Author Topic: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?  (Read 2958 times)

Offline TheCurse

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How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« on: November 08, 2019, 07:21:50 pm »
Since your weapons normally beat your armor, someone getting MC'd wreaks havoc in your lines...
What to do against it?
Even if you have proper psi skills, at some point some soldiers will be MC'd and kill several of yours.
Sectoids do this some times, some flying spaghetti monsters who once stormed my base do it constantly and I haven't even encountered ethereals yet...
Usually once someone was targeted and looses morale, i let them drop all their weapons and walk away so they can't harm anyone, but that only works if it takes several turns to MC.
Or let someone stand close so they can melee block the shots.
Is there anything better to do?
If only there was some anti MC measure... like a piece of equipment or drug that reall f****s your soldier up for some time(for balance reasons), but denies MC or makes it very much harder... (or semi-useless, since he´s taken the drug and can't do much anymore)
Or some psi armor, that really restricts the wearer in a lot of ways, but gives psi resistance.
It just seems psi is a front you can't really defend...

Offline X-Man

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #1 on: November 08, 2019, 07:47:50 pm »
The only measure is to do a selection of your soldiers - train and push to the missions those soldiers, who has psi-str 80 and more. Such measure is inevitable - you will see. Sometimes their brains can be hacked, but this happens very seldom. Actually, only alien brain or high-ranked aliens with psi-abilities can do, and even they need to do several psi-attacks to hack your soldier. Just make sure to have enough income to support your 'selection program'. Hmm... and pay some attention to bravery. Just in case. :)
« Last Edit: November 08, 2019, 07:49:54 pm by X-Man »

Offline TheCurse

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #2 on: November 08, 2019, 08:16:02 pm »
so basically i need to prune my soldiers to high psi strength, so they can't be taken over in one turn.
i see.
how does bravery come into play there?

Offline X-Man

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #3 on: November 08, 2019, 08:38:35 pm »
so basically i need to prune my soldiers to high psi strength, so they can't be taken over in one turn.
i see.
how does bravery come into play there?

Bravery reduces amount of morale, which looses yout soldier under successful psi-attac on him.

Offline magitsu

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #4 on: November 08, 2019, 09:13:25 pm »
You could try experimenting with the idea of running a canary. As in someone who is so bad that it's bound to be targeted for mind games.
That one could carry utilities like flares/flashlight, stunning weapon.
This would be a compromise instead of a good solution, but building a team around a know deficiency could work better than having to respond to a complete surprise.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2019, 09:16:17 pm by magitsu »

Offline TheCurse

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #5 on: November 08, 2019, 09:23:38 pm »
You could try experimenting with the idea of running a canary. As in someone who is so bad that it's bound to be targeted for mind games.
That one could carry utilities like flares/flashlight, stunning weapon.
This would be a compromise instead of a good solution, but building a team around a know deficiency could work better than having to respond to a complete surprise.
now that is an interesting idea  ;D

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #6 on: November 08, 2019, 09:34:50 pm »
This is usually referred to as the lightning rod tactics, or variation thereof. It's pretty popular.

Offline Arcalane

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #7 on: November 09, 2019, 03:07:32 am »
so basically i need to prune my soldiers to high psi strength, so they can't be taken over in one turn.
i see.
how does bravery come into play there?

To elaborate on what X-Man said: assuming OXCE and XCF still mostly use vanilla-style psi, successful psi panic attacks deplete morale by 110 minus the target's bravery (e.g. 60 Bravery = Psi Panic does 50 morale damage). The lower your soldier's morale is, the higher their chance of panicking when panic checks are run. So a low psistr, high-bravery soldier is moderately resistant to psi panic, but still weak to MC.

The linked article goes into deeper detail on all the math and interactions, if you're curious.

But basically as soon as you have PsiStr evaluation (via the basic metapsych tech in XCF IIRC) I believe SOP for a lot of veteran players is to go through new recruits and just fire low-psi personnel, then hire replacements, until all of your soldiers are fairly high psi strength. I think it's actually a lot easier to do this in XCF since you can determine psi strength fairly early on, especially if you're working through the Black Lotus arc first.

The canary/psi-dummy tactic dates back as far as vanilla afaik. OXCE/XCF seem a little more lenient in that most enemies seem to need to have LoS from any one of their units to yours in order to make psi-attacks with psi units, whereas aliens in vanilla would start hitting you with psi attacks the moment your skyranger touched down, more or less.

Offline TheCurse

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #8 on: November 10, 2019, 11:18:06 pm »
At an embassy atm.
First level was kinda easy.
Second level... I´m getting picked apart insanely  :o
Every turn like 5 MC'd soldiers. The alien weapons seem to pose no threat, but my own people...
Next thing I'm gonna try is just discarding all weapons and going in only with stun prods.
Wth...

EDIT: ok that ended in a disaster... who the F put so many discs in that basement and taught the ethereals kung fu...  :o

EDIT2: 2nd try is the charm ^^
feels weird though. Either stun prods are OP (doubt it...), or my armor and weapons are (compared to alien dmg/armor). Or they are too weak but psi is kinda insanely strong...
« Last Edit: November 11, 2019, 01:13:45 am by TheCurse »

Offline X-Man

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Re: How do you contain MC'd soldiers?
« Reply #9 on: November 11, 2019, 05:44:39 am »
At an embassy atm.
First level was kinda easy.
Second level... I´m getting picked apart insanely  :o
Every turn like 5 MC'd soldiers. The alien weapons seem to pose no threat, but my own people...
Next thing I'm gonna try is just discarding all weapons and going in only with stun prods.
Wth...

EDIT: ok that ended in a disaster... who the F put so many discs in that basement and taught the ethereals kung fu...  :o

EDIT2: 2nd try is the charm ^^
feels weird though. Either stun prods are OP (doubt it...), or my armor and weapons are (compared to alien dmg/armor). Or they are too weak but psi is kinda insanely strong...

Just delay too difficult missions, gather strong squad, and only then - attack. Keep your time and nerves  :)