to Paralyse, but don't use it yet. I'm not averse to giving it to Psions as well though.

We've also got a modifier for individual powers too, which allow us to make the global powers less likely to succeed then direct attacks.

In the next build Berserk will be direct LOS but mind control will remain squadsight, but have a limited 30-tile range. Given MC-capable aliens are quite rare, we don't want to limit it to direct LOS quite yet.

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I don't know if I agree with the idea of mind control remaining as a squad sight ability. We shall see how that plays out.
Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I could see squad working on weapons fire, but psychic abilities aren't affected by range, so it seems a bit unfair for squad sight to used to "fire" that.
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I won't say too much more about the psychic powers, as I've probably already said enough in the thread Max_Caine linked to in his first post, where I complained at some length. :-) Hoever I would be interested if anyone could explain to me how squad-sight works . One of the things I found so frusttrating about the new psychic abilites was that they seemed to operate without any aliens being able to see the soldier affected.

If psychic abilities currently require squad sight, does that mean that if a psychic attack occurs tehn I must be visible to at least one alien that I am not aware of? Or can they "guess" where my soldiers are and aim a speculative psychic attack that way, in the same way I might pump a rocket into a building if I think an alien ran into it?

If the aliens really can't use psychic attacks unless at least one of the aliens can see the soldier being attacked, then I can imagine tactics that might help cope with this situation. I certainly felt that I have had psychic attacks without the soldier being visible to any aliens, but it's hard to be certain -or have I mis-understood what people mean when talking about squad-sight?

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Hoever I would be interested if anyone could explain to me how squad-sight works.
It's very simple, if ANY alien can see you then all aliens know where you are and any alien with a clear line of sight (LOS) can shoot at you (even if it's so far away it's not worth brothering with.) For psychic powers I don't know if the LOS from the "emitter" needs to clear or not, but at least one alien still needs to be able to see you. However, that being said, if you can eliminate all the aliens within sight range or find a place that blocks their LOS you should be safe from both weapons and psychic attacks.
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The issue at the moment is that some UFO hulls seem to have points at which it is possible to see through them (I just did a landing ship and I kept getting LOS to aliens inside the ship on the top floor while outside the UFO). This means, presumably, that the aliens may have LOS out as well. Also, bear in mind that Caesans (sp?) have longer visual range than humans.

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If psychic abilities currently require squad sight, does that mean that if a psychic attack occurs tehn I must be visible to at least one alien that I am not aware of? Or can they "guess" where my soldiers are and aim a speculative psychic attack that way, in the same way I might pump a rocket into a building if I think an alien ran into it?

From what was said elsewhere, I think that's how it's supposed to work. However, it's been reported that psi attacks are happening even in the absence of being spotted by aliens, so there's possibly a bug at the moment.

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Gentlemen,

In my opinion, the introduction of Psi powers has dramatically changed the balance and playability of Xenonauts.

For the record, I'm playing Normal on V21 Stable. I have just started May.

My objections to Psi are twofold, First, there is no defense against it. Of course, in the OG you could train your soldiers to have some resistance to Psi, and even determine who were susceptable and who weren't; however, as near as I can tell, no amount of Bravery or Morale will keep a squad member from becoming an Enemy, which brings me to my second point.

I take no joy in watching my squad randomly shoot itself to pieces over and over again. The present implementation of Psi has taken a tactic based game and turned it into a random crapshoot. Which squad member will turn into an alien and which other squad member will kill him? I have watched my squad be chewed up twice by Psi bearing aliens. That leaves me with a bunch of noobs that can't move and can't shot straight, and against May-class Aliens. I'd rather watch tiger sharks eat penguins.

BTW, if you insist on turning one of my squad into an enemy, please shade him or her red as you do when the "Alien In View" icon is clicked or swiped.

AND if I never see "PlayerX is filled with Dread" again, it will be way too soon. If you want to sap a third of my TU's just freakin' do it.

I understand that in the Valkerie era with sixteen squad members, the countervailing force must be equivalent size, so the calculations to place them must be extreme. Still, the time it takes for the Alien Turn is reminiscent of the times in V19. Please speed it up. Watching banners of Dread is a waste of time.

In closing, I suggest you give me the chance to train my troops against Psi. Failing that, backing it off to LOS and a 20-ish tiles might work.

Just to reiterate, the Psi implementation I have seen has taken a wonderful turn based, tactic-centric game and turned it into a random mishmash that eventually devolves into "Why do I care?" I know you can restore the balance. I await your next evolution, but I'll be Xeno-less in the interim.

Sandy

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Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I could see squad working on weapons fire, but psychic abilities aren't affected by range, so it seems a bit unfair for squad sight to used to "fire" that.
mind control will remain squadsight, but have a limited 30-tile range.

Just thought I would point that bit out.

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From what was said elsewhere, I think that's how it's supposed to work. However, it's been reported that psi attacks are happening even in the absence of being spotted by aliens, so there's possibly a bug at the moment.

It certainly seems that way to me. As I think I have mentioned in another post, it's hard to be 100% sure that no alien can see you, as they can see you when you can't see them. However when I'm playing at the beginning of a mission and I'm still a long way from the ship, I have at times made soldiers run away from the aliens, into a building and hide inside it out of view of all windows ... and still get mind controlled. That's why I wondered if maybe the mind control attack might occur within the game mechanics when my soldier is running to their hiding place , and but only show the effects at the end of turn.

Once I'm in sight of or inside the ship, mind control attacks happen almost without fail on 1-3 soldiers each turn. Again, I understand there may be some "holes" in the ships that the aliens can see through, but the occurrence of mind control attacks fits much better with the aliens not needing to see you at all - unless the entire ship is completely transparent to the aliens.

Really, I do not believe that squad-sight is working for mind control in the way that it is "supposed" to as described in this and other threads. Limiting mind control to 30 tiles isn't going to help much if the psion or praetor can always see you once you are near or inside the UFO.

Edited by dmholt
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Reaper Alphas have access to Paralyse, but don't use it yet. I'm not averse to giving it to Psions as well though.

We've also got a modifier for individual powers too, which allow us to make the global powers less likely to succeed then direct attacks.

In the next build Berserk will be direct LOS but mind control will remain squadsight, but have a limited 30-tile range. Given MC-capable aliens are quite rare, we don't want to limit it to direct LOS quite yet.

That might be a mistake. I remember in the OG where all psychic powers were squad sight. One of your troops would stray into sight range of an ethereal, who would then mind control him and turn him around so he could see all of your other troops... Cue every other ethereal on the map trying to mind control your guys.

The 30 tile range might cut down on that but I still see the potential for bullshit/gamebreaking moments.

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Glad to see thread with it being talked about. A lot of points I've got has been said here.

I will say this though, with the current implementation of Dread, and Mind Control working even when NO ALIENS can see your squad (As I understand it, this is a bug) it has rendered the final mission next to impossible. I have found several ways to keep mind control from squad-killing, the most effective costs 4 TUs to be 'safe' and 0 TUs in an emergency but risks losing/misplacing your weapons.

Short list of stuff in no particular order

  • Remove Dread Pop-up Message, it wastes 30 seconds+ of time
  • Allow Morale or Bravery to 'resist' psionic attempts, they clearly do nothing at this time and I do not know if they do anything for any other mechanic either (maybe suppression? No idea to be honest)
  • Mind Control units should act on aliens turn, not before your turn. Currently the aliens get two turns in a row due to it.
  • Fixing the Squadsight requirement and range limiting Mind control really really needs to be a hotfix asap. Should never have been pushed to a Stable build as they are currently implemented (personally).
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Bear in mind there are wider issues with LOS - the aliens have the same LOS abilities your soldiers have, that when they move all the terrain that they've seen in that turn remains visible. So if an alien was watching an area and then left the area during his turn, if you then walk into that area then the alien team can still see your unit(s).

We're looking into resetting LOS at the end of each turn to see what effect that has on gameplay.

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Bear in mind there are wider issues with LOS - the aliens have the same LOS abilities your soldiers have, that when they move all the terrain that they've seen in that turn remains visible. So if an alien was watching an area and then left the area during his turn, if you then walk into that area then the alien team can still see your unit(s).

We're looking into resetting LOS at the end of each turn to see what effect that has on gameplay.

So, are you still thinking about making psychic powers require a clear line of fire like the other weapons? It seems unfair that if you guy ducks around a corner the alien can still psyhic him because he had initial sight on him at some point in the turn (assuming all the reaction fire "tests" are passed.) Does psychic attack even use the reaction fire system at all? That's one thing I always hated in the OG. Of course, I think in the OG the aliens had a cheat in that they knew exactly where your soldiers were for something like 5 turns even after they lost LOS to them or so I've been told.
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That's one thing I always hated in the OG. Of course, I think in the OG the aliens had a cheat in that they knew exactly where your soldiers were for something like 5 turns even after they lost LOS to them or so I've been told.

Yes, this is right. It varied depending on the 'intelligence' of the alien. I think it was intended as a way of making the aliens smart so they don't just forget your soldiers exist when they can't see them. In practice, however, it allowed mass spamming of psionics. (Not to mention the "after 20 turns the aliens can see all your soldiers" 'feature'!)

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To me, psychics powers should require LOS. Why ? Because otherwise it's really not enjoyable. It's breaking the game. But in other way, they were the only aliens that were really challenging.

Alien with psychics power should boost their own troops rather than been offensive. Give them defensive powers : harder to hit, harder to see, etc...

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I would at least like to be able to think, "OK, that alien is around here somewhere because Sgt. Jane just went crazy vs. well that sucks." If they can zap us from anywhere on the field, I think we should get 81 mm mortars to even things up.

Edited by StellarRat
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Bear in mind there are wider issues with LOS - the aliens have the same LOS abilities your soldiers have, that when they move all the terrain that they've seen in that turn remains visible. So if an alien was watching an area and then left the area during his turn, if you then walk into that area then the alien team can still see your unit(s).

We're looking into resetting LOS at the end of each turn to see what effect that has on gameplay.

Chris this has NOT been my experience at all. My experience is closer to if the aliens have seen an area, they are able to see that area for 5 to 10 turns AFTER I have killed all the aliens in that area. If you would like me to replicate this on video, I would be happy to do so.

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