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)