Mind Bender

Marsec has produced the mind bender as the modern day application of the old Psi-Amp that amplifies a user's latent psionic powers.

Even so, psionic powers today are no where near as powerful as they used to be, and are now limited to strictly line of sight attacks. Gone are the days of nigh peerless dominance over your enemy forces with sheer willpower alone.

In fact, latent psionic powers have watered down so much that only those spliced with Sectoid genes are even able to use them to any great effect. Ordinary humans at best can use it to probe enemies once in a blue moon. Androids can use the mind bender as a fancy paper weight.

A highly skilled hybrid however can effectively direct the Mind Bender to practical use in combat. It can be used to probe an enemy's vital statistics, stun an alien by numbing its mind or even put it out of combat temporarily by making it panic. The more useful but most difficult attack is mind control, although this can only be done very briefly.

Though the duration of a mind control session is short, a lot can be done. For example, in a few seconds you can instruct the victim to set all of its grenades timers and have it throw its disrupter shield over to you before breaking the psionic link. Or just make it jump off the side of a building.

One major disadvantage of the Mind Bender is that very few aliens are susceptible to psionic attacks. The only two that can be affected by it are the Anthropod and Skeletoid. All other aliens are incredibly resistant to psi attacks, and often only allow a 2% success rate for all but probe attacks while probes only work one fifth of the time. Human enemy opponents on the hand are fair game.

It's not an essential device to have in combat, as it does not have very immediate initial benefits. It does however pay off in the long run after you've invested the time and money in training naturally powerful hybrids. It becomes indispensible for disarming humans and humanoid aliens of their disrupter shields.

Usage Note

Todo: Need to differentiate between Real Time and Turn Based usage.

Real Time notes

When using the mind bender in real-time combat, in addition to the initial cost of each attack, as long as any psionic effect is in place, the user's psionic endurance will slowly be drain.

Maintenance costs differ depending on the severity of the attack used. Once completely drained all attack cease to take effect. Psi Energy recharges over time. It is recommended that the psi-link is maintained only for as long as necessary to conserve psi energy.