Instead of usual panic and firearm shooting maybe some customizing events or abilites can get additional juice into the gameplay
Extra behaviours (something like in “Darkest Dungeon”):
N% chance to trigger behaviour at 0 WP to become either:
a) virtuous [N% roll event to inspire team member(s)]
- fearless = buff panic immunity to team member for 5 turns
- vigorous = buff random team member with 20% increased move speed for 3 turns
- hopeful = increase random team member WP by 2
- powerful = increase random team member damage by 20% for 3 turns
- helpful = increase random team member healing power by 50% for 5 turns
- … etc
b) afflicted [N% roll event to demoralize team member(s)]
- paranoid = reduce AP of random team member by 2
- confused = misinform random party member to perform unplanned weapon reload
- irrational = fire at random enemy target
- hopeless = misinform random party member to fall back to previous position
- stressful = reduce WP of random team member by 2
- … etc
so at the beginning of each turn there’s N% chance that one of those actions will be performed by virtuous/afflicted team member… until to the end of mission or state lasts for N turns. No idea yet about how it might affect gameplay but for sure it does in DD and by huge margin.
Maybe theres room for another stat like mental strength that can be indicator when we talk about panic resistance, WP recovery amount, behaviour change or some mental damage abilities/resistances.
More perks:
Vitality: x2 reduced poison/virus damage taken, x2 faster recovery from paralysis
Prayer: recovery restores 75% of max WP instad of 50%
Calm: no WP loss on friendly unit death
Focused: double WP is required to lose mind control, induced panic resistance
Steady: recovery cost reduced to 3AP instead of 4AP
Enlightened: recovery also increases WP for each team member by 1
Conseal: damage caused to equipped weapon/item reduced by 50%
Gambler: operating below 50% health there’s 10% chance to perform additional shot/hit
Elusive: 25% chance to dodge melee attacks while having melee weapon equipped
More monsters with abilities:
LIGHNING SQUID
reactive force (red circle, AOE):
when soldier carrying any explosives steps into the area of force-field, all human made grenades and rockets are triggered and detonate [if not equipped+fired/thrown at the same turn] on next turn after all enemy movement is finished. Assault class can drop all of them without AP cost [RFA skill] but you still need to run away into safe distance. All enemies also get chance to move before explosion occurs to avoid this cheat-planting by assault class just running around and dropping hot and live explosives without cost of AP.
static field (blue circle, AOE):
can cause N amount of paralysis damage per tile/step if conducted…
lets say its 6-8 tile wide area around caster, each tile delivers instant 1 point of paralysis damage to human flesh if entered. effect penetrating through walls/obstacles is 50% lower than direct visible contact
electric ink (single shot, long range):
fires charged ball of ink at the target causing heavily blurred vision / affected accuracy for N turns.
vision/accuracy gets better (bit less blurry effect) each turn until debuff worn off. soldier carrying a melee weapong has high chance to miss hit according to ink stack amount.
chain-lightning: (single shot, mid range, chained effect):
affects targeted unit first, after that chains to the next closest unit if distance is shorter than 5 tiles, then to the next one etc… all afflicted units have 50% chance to drop equipped weapon on the ground or 50% chance to get dazed
thornspike: (single shot, mid/long range, stacking bleed debuff)
throws sharpened thorn at the target, causing 20 permanent damage and applying stacking debuff of +20 extra bleeding damage after each turn until wound is treated. debuff can be avoided using bleed-immunity augmentations… or if target is vehicle type
TIDAL PINCER
shredding swipe: (close range, frontal cone AOE)
serious cleave damage, bleeding effect + shredding, targeting legs + hamstring effect for N turns?
lightning reflexes:
X% chance to take cover inside huge shell to mitigate Y% of any direct damage
monster leap:
similar to JET JUMP it can jump on top of buidings and back to ground with area slam/daze effect
cannibalize:
can eat all types of corpses (except vehicles) to heal huge amount of HP over time
burrow:
on plain ground (outside of buildings) can burrow into soil for some turns, removing all debuffs and regenerating HP/WP over time