LW- Psi rush?

[Karina]

I heard about people rushing guass, rushing pulse, rushing mecs- but i never heard about psi rush. Is it viable? What are the pros of psi focused playthrough? Which country is the best for such a strategy-

Argentina gives flat +5 will, that will improve psi performance as well as change of unlocking psi.

Mexico gives +20% chance of unlocking psi BUT you can gain half of that for just placing a satellite, so i dont think it is worth it.

Egypt reduces fatigue from psi powers, so i can potentially use my wizards more often.

[TwinuX]

I tend to rush Psi, but I don't grab will/psi-related starting bonuses as they don't provide much benefit, even in the late game. The fatigue reduction is nice, but having extra squads counters this and enables more variation in Soldiers.

PSI-related builds are useful when trying to capture ayys, as mindfray can be used to chip health while nuking aim, which makes failed attempts safer. (I play rather risky with arc throwers, so sometimes I give an ayy a free shot.)

Psi also compliments bio-tank builds, as mind merge improves damage reduction in human soldiers. As I always run at least one bullet sponge (generally lowest-defense, highest-health soldier) that the ayys see as more of a threat than they really are, letting ayys get a shot off becomes a less dangerous situation. Even with a TK field up, they like to target 'em, which makes 1% hits less painful.

One big issue with psi-rush builds is that weapons and armour tend to lack a bit, while early psi skills don't make up for this much. Skills like mindfray are also useless against Sectopods and Cyberdiscs, while the DR bonus from Mind Merge isn't that useful against their high-damage weapons. TK-field is a life saver in these situations, but still isn't a guaranteed tactic. Generally, I run a gunner with HEAT ammo and a rocketeer to counter 'em, but that still takes up a couple soldier slots that could be used by other classes or rookies needing training.

[red255]

there are a few ini edits I did to improve PSI.

issue 1, you have 3 PSI bays, you could ini edit this up but whatever. each PSI training time takes 160 some odd hours depending on will. and you've got 5 ranks of PSI 60% chance of success.

at 100% chance of success thats 35 days in the tank, per psi soldier 3 at a time. double that for your 50/50 odds.

past that each rank of PSI adds a crippling amount of fatigue per rank. so since you need to go on 5 or so missions per psi rank (math missing here, meant to say something about number of days to raise psi to lvl 5 for purposes of winning the game being whatever it is 5 days of fatigue basically mean 25 days between trainings so 185 days total.)

finally PSI items like the neural gunlink are +12 aim -12 will, but preclude you from using a scope at 8 aim and no loss to will.

so Yeah I made some ini edits to get rid of the 'you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nutz johnny' mainly justified on the fact that psi is rather late of a victory lap notion.

my PSI ini edits include.

1.) increase PSI training chance 20% Reduce training time by 100 hours
2.) drastically reduce fatigue adders. basically set them to 1 instead of 6 because I'm concerned 0 would cause issues.
3.) reduce the will penalty for the Neural gunlinks, from 12 to 6.
4.) altered the psi XP required for each rank to clip properly with missions. just because what exist is just saying, Hi i'm bad at math. and its annoying. I just lined up the XP so the XP takes X amount of missions instead of X.2
5.) restoration of iron will, unrelated. but basically give everyone +2 will at level ups to manage the loss of iron will.

with my edits sure, I can use my mind powers late game to deal with heavy floaters and muton elites reasonably well, but as it stands with unaltered values, probably not especially worth the fatigue adders. (which I think adds like 2 days of fatigue)

---

anyways my numbers are to the fifth rank of PSI which is the rank required for beating the game which requires 185 days after the psi lab is built before you get the first valid canidate assume all your ducks allign. with the default values.

tactically I suppose you could get by with mindfray, psi inspiration and psi panic and maybe TK field all provide utility before rank 5. my numbers were mainly from an arguement of why it needs to be changed to prevent dragging out the end of the game 6 months more than it needs to be dragged out.

and alternatively why it cannot be rushed. as it take so many days to get done.

[Fadeway]

The biggest issue of both psi and gauss rush is not the tactical layer. It is the air game. Laser cannons are a more important reason to get beam than the actual beam weapons for the soldiers. Similarly MEC rushes are strong because they get you to dodge modules. Both options let you fight the raiders in May and after. The gauss rush appears to offer coilguns, but in reality that project requires too many engineers to complete in reasonable time. Psi offers nothing.

Well, that last one was an exaggeration. Psi gives you fast captures and base assaults. The philosophy of all these rushes is that most really experienced players can play deprived, with ballistics only, for a really long time if that is what it takes to get strategic tech. But nobody has really pushed the psi into base assault with ballistics idea. It seems overboard, psi does not really give you the tactical tools for that.

[red255]

I sort of understand Fade away's point.

I make beam weapons then using Ranger and vital point targeting I manage to make my beam weapons do alot more mileage than larger weapons. a Heavy laser rifle is the same damage as a gauss rifle, I add alot of damage +3 with ranger and VPT and my Heavy laser rifle will do the same amount of damage as a plasma without VPT and Ranger.

so we don't Really NEED to upgrade our guns, we can manage, just need to take it slow.

I did not do coil guns either (until much later for completionist sake with my last 100 fragments)

instead opting for penetrator weapons and upgrading my lasers to super capacitators.

Dodge modules require cyber disk wrecks and just aren't common enough to use. I save them for taking down overseers and assault carriers.

raiders go down easily enough for me, its the fighters and destroyers that need help with the air game. did you mean destroyer class units?

I still manage well enough getting the armored fighters, penetrator weapons, Air Dodge and Air Accuracy upgrades in the foundry. Raiders aren't an issue provided you ugrade to laser cannon.

my current campaign is in its second year. only had like 8 spare disk wrecks to make dodge modules with.

Certainly not enough to influence my air game with.

[Fadeway]

I meant aim modules.

>Raiders aren't an issue provided you ugrade to laser cannon.
Thats the point, you either go for beam and get laser, or you go for mec and get aim, or you go for something else and have an issue.

[red255]

Oh, see i would always go beam before going into my 'rush' Beams are cheap and a huge upgrade over conventional weapons especially for low level troops who need the aim boost.

[witch[bb]]

The aim is convenient, but skipping laser doesn't hurt much on tactical with alloy jacketed rounds, vpt, and ranger making up for the damage. Beam cannons really is the biggest loss in skipping lasers, but aim modules work reasonably well. You'll have plenty of floater corpses for them anyway. I'll concede that lasers are great for newbie training though.

[Karina]

Originally posted by stormy:

The aim is convenient, but skipping laser doesn't hurt much on tactical with alloy jacketed rounds, vpt, and ranger making up for the damage. Beam cannons really is the biggest loss in skipping lasers, but aim modules work reasonably well. You'll have plenty of floater corpses for them anyway. I'll concede that lasers are great for newbie training though.

What about phoenix cannons? Are they worth building after gauss upgrade?

[witch[bb]]

In my current campaign I skipped lasers and used Phoenix Cannons->Coilguns (the upgrade) along with liberal use of aim modules when needed. I was made rich in March from a successful landed transport which made me decide to go for early MEC and Gauss, skipping lasers. I was lucky with some later mission that allowed me to get most of the air foundry upgrades, and so yes the Phoenix Coilguns were worth it for me for quite a while.

There was, however, a period in year two that I was struggling with the airgame as I'd depleted all of my resources due to a lack of forethought, so I didn't have the means to push to EMP Cannons or Plasma Cannons when I really needed them. If I had keep better track of my money and resources I could have avoided that lull in an otherwise strong air game.

[red255]

I generally keep things simple.

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/UFOs_(Long_War)

we have 4 types of ships you might engage with lasers/coilguns.

so lets write down numbers

Scouts 0 armor 750 HP

Fighter 12 Armor 850 HP

Raider 5 armor 1500 HP

Destroyer 18/32 armor 1600 HP.

Armor Mitigation = 0.05 * (Target Armor - Armor Penetration)

0 is the minimum Armor Mitigation and 0.95 is the maximum

Base Damage = Weapon Damage * (1 - Armor Mitigation)
Crit Chance = (Armor Penetration - Target Armor) / 2

5% is the minimum Crit Chance and 25% is the maximum

A successful Crit multiplies damage by 2
total damage is then randomized to between 100% and 150% of its current value.


Coilguns have 18 penetration +5 with penetrator weapons and 25/40/55% accuracy. +10 with some research +10 with friendly skies + 10 with cinematic mode.

damage of 230 every .75 seconds.

laser guns have 300 every .75 seconds and 40/55/70 accuracy after super capacitators, with 11+5 penetration.

290 every 1 second with 5 penetration without super capacitators.

the higher weapon accuracy and good enough penetration makes the lasers work better.

Originally posted by stormy:

There was, however, a period in year two that I was struggling with the airgame as I'd depleted all of my resources due to a lack of forethought, so I didn't have the means to push to EMP Cannons or Plasma Cannons when I really needed them. If I had keep better track of my money and resources I could have avoided that lull in an otherwise strong air game.

Year 2 is fusion lances man. *stares at my fleet of firestorms* took a while getting those up. But I got 20 of them armed with EMP or fusion lances.

[red255]

Yeah. the ini rates for intact power sources is very low I can't remember what the value is. It can be raised.