Convince me of Psycasts

[Shigoshi]

So, decided to start a new colony coming back to rimworld with the royalty thing and decided to go down the path of having one of my pawns become a psycaster. However having seen what power he got for level 1 and 2 (word of friend and neural heat dump) I decided to look up the powers and...I am not impressed.

Not saying there isn't good stuff there but coming from a 40k background, this stuff is fairly anaemic to look at. Not asking for all powers to be lightning bolts of death but I was expecting at least some high level stuff to be powerful attacks...all of them are just support based abilities with a focus on doing mildly ineffective things against enemies.
The teleporting skips are among the only things that seem to redeem it, both skip and farskip being incredibly useful tools. However all other powers seems fairly meh and not worth putting in the effort for.

Again, for this being a centre piece thing to do and put effort in I was expecting more than "raise some cover" and "have a headache" being the top. Not even one offensive brain melter or anything.

[Astasia]

Where did you "look up powers?"

There are some ridiculously strong psycasts, several that take enemies out of the fight instantly, vertigo pulse shuts down a large area of enemies allowing you to shred them with attacks while they wander around and vomit, the berserk casts allow you to have an entire raid kill itself, and then there's stuff like skipshield which is ranged immunity in a radius and turns many battles into a trivial bloodbath for your persona wielders. Neuroquake is "brain melting" across the entire map. There's also lightning bolts, manhunter pulse, invisibility, long term blinds, smoke pops on demand, stuns, not to mention the spammable inspirations and mood buffs from the "word of" casts. The power and utility is pretty huge, assuming you manage to get those casts.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Psycasts

[^3Tinkles]

Originally posted by Shigoshi:

So, decided to start a new colony coming back to rimworld with the royalty thing and decided to go down the path of having one of my pawns become a psycaster. However having seen what power he got for level 1 and 2 (word of friend and neural heat dump) I decided to look up the powers and...I am not impressed.

Not saying there isn't good stuff there but coming from a 40k background, this stuff is fairly anaemic to look at. Not asking for all powers to be lightning bolts of death but I was expecting at least some high level stuff to be powerful attacks...all of them are just support based abilities with a focus on doing mildly ineffective things against enemies.
The teleporting skips are among the only things that seem to redeem it, both skip and farskip being incredibly useful tools. However all other powers seems fairly meh and not worth putting in the effort for.

Again, for this being a centre piece thing to do and put effort in I was expecting more than "raise some cover" and "have a headache" being the top. Not even one offensive brain melter or anything.

There is a mod for more Psycasts and another for being able to 'choose' your psycast (power) for each level. Like "word of" powers are typically level 1 (if I recall correctly), so you could choose any of the Tier 1 for your first, any of the Tier 2 for your second and so on.

If you're looking for more abilities, perhaps Rimworld of Magic is to your liking? You can even tailor it so that only you / your colony have these traits and no other, making you very overpowered in most situations.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2460833332
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2293460251
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1201382956

Hope this helps with what you're looking for.

[Auzzie]

Theres an ability that reduces a prisoners resistance, super helpful

[LIMP BISQUICK]

Never played with the royalty dlc but there were a couple of mods that added their own abilities you could look into, mods such as psi-tech.

[Kittenpox]

Stun, alone, has saved entire colonies in my previous playthroughs.

But I can see how you'd have heightened expectations, if you're coming from 40k. That setting is not known for its subtlety. :-)
On the up-side, nobody here gets possessed by chaos demons, or accidentally causes a spontaneous blood-rain on the inside of their escape pod...

I've previously used the Psychic Insanity Lance item (a consumable which has the same effect as the Berserk psycast) in defense against raiders. It was nice when I used it to pick off their sniper when I was woefully under-equipped - and later on making the raider holding a Doomsday Rocket Launcher attack the nearest pawns (their allies) turned the fight into something trivial. Having that power on-tap is not anaemic.

I can't convince you to appreciate psycasts, so I'm not going to. (This isn't that meme of that right-wing guy with the "change my mind" sign, either.) But consider that not everything has to be fireballs - and if thats what you prefer then the magic mod linked above should have you sorted. Alternately, https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Phoenix_armor :-)

[Cryptic]

no one needs to convince you of anything. have a mind of your own and prosper.

[Monty]

Finish your play though with vanilla psycasts before adding mods. They are far more powerful than first glance will indicate. Game breakingly so as mentioned by Astasia.

The first psycast mod you should add if you want is the psycast AI to let raiders use casts. You will change your mind when you shooters get blinded or your most powerful melee with marine armour gets bezerked.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2026063610

[VoiD]

Psycasts are super OP, ofc a level 1 guy won't be cracking the earth, but a strong psycaster will do crazy things.

Also, not just stupid "I win, I strong" buttons, they also add a lot of tactical options, from drawing long ranged fighters closer to you, creating walls for instant cover, slowing down thrumbos as you kite them, stunspam a target that can't fight back, to the more serious psycasts like AoE berserk, instant inspiration so you can spam legendary items, teleporting dozens of targets into the range of your 4+ melee experts (best way to instagib centipedes), or teleporting melee chargers away from your team, teleporting people running away so you can get closer, or even teleporting an antigrain warhead into the middle of a mech cluster so you can wipe it out in a single explosion.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Shigoshi:

So, decided to start a new colony coming back to rimworld with the royalty thing and decided to go down the path of having one of my pawns become a psycaster. However having seen what power he got for level 1 and 2 (word of friend and neural heat dump) I decided to look up the powers and...I am not impressed.

Not saying there isn't good stuff there but coming from a 40k background, this stuff is fairly anaemic to look at. Not asking for all powers to be lightning bolts of death but I was expecting at least some high level stuff to be powerful attacks...all of them are just support based abilities with a focus on doing mildly ineffective things against enemies.
The teleporting skips are among the only things that seem to redeem it, both skip and farskip being incredibly useful tools. However all other powers seems fairly meh and not worth putting in the effort for.

Again, for this being a centre piece thing to do and put effort in I was expecting more than "raise some cover" and "have a headache" being the top. Not even one offensive brain melter or anything.

Psycasts are ridiculously OP. Two level six casters with good gear can send 100 pirates packing before they get near your base, then get a bite to eat and do it all over again.

It’s up to you to figure out how to use the available mechanics.

[Auzzie]

Originally posted by ichifish:

Originally posted by Shigoshi:

So, decided to start a new colony coming back to rimworld with the royalty thing and decided to go down the path of having one of my pawns become a psycaster. However having seen what power he got for level 1 and 2 (word of friend and neural heat dump) I decided to look up the powers and...I am not impressed.

Not saying there isn't good stuff there but coming from a 40k background, this stuff is fairly anaemic to look at. Not asking for all powers to be lightning bolts of death but I was expecting at least some high level stuff to be powerful attacks...all of them are just support based abilities with a focus on doing mildly ineffective things against enemies.
The teleporting skips are among the only things that seem to redeem it, both skip and farskip being incredibly useful tools. However all other powers seems fairly meh and not worth putting in the effort for.

Again, for this being a centre piece thing to do and put effort in I was expecting more than "raise some cover" and "have a headache" being the top. Not even one offensive brain melter or anything.

Psycasts are ridiculously OP. Two level six casters with good gear can send 100 pirates packing before they get near your base, then get a bite to eat and do it all over again.

It’s up to you to figure out how to use the available mechanics.

Id like to see a video achieving this lol

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Auzzie:

Originally posted by ichifish:

Psycasts are ridiculously OP. Two level six casters with good gear can send 100 pirates packing before they get near your base, then get a bite to eat and do it all over again.

It’s up to you to figure out how to use the available mechanics.

Id like to see a video achieving this lol

Francis John “Tribal Wizards”

Rhadamant “Vikings”

Lol

[Arsonica]

When I first looked at the psycasts I too found em underwhelming, tho after playing around with em I've realized most of em are pretty powerful if used cleverly. You have no brainbusting powers but I think that would kinda break vanilla rimworld.

Just stating my oppinions aint gonna be helpful tho so I'll give some examples of how some of em can be used effectively. Focusing on the possibly non obvious.
Level 1:
Painblock - Your wimp pawns can now fight and downed pawns can get themselves and someone else to the hospital and out of danger.
Word of Trust - Reducing resistance will allow you to (with a decent warden) immediately recruit those surviving raiders that came your way and since none in your colony know em yet you can just throw em at that off site weathercontroller with no harm done should they die.
Level 2:
Waterskip - Nullifies those lovely infernocannons as long as you have your caster a bit to the side.
Neural Heat Dump - The main limiting factor for combat psycasts is neural heat so bring along some human sized batteries. It's also useful for when you need a pawn to go unconscious to save their life, like from animal revenge or manhunter packs.
Word of Joy - That pawn with witdrawal vaing too many mentalbreaks and dont wanna remove their legs? Know that when Consciousness drops below 30 a pawn passes out so the -20 from this skill can be used to put em under without using a lot of medicine during rehab.
Level 3:
Vertigo Pulse - Basically an AOE stun which also works on mechs. The effect also reach trough walls so you can delay sappers and insects from breacing your walls before your squad is ready or passing out from heatstroke.
Beckon - Creatures cant shoot while walking, so instead of having that lancer remove someones head have it come over to get that faceplate smashed in.
Level 4:
Smokepop - You just solved any mechcluster that heavily relies on turrets.
Level 5:
Flashstorm - Your only direct damage spell, too inaccurate you say?, flashstorms can only strike unroofed areas. I bet you just came up with a bunch of uses for this spell.
Level 6:
Skipshield - While garbage with firearms, it's a great setup area for the rest of you psycats so you dont get braindamage while trying to cast that berserk pulse.
Manhunter pulse - Attacking that mech cluster too costly? Just let nature take care of it (remember to wake the mechs ahead of time tho.
Neuroquake - The "I win" button.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by Arsonica:

Solar pinhole - light on demand, pop it near you colonists in combat and they get better acurracy than when standing in darkness

Just gonna jump in and say I'm pretty sure that mechanic shooting became obsolete some time back. But solar pinhole does illuminate rooms, for free, and is good for keeping pesky mood debuffs at bay - even during a solar eclipse / emi event.

[Arsonica]

Originally posted by Kittenpox:

Originally posted by Arsonica:

Solar pinhole - light on demand, pop it near you colonists in combat and they get better acurracy than when standing in darkness

Just gonna jump in and say I'm pretty sure that mechanic shooting became obsolete some time back. But solar pinhole does illuminate rooms, for free, and is good for keeping pesky mood debuffs at bay - even during a solar eclipse / emi event.

Thank you for pointing this out! Seems like I was going off outdated info. I went ahead and booted up a test map and you're correct, so I'll go ahead and edit that part. Cheers!

[ichifish]

The most valuable part about psycasts is they support a unbelievable amount of creative tactics.

Skip is very versatile. Some things I’ve done aside from covering long distances (some backed up by invisibility):

1. Skip shells away from siegers.
2. Skip shells next to mech cluster buildings (then berserk a centipede to get the infernos started)
3. Skip berserking/tantruming/binging pawns or their target
4. Skip downed pawns/surrounded pawns to safety
5. Skip berserked/manhunting enemies into other enemies (once shot a thrumbo, enraging it, then skipped it into sappers)
6. Skip sappers away from walls before they can take them down
7. Skip medicine next to downed pawns
8. Skip mental break pawns out of danger
9. Skip enemies onto traps/away from turrets
10. Skip mechs to zeushammer wielders (works great with a 3-4 in a kill circle)
11. Skip rocket/grenade-toting drop podders out of los/into melee range
12. Skip blocks/wood for emergency wall building
13. Skip dropped things out of doorways
14. Skip valuable loot out of fires

Combine skip with other casts and you can own a battlefield, just don’t forget to bring along your pacifist heat dump sidekick.