Why dont raiders use psycasts?

[fatburner]

Has anyone ever been raided by a psycaster? How was it?

[Jaggid Edje]

Without mods, I'm fairly certain enemies simply will not and do not use psycasts. I certainly have never seen it and have played a lot of hours.

There are mods that add it though. This is one, and it's probable there are others:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2026063610&searchtext=powerful+psycast+ai

[The Manual]

I hope I'm not wrong, but I noticed that maybe raiders who use psycasts will be implemented in a possible future update of the game. Not one of the upcoming, but I think is in Ludeon's schedule.

[Cervidal]

I'm willing to wager they don't raid with psycasts because of balance - imagine how quickly your settlement's potential power goes up with adding another captured and converted psycaster to your ranks.

[Morkonan]

I don't own Royalty. I've only watched a few "Let's Plays" of it.

Of some of the psycast abilities I've seen, it appears their use may require "discrimination." IOW - If an AI Raider used Psycasting based on RNG+EnemyTarget~Friendly, wouldn't their use of it seem kind of nonsensical at times?

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

I don't own Royalty. I've only watched a few "Let's Plays" of it.

Of some of the psycast abilities I've seen, it appears their use may require "discrimination." IOW - If an AI Raider used Psycasting based on RNG+EnemyTarget~Friendly, wouldn't their use of it seem kind of nonsensical at times?

I'm only an amateur programmer and I could write scripts that make intelligent use of the few psycasts that are combat oriented in a single afternoon, so I don't think that's the reason.

[Astasia]

Pretty sure it's never going to happen, it would be an awful experience. Psycasts require a lot of investment and a heavy cost, things raiders wouldn't care about, having your entire defense team effectively shut down by invisible enemies would not be very fun. It would be like enemies spawning with artifacts that they use instantly when getting into range, rare or hard to get stuff they just spawn with and consume at will.

RimWorld combat is asymmetric, generally the number of enemies vastly outnumber you and are flung at you with a sense of abandon you can't match. If they had all the same tools the player had and the AI to use them properly, the game would be unwinnable.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Astasia:

It would be like enemies spawning with artifacts that they use instantly when getting into range, rare or hard to get stuff they just spawn with and consume at will.

Granted, that's not too different than them having doomsday and triple rocket launchers, but at least those have an aim time.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Granted, that's not too different than them having doomsday and triple rocket launchers, but at least those have an aim time.

Well I mean those are also just weapons that do damage, not a lot of damage either and easily mitigated by armor. A colonist in quality cataphract armor can stand there and eat doomsday rockets all day.

An insanity lance or berserk psycast not only instantly removes a pawn from your side, but generally sends it after your other pawns, with no realistic way to defend against.

[ichifish]

Check out the Powerful Psycast AI mod. It’s pretty good. You can turn off berserk in the settings, thankfully.

Play with the mod a bit. Scaling raids is pretty tricky challenge.

[Xao]

Originally posted by Cervidal:

I'm willing to wager they don't raid with psycasts because of balance - imagine how quickly your settlement's potential power goes up with adding another captured and converted psycaster to your ranks.

This is a door that swings both ways, and badly in both directions.

Rimworld has a great degree of asymmetrical balance, in that raiders tend to show up in large numbers compared to your colonists (and when they don't, it's a highly equipped faction), and being enemy AI, experience very little penalty for their colonists being killed or maimed.

Conversely, the player has far fewer expendable bodies, colonists being maimed can rapidly create statistical colony death spirals, the player has to worry about recruiting bad pawns, and managing large numbers of pawns effectively (something the game doesn't even provide great tools for), their colony being damaged or destroyed, etc.

The AI just shows up at your doorstep with guns and can basically kamikaze with little to no penalty, especially with the decision to add things like tainted clothing and death acidifiers.

Psycasting is likely designed to be player side only on account of the fact that many of the psycasts are designed to give the player some crowd control, and fix the bad balance in the vanilla game.

It's the same reason massive AoE weapons range from just OK to outright mediocre in player hands, but in enemy hands it can be a colony wiping event if things go particularly bad. Asymmetry makes problems like this.

Pair that with what you've said and you have a really bad design problem that can snowball wildly in either direction, not just against the player, but in their favor, if for instance, a psycaster shows up with RNG psycasts that are useless against your colony, and you manage to capture them- As you can train them in psycasts that are useful. Suddenly a throwaway enemy pawn becomes a game changing factor for your colony.

It's better to just not have enemy psycasters, to be blunt. Screws with the asymmetrical power and risk/reward too much.

[fatburner]

If you imprisoned psycasters they would have to be subdued somehow because if even you strip and disarm them they could probably still use their psycatss if they meditated a bit which they would be able to do while imprisoned. So this means that capuring a psycaster without a serum or technology to subdue him/her could be a bad time.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by SOMR:

If you imprisoned psycasters they would have to be subdued somehow because if even you strip and disarm them they could probably still use their psycatss if they meditated a bit which they would be able to do while imprisoned. So this means that capuring a psycaster without a serum or technology to subdue him/her could be a bad time.

That would be good rp but those things aren’t mechanically necessary - vanilla prisoners don’t do anything (dig a tunnel, steal a fork, etc.) except for prison breaks. You just have to expect a more capable prison-breaker if they’ve got focus. Prisoners don’t meditate, so that’s not an issue.

[ichifish]

Originally posted by Xao:

Originally posted by Cervidal:

I'm willing to wager they don't raid with psycasts because of balance - imagine how quickly your settlement's potential power goes up with adding another captured and converted psycaster to your ranks.

This is a door that swings both ways, and badly in both directions.

Rimworld has a great degree of asymmetrical balance, in that raiders tend to show up in large numbers compared to your colonists (and when they don't, it's a highly equipped faction), and being enemy AI, experience very little penalty for their colonists being killed or maimed.

Conversely, the player has far fewer expendable bodies, colonists being maimed can rapidly create statistical colony death spirals, the player has to worry about recruiting bad pawns, and managing large numbers of pawns effectively (something the game doesn't even provide great tools for), their colony being damaged or destroyed, etc.

The AI just shows up at your doorstep with guns and can basically kamikaze with little to no penalty, especially with the decision to add things like tainted clothing and death acidifiers.

Psycasting is likely designed to be player side only on account of the fact that many of the psycasts are designed to give the player some crowd control, and fix the bad balance in the vanilla game.

It's the same reason massive AoE weapons range from just OK to outright mediocre in player hands, but in enemy hands it can be a colony wiping event if things go particularly bad. Asymmetry makes problems like this.

Pair that with what you've said and you have a really bad design problem that can snowball wildly in either direction, not just against the player, but in their favor, if for instance, a psycaster shows up with RNG psycasts that are useless against your colony, and you manage to capture them- As you can train them in psycasts that are useful. Suddenly a throwaway enemy pawn becomes a game changing factor for your colony.

It's better to just not have enemy psycasters, to be blunt. Screws with the asymmetrical power and risk/reward too much.

These are good points.

One thing that should be done for balance anyway is to include psycasts in pawn value the same way that bionics are.

The easiest solution to bring in enemy casting would be making enemy-only psycast weapons. Something like a biocoded eltex staff imbued with combat casts. That would constrain the psycast types and limit them to enemy use. They could be balanced by adjusting range/duration/cool down, etc.

[BoogieMan]

Tynan said in an interview he chose not to allow it since they can be so powerful that it would be disruptive and less fun for the player.

[goddling]

Just to add if you use the magic mod they will use it on you
Much more powerful than Psy also makes it harder