[1.1] (WIP) PsiTech - Harness psychic phenomenon!

[K]

I've just put out a 1.1 update for this mod. Sorry to anyone who's playing/wanting to play it for the delay. I've been caught up with real life and updating GlitterNet and CyberNet. Note that since this mod is pre-release and I don't like maintaining multiple versions, it will be 1.1 only from now on.

This update also brings a ton of new visual assets courtesy of Emma Caraway. Everything should now look much better than my garbage development assets. There's a couple of things that need tweaking visually still, but it's much, much better looking now than before.

I've also been at work on the autocast system. There's a button for it now but it's not complete, so use it at your own risk. I couldn't disable it easily to put out the 1.1 update, so it's there. There shouldn't be any issues if you try to use it, but it probably won't work correctly.

[K]

I've just put out an update that adds a fully completed version of the autocast system. It is highly configurable, and modular so I can add even more options as new ones appear to be needed. A side-effect of the high level of configurability is that the system is also quite complicated at first glance, so here's an explanation for anyone playing with it. Note that you can ignore it completely and happily go your way manually casting instead.

Here's an image of the new autocast configuration UI. There's four major sections to it.

At the top there's tabs for each ability that a pawn has that can be autocast. In the image, the only ability that this pawn has is Inspire, so there's only one tab. The tabs also convey some additional information, with a bracketed A appearing if autocasting is enabled for that ability, as well as a plus or minus appearing after the name if the priority is high or low respectively.

At the top of the menu section there's two options, a checkbox to control whether the selected ability is autocast and a priority selection which is used to determine which ability to cast if multiple are available.

Lower and on the left side of the menu are autocast conditions. You can add autocast conditions with the "Add Autocast Condition" button and configure them in the interface. Autocast conditions are conditions on the psion that must be met for an autocast to be allowed. There's currently five different types of autocast conditions and I can add more as the need arises. All autocast conditions can be inverted, flipping the default behavior, and most of them also have a threshold which can be set. The threshold is the value at which a condition changes from being unsatisfied to satisfied or vice-versa. To help with "debugging" autocast profiles, conditions also list whether they're currently met or not.

Opposite the conditions on the right side of the menu is the autocast filter. The filter has options relating to target selection. For single target abilities, you can set the minimum success chance, target range, target type, and a target selector. The target selector in particular is not terribly obvious; it determines the algorithm used to pick the best target after filtering. Selectors can also be inverted, flipping their default behavior. For "burst" type abilities (Psi storm and Psi rally) there's available options for determining how many targets there must be to attempt an autocast. The settings there are similar to those for the single target filter.

Lastly, a warning. It's very possible to make dysfunctional autocast AIs using this system, like one that tries to Mindfray your colonists constantly. With great configurability comes great possibility for failure, or something.

[K]

I've just pushed a new update that adds the psionic faction to PsiTech. This faction also utilizes psionics and will raid you if you research too deep into the tree. They don't like the threat to their mental dominion.

This faction can be quite difficult to fight, particularly when they deploy their three elite tier units, the commando, the warrior, and the conduit, named after the armor sets they utilize. For this reason, I've added an option to disable raids by the psionic faction. It can be toggled at any time to change whether the psionic faction is in the pool for raid factions.

With this release I now consider PsiTech to be feature complete. I am now waiting on some assets from collaborators before the full release, but all gameplay features is implemented.

[Canute]

Ohh Imperial Inquisitor faction to conquer the research and use of non-imperial pschic power ! :-)

That remind me i allready wanted to try out this mod, time to start a new colony.

Some request for the first posting, could you maybe adjust the dropbox link ?
Change the 0 at the end into a 1, then the download start without opening the dropbox page.

[Canute]

K,
what do you think about the spread the psionic abit more.
Currently it is a hightech research and use only, since you need the multianalyser.
So it isn't anything useful for a tribe start.
The tribe should have access to some early psionic too. To awak the psionic the pawn need to do a ritual. I think you need to mix a ritual-potion first made from herbal,smokelead and psychite leaves. That will awake the power, but the pawn will sleep 2-5 days.

Damn, i just notice i started with a race that don't got any Psi.
I used the Mantodean
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1294507772
and found it curious that i never saw anything with Psi. Just spawned a human and first time saw the Psi tab.
Does Psi only work's for humans ?

[K]

It should work for any pawn type that inherits from the base pawn type. I'm not certain if HAR races do this, but I'll look into writing a compatibility patch if they don't. It shouldn't be too difficult to ensure that they also get the tab properly.

As for early game psionics, PsiTech is supposed to be a late-game techno-magic mod, so I'm hesitant to add anything like that. There are plenty of magic mods out there that (I assume) add early game magic content if that's what you want. PsiTech is about "unlocking the secrets of the archotechs" or something along those lines, so it doesn't really make sense for low-tech civilizations to have easy access to it. From a non-lore perspective, psionics are meant to act as an alternative enhancement path to bionics, which are also late game, so I like it where it is now.

Edit: After investigating the mantodean race it appears that the author has chosen to do things in a way that breaks my various patches. Other races I tested worked fine as the followed the HAR guide for how to create a race. This means that they'll need a custom patch for the psi tab to appear. If you want them to have a tab all you need to do is go to the PsiTech/Patches folder, copy the PawnITabPatch and rename it to something else, then open it with a text editor and change "BasePawn" to "BaseMantoPawn".

I'll try to think of a better way to ensure compatibility with alien races but it's difficult for me when race creators essentially hide their race from me. I'm not very keen on writing individual patches for every conflicting race but that may be the only way to make it work.

[Canute]

Maybe just leave the author of the race a hint how he could made his mod more compactible with others mods. Many authors just use/test their own mod without others so they don't be aware of such issues.

Ok, i can understood you definition of Psionic as TechnoMage, while i got something else in mind.
And ofcouse a technomage don't fit in any early tribe development.
And yes i am a fan of Rim of Magic, but since it is pretty overpowered, i wanted to use something else.

Since now these Mantodeans got the Psi tab i can finaly train them.
But it is very annoying job.
Could you maybe add some queue system for it ?
And i think a reuse timer for training couldn't hurt either. So long they got the cyrosleep sickness they shouldn't be allowed to enter the trainer.

[K]

I'm not so keen on trying to tell people that their mods have issues; it hasn't worked out so well for me in the past.

I don't particularly want to add any sort of additional time restrictions on training since it takes so long anyway. I could probably just get rid of the cryptosleep sickness that pawns get afterward instead. To be honest, I never even saw a pawn get cryptosleep sickness in my testing, so I wasn't aware that it happened.

As for a queuing system for training, I certainly think it's a good idea but I don't particularly know how I would implement the UI for it. The way that the psi card is set up right now sort of locks me in on the way that training works. The way training works right now is intimately tied to the concept of an "ability slot" in the UI, which becomes something of an issue when trying to implement queuing. It's a very good idea that I certainly have considered, but it might wait until after release when a bunch of people are complaining.

[Canute]

Maybe add a new job category. Like a sub category of "Bed rest" since it is pretty high.
Instead to send the pawn straight to the casket you create something similar like a surgery. And the pawn will seek out the casket after no other higher priority job need to be done.
At this way you don't need a free casket when you add the training, the pawn just wait if one get free.


About the cyrosleep sickness, it happen all the time, i just tested it with vanilla+psitech and happen too. So it isn't based on a my modlist.

I notice a retraining subcon. ability will cancel the awoken ability.
I need to train Weapon syncro first so i can train perfected synco.
But then i can train Weapon syncro again. At last there should be a warning that this would unlearn the awoken ability.
But i rather would see a right click menu to unlearn an ability if you wanted to have such option.

[Canute]

What is the capacity of the pschic trainer ?
I though just 1 pawn each. But i could train multiple pawn and they did some group cuddle inside the casket.
But only the first one got the training.

[K]

It's a good thing for me that you decided to play the prerelease Canute. You're finding a lot of bugs I didn't know about.

I'm currently overhauling the training system to allow for queuing, and I'll include a fix for that issue along with it.

[K]

I've just put out a new update which includes an overhauled training system and some new art and sound effects. I consider this update to be a release candidate. This update might have some minor save incompatibilities if you've got pawns training.

This update should hopefully address all the various issues and concerns with the training system, but do tell if you manage to find more Canute. I'd like to fix as many issues as possible before a full release likely happening late next week.

[Canute]

:-)
I just found with the old version, the training times don't match.
At the description of Battlefield Precision it say 2 days, but when the pawn enter the casket only 0,2 days left.
Basicly all training times was just 0,2 so far beside the focus/node to 3, that was 0,8.
Just downloading now the new version.

[K]

Yeah, I noticed that while overhauling the system. I had a test setup with lower training times and forgot to remove it. The most recent version has the proper training times.

[Canute]

Ok, looks like the new version don't works well with old safegames.
The Psi tab stay mosttimes empty.  At afew pawn a few things show up but not all and wasn't useable at all.
https://gist.github.com/70129478100ce388bf620bcfd4f0ddab

On a new test colony with same modset but human pawns, the casket got problems to display the proper informations (picture) for the awaking process.
The pawn's came out after ~2 days.
The casket got normal display, seting up some training and the display was normal.
The pawn's stay at the casket for the next queued training.
Nice that you can queue training while he pawn is inside !!

I think i will setup later a new colony with some Lighter then fast races.

Edit:
When i started a new colony i found out, PsiTech isn't compatible with Prepare Carefully.