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XCOM 2 >  Workshop > LeaderEnemyBoss's Workshop > LW2: Make PsiOps Great Again! > Discussions
LW2: Make PsiOps Great Again!
Description Discussions5 Comments340 Change Notes
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Mar 21, 2017 @ 9:47am
New Abilities Info
This mod provides a new "branch" of 8 abilities. Many of them build on existing ones to make them more worthwhile, others are completely new. One of my main goals is to provide low level Psi Operatives an assortment of situationally useful support abilities, that do not end the casters turn. This should ensure that a new PsiOp almost always has something useful to do other than shooting. Additionally some of the new skills scale with Will, making this stat a bit more important for PsiOps.

Rank 1: Telekinesis
-provides the ability to reload an allies weapon
-does not end this allies action, does not use autoloader charges
-A good combo: Gunner uses travers fire, then suppression, then gets his weapon reloaded by a PsiOp
-Telekinesis also lets you open doors from afar (this is more for flavor ;) )

Rank 2: Invigorate
-reduce all active cooldowns of a targeted ally by 1 turn

Rank 3: Advanced Telekinesis
-provides Mind Grasp: target an enemy without range limit, reduce this enemies dodge stat based on Psi Offense and Will, lasts 1 turn
-this ability is kinda an experiment in that it scales strongly with the Will stat and only weakly with Psi Offense, may get changed depending on feedback
-Advanced telekinesis also lets you pull in loot items from afar (no range limit, Line of sight required, has a 4 turn cooldown)

Rank 4: Share the Gift
-Soul Steal now also heals all your squad mates

Rank 5: Sustain/Samaritan
-Since LW2 1.3 removed Sustain, i added it to my 3rd branch
-If the PsiOperative has learned Sustain and Stasis Shield he or she also gains the passive Samaritan ability

Smaritan:
-The Psi Operative can use Sustain to save an ally from death. Has no range Limit.
-Will remove Effects like Mind Control (meaning you can shoot your mindcontrolled soldier in the face and have him saved by Samaritan)
-Counters are separate (meaning a PsiOp can save an ally and still have his sustain use left)

Rank 6: Mind Collective
-Cast a weaker mind Merge on all your squadmates
-Combos with Soul Merge

Rank 7: Winged Lance
-Increases the width of Null Lance considerably

Rank 8: Singularity
-Create a psionic Singularity that sucks in most units in a large area
-The AoE of Singularity is affected by the casters Will stat
-Cover may block the effect depending on the physical model of the cover element
-units behind half cover usually get launched over it, except when its a larger model (like a car)
-Sectopod, Gatekeepers, Avatars are immune

- For bug/lazyness reasons unconscious units are also immune.

-Also lazyness/balance: Units flung around by Singularity currently do not trigger Overwatch fire. May change in the future depending on balance feedback.
Last edited by LeaderEnemyBoss; May 15, 2017 @ 10:18am
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Showing 1-15 of 23 comments
Bobsol Mar 24, 2017 @ 2:01pm 
Share the Gift does heall the fill amount to every squadmate?
#1
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Mar 24, 2017 @ 2:17pm 
Originally posted by Bobsol:
Share the Gift does heall the fill amount to every squadmate?

It heals half of the damage done on every squadmate if you mean that, yes.
#2
Phrozehn Mar 25, 2017 @ 5:36am 
Ive got a few suggestions..

I had suggested this in a thread on the Pavonis forms. What if will and psi both worked on abilities in different ways. Will determined stuff like ability radii and had a slight effect on cool downs (flavor being that that higher mental discipline allows them not to be distracted or flinch during hDavy firefights; they can focus through it all). Psi would determine raw damage and effect chance (flavor being they have the raw potential for power, but don't necessarily have the focus and discipline of a high will psi. Think Jack from Mass Effect).DD abilities like SF would scale with psi stat rather then the amp itself, mitigating the pure dependency on amp corpse rarity. Amps would only grant bonus psi, which is still super useful but wouldn't be a hard cap on psi abilities. Allows a granularity,to abilities and this would really allow for different psi soldiers. High will psi would be better as a support. High psi would be your damage dealers and debilitators. Variety!
Does sustain have a cold own or limit, like once a mission for the psi and friend, for two in total? Will could determine a cool down and radius if we had it only effect a radius, as map wide seems waaayyyy to strong and easy to cheese with shining shenanigans.

Haven't gotten winged lance yet, but just how wide is it? I feel like any more then 3 tile would be too much. 2 might even be enough. Thoughts? With regards to my will/ psi suggestion above, width could scale up based on psi power. Could start as a width bonus of one, reach to a bonus of two at like, ninety psi, and then a bonus of four if yr psi somehow got psi stat up to a number unlikely to be attained by any psi other than ones who started with an abnormally high stat or got lucky with hidden potential. Would really make the high stat soldiers feel truly unique and special.

Share the gift should have a radius that is influenced by your will stat. Same with all other radii for support abilities.

Telekinesis seems awesome. Great idea and a classic sci if ability! Does it break steal with door opening? Or at all? I kinda feel there should be a range limit. May behave a similar radius indicator for psis to officers that's based. On will that show the range of your beyond line of sight abilities? That way you don't get ridiculous ranges, but still beyond Los range?

Awesome mod. Long time coming. Love it so far.
#3
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Mar 25, 2017 @ 5:52am 
Maybe i will do more with will in future updates, but since it already has a defensive use, I will hold off for now. I dont think i will ever incoorporate all your ideas, they would make will a godlike uber-stat, but some are interesting ;).

Samaritan/Sustain can be used once per mission each.
Winged Lance is 3 tiles wide (2 is not possible as far as I know as you can only increase its width by multiples of 2).

Telekinesis - Knock (the door opening ability) does not break stealth and basically acts like your normal open door ability ..just from range. It requires LoS (but the check is somewhat "forgiving").
#4
Phrozehn Mar 26, 2017 @ 10:55am 
Awesome :) When I was incorporating Will, I guess I sorta envisioned most abilities balanced around ROUGHLY being the same as they were in vanilla within a large range of will values, or onlymaking slight improvments/negatives. So something like 50-80 will roughly the same values as vanilla, but if you had less than that things went down slightly, andmore than that would only be like... 3-5 tiles more ona radius for support auuras and maybe a turn of CD. Ormaybe even make it so that higher will score gave a CHANCE to reduce cooldown. This way you'da ctually be EXCITED to see a high will soldier and might save them to become psis :P Example:

Soulfire 4 turn cooldown base. Will > 60 starts to reduce cooldown from 4 to something like 3.8, 3.5, 3.2. So each usage has a 20%, 50%, 80% chance to be a 3 turn cooldown. I agree if it would always be just a flat 3 or 2 turn cooldown it'd be RIDICULOUS! lol. This chance based CD reduction would still incentivise a high will, but you'd care more about psi strength to do mre damage. SO a high will souldier with lower psi str could still be good at picking off low health guys, but bad at nuking. It owuld make up for it by potentially casting SF slightly more often sometimes, and having wider auras and influencing Mind Merge to last longer, for example, if it's high enough, and psi str could increase potency maybe. So that high will soldier would be bad at nuking, but a better support. High psi lower will would be great a dealing dmg and diilitating, but less good at supporting. This way a soldier who has less psi power would be just straight up worse witht he same skillset than one with high pisi. There'd be some variability.

I dunno, my big thing is just wanting to see graularity and individuallity between psiops :) I frickin' LOVE your mod and thought you'd be the best person to talk to :P Even if you wouldn't be interested in doing them yourself, do you thinkt hey'd be HARD to do?

Do you plan on adding abilities similar to XCOM1 like telekentic blast to destroy cover? or the Memetic skin abilty that LW1 turned into a psi ability? That's be so cool!
#5
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Mar 26, 2017 @ 11:19am 
Dynamic Aoe's are a bit harder, but still doable. Dynamic cooldowns are rather easy. The thing with dynamic aura ranges is, that its a bit tricky to get the visual effect to match that dynamic range (especially since there are effects that can influence your will on the battle field). The thing you also have to consider is: even when you dont make the "best possible effect" of will itself too strong, too many things relying on it may still make that stat so desirable that it's basically a must have on psi ops.

To your other questions: I will never add a psi ability that destroys cover. It would clearly invade the design space of three other classes, and I dont want to replace gunners, grenadiers and especially not the already struggling technical ;). I'm also not a huge fan of mixing stealth with psi. We have the ghost grenade and dedicated stealth classes, I think thats enough.
#6
Kaerius Mar 26, 2017 @ 7:41pm 
An idea I saw on Pavonis' forum was for a Mind Shout ability, sort of a psionic flashbang, with no LoS requirement/unaffected by terrain. Which I thought was neat, or alternatively it could be a big cone. Just AoE disorient, alternatively make it a check psi offense vs will for stun, but no guaranteed effect(this still leaves it weaker than sting grenades, doesn't step on the toes of support grenadier).
#7
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Mar 27, 2017 @ 3:11am 
@Kaerius ... hmm ... a slightly different flashbang doesnt really make me exited ;)
#8
Adx9 Mar 27, 2017 @ 6:01am 
This looks pretty fantastic - balanced and creative. Haven't had a chance to try this out in game yet, but on paper, invigorate looks a bit weak, especially if it is turn ending (in that case could you consider adding mobility bonus for one or two turns?). I'd also consider adding armor melt scaling effect to either telekinesis (like one per fifteen psi offence if targetting enemy) or advanced telekinesis (one per 25). Share the gift and samaritan look a little OP, but considering you have to take two other perks for each and it precludes you from getting other powerful abilities that is probably fine. Winged lance though might be the most powerful and I think you could make it require both telekinesis perks or make it a cone attack, where cone width scales with psi offence, if possible. Straight up three tiles width potentially as the second perk is very powerful. I also like the idea of scaling aoe for singularity to make it very large in the late game. Finally, if you have to level up with mastersergeant xp requirement for every perk after 11th, why have a cap on total perks at all? Considering extra training time you won't get all of them anyway, and getting beyond 13 will be quite a feat, but it would be nice if it were possible
Last edited by Adx9; Mar 27, 2017 @ 6:24am
#9
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Mar 27, 2017 @ 6:23am 
Invigorate doesnt end your turn. In my test sessions, i found it to be "useful" ;). Most of my "weaker" active abilities dont end the casters turn.

Thanks for the feedback, It will take some time if I make my first judgmement of how balanced everything is. Winged lance in generel seems to be the most mentioned contender for being OP, and making it a cone instead of a line might actually be a feasible idea.
#10
Adx9 Mar 27, 2017 @ 6:35am 
On the other hand, Plasma blaster on a SPARK with rainmaker is very similar to winged lance and you'd be hard pressed to find people who consider that OP, so maybe we all just got too used to psiops being underpowered in LW
Last edited by Adx9; Mar 27, 2017 @ 6:37am
#11
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Mar 30, 2017 @ 5:04pm 
@Phrozehn the newest update makes Singularity's AoE dependent on the casters Will stat
#12
Emi♡⚢ Apr 20, 2017 @ 11:05am 
Invigorate seems too bad (buff it)
#13
Emi♡⚢ Apr 20, 2017 @ 11:07am 
Or maybe make that share the gift would heal the operative for half of damage and all others by quarter of it?
#14
LeaderEnemyBoss  [developer] Apr 20, 2017 @ 1:10pm 
In my playtests invigorate is quite useful for cd builds (gunners, other psiops). It's not supposed to be op but to give the psiop something to do on low levels. The fact that it doesnt end your turn makes it very efficient action economy wise. I think its perfectly fine.

I have limited experience with share the gift, but the cooldown makes it work more like a "slow healing aura" than a burst heal on a single target that is most of the time preferred. I rarely had the situation where i found "wow this is exactly what i needed right now" (i often take stasis vests with me anyway). A nerf is totally unnecessary imho.
#15
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