Like many people, I detest using mind control in my games because it simply makes the game too easy. Dealing with Aliens using it is fine, but once the human side gets the game, it gets to the point where you don't even need to leave the Skyranger.
So I was working a concept to allow for hardware hacking instead of psionics. Yes, this would require massive code changes in order to do it, but that's not outside of what I can handle (most likely)
So, once the right research is done, and a hacking tool is equipped, a soldier could do the following: (in no particular order)
1) Panic fire a weapon with extremely low accuracy
2) Set an enemy weapon's current ammo load to 0.
3) Open UFO doors from a distance
4) Render Mechanical AI enemies 'stunned' (Cyberdisks, Sectopods, etc)
5) Explode Navigation consoles or UFO Power Units
Some of these options may be completely impossible even in code, but this is just a conceptual run for now.
Anyone interested in this? I'd be more than willing to offer the code up to OpenXComEx.