Just had a mission where one took control of 3 soldiers. Keeping soldiers under control should also have a price, or number of soldiers one can control should be limited. Encountered 2 and Chiron in heaven defence, took one and while dealing with Chiron and worms, other used MC/hide/MC/hide … to take half of the squad
Was it all in the same turn or she MCed a new soldier each turn?
It has; 2 WP per turn for each human under MC. Same as for Priests.
Prioritize the Siren over Chiron 
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Nice to know. Last time I checked that was not the case. I wondered if it got fixed, got bugged out, or something else?
Certainly they seem to be able to easily mind control fully upgraded PP soldiers, and to keep it mind controlled for a long time. But that could just be their insane ammount of WP.
Also I have found this info on the cost of mind control:
Unit | MC Cost | WP
PP Soldiers | 02 WP | 8 / 20
Worms | 01 WP | 03
Crabs | 02 WP | 09/30
Tritons | 03 WP | 18/35
Chirons | 05 WP | 34/40
Sirens | 05 WP | 32/40
Scylla | 10 WP | 42/66
I’m pretty sure it was always like this, I didn’t check it in a while because I was certain that it was working. Could be a glitch, or that you simply misread the numbers. The Sirens do start with a large pool of WP and they can certainly MC any operative if their pool is full, and maintain control of it for a long time. But having to pay the WP cost to initiate and maintain MC does mean that there are ways to prevent or to break MC by reducing the WP pool of the controller
Yes, this is correct. BTW, player MC happens to be really effective against “human” enemies. One thing l like to do is “Pure tryouts” where I MC a new Pure every turn and have them fight each other once I run out of WP to maintain the MC.
You are making me doubt my own observations, wich is good. I will check it next time I play to be sure.
I have added to the table the WP of the units, Now is easy to see why MC is so effective against humans.
All nemies that can be MC have significant more WP, and as they evolve faster than you level up. Most of the game all enemies will have 2 times your WP. This may be where the biggest unbalance is.
Crabs and Tritons, (at minimum) need their WP to be tuned down significantly. Priest need to have their max WP increased (at cost of reduced max strenght)
Don’t forget that they also loose way more WP during a fight with the player. They start higher but they loose faster.
Edit:
The problem is that the player has almost little chances to MC when it is needed at the start of a fight and when it is doable it is not longer necessary or useful.
A general decrease of Pandoran WP would end in pretty fast Panic loops and then MC is also not really useful.
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They lose more WP because they have more units. That is not a disadvantage, but the opposite, they follow the same mechanics as you with more units.
If only, the mechanic will force them to recover once in a while, not often enough to unbalance the game, but helping in creating new opportunities. More if we consider than crabs and tritons dont really need WP for that much. Which is another thing to consider. You will spend WP much faster than they.
In my opinion a Priest should have higher WP than the average soldier, and Crabs and Tritons shouls have significantly less WP. This would be my propossal, and something which makes far more sense:
Crabs 08/20 the same as your average soldier.
Triton 10/25, higher than your soldiers but not as much
Priest 10/25, same WP as the tritons
All remaining units can stay as they are.
They have access to the Judgement head mutation (which is only available to them), which increases their WP by 5 (that and 2 random perks can add another +2 each, for a max of 29)
Different stats based on classes doesn’t work that well given that it’s a free multiclass system.
Their WP used to be around there IIRC, but it was buffed because of this:
In the end, call it what you will, but Pandorans do most of the dying and that has to be factored in
Having said that, in the next patch Recover should give one turn panic immunity (as a remedy against panic stunlock), so perhaps those numbers will be reviewed.
It does not need to be a direct class thing. There are many ways to do it. For example increase in 1 WP and (maybe) decrease 1 strenght with each Priest perk. There are already perks that change stats. So is not something new.
The fact is that having the most midless of crabs twice the Will points of a priest does not have any sense. Pandorans dying more does not alter the game that much, it would just imply forcing high level crabs to recover every 10 killed enemies, instead of 15. (Also If I was a Crab I would be scared if 4 of my sirens bosses or 10 of my companions are immediatly killed 
)
Also Im not proposing a general decrease in WP, Im propoing to decrease the WP of the two more common low tier enemies. Which do not use WP that much, would help the more stronguer enemies to feel stronger, and will not create such easy panics, because they would still have more WP than any of your soldiers in general.
Also again, I think the fact that you have less units and you spend much more WP than the Pandorans, should be factored in too.
Would it? with a reduced to 20 max WP for crabs. I only see to need of increasing its cost the Panic ability of the priest. There are no other abilities in the game that decrease the WP of the enemies. Will make virus guns to be more effective against low tier enemies… which is good as I think virus is not useful enough for the player imo, and you would neet to kill 15 crabs in two turns to chain two panic turns in a crab.
Im not sayin in practise would work flawlesly, maybe u are right and would create some speciffic issues. In my opinion it would not be the case. But if it is, I think it would just mean that they have incompatible systems in place, and it is not easy balancing one without unbalancing the other.
10 killed enemies are 20++ WP lost for every enemy unit, 15 are 30++ WP lost, the highest WP a Crab can ever have, endgame, very late, just to get the numbers clear.
The most common are also the most on the field and when they all panic then the battle is mostly over. Just keep on killing them while they are helpless and can’t react and after some more killings the bigger ones are also in the panic trouble. This is the panic loop that was the situation before they increased the WP mostly of the common Arthrons and Tritons, the bigger ones already had higher WP in the past.
I can understand what you will achieve, but IMO it is not that easy and can bring back these troubles.
Let’s see how it will work with the new recover mechanic and when it will also help the little enemies then they can of course decrease their WP again. But just let them do the first step that is now announced …
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MM yes, I mean killing 10 crabs, -20WP for another crab, with a max of 20WP. Just enough to have a panic turn. Which I dont think is too much.
I actually just propossed changing the max number of WP of the crabs to 20, they now start with 9 WP already. I have not seen such panic loops with early crabs. Why would you think you will see it with crabs with twice those WP? I think you are just exageratting a lot the effect of the panic induced due to killing. In small enemies. Remember, you usually kill any of these in a turn, so they dont last long. Losing un turn due to panic or recovering would not happen that much, nor would it be disrupting. How do I know this, because it is not disrupting with 9 WP crabs.
Also remember any crab can recover WP, and they not use WP that much. So, unless you reliably kill in one turn that many crabs, they just need to recover from time to time. Which I argue can be good for the game.
Because later on, when these come up, you kill more of the higher enemies like Tritons (-3), Sirens (-5), Chirons (-5) etc.
Currently it seems to me not that bad balanced, it is not longer that easy to get all of them in a panic loop as in the past but is still doable.
I agree, MC is the looser in this arrangement.
But on the other side it is a level 1 skill and should not be so much powerful as it currently is. It is usable, but the player has to do something that it works, it is not a no-brainer MC as it is in some other games.
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Fair, but late crabs, when you face that many enemies would have 20WP
You would need to kill 4 sirens in a turn to make a freshcrab have one turn of panic. Which I dont see a problem with, at least I think I never pulled a turn like that in 100 missions.
Yes, will make a regular crab occasionally waste a turn to recover, usually offscreen, as a crab lasts 1-2 turns in the battlefield and would not last enough to have any effect.
Also I would argue that the result would be an improvement in pace rather than a disruption. If you are attacked by that many enemies that you need to kill more than 2 higher enemies a turn; you probably need the breath time one wasted crab turn would give you.
It is not necessary to do this in one turn, even it is not so hard to achieve thanks magic skills on the player side. 2-3 bombard heavies are mostly enough and easy to get.
But when it lasts 2 or even 3 turns then the result is the same = mass panic on the enemy side.
Should they recover earlier in between when their WP are low but still not completely down?
Maybe, but I’m pretty sure for the player it would be not much difference, because many of the enemies would then be in a permanently recovering loop and therefore no longer a threat. The same result as with a panic loop (panic = recovering WP).
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This is going a bit too far in the realm of hyphotesis. How would a crab react in this scenario? deppends on its IA (an AI that is programmed for recover when their will points go under a threshold does not behave the same as one that does not), how many enemies should the enemy be able to throw at you each turn reliably per mission? How easily would be a player able to induce panic by bombarding 20WP units?
I think the only way to know is testing, and we are arguing based too much on our impressions. Regardless, I want to clarify one thing, a panic loop requires a loop. What you are describing is not a loop. Killing enemies will never create a loop, unless you keep killing enough enemies per turn to remove 10WP each turn. Which is in my opinion, according to my experience, never. Also take into account that as we know now, recovering will prevent panic on the next turn (change in progress as explained by the devs). So we already know that what you are describing will not happen.
In the end I think we are both making hypothesis based on our perception of the difficulty with the game. Im arguing from the point of view of a regular player that feels often unfair the veteran difficulty. Which is one of the complains of many.
You are arguing obviously from the point of view of someone who does not want the game to be too easy. I just think this is a completely alien feeling for most of the players. But it is ok. Balance changes should take into account the difficulty. And by default Im always talking about normal difficulty, thinking that all these changes should take difficulty into account, WP of your soldiers are as far as I know already dependent on difficulty.
The fact is that easy/normal difficulties are too hard for many. A change that may bring back a bit the difficulty is not inherently bad in this context. I get that experienced players feel very protective with difficulty, but the difficulty in the normal setting is now not at risk of being too easy. In fact it is too hard.
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Agree! 
I am immediately in favour of adapting the WP of the opponents to the level of difficulty.
Unfortunately this is not provided for in the current state, the individual types of opponents and their statistics are the same for all levels of difficulty. I have no idea if this will ever be introduced, but I’m pretty sure it would be a milestone for many player and could also solve many of the balancing issues.
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100% Agree.
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No, in 3 turns, but in past I have seen MCing 2 plus targets in one turn 
Surely, but as it happens, you spot one and Chiron, prioritize that one. Meanwhile other comes from some other direction and MCs. You send soldiers to that direction, it MCs them, turn by turn Siren is more complex oponent even then Scylla in some aspects. While it has no heal and long range, combination of psy attacks (Mass Panic, MC) strong melee and quite a movement makes a headache on maps where it does not come plain open.
It can use powers and hide quite well. I like the concept of such creature that could be a melee only or extended melee oponent, just coupled with psy powers and such movability, feels sometimes a bit owerpowered, especially if several of them appears and have where to hide.
Either less WP, more restricted MC ability or some chance of MC fumble - would be good balance to me. Especially on veteran and higher where they appear more and tend to use abilities more.
On MC “fumble”-RNG, if I remember correct old Xcom 1994 had some Psy powers vs will basic mechanics which could cause unit to turn from mind control to state of panic. Maybe similar concept of not so constant MC could be a solution.
People complain about the AI in this game, and in most games. However the MC-hide loop is one example of the AI working really well. I can’t think of another in the game where units do something other than bimble about. Overwatch seems random and Warcry derps them out - even if they have 2AP they rarely do anything. I guess they focus fire down weaker targets sometimes? Might be chance.
I am also happy with rubbish player MC. It is incredibly hard to balance this as it is so swingy. Going back to UFO where the game was over once the player got MC, chaining control using alien spotters. If we get a powerful version then it would soon join the pile of OP endgame skills ready to be nerfed again.
This was tested to death before the WP were buffed; that’s why they were buffed in the first place
Perhaps panic loop due to morale loss is a bit of a misnomer as it suggests something that goes on for a long time, while what happened in practice is that once you killed a certain amount of enemies the rest panicked and you had two turns to kill them. If anybody survived those 2 turns, they spent another 2 turns panicking.
So it was like one turn of heavy action, 2-3 turns of mopping up.
+1
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