Hemebond on 17/7/2007 at 07:09
Quote Posted by heywood
If you make Cryokinesis and Pyrokinesis ramp up significantly at high PSI so you can go blast everything up, you'll end up fighting like a marine rather than a psi player.
One of the great things about Psi that it encompasses all 3 disciplines within itself. It's perfectly legitimate to play as a Psi-toting marine.
Ultraviolet on 17/7/2007 at 09:16
On Impossible, I don't think there are really all that many cyber modules for really being able to accomplish that to good effect, though.
I didn't mean that psi shouldn't generally get more powerful, and I certainly don't think psi should be underpowered, but the game should just get harder toward the end (and it really doesn't). Psi should give you the same lethal potential, but make you maybe think more or know more to do it; psi attacks would do narrower types of damage as projectiles so that you can't have one psi attack that's good against everything, radials (That flame thing) could be weaker overall but do more than one type of damage as psi goes up and maybe include increased defense some way. As it is, there's a stat boost of every type, so that's good for letting the player spend psi points on being more effective in general with general weapons and more effective against specific targets with specific psi attacks, so that's good.
Bjossi on 17/7/2007 at 17:09
Pyrokinesis and cryokinesis are very powerful when at max PSI, but it is expensive to reach that sort of power. Plus the PSI hypos are expensive as hell on Impossible. :sweat:
heywood on 17/7/2007 at 22:46
Quote Posted by Hemebond
One of the great things about Psi that it encompasses all 3 disciplines within itself. It's perfectly legitimate to play as a Psi-toting marine.
Legitimate maybe, but kinda pointless to use Psi that way. I think it would also be quite boring going through the whole game with a single weapon that just fires two different colored blasts.
More to the point, as Ultraviolet said, the game should get harder as you progress, but it doesn't for a Psi player. Engineering is usually the hardest level for a Psi player and some of the later parts of the game are too easy. I think if the goal is to make Psi more balanced or consistent, one could start by making things easier in Med/Sci and Engineering and harder at the end of BOTM.
Bjossi on 17/7/2007 at 22:49
A good way to make BotM somewhat harder for PSI players, is to make soma transference not affect the brain. . .
Louis Cypher on 20/7/2007 at 21:54
Erm... would somebody mind telling me if they actually see the hopefully massive difference in Cryo and Pyro once you hit PSI 9 and 10? I'm not at all certain I did it right.
Ultraviolet on 21/7/2007 at 20:37
Quote Posted by Louis Cypher
Erm... would somebody mind telling me if they actually see the hopefully massive difference in Cryo and Pyro once you hit PSI 9 and 10? I'm not at all certain I did it right.
I would have tested this for you long ago, but I'm often on here from work and don't have SS2 installed anyway. I would say, if you actually set the psi powers in those entries up to EXTREMELY high levels, or with different effects, you could tell a lot easier.
RocketMan on 22/7/2007 at 02:01
I figure if somebody can level up that high that they get to ten then the enemies should burst into flames or become a solid hunk of ice. It only seems fitting as a reward.
TF on 22/7/2007 at 02:31
Stats cannot go above 8, what makes you think they can go as high as 10? If they did go as high as 10 then trying to fire Cryokinesis with PSI 10 would result in no projectile being fired since no Level 10 projectile is linked.
No matter how high PSI goes beyond 8, a projectile higher than Cryo PSI 8 will never be fired.
Another little experiment was making a weapon require a STR of 9 to be wielded, then giving the player a STR of 9 through the ubermensch cheat and a modified strength booster that gives +3 strength, the weapon couldn't be wielded because STR 9 was never reached and the condition didn't validate.
Louis Cypher on 22/7/2007 at 09:30
Supposedly, certain Psionic abilities count PSI up to 10, while others only count up to 8. These are, quote, Remote Circuitry Manipulation, Molecular Transmutation, both forms of Cerebro-Stimulated Regeneration, and Metacreative Barrier. Now I've looked at them and can't see why they would be so special, but eh. I imagined if that was false it wouldn't get around so much.
I knew about the Cryokinetic projectile... Cryo PSI 1-8. However, to me what it looks like the game is doing is launching the cryo orb with Cryo PSI 1, and the Cryo PSI projectiles 2 to 8 are invisible and simply follow it if you have PSI 2 to 8. I guessed this because the Cold stimulus for Cryo PSI 1 has an intensity of 4 (which happens to be Cryo's damage at PSI 1), and each one after has an intensity of 1, which would seem to correspond with the fact that Cryo's damage goes up by 1 for each PSI level. This idea is made more appealing when you consider that if you augment Cryo PSI 2's intensity, if you have and fire the projectile it inherits whatever damage you gave Crto PSI 2... as does 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. So I presumed the game was firing projectiles 1-8, then stopping because it had no 9 and 10.
I thought if I simply linked a projectile each for Cryo 9 and Cryo 10 it would launch two more projectiles, but apparently not.
Good college try I suppose?
