Does psi training work differently?

[Nerro]

Hi,

I have a base with soldiers in psi training since about 1 month and a half and only one of those has gained psi skill.
I don't get how it could happen.
I also tried to let the game run to the end of the current month, and I got no psi improvement on any soldier again.

I guess I'm missing some information.

Edit: I looked at my save, the soldiers that did not get psi skill actually have a negative psi skill o_0

Code: [Select]

      - type: STR_SOLDIER
        id: 520
        name: Pape Sow *
        nationality: 65
        initialStats:
          tu: 53
          stamina: 53
          health: 30
          bravery: 20
          reactions: 36
          firing: 50
          throwing: 55
          strength: 26
          psiStrength: 89
          psiSkill: 0
          melee: 32
          mana: 70
        currentStats:
          tu: 57
          stamina: 64
          health: 34
          bravery: 20
          reactions: 36
          firing: 63
          throwing: 55
          strength: 41
          psiStrength: 89
          psiSkill: -2
          melee: 53
          mana: 70I'm gessing I got very unlucky and got 9 negative roll (does that event exist?) over 10 soldiers

[Juku121]

Share the save? Offhand, I can't think of an explanation for this, unless all these guys/gals/friendly aliens have Blood Boosting or something. And even then, that shouldn't affect base stats.

[Nerro]

Save attached.
Psy lab is in the 5th base.

I ran about 25 more days and everyone finally got psi skill.
I guess everything is fine, but I'm still curious to what happenned

Edit: Also, I forgot to mention that no blood boosting is present.
8 of those soldiers are actually rookies that have done nothing except some training.

[Juku121]

Yeah, I'm kinda puzzled as well. Your agents do get either some improvement or at least zero skill after the first month, and proceed normally from there. But how the heck did you manage to give them negative psi skill is beyond me. New rookies come in with zero skill, at least now.

You didn't use something like the soldier stat randomiser mod at some point, did you?

Or was there some OXCE bug at some point in the near past that I missed?

[Nerro]

The only mods I ever used are the ones that are in the save. They only affect battlescape and ufopedia.

Also, I found an older save from between the moment I put the soldiers in training and their first month of training. Every soldier in training have a negative psi skill. The soldier that actually managed to get a skill value after the first month has -1.

So my guess is:
When a soldier is put to psi training, they get a random negative psi skill asigned.
Then they get normal improvement every month.
Has long as their psi skill is negative, it does not shows in the in-game stat.

[Juku121]

I tried putting Mateo Nuñez into psi training. He had 0 skill before, 0 skill after the month changed, and 9/+9 skill after a month. You should get 6-9 for your first month, so that checks out. So I don't think getting negative skill from training assignment is the problem.

Do you have any saves immediately after hiring these negative-psi-skill agents?

Edit: The game not showing or using negative skill is true.

Mateo Nuñez also has been in the gym and continued during that month, so I don't think regular training is the culprit, either. And some of the problem children are absolute rookies, so they couldn't have been hit with some psi-draining effect, either.

Puzzling.

Edit2: You can try hiring new rookies and checking whether they're okay in the save.

[psavola]

For what it's worth, I have never been able to figure out how long it takes to get non-zero PSI skill (when you can assign/deassign soldiers to PSI lab at anytime) - and what affects this. It seems some get this earlier than others but not sure why (do injuries affect this, for example).

[Vakrug]

For what it's worth, I have never been able to figure out how long it takes to get non-zero PSI skill (when you can assign/deassign soldiers to PSI lab at anytime) - and what affects this. It seems some get this earlier than others but not sure why (do injuries affect this, for example).

Oh! I share your pain! I can't prove this, but it looks like this 1 month counter gets reset every time a soldier gets unassigned from psi-lab, for example because of transformation. That is why I always mark soldiers in psi-lab and never transfer them or transform.

BTW, some psi-amp stuffs are "softly" 2-handed (green "2" icon). But does this actually affects psi-success? And how?

[Juku121]

AFAICT, psi attacks are not affected by twohandedness. Direct damage psi weapons that scale with stats of course are.

[Nerro]

I did a few more test and noticed that:
- Soldiers in training actually gain psi skill points over time. I noticed a soldier getting a 1 point increase between 2 saves (both saves are attached). I guess that it could be linked to the fact that soldier are also in normal training and getting skill point XP somehow?
- When asigning soldier to psi training, their psi skill stays to 0 at first. The negative psi skill only comes after that. I did not check when the change occurs (I was to busy playing ).

[Juku121]

Er, are you using the 'psi training at any time' option? In any case, that agent (Arthur Pereira) is in psi training, so of course he gets psi skill improvement. What's so strange about it?

Normal training should have no effect on psi stats whatsoever.

In any case, I can confirm that 'psi training at any time' does award you something like [the following month's days + remaining days in the current month] 30-60 days' worth of negative psi skill. Presumably to simulate vanilla training delay (can only assign at the start of a new month, and progress requires a full month of training).

This happens on the next day after getting assigned to psi training.



Personally, I like the vanilla training screen, so I don't use that option. Hence my confusion.

[Flaubert]

I noted also that some agents didn't have any improvement. And yes, some of them had negative psSkill (even -33pts!)
It's a bug or perhaps some transformations decrease psSkill?
As, the ones with more negative psSkill are also the ones with more transformations.
(I'm playing XCom Files mod)

Enviado desde mi V2244 mediante Tapatalk

[Nerro]

Er, are you using the 'psi training at any time' option? In any case, that agent (Arthur Pereira) is in psi training, so of course he gets psi skill improvement. What's so strange about it?

Normal training should have no effect on psi stats whatsoever.

In any case, I can confirm that 'psi training at any time' does award you something like [the following month's days + remaining days in the current month] worth of negative psi skill. Presumably to simulate vanilla training delay (can only assign at the start of a new month, and progress requires a full month of training).

This happens on the next day after getting assigned to psi training.



Personally, I like the vanilla training screen, so I don't use that option. Hence my confusion.

Ok,  that's it then.
This is a recomended option for the mod, so yes, I'm using it.
I'm not sure why it took so much time to get psi kill on most agents, but I probably just got unlucky RNG.

[Juku121]

I checked the code. I was wrong, the initial training time is actually randomly between 30 and 60 days. Which also neatly explains the unevenness you observed.

After seeing the actual 'anytime' psi-training algorithm, I'm really not sure I like it. It's only rather roughly equivalent to the classic one, and the randomness bit is a little weird.