The new psi system will now allow 8 slots.
Are pure psi and psi hybrid viable and effective under the new system, even on dominating?
Yes.
A special mention of Force Field for psi hybrid - under the new system FF will get you kill and is not worth using for 3 WIL psi hybrid and I permanently taken it out of my loadout as a result.
However with the max 8 slots limit, a lot of psi abilities will never get use now.
- Psi-cognitive Interruption, great for npc, almost useless for player. It was maybe useful for taken one psi enemy out before the change (X: doubt) but now the opportunity cost of having it taking up one valuable slot is way too great.
- Neurovisual Disruption: probably maybe useful for psi hybrid that want to snipe next turn, but even that is doubtful as you can just use 5 more AP to enter stealth mode and save up a valuable slot.
- Force Emission: not that great before the change but now absolutely garbage under new system.
- Disruptive Field: super useful before against ranged with its long range and low cost, now again the opportunity cost of having this take up a slot is too great, will never get use.
- Cryo-Shield: opportunity cost, never get use, you get the idea.
- Psycho-temporal Dilation: situationally useful before change, now oc, never get use. I'm a broken record
- Entropic Recurrence: hard to use before, now absolutely garbage under new system, oc, never get use. You know the drill.
- Temporary Rewind: same as above.
- Precognition: I occasionally turn this on before the change hope RNG goddess will smile upon me. Now? Please, oc, never get use, blah blah.
This is at least 9 psi abilities out of 32 available that will never get use due to opportunity cost at a staggering rate of 28.125%. Styg you said you want to expand the psi system, but what's the point of adding new spell if it'll either:
1) never get use because slots are valuable and it's simply not good enough to make the loadout, or
2) It's very good and a must have to be included squeezing another spell out of loadout making the old spell effectively window dressing
See for me, when I play full psi the fun comes from using specific spells under specific condition or using spells unconventionally to giving me an edge: Pre-casting Pseudo-spatial Projection and Cryo-Shield before a tough fight, Disruptive field against a sniper/xbow taking this one enemy out of the fight for several turns, cryostasis/cryo-shield against that native boss using exothermic aura, ThermoD to take out enemies' cryo-shield, Stasis to take out an enemies' pseudo-spatial projection, force field blocking npc into a far corner so he can't yell for friends, FF moving NPC to pickpocket him, cryo-shield yourself when you are on fire, etc.
The above situations do not happen all the time and occurred every once in a while. They added variety and made things fun. With the new system there's simply no place for these kinds of shenanigans now. This is why pure psi are less fun and boring now - you are doing the same thing over and over in order to be viable and effective. It does not make sense to innervated these spells to prepare for an edge case that might never come.
I prepose all psi user getting a free ability once you take the psi pill that will allow the casting of a single non-innervated spell at various cost and/or penalties with the ability itself having a cooldown of 50 ~ 200 turns to cover these edge cases.
On the topic of fun, I do have more comment on this as it had been bugging me for a while now:
There's a very thin line between having challenging mechanics and annoying, extra tedious "work".
The increased weight of repair kits means you need to return to base for repair far more often, breaking game flow making it annoying. Seriously have you try playing a pure AR tin can and watch your gun's durability take a sky dive after every fight? Or play a 3 STR SMG char trying to use trap? Locus? I know they were reduced after much outcry. A certain powerplant not letting you power everything in one go? I know you are trying to drain player resources by making them backtrack to confer a sense of hopelessness and dread - but all these changes and the design philosophy behind them, imho, had crossed this line and ventured firmly into annoying, tedious territory making the game feels like work sometimes and do not, again imho, increase the fun and challenge of the game. This trend is indeed worrying especially with Infusion currently under development and I suspect Styg is using Underrail as a test bed for future system.
