Subscribe to download
LW2: Make PsiOps Great Again!

Attempts to improve LW2's Psi Operative Class. Adds new abilities, improves existing ones, provides a new Promotion Screen and more! Intended to be used with LW2 1.5

Title art by https://www.facebook.com/jujibla/
Skill icons by .vhs http://steamcommunity.com/id/voythas/

(skip to features if you dont like lengthy ramblings)
Psi Operatives feel like the forgotten stepchild of LW2. While all the other classes got tons of new toys (or are entirely original), psi operatives became significantly weaker. Their few new skills are highly situational (except bastion), a useful ability got removed (inspire), they need experience to train and they can't learn all skills. While a fully trained Operative is still a force to be reckoned with, the path to that point is overly expensive and the requirement of learning some of the top skills are not communicated to the player. Additionally now that Psi Ops have a limited ability pool, there are actually a bunch of abilities that are so situational, that the player usually wants to avoid them all together. On a final note: The niche PsiOps filled in vanilla is now filled by other classes (mainly the gunner, with some assault and ranger in there).

In my opinion, the changes to the way Psi Operatives train are actually a good idea. No longer are PsiOps clone troopers that you never had a chance to grow attached to. The problem is: the power level rarely justifies the investment. The lack of communication regarding the prerequisites of abilities combined with some abilities being vastly underpowered can lead to very underwhelming endgame results. The goal of my mod is to provide a new identity to PsiOps by directly and indirectly buffing existing support abilities and by providing some new tools. The Psi Operative is no longer the heavy cooldown based aoe damage dealer with good aoe crowd control - other classes can do this better. He is now a damage-support hybrid, that has many ways to protect and aid the whole squad. To clarify: My mod wont remove old abilities, so you still have Void Rift and (an improved!) Null Lance available for your damage needs!

Straight up buffs
-A Psi Operative now gains 5 abilities after the initial training (up from 4)
-A Psi Operative now can learn up to 13 abilities (up from 11)

New Abilities
This mod provides a new "branch" of 8 abilities. Many of them build on existing ones to make them more worthwhile, others are completely new. One of my main goals is to provide low level Psi Operatives an assortment of situationally useful support abilities, that do not end the casters turn. This should ensure that a new PsiOp almost always has something useful to do other than shooting. Additionally some of the new skills scale with Will, making this stat a bit more important for PsiOps. Learn about the new abilities here.

New Promotion Screen
The Promotion Screen for Psi Operatives got a complete Overhaul. All abilities get displayed regardless of the PsiOps rank. A "Psi-Meter" at the top left indicates how many abilities you already have learned, and how many are left. Little icons near unlearned abilities indicate the requirements for this ability and how many you have fullfilled. Hovering over these icons opens a tooltip that spells out what you need. Note: Having all required Abilities doesnt ensure you actually get to choose the desired Skill. This process is still random! However if you are smart with your skill choices you can actually influence the odds by avoiding skills that unlock other abilities than the one you like to have.

Do I need to start a new campaign?
No. The mod should work fine with ongoing campaigns. Already trained PsiOps will even get an additional free starting ability and will be able to train two more times.

What if I remove this mod in an ongoing campaign?
That should work aswell as long a you are doing it outside of a mission. However: abilities from this mod are obviously lost. This also means: a Psi Operative that trained these abilities may effectly lose ranks that cant be retrained.

Will this mod be released for vanilla?
For now: No, because i got no time and it's kinda designed around LW2. I may release it as an addon for the perkpack if I find time (will require the community highlander!), but it will probably be imbalanced.

Compatibility
This mod overrides four classes. Some of these overrides will be unnecessary in future LW2 releases.
-Utilities_PP_LW
-UIArmory_PromotionPsiOp
-UITacticalHUD_Enemies
-UIChoosePsiAbility

The following mods are incompatible or need manual fixes to work with this mod:
- Armoury Navigation Fixes (overrides UIChoosePsiAbility, can be made compatible via commenting out the override)

If you use the Alternative Mod Launcher and it displays a conflict between LW2 and my mod regarding UIArmory_PromotionPsiOp: you can ignore it.

This mod is largely my own creation. But it would not be possible without the help of the following people:
-robojumper for his advice regarding programming issues
-xylthixlm for his helpful mods and also skill design
-pavonis for LW2 and some helpful input
-.vhs for all the new and altered skill icons and his skill ideas
-Thrombozyt (pavonis board) and /u/duskaco for skill ideas
-jujibla for the title art
-and ofcourse my closed beta testers, especially Urist_Imiknorris since he made me aware of one and a half nasty bugs ;)

Donations
As usual, donations are not required at all ;), but since sometimes people ask, here we go:

[www.paypal.com]