Talk:Psi-Amp

I don't know whether it is pointed out elsewhere but I've recently found out something interesting about the mind control of Sectopods and Cyberdiscs (a Reaper still needs to be tested). Whenever you mind control one quarter of it and have used up its time units you can still mind control another quarter that lets you once again have a full gauge of the enemy's time units at your disposal (therefore you don't necessarily need to mind control all four parts at once). Thus, as long as the other quarters don't reaction fire in the meantime you can use a Cyberdisc and especially a Sectopod (and presumably a worthless reaper too) up to four times, wreaking havoc upon your enemies. According to my personal gaming experience the probability of a Sectopod reaction shooting itself decreases significantly by moving the mind controlled unit only one (double) tile per mouse click. (Euphoniac, 7-2-2009)

Good catch, though I think that's been independently reported at Exploiting Mind Control#My Pet Alien. Maybe it's not made clear enough, how powerful a tactic that is. As if mind control wasn't powerful enough! By the way don't discount Reapers, they are fearsome at close range. And with 4x their usual TUs, they will not have any trouble closing in for the kill. Tasty Floater, chomp chomp! They also have the advantage, for your purposes, that they can't spoil your fun (and steal "your" TUs) by reaction firing against themselves, or anyone else. Spike 13:34, 2 July 2009 (EDT)

Er... since when could X-com order the Reaper to actually BITE something? ... I'm pretty certain that a mind controlled reaper can run around... and run around... and... that's about it. Same for those Chryssalids. Jasonred 09:36, 4 July 2009 (EDT)

Two handed use - experiment

Mike The Red, could you create some kind of critical test where an operative had a known but slim chance of success on some Psi task, say 10%, then put another weapon in the other hand - potentially reducing the chance below zeros - and make repeated attempts. If you do say thirty attempts and they don't succeed, that strongly suggests the two hand penalty is being applied. Though, if it's just going to multiply the success chance by 0.8 - that is going to take a lot more testing to detect. Unless someone knows where to inspect the code. Or another variant of this test would be to create a situation where the operative's chance of success is known to be 100%, then introduce the second hand item, run a large number of tests, and see if they ever fail. Spike 06:55, 20 September 2012 (EDT)

Hi Spike, sure! That would be great...

Start with alien psi defense strength and determine the distance for your soldier to get a specific percent. Since we might test (just as a straw theory) that having hands full causes a 20% decrease, we could stand at a place that should give 22% success. Verify it with only psi-amp in hands (maybe 100 tries; probably 18-26 successes), then try another 100 with hands full. That'll probably be 1-3 successes in 100 tries if the rate has indeed reduced to 2%, way different than the 22% rate. (But if there are no successes, the decrease must be worse.)

As an example, say you have a psi noob (so you can get close) with psi str 90 and psi skl 19 (AS 34) versus certain Superhuman common aliens at DS 46 (see alien stats table). Using the Distance equation, terms are AS - DS - .56 A% + 25 = 34 - 45 - .56 * 22 + 25 = a distance of about 1. Just play with the equation if you have a different situation; let me know if I can help. You can also directly edit UNITREF.DAT, of course, to change the psi values.

For mind-numbing work like this, I rely on UNITREF.DAT experience counters instead of manually keeping track. Then I don't even have to pay much attention and get the count perfect. If you set up a test game and then do exactly 2 (or 3) attempts every turn for X number of turns, you know exactly how many attempts you made. And the counter will say exactly how many successes (a fail adds 1 and success adds 3, so use (counter-attempts)/2). Keep in mind the 255 limit on the counter if you try different test scenarios. But manual counting will get you a decent answer, too.

If you want to try other distances, etc., just try variations on the above. But always check the psi values for targets and test with only psi-amp at least some, to make sure the setup is working as expected. Let me know if you don't understand anything.

It'd be cool if you tested it! Then we'd know. I've never seen this point brought up (that it's 2H), but I think I inadvertently decreased success the other day by also holding pistols while psi training (which I was going to follow up with reaction training), then it occurred to me - it's 2H in OBDATA! I didn't really have time to test, though, so I made a quick note on the page and holstered my pistols. :) -MikeTheRed 18:10, 20 September 2012 (EDT)

Oh actually I wasn't volunteering to run the experiment, just thinking about how to design it. Sorry! Thinking about it some more, maybe a good way of doing it is 2 X-Com agents with identical Psi stats, one with hands full, one without, both doing borderline Psi attacks on a bunch of Psi-identical aliens. You could pretty soon see if there was or wasn't an effect of "hands full", though it would take more runs and more scenarios to confidently measure it. Maybe I will give it a try when I get some time. It is quite an interesting question. Spike 09:08, 21 September 2012 (EDT)