Suggestion: Focused Psychic Abilities

[Holvr]

Given that the game offers different meditation foci, like art, nature, morbid etc. It'd make for a fun variety among the psycasters if some new abilities were tied to a specific focus, or perhaps a specific trait of the caster (for example - pyromaniac psycaster would have unique, and otherwise inaccessible, pyrokinetic abilities).

Psycasters that rely on Morbid focus could even be Rimworld's own necromancers - instilling some rudimentary brain activity into corpses to turn them into zombies that only "live" as long as the psycaster is actively focusing on them, be it for dumb labor or combat.

Fire psycasters, as mentioned before, would access pyrokinesis - some flashy AoE burning abilities to sow true destruction among the enemy lines. The price for having such a pawn would be having to deal with a pyromaniac in the colony. Even funnier if psycaster pyromaniac would use their powers to satisfy their need to watch the world burn, instead of just igniting some tiles by hand.

Nature casters would gain access to some healing abilities (in the sense of significantly increasing the target's natural healing speed, not magical, instant wound closure), temporarily fertilizing soil (overuse would turn the soil into sand), charming animals and such.

Ascetic pawns, being the ones that focus on looking within themselves and meditating deeply, could be the "seers" of psycasters, getting access to a "Foresight" ability that allows them to predict events (such as raids) several hours before they occur, letting the colony to prepare for the incoming threat.


At the same time, as a part of this idea, I'd like to suggest a new focus - "Technological", tied to the "Transhumanist" trait. The focal objects of that interest would be the most advanced pieces of technology in the colony (spaceship AI core being the holy grail among those), and their special abilities would revolve around producing electricity, overloading the power network to cause turrets and such to faulter, as well as creating localized EMP bursts, or (very debatable) rewiring mechanoids to temporarily fight on your colony's side.


All in all, such special abilities would introduce some variety to psycasters, and would make the player consider whether to give that psylink neuroformer to the precious psychically sensitive pawn, or maybe to that pyromaniac, to access potent abilities that other pawns couldn't.