Ideology and Psycasts

[Lesser Evil]

Initially, I wanted to make this thread about BlindSight, but I realised that this issue applies to any playstyles and memes.
So, initially in Royalty the only way to get psypowers was to either suck Empire's staff, or rely on inherently unreliable quest rewards. Sucking Anima Tree's roots was a welcome alternative. You can imagine my excitement when I read about blind people and their special way to connect to psychic realm. That excitemtnt died down when I realised how poorly it is implemented. So, blind people get psychic sensitivity bonus. That's cool. I guess. But they need actual psychic powers to utilise this bonus. And blinding ritual is just inherently wrong L you can't blind already blind people, unless you're using an immersion breaking eye-transplant gimmick. And even if ritual works from the first attempt, you can only blind a person once, which means he gets only one level of psychic powers. Which means we're once again stuck with empire/anima tree/quest rewards as options.
But ... what about your Ideological altars could grant psychic power in a way similiar to anima tree ? So you could develop them by playing the way you want ? Say, sacrificing a prisoner would slowly charge morbid altar. Or helping desperate people and giving to charity would charge nice altar. Or plugging tech altar to your power grid and supplying it with abusrd amounts of power could charge it for tech-y colonies. (or they could just craft neuroformers, I guess)
Anyway, current model is extremely dissapointing and I hope to see it refined.

[The Blind One]

They should really focus the whole psypower around the leader and moral guide.

More followers praying extra hard = More psychic energy drain from your brainwashed pawns, ugh I mean, colonists yesss ... yesss ... free ... independent thinking colonists that support your leader from the bottom of their heart. I <3 my leader!

More followers = higher max level psylink.
More praying = more psypower

With the ultimate goal to become a demi-god of course ... although you should lose your power if your flock dies and you no longer receive their completely free donations. But that's just my idea.

[Lesser Evil]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

More followers praying extra hard = More psychic energy drain from your brainwashed pawns

This strongly reminds of Age of Mytholgy and how Greek nation generates faith. Which is a good and elegant system and could work in RimWorld too

[Captiva]

As another option, could just role play it out yourself.
Using your ideology as a guide, just have it so when you do enough of whatever, do a ritual you want and then just add the next level of psy link yourself.

Not perfect, or ideal but would work fine to get the desired result.

[Hykal]

You have to keep in mind that the DLC was made without Royalty being required. Chances are, as things are more fleshed out, psycasts and Ideology will be more intertwined. After all, one of of the cooler rewards you get for a celebration is having everyone's psyfocus restored.

As things are now, you kinda have to be nice nice with the Empire, and frankly I kinda don't mind that because the whole more ranks = more power is, and should be, is a very core part of Royalty 's identity. The anima tree meditation has never been a core part and the fight against the Empire for more psylinks has never been advertised as a main selling point.

What would be nice though, is psycast related powers unique to blinding. That would be cool.

[zgrssd]

You could also make a enemy of the Empire and rip psylinks out of any prisioners you take.
This was actually added back when Psychic heat was reworked.

[Makeithappen]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

They should really focus the whole psypower around the leader and moral guide.

More followers praying extra hard = More psychic energy drain from your brainwashed pawns, ugh I mean, colonists yesss ... yesss ... free ... independent thinking colonists that support your leader from the bottom of their heart. I <3 my leader!

More followers = higher max level psylink.
More praying = more psypower

With the ultimate goal to become a demi-god of course ... although you should lose your power if your flock dies and you no longer receive their completely free donations. But that's just my idea.

sounds like a succubus or some demon that feeds on people's dreams for their power.

[Makeithappen]

There is a Mod out there that someone made for blind meme. I forget the name.

[zgrssd]

Originally posted by The Blind One:

They should really focus the whole psypower around the leader and moral guide.

Anima trees kinda do that.

All pawns meditating on it grow the grass, that the Bound persons use to increase their Psi Level.

[Hykal]

If there's a meme where most of the benefits are psycasts stuff, people would complain that they would require Royalty to enjoy it - thus the very few instances of the two DLCs interacting with each other.

[adobo]

You know psychic powers isn't straight up magic in this game. You either get it from technology or from a mutant psychic tree. Though they probably need to add a precept that lets you link with the tree regardless of background.

[Vintorez]

I thought it was weird that blindness gives psychic sensitivity, having it give a conciousness boost instead would make it better stand on its own. Might make a mod for that.

[adobo]

Originally posted by Vintorez:

I thought it was weird that blindness gives psychic sensitivity, having it give a conciousness boost instead would make it better stand on its own. Might make a mod for that.

There's a mod for that. I think its called "Blindsight = Truesight" that gives you a blindsight buff based on psylevel.

[BurlsoL]

Not to be too blunt, but that might be too power-gamey for what Idealism is meant to be. The expansion is meant to be something more along the lines of adding additional flair and flavor to the world, not something that should be used in very specific ways to get a significant edge over the game's difficulty curve. Not only does that break from the unpredictibility part of what makes Rimworld fun, but also ends up being a self-defeating situation as you obtain things more quickly than you should by using that power-gamey exploit and end up facing a steeper difficulty anyway.