Is there a downside to being psychically deaf?

[KalkiKrosah]

I know the drones are a thing giving your colonists a mood debuff but is there ever a time where being psychically sensitive is useful or is psychically deaf the best trait in these scenarios?

[ministrog]

Psychically deaf also makes them immune to artifacts, like the insanity one. So if a raider is psychically deaf, it'll literally pop up in a message you cannot use it on this pawn. It's pretty OP.

If you want a downside... it could take up a slot for something you wanted, like industrious or kind. Those ones actually benefit other pawns not just the one in question. Then again, in dev tools you can keep adding traits with maybe a soft cap at 3-4 traits.

[Innese]

Its rare, but you can have a version of the drone event trigger that actually gives a positive mood boost to a gender. In this case, being psychicially deaf would mean they get no boost, while the sensetive traits would mean they get an even larger buff to mood

[Astasia]

There is a ridiculously rare "psychic soothe" event which adds a positive mood boost to your colonists, and an artifact that does the same. Being psychically deaf prevents benefit from those.

[KalkiKrosah]

Originally posted by Astasia:

There is a ridiculously rare "psychic soothe" event which adds a positive mood boost to your colonists, and an artifact that does the same. Being psychically deaf prevents benefit from those.

Seeing as how I have yet to come across the soothe event but get a psychic drone debuff atleast once a game I think it would benefit me to never get the psychically sensitive trait ever.

[Astasia]

I've only seen it once in like 500 hours of playing. So ya...

[ministrog]

I've actually forgotten it's a thing. It's not that rare though, since it appears when you get your colony trashed. I've held onto a colony well past the point to continue just to see what happens. Depending on your storyteller mode, they do try to balance the game and not completely kill everyone off.

A good example would be after a nasty fight where you lost close to half your colony. During and after the fight, you'll get a few blue incidents like drop pods and more importantly, psychic soothe.