What does Brainwashing do?

[frankie60]

Finally spent some money to get the MK Ultra. I had 2 enemy agents in the tank, so I interrogated one, and used brainwash on the other (bought two slots), basically to see what happens, since almost nothing is explained in this game and everything is either a guess or experiment.

Anyway, interrogating got me some fairly minor intel, that I could have gotten anywhere. The brainwashing did nothing at all as far as I could tell.

I then killed them both. Spend a shipload of money for pretty much nothing, or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance...

[LordRedStone]

It is used to neutralize sleeper agents, at the cost of special perks. (The ones that give bonus XP with special mission types, not the ones you can select).

The best case is that you already revealed said perk, and you know one agent secretly works for Beholder. Brainwash him, and you may loose other perks if he has some, but these are usually not really useful anyway.

When someone has unrevealed perks, it can either be a sleeper or other special perks. You can brainwash if you suspect someone, but most of the time you will just remove the special perks, as sleepers are very rare.

So in the end, brainwashing is indeed useless unless you have revealed a sleeper agent you want to keep, the other option would be to just kill him.

MKUltra really unlocks its true power with Control Phrase, Mason Gambit and Saboteur. Before you unlock these, you can only interrogate and kill captured enemies, but now you have to pay money for it, and you did the same things before, free of charge.

Some said that the intel they get with Interrogation is better than before, but that's not confirmed and can depend on the state of your save file: Your progress is tied to the chapter you are in, when you only get new recruits for hire and meaningless files (which then would produce more recruits) that means you can not unlock more stuff in this chapter and should advance the story.

[jorel91023]

Exactly. The MKUltra facility is your new best friend.

Worth every upgrade as you go. Just make sure you also upgrade your living quarters as well.

I haven't gotten to Saboteur yet but I read that it can be used to wipe out a Beholder cell in one go without you needing a mission to do it.

[Gregorovitch]

I haven't played so much with the Mason Gambits and the sabateurs etc yet, but I've done a few Control Phrases. It's pretty good fun.

I haven't bothered brainwashing the double agents yet either - I just use them for forging, crafting and comms. Dunno if that's going to bite me on the arse at some stage.

My main thing is interrogation though. I bring in Beholder agents in batches of three at a time now from Beholder cell takedown missions. You get a shed load of intel from it, but it does vary from victim to victim so if you haven't done many interrogations yet you may not have noticed how much intel you can get from it. A fully expanded four slot MKUltra unit is a must for this. I'm even considering getting the Faraday Cage thing so I don't get a danger hit from overstocking.

It's well worth it. The game is bascially paced by how quick you get intel so it gets you to the more exiting bits faster.

As for money, pfft. All I do is make sure I get every forging upgrade as soon as it appears and if I ever run short of cash I just look at my inventory and see a pile of weapons and armour I'm never going to use, particulalry the heavy armour, and it all sells for $500-$1000 a pop.

[frankie60]

OK guys thanks for all the info. Very helpful!

[Jhonny G]

I tried to brainwash a beholder agent and then set her free, which kinda resulted in her becoming a mindless zombie on the enemy agent list for 30 days until she finally showed up in a story mission.

Must admit that I'm a little curios whether this could be exploited to created an army of 'zombie' agents that would render beholder unable to do anything for long periods of time.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by LordRedStone:

It is used to neutralize sleeper agents, at the cost of special perks. (The ones that give bonus XP with special mission types, not the ones you can select).

The best case is that you already revealed said perk, and you know one agent secretly works for Beholder. Brainwash him, and you may loose other perks if he has some, but these are usually not really useful anyway.

When someone has unrevealed perks, it can either be a sleeper or other special perks. You can brainwash if you suspect someone, but most of the time you will just remove the special perks, as sleepers are very rare.

So in the end, brainwashing is indeed useless unless you have revealed a sleeper agent you want to keep, the other option would be to just kill him.

MKUltra really unlocks its true power with Control Phrase, Mason Gambit and Saboteur. Before you unlock these, you can only interrogate and kill captured enemies, but now you have to pay money for it, and you did the same things before, free of charge.

Some said that the intel they get with Interrogation is better than before, but that's not confirmed and can depend on the state of your save file: Your progress is tied to the chapter you are in, when you only get new recruits for hire and meaningless files (which then would produce more recruits) that means you can not unlock more stuff in this chapter and should advance the story.

Yes, but on Hard I wouldn't say sleepers are rare. For the cost of special perks, there's a random, and you have research to lower the chance to remove such perk. But brainwash guaranty remove the enemy sleeper perk.

Not all special perks are insignificant, some are more useful, but still not game changing. Those good are time reduction for crafting, analyze com, body building. Faster training would be ok if they was given the bonus for a full training category. For those giving more XP, anyway it's a game aspect not tuned, XP just gained on global map are neglect-able, obviously on purpose, So any bonus on that can only be insignificant.

Myself I use brainwash only to remove the enemy sleeper perk, and I decided keep the agent, otherwise free him after have give him manson gambit or saboteur.

As I want try keep the roster not too high to allow hire option, I don't keep them otherwise. I want any agent usable for any action, stop analyze com during a definite time isn't a problem, most often it's the same for forging and crafting, so have them all ready makes sense in that perspective (keep roster size not too high).

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Dogmatius:

I tried to brainwash a beholder agent and then set her free, which kinda resulted in her becoming a mindless zombie on the enemy agent list for 30 days until she finally showed up in a story mission.

Must admit that I'm a little curios whether this could be exploited to created an army of 'zombie' agents that would render beholder unable to do anything for long periods of time.

I'm not sure there's any link with brainwash, are you sure he was a zombie, or you just didn't identified location and activity?

Otherwise yes, hire agent, set them control or any other implant, free them through the MK and you have a chance they become an enemy agent. Do it with enemy agents controlled and then on player side but release them through the MK provided a good rate of agents infiltrated.

[Jhonny G]

Originally posted by Dorok:

I'm not sure there's any link with brainwash, are you sure he was a zombie, or you just didn't identified location and activity?

Well, the brainwash wiped out all her perks and after that I released her. Then for next 30 days she was displayed atop the enemy agent list with foto and real name, but with a constant 'unknown' location status and all buttons greyed out. I could locate all other agents except her which seemed kinda weird, so I think it was related to the brainwashing I did.. Or many it was just a strange one-time bug, dunno for sure.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Dogmatius:

Originally posted by Dorok:

I'm not sure there's any link with brainwash, are you sure he was a zombie, or you just didn't identified location and activity?

Well, the brainwash wiped out all her perks and after that I released her. Then for next 30 days she was displayed atop the enemy agent list with foto and real name, but with a constant 'unknown' location status and all buttons greyed out. I could locate all other agents except her which seemed kinda weird, so I think it was related to the brainwashing I did.. Or many it was just a strange one-time bug, dunno for sure.

Ok I think it's more the track agent button which has a bug or a design a bit special. That is it's normal you know agent identity, and you don't know agent location/activity. But it seems the button track agent is linked to identity and doesn't allow track them when you know already the identity but not location/activity.

Ok I never bothered on that aspect much, just if they was joining enemy and when. Sometimes they definitely don't when you used control and they joined your rank and you free them anyway, but most often thy did.

I don't know for the brainwash effect on that, there's perhaps one, or not, more testing and observation are required.