Since the last DLC dropped, I’ve invested much more in psychic abilities in my new campaign than I use to… and found quite a few recurring bugs. I tried to document them a little but, to be honest, most of the time I’m mostly trying to work around them to keep playing so… the record is spotty.
Neural Disruption doesn’t work on Sirens
Tried to use it quite a bit, not sure if there are targets other then Sirens the Neural Disruptor head could aim for, but I never had any clear result on Sirens : most of the time, a Siren showing the “neural disruption” tag would still Mind Control or Psychic Scream at my units.
It may still work sometimes in an invisible way (Siren simply not trying to use disrupted abilities) but, by definition, it’s unknowable on the player’s end.
I tried to disrupt Tritons but either it doesn’t work on them either, or Spread Mist and Pain Chameleon aren’t actually “will point” abilities (can’t be sure : description doesn’t say).
Psychic targeting is weird in itself
I can’t figure out what conditions decide when an enemy can or can’t be targeted by Neural Disruptor head, Mind Control or Panic : sometimes I can shoot at them but not “dirsrupt” nor Panic them, sometimes I can panic or disrupt enemies (with no effet whatsoever, though the ability show targets) I still can’t shoot…
I assume line of sight and line of fire use different ray-tracing rules, it would make sense that “line of psy” is calculated from the head of a Priest when line of fire originates at is gun’s end. But, even when it seems I checked all the boxes (enemy is in the Radius, is visible enough to be shot,h as less WP than the Priest, etc.), my poor disappointed Priest or Disruptor still can’t “psych” them.
Thanks to AoE, Psychic Scream and War Cry seem to work fine, though.
Sometimes, Frenzy has targeting issues, too…
It’s uncommon, and only happened twice on otherwise rather “buggy” maps, so I’m not sure if it was a dysfunctionment of the map or the ability, but out of a bunch of soldiers in the Frenzy radius (20 tiles, that’s big) some would appear has target, some other wouldn’t (2 out of 6 soldiers in radius ended up frenzied) : none of them were already Frenzied, Panicked or Mind Controled, wether they were in sight or how close they were to the Priest didn’t seem to matter.
Mind Sense doesn’t work at all
This one is pretty clear cut : even when counting squares to make sure “blips” are in a 15 tiles radius from a (mind-sensing) Priest, I have yet to see an organic creature being revealed through walls, mist, despite stealth or after using Pain Chameleon. I stopped counting on it working since but, when I did, it happened more than once that an enemy would suddenly show up without a blip of warning in spitting distance of the poor Priest (sometimes literally “spitting”, damned Arthrons).
All my Priest use Judgement Head at the moment, if it’s of any relevance (the one with Screaming Head proved less usefull than a good speed boost and psychic protection).
So, as far as I know, not a single positive result through dozens of missions and various maps with 4 different Priests.
Is it an atheist statement from the designers (I could get behind that) ?
Have my fellow Phoenix Pointers encountered such issues, can they shed some more light on those ?
Now playing with priests induce panic and that psy all around attack work well. Dont have latest DLCs so might not have it all. Hope it will be worked around, as usual create a bug ticket to make it possible to happen.