Is it weird that I haven't had a base defense mission yet?

[Countdown]

i usually disable psi as same makes game too easy/boring for me).

...Albeit zombies make good reaction fire practice for scouts. On terror missions with Chrysalids allow them to impregnate civilians for the reaction fire practice on the zombies (as zombies are harmless until they turn).

Yeah, you were very right about the mind control making it boring. In the save file I uploaded before they weren't that skilled and it was pretty new, but now that they're really good it makes most missions (even base assaults) a joke.

Next campaign I'll definitely change something with mind control. I might start a separate thread about this, but do you (or anyone else reading) advise:

a) turning it off completely for humans and aliens
b) leaving it for the aliens, but not using it yourself (even though it can be frustrating, the alien mind attacks add a fun/challenging element especially in the beginning ... but Ethereals will be a nightmare if you can fight back /at least jack up your troops psi skill)
c) add the "line of sight" option to mind control which would make it more difficult since you can't just leave one guy in the skyhanger doing nothing but mind attacks all mission
d) something else?

I've been playing beginner. I assume mind control is harder at the higher difficulties anyway. Turning it off completely has a certain appeal, but then what would Ethereal missions look like? They'd go from one of the hardest/most dangerous to basically wussy floaters.

[Countdown]

You have misread the name a bit, but thanks for the laugh

Haha, oops, looked too quickly. Guess I've seen too many Adam Sandler movies. "Warboy" does make more sense.

[Solarius Scorch]

Regarding psi: in my experience line of sight is pretty good at balancing the psi; maybe not perfect, but good enough.
It does however hamper aliens, who no longer can psi you to death before you get out of your craft, so many people criticize it for being an "easy mode".

[yrizoud]

In my opinion, Psi is balanced to be a strong help for getting the live commander if you don't have one already, but then it's supposed to be a straight line to the endgame (research last mission, last ship, build it, lift off.)

[psyHoTik]

It does however hamper aliens, who no longer can psi you to death before you get out of your craft, so many people criticize it for being an "easy mode".

I wonder how many of these people actually keep playing after having the whole squad of elite troops wiped out by alien grenade thrown by mind-controlled soldier. And how many just load a savegame  But, yeah, they are playing the "hard" mode...

When I started playing OXC I also thought that I will play it like the original. It was fun until first base attack by Etherals - the game turned into save/load fiesta. Theoretically, according to ufopedia (website, not the in-game one), psi can be avoided if you keep your soldiers out of aliens sight, as they can psi only if they see at least one of player units. Unfortunately, the AI can track spotted units for a few turns, so moving out of alien sight or killing spotting creature won't prevent enemy psi attack On the other hand, if you master your troops in psionics, the game becomes absurd.

[Solarius Scorch]

Yes I agree with you, psyHoTik - that's how I feel as well. And difficulty aside, I think weaker psionics simply make the game more interesting and less one-sided (whoever has the advantage).
I was merely saying that it's a controversial change that not everyone agrees with. Luckily it's an official mod, so everyone can decide for themselves.

[Dioxine]

I wonder how many of these people actually keep playing after having the whole squad of elite troops wiped out by alien grenade thrown by mind-controlled soldier. And how many just load a savegame  But, yeah, they are playing the "hard" mode...

What kind of resolve, or rather lack thereof, makes a Commander surrender to the alien horde because he lost a single squad?
Basic ways of handling it are:
- Anyone who's not likely to have high Psi Power (and you can tell because aliens either fail their psi attacks or do not attempt any - they know who's the weakest and go after them first) should drop any big grenades and big guns to the ground.
- Power Suit + Laser Rifle as the basic loadout suddenly makes much more sense (with heavies carrying laser pistol as backup). These weapons are still good enough to kill Ethereals (and basically anything else Aliens have if applied in right qunatity) while being almost harmless to power-armored soldiers. And the heavy weapon dudes who dropped they gear still have their pistols. You can also have standard human grenades as backup - still useful for killing weaker aliens, harmless to power armor.
- Dangle proven psi-weak soldiers (unarmed or armed with human pistols), ideally with top-notch Bravery (70+) in the front of aliens. Their psi attacks will likely go against these soldiers first. High bravery makes them less likely to lose their nerve if aliens go for Panic attacks, and a soldier who lost his nerve may run towards alien lines to his death.
- Disperse the troops. Less grenade magnets, less targets for MC-ed soldiers. Good chance they'll fail to find any targets.

So in short you have ways of defending (and it gets trivial after researching psi-lab - just don't use anyone with Psi Strength below 70-80 and you're basically immune to Psi), while aliens have none and are at your tender mercies.

[Solarius Scorch]

Yeah, these are good tactics Dioxine. But still, I think the way the original game handled psi is really... well, I'd say it's significantly less brilliant than the rest of the mechanics. And many efficient tactics to deal with it are kind of silly.

[Dioxine]

Well, not really weird, it was designed as the game-ender IMO. And no tactic is silly when you're trying to defend against something that's OP AS FOCK by design.

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, not really weird, it was designed as the game-ender IMO. And no tactic is silly when you're trying to defend against something that's OP AS FOCK by design.

I didn't mean it's silly as a player's action. I meant it's silly in-game - like assigning a "psi rod" with no weapons etc. Sure, it's good tactics, but it's bad that the game forces you to do that, or at least gives a strong incentive to.

That's why I prefer to have some sort of limitation for psi, and the line of sight does that pretty well - and is easy to enable. But your approach in Piratez with distance limitation also works.

[Dioxine]

I haven't hampered the alien psi in any way, though. I just don't consider it to be that much of a danger, even without "psi-rods". If you enable LOS limits for alien psi, it turns them into morons who MC your scouts instead of killing them, only to hang out at 20 tiles range and be summarily executed. So it makes them IMO less dangerous than if they had no Psi at all.

And psi rods work only because the AI is a cheating bastard. If they attacked at random, it would be overall more dangerous IMO. But I guess Ethereals are too smart for their own good.

[Countdown]

I meant it's silly in-game - like assigning a "psi rod" with no weapons etc. Sure, it's good tactics, but it's bad that the game forces you to do that, or at least gives a strong incentive to.

I agree. I feel like I'm cheating when I do this (I usually give my weak psi soldiers small launchers and a backup weapon in their pack), but what is the alternative? Give your soldier with psi strength 1 a heavy plasma, a couple alien grenades and let them go crazy on your own troops? Basically your option is "cheat" them at their own game or willingly let them exploit your weakness.

You can only use psi strong soldiers and fire others, but then that's a different form of "cheating".

psi rods work only because the AI is a cheating bastard. If they attacked at random, it would be overall more dangerous IMO. But I guess Ethereals are too smart for their own good.

Yeah, it might be better if they randomly did psi attacks. Then your psi strength 50 soldier could become a liability, where in the current format if you have three troops with psi strength below 30 and throw them out there as scouts (aka "lightning rods"), the rest of your group should be pretty safe from psi attacks.

[Countdown]

Anyway, I've been giving this a lot of thought and reading some other discussions on this topic on these forums and have came to a couple conclusions I think will work for me and let me have a more balanced game next time through.

First, so far I'm just playing with what I get. I don't see myself wanting to do the hiring/firing route and only take soldiers with good starting stats. Once I get more money and multiple bases, I might throw the shit soldiers as base defenders at the South Pole, but no pink slips. Only way out is in a body bag.

Then...

Option 1: Leave psi on, don't require LOS, but have a self-imposed restriction that I can't use psi amps. So I still have to deal with the alien attacks and I can't just MC them into oblivion, but I can still have psi labs so I can find my strong psi soldiers and incrementally increase their psi skill through psi lab training which will help them defend against psi attacks (unfortunately I know with the formula, psi skill isn't that helpful with attacks, but it's there).

Option 2: I saw discussions about this from 2013-2014, so I'm not sure if it's made it's way into the 1.0 version, the latest nightly, or is some kind of mod I'd have to add, but it sounded good. Alter the cost of using psi attacks so it is way higher by...

a) requiring 80 to 100% of your TUs
b) using a high percentage or 100% of your energy
c) giving stun damage so that after maybe 1 or 2 psi attacks, you're unconscious (I think 1 almost guarantees you can't exploit MC)

That would definitely tone down the power of MC for XCOM troops a TON. And it makes sense; doing these mind attacks would take a toll on the human brain/body. I'd have to do some testing and figuring out the best math (I don't quite understand the numbers on energy and stun damage), but basically you could have it so one good psi soldier could do 2 attacks every like 5 to 10 turns or something.

They only have enough TUs for one attack in a turn, then energy takes time to come back so even if they sit still it might take 2+ turns to recharge their energy and then depending on how much stun damage you apply after one or two mind attacks they are unconscious. You could have someone there to revive them right away with a medi kit, but they'd start with 0 TUs and low energy even once revived. I did some testing and it takes a lot of medi-kit to revive a person who has been fully stunned. It might take 2 turns for the "medic" (or two "medics" on 1 turn) to even revive your psi troop.

Basically the end result would be that you could use several strategically placed mind attacks during a mission and it might save a soldier or two who get stuck in a bind, but it's not going to let you MC your way to victory by taking over 10 aliens in one turn.

Even if you have an avenger with 5 psi soldiers and 5 designated medics to revive them (that leaves you a tank and 12 soldiers in the field) you might only get 10 mind attacks in a mission total. For smaller UFO crashes that's still enough to make the mission pretty easy (but at the point in the game you have an avenger, smaller UFOs should be easy anyway; they're basically just good for giving your new soldiers practice and getting some quick supplemental income) but 10 mind attacks in a base assault, battleship, terror ship or any mission with Ethereals is nothing. And that's with an avenger and several psi troops ... if you have a sky ranger and 1 or 2 psi troops, you're going to be even more limited. Again, might save a life or two or let you suicide a few aliens, but isn't winning you the day by itself.

I think I just convinced myself that option 2 would be great, but I just hope there's a relatively easy way to apply it with the current mods.

[Dioxine]

Regarding option 2. You can do it with OXCExtended, but not much of a solution. You just need a support crew of a few medics who's gonna stimulate the s*it out of your psi-users so they will be good to fire each turn. In practice this means going down from 14 psykers to about 9, and max number of psi attacks drops from 42 to 9. Still enough to completely control the battlefield but at least some subtlety would be required, meaning, IQ of over 80 if you know the drill.
Naturally you can make the psi amp to do enough damage for the soldier to keel over, but
1. it's not allowed to kill/stun yourself that way in OXCE;
2. it would smell BS for miles
If you really want to f*ck them up make the psi-amps drain morale as well... But then again, morale can be restored by aliens killing themselves. But with OXCE, you can control psi-amps in much more ways than just that - change their range dropoff, base power, for MC and Panic separately and all sorts of stuff I can't even predict because no-one has tried them yet

*With 9 psykers I meant Skyranger. With Avenger you can double that number if you go for a complete psionic overkill. Even with a hovertank to supervise the action and more medics, you can have 12 psykers. If they're well-trained, that should be enough to MC at least 5 Ethereals, more than enough to clear the LZ. Then you go from there, advancing your puppets across the field, killing every alien who resists and MC new ones when some of your original puppets die.

Oh yeah and don't tell me your psykers do not sport a couple of Blasters to nuke everything back to Mars if something goes wrong

[Solarius Scorch]

Yeah, that's all valid points guys. I admit that limiting alien psi is a bit of a problem, but then... what would be a better solution? Making it range-based works for X-Com, but would it work for aliens?