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Mind war is overpowered


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It makes useless soldiers with bravery below 60.
And even with bravery 60 and more half of my squad is panicked or under alien control in later battles (May and furter)
So the only option is to give mind shields to everybody but it means no secondary slot for weapon anymore

I think mind war shouldnt work for the whole map but an alien should see the target for it directly - this way it will be ok 

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I liked the way it was handled in xen1, but there was a bit too much, "Under Alien Control" going on. I don't think humans should have attacking mind control power though - only defensive. Some things should remain a mystery!

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On 4/12/2020 at 3:31 PM, ooey said:

I liked the way it was handled in xen1, but there was a bit too much, "Under Alien Control" going on. I don't think humans should have attacking mind control power though - only defensive. Some things should remain a mystery!

I agree with that. I don't think psychic powers should become available to human forces, but defenses seem reasonable. (This is one thing I really like about Xenonauts is that they didn't fall into temptation with psychic soldiers. That has its place, but as the game is, it's unnecessary.)

Edited by indaris
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The under alien control thing got a bit too much on the bigger UFOs because the most powerful of the Alien Psi-soldiers would always tend to be in the control room at the top of the UFO, which of course, were hard to get at. So they could even decimate a very good squad (i.e. have them kill each other). Also, I'm not sure how Psi-ops were conducted. It makes logical sense to only allow them to lock on to one of your soldiers that was seen by a friendly, but I don't think that was the case. That would make it a lot fairer though.

If they have the right to cower in the control room without fear of imminent attack to do their stuff then your soldiers have the right to stay in the dropship, hidden away without fear of a psi-attack! That was always one thing I found unfair about xen 1. And surely line-of-sight Psi attacks are easy to do.

Something for Chris to tweak perhaps?

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I've never been able to get past March, the weight of bugs seems to always drag me down, but I've got to say I've never had a real issue when Mind War was used in Raids and Terror sites. Seeing as I have a full turn before a mind-warr'd soldier is affected, I drop that soldier's gun and have him crouch in position. As there's never - to me at least - any more that two soldiers affected at any time by Mind War I can't see the problem other people are having?

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24 minutes ago, Max_Caine said:

I've never been able to get past March, the weight of bugs seems to always drag me down, but I've got to say I've never had a real issue when Mind War was used in Raids and Terror sites. Seeing as I have a full turn before a mind-warr'd soldier is affected, I drop that soldier's gun and have him crouch in position. As there's never - to me at least - any more that two soldiers affected at any time by Mind War I can't see the problem other people are having?

Mind war is not a problem before May actually. Then it becomes really strong as the number of psi aliens increases and mission difficulty increases either in other ways. Before I gave mind shield to everybody I had a situation where on terror mission (a mission where you cannot waste time or civilians will be killed and mission failed) I got 2 soldiers in panic and 2 under alien control at once so I had to fight further with only 6 soldiers out of 10. Worth to mention that all my soldiers had bravery around 60 then.

Edited by Rusknight
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2 hours ago, Max_Caine said:

I've never been able to get past March, the weight of bugs seems to always drag me down, but I've got to say I've never had a real issue when Mind War was used in Raids and Terror sites. Seeing as I have a full turn before a mind-warr'd soldier is affected, I drop that soldier's gun and have him crouch in position. As there's never - to me at least - any more that two soldiers affected at any time by Mind War I can't see the problem other people are having?

Yes, it's much more of a problem when the big ships turn up (UFO crash sites). You can contain it until then. The only thing you can really do is drop your weapon, yes. By bugs do you mean software errors? I had a guy with a jet-pack get stuck behind a carrier once and had to edit the file to place him just outside so he could move again. Seeing that he was the last man and I play on Iron man mode I just flew him back to the ship and aborted the mission!

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Yes, I'm referring to software errors. In my latest run, one of my fighter craft won't replace and I'm pretty sure it's why I can't do ground sites (it's Beta - waddaya gonna do?). Eh, so it looks as much like weight of numbers are causing problems. I guess that having a hard cap of 2 aliens which can use the squadsight (I'm pretty sure that the current version of Mind War is squadsight) version of Mind War would help, and possibly transferring the Mindshield as an armour module would be good - of course, I guess if the mindshild is an armour module then you wouldn't be able to have things like the tac visor or the rebreather.

 

How about this as a suggestion - have two versions of the Mindshield? One version which is an armour module only affects the wearer of the armour. And you have another version which is its big brother, goes in the secondary slot and has an AOE, so you can designate some soldiers as umbrellas. Perhaps a 6x6 or 7x7 radius?   

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  • 1 month later...

Responded to a terror mission.

Turn 1: Exterminated two aliens as we left the jump ship; killed the third and wounded a fourth during alien movement.

Turn 2: Had two aliens in sight. (One man panics and Local troop panics) Squad advanced on both sides of jump ship. Set up crossing fields of fire. Alien turn: 7 mind war attacks; panicked local troop resists, two civilians resist, One squad member panics, two others change sides, one resists (the one that panicked earlier).

40% of my unit is out of the fight with two actively fighting me. I think this is a bit much.

 

Edited by Challenge
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Yes, it really needs to be line of sight rules for mind war I would think. I don't mind an alien on the bridge being able to psi you as long as one of his comrades can see you. That's fair enough. knowing where one of your men is without actually seeing you is just a bit too powerful. It would probably be best to base its effectiveness on range too (the nearer you are to the psi-alien, the more likely you are to be mind controlled, whereas the further you are the less the chance of this but the chance to dissolution you into panicking is greater) - I don't think that is currently the case.

Edited by ooey
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Does the power itself need toning down, or does the number of aliens that can use it need toning down? It seems to me that if the power is squadsight, then the moment an alien sees a squaddie, that squaddie will  get hammered by mind wars. 

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Yup, Mind War isn't properly balanced yet and will probably see some changes before the game goes into Early Access.

Remember that a soldier gets a defensive bonus against psionics if they have remaining TU, though - so if a soldier is under Mind War and you don't spend all their TU, they're better able to concentrate on resisting the psionic powers.

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On 6/1/2020 at 5:10 AM, Max_Caine said:

Does the power itself need toning down, or does the number of aliens that can use it need toning down? It seems to me that if the power is squadsight, then the moment an alien sees a squaddie, that squaddie will  get hammered by mind wars. 

Good point. It probably needs toning down a bit too, since those psi-aliens on the bridge will have nothing to do except mind war a trooper one of their comrades can see. The defensive bonus for leftover TVs is a good thing too. It CAN feel very overpowered at times. I'm basing this on what happened in Xen1 of course. The severity of the psi-power should really be  based on range from the Psi alien to the trooper too (the closer they are the more chance of being under alien control rather than just disillusioned etc.). 

If your soldier is under alien control, he should never stay under it indefinitely and be "lost for good" like the original UFO, but I don't think that was the case in Xenonauts anyway (i.e. it should be a temporary thing). 

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