Part 38: Operation Naked Bullshit

Operation Naked Bullshit



Polsy



Let's go fuck up some EXALT! I uh.. honestly I recorded this a while ago, and then sat on the commentary with Guava for a week. Sorry. So uh, have a relaxing video with discussion primarily revolving around Rootbeer. Yeah. Take that readers. I really hate the EXALT clues I've gotten this play through. I'm not even sure which 5 countries that clue was supposed to eliminate, but I got it so late in the game that it only checked off one new country.

So let's talk about Psionics! We finally get to use it in a mission and knowing what Psionics do is pretty cool. For now we only have one power, Mind Fray. It deals 5 damage to a target and inflicts a lingering status effect that slows their movement speed and reduces their aim. It's a pretty great skill, dealing damage and ruining an aliens aim is a pretty useful power. Psionics are powered by a characters Will score. More will power means you can think harder. Powers like Mind Fray are more likely to succeed when the user has a high will score and the target has a low will score. Knowing this makes it easier to know your targets for psionic attacks. Mutons, sectoids (but not commanders), and floaters all have pretty low willpower, making them ideal targets to think at. Not to say you can't use psionics against the stronger aliens but you need either an exceptionally high will powered soldier, or items and tech we haven't unlocked in the LP yet. There will be items to boost psionic powers, not to say they grant new abilities, but that what you can use can be made stronger or with higher success rates.

Psionics isn't as broken in EW as it was in the old X-Com. Line of sight is needed for any Psi activities. Every power has a cooldown timer that is greater than its duration, so no more mass mind control. And on the subject of mind control, it's a lot harder to mind control an alien and then make it kill itself. Standing on it own grenade for example, still only does 5 damage and then you still have a half dead alien on your hands for when the mind control wears off after a short number of turns. You can't even shoot mind controlled aliens while they are under your control. Jake Solomon doesn't like you intentionally targeting friendlies. So Mind Controlling isn't as easy or over powered as it used to be. The upside is that there are now 5 abilities compared to the original two, panic and mind control. We'll cover them as we go, but for now all we have is Mind Fray.