Psychic Harmonizers are probably overpowered

[Boboid]

For those who don't know a Psychic Harmonizer is a brain implant that provides a mood bonus/penalty to surrounding pawns based on the mood of the person who has it installed. The bonus varies from -10 to +10 from 0-100% mood. The range is roughly circular with a diameter of 31 tiles.
You can't craft a harmonizer meaning you can only be rewarded with one from a quest, or purchase one from a trader.
The mood projection and mood received are both affected by psychic sensitivity. A projector with +100% psychic sensitivity projects twice as much mood, and a receiver with +100% sensitivity also receives twice as much mood resulting in 4x the mood change.

The intended use case seems to be to take an individual that is naturally happy (Optimist/Sanguine ect) and coddle them by giving them a nice room, environment, ect so that bonus can be passed on to nearby allies. This totally works and seems reasonably balanced when taking into consideration the downside that when they get ill or injured -unless more drastic steps are taken- they'll make everyone around them sad.

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The problem is that they stack. And this trivially perpetuates an unbreakable positive mood cycle due to its interactions with psychic sensitivity.
For those who don't know Psyfocus gear increases your psychic sensitivity, as does the Psychic sensitizer implant. The total bonus from a full set (Staff/Shirt/Vest/Robe/Helmet/Implant) is 50+10+15+20+15+25 = +135% psychic sensitivity...
This rounds up to +24 mood when the sender is at 100% mood. This also means that a second Harmonizer provides 24 mood to the first harmonizer even if the second has no bonuses to sensitivity.
At this point it should be noted that anyone who doesn't have a harmonizer is now getting +34 mood combined.

If you're selective about the people you put Harmonizers in (Pawns who already want Psyfocus gear,  in relationships,with passions for stationary work like cooking or crafting, optimists, ect) and then coddle them slightly ( Better rooms, food, comfortable furniture while working, high beauty in frequently traveled areas) the effect is extraordinarily consistent.
And this is with just two harmonizers.. With 3 the effects are even more pronounced as each individual A buffs B and C which directly buffs A's mood.
The theoretical max with 3 sets of psyfocus gear at this point is +72 mood for all non-harmonizers, and +48 mood for all harmonizers.
Edit: I'm a dummy and those numbers are wrong because as mentioned earlier sensitivity applies to both sent and received mood. The real total for 3 harmonizers should be +116(10x2.4 = 24 sent, 24x2.4 = 58 received per harmonizer affecting an individual or +116 for 3 harmonizers with gear)
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TLDR: Psychic harmonizers stack, are affected by psychic sensitivity, are reaaaaallly god damn strong, and with 2+ might result in unbreakable colonists.

Here are some screenshots of my current playthrough where I'm experimenting with them. The install date of the second harmonizer is shown
Before someone comments about the Lovin'/Comfort I included some after the graph with -30 from dev-mode to compensate.
https://imgur.com/a/BhJ2dbI

[ShadowKatt]

The way I see it they're not that different from psychic emanators. The difference is that they're mobile. I don't remember if psychic emanators stack, but if you can get enough of them and cover your colony, well, even your depressed pawns will be as happy as Bob Ross. And you can only get them from a quest or the very rare, occasional trader. I see no difference here. Overpowered? maybe, but you shouldn't even see that many in a normal game. And if you do, rejoice. They're not going to make raids any easier, just the cleanup afterwards.

[Boboid]

Well, psychic emanators don't stack, only provide +5, their diameter is 29, and they can't be purchased.
Harmonizers are rare, but steps can be taken to obtain them as they can appear in exotic goods traders from Outlanders and from Imperial Traders, both of which you can request at a surprisingly high rate. It's not a question of "If" but "When" if you're deliberately trying to get them.

If you obtain 2 emanators you're set up to compensate for the pain from a few scars.
If you obtain two Harmonizers everyone is suddenly on Yayo full time


Edit: Also Inspirations can have combat effects (Shoot/Go frenzy) and can be used to craft considerably better combat gear.

[carbon]

I generally agree with them being overpowered if deployed in numbers.

One thing I will say against it is that, if things go bad enough or if some of the harmonizers are forced apart for a bit while otherwise unhappy, you can end up stuck at the opposite end of the spectrum, with everyone feeding one another terrible thoughts. That would be especially likely if you have a high psychic drone which will be pumped up by the psychic sensitivity.

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Kind of seems like the harmonizer should give or take happiness based on the -difference- between the harmonizer and the harmonizee rather than the absolute mood of the harmonizer.

For example, a harmonizer with 50% mood will:
-Give a 0 mood buff to a pawn with 50% mood,
-Give a +10 mood buff to a pawn with 0% mood.
-Give -10 mood debuff to a pawn with 100% mood.

That way, it simply brings everyone closer in mood to the pawn with the harmonizer. If you have more than one, they'll average with one another, rather than stack additively. The meta of giving a harmonizer to your happiest pawn(s) remains, but it never gets out of control. If everyone has a harmonizer, everyone is simply locked at one averaged mood across the entire colony.

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Edit: I will also say that I do think the harmonizer should stay in some form and shouldn't be removed. There's a great potential synergy between the joywire and the harmonizer that make me actually consider using a joywire for once and I'd hate to lose that.

[Boboid]

As to the possibility of a failure cascade - It's heavily mitigated by the fact that everyone with a harmonizer has to be affected simultaneously to cause a critical mass failure and most of the time a single dose of yayo across all harmonizers instantly resets the system.
You're actually more vulnerable to failure cascades the fewer harmonizers you have because a single instance (Breakup/injury/sickness) on an isolated harmonizer can't be mitigated by the other harmonizers.

It's also worth noting that colony-wide psychic waves are much less common now as Mechanoid ships are no longer picking from just 2 types. Additionally everything that increases sensitivity except the sensitizer implant can simply be taken off.

I'm personally yet to have an issue that couldn't be immediately solved with little effort. Working on acquiring a 3rd harmonizer (which is taking some time because I didn't intend to ally with the Empire in this game)
Ideally everyone gets a harmonizer

Edit: As to solutions to the problem - There's all kinds, almost any system other than the current additive stacking would be more sensible.
I agree that the entire mechanic is quite cool and its potential synergy with the Joywire is interesting.
(If a bit horrific since you're basically taking someone who's sanguine... partially lobotizming them.. and then using their brain juice to make wafers...)
I really LIKE harmonizers, I'm just pointing out that currently I'm trying to acquire 12 of them and that seems.. wrong


Edit2: Well this got out of hand. I got another 2 harmonizers from a quest.
Hopefully this really drives home how silly this gets and how unlikely it is to generate a failure cascade.
https://imgur.com/a/Vzdq2qb

[ardentpause]

Psychic Harmonizers don't effect other psychic harmonizers. Only non-harmonizer colonists can get the mood buff. That means that the more harmonizers you have, the fewer the colonists who get the buff.

[HomelessAbe]

Psychic Harmonizers don't effect other psychic harmonizers. Only non-harmonizer colonists can get the mood buff. That means that the more harmonizers you have, the fewer the colonists who get the buff.

This whole post was before that was changed. That change actually resulted from this very issue being brought up to the developers in the "Bugs" section by the OP of this thread.