Psionic Powers Suggestion Überthread

[LordFowl]

Over the past few months I've sporadically been working on a project to implement psionic powers in the game, largely for my own amusement. This feature would have been present in the lavaland map, but as map rotation is currently on permanent hold on the moment I began to think of possibilities to make it a more general thing. To do this however would require some community input, as there are numerous holes in the current implementation. Firstly however, where there is so far:

Every sentient being that possesses a distinct brain possesses also a certain spark. This "awareness" of the strings that manipulate reality, invisible to even the advanced instruments of the future era of 2456, are made visible to them by some undetermined virtue. This "wokeness" can be quantified, and this quantification manifests as a resource called "willpower". Some species, such as Skrell, Vox, and Vaurca breeders, have more willpower than standard, and some species such as Unathi have less willpower. Other species such as golems have no capacity for willpower at all. Regardless of whether an individual possesses psionic powers their willpower stat is tracked, although it tends to be that the awoken, as psions are called, developer stronger willpower than the awoken.

By whatever mechanism that an individual becomes awoken, when they do they are given a choice of discipline. Discipline is the categorization of psionic powers, and the choice of discipline is permanent. Each discipline grants their disciples immediately three cantrips, and access to rank 4 and rank 5 powers for any discipline are limited only to that discipline's disciples. Rank 1-3 of any discipline are freely available to any disciple. However, each discipline also has an opposing discipline, which is totally locked off to that discipline's disciples.

By whatever mechanism one develops their willpower, once their willpower crosses a certain threshold their mastery will develop. Mastery is categorized into 5 (technically 6) broad ranks:

RANK 0: "Unawoken" - The majority of sentient beings are unawoken. They go throughout their dull lives without ever knowing of the invisible strings that manipulate their delicate reality.

RANK 1: "Initiate" - These are the freshly awoken. They have access to 3 cantrips and +1 power point's worth of powers.

RANK 2: "Adept" - Not much stronger than initiates, they have access to a further +2 power point's worth of powers.

RANK 3: "Operative" - Twice as powerful as an adept, they have access to a further +3 power point's worth of powers.

RANK 4: "Masterclass" - Very few ever attain the rank of masterclass. They have access to +4 power point's worth of powers, and the secret powers of their discipline.

RANK 5: "Grandmasterclass" - Unheard of. This theoretical being has access to +5 power point's worth of powers, and the ultimate power of their discipline.

At each rank-up the individual must select new powers. Each power costs a certain number of power points, and a psion must choose generally between many low-level powers or a few high-level powers.

As mentioned above, psionic ability is divided into 4 disciplines, each discipline granting 3 cantrips, and 2 powers for each rank, with progressively greater willpower costs. Willpower is regenerated either through specific psionic abilities, or some undeveloped mechanism:

Coercion: The discipline of manipulating intelligent beings and their component organs. Its opposing discipline is Subterfuge.

 

Revulsion: Fill the target with revulsion, forcing them to vomit.

Nutrition: Convert the target's aura into nutrition, filling their stomach with psychic goodness. Cannot be used on self.

Skin Sight: You perceive the damages of a target's mind and body.

Spasm: Force the target to be disarmed of their tools.

Silence: Seal the target's lips, preventing them from speaking.

Mind Static: Fill the target's mind with static, rendering them temporarily blind and deaf.

Mend Flesh: You touch the target and fill them with healing energy.

Enrage: You touch a target and enhance their muscles dramatically, granting them the hulk power temporarily.

Sacrifice: You bring a target immediately to life from any condition at a cost of your own flesh. Even if the target is completely destroyed provided their spirit remains a new body can be weaved for them.

Puppet: You temporarily assume direct control of a target. Their spirit hovers helplessly above their old body as this happens. Your body remains where it was but becomes incredibly resistant to damage for the duration of the power.

 

 

Psychokinesis: The discipline of manipulating material elements through physical force. Its opposing discipline is Energistics.

 

Psychic Push: You push an object or creature gently away from you. Does not affect targets firmly rooted.

Forcewall: Create a wall of pure energy at your location.

Tinker: You manipulate machinery, simulating screwdrivers, crowbars, wrenches, and wirecutters with your mind.

Psychic Pull: You pull an object or creature violently towards you. Does not affect targets firmly rooted.

Psy Blade: You conjure a blade of psionic energy that saps willpower from your target along with damaging them.

Crushing Grip: Your hands are reinforced with a mighty strength, and you can crush men, walls, objects, and structures with a mere finger.

Unrelenting Force: You violently push a target away, stunning and dealing brute.

Telekinesis: You are granted perfectly dexterous manipulation of any target from range.

Entrapment: You stun a target and bind their limbs together forcefully.

Vortex: You create a tangible vortex at any given point. All mobs and objects are drawn to the vortex. If the vortex is not destroyed before it times out anyone drawn into it is dealt a crushing blow.

 

 

Energistics: The discipline of manipulating immaterial elements or material elements through non-physical force. Its opposing discipline is Psychokinesis.

 

Light: By touching an object, illuminate it for five minutes.

Shatter Lights: This spell overloads any nearby lights.

Soulfire: Burn away the target's willpower, adding it to your own.

Recharge: This spell recharges all battery cells in a small area.

Shutdown: By touching an object, emit a small EMP burst.

Jolt: Launch a beam of electricity at the target.

Knock: Force any door open.

Insanity: Mark a target with the affliction of insanity, with randomized effects and trauma.

Greed: Absorb all the willpower of targets in your area for a duration. At the end of the duration any unspent willpower over the psyker's max is dealt back to them in backblast, and the willpower is divided and returned among the targets evenly. Any spent willpower under the psyker's max is instead backblasted over the targets evenly.

Null Lance: Project a massive brain laser, piercing walls and targets.

 

 

Subterfuge: The discipline of manipulating the world in ways to allow the user to go undetected. Its opposing discipline is Coercion.

 

Ghost Sound: Covertly whisper a message into the target's mind. The target can reply once if they so choose.

Agonizing Touch: Fill someone's mind with agony.

Counterfeit: Create a illusory counterfeit of any object in sight beneath you.

Throw Voice: A select target will speak a message of your own choosing aloud.

Shroud: Shroud yourself in temporary invisibility.

Suggestion: You fill a target's mind with a suggestion that they fill obliged to comply with. This suggestion becomes weaker over time.

Mindwipe: You wipe a target of their memory of the past X minutes, and send them to a temporary sleep. They awake believing they had been asleep the entire time.

Blink: You project your being to any location sight.

Astral Projection: Your essence temporarily leaves your body, leaving you free to commune with the dead or spy on the living.

Dominate: You permanently enthrall an individual. You may possess only one thrall.

 

 

Miscellaneous:

Cantrips: Cantrips are immediately granted to any disciple of their respective discipline. They are infinite use and cost no willpower, only being limited by cooldown. They are largely non-offensive.

Powers: Almost all powers, including cantrips, are cast via a hand spell. This means that for the duration of the power you control the spell with an abstract hand object. Powers above the rank of cantrip cost willpower, and have both a limited duration and limited uses per casts.

Backblast: Whenever a psyker overextends their willpower, or via specific conditions, wild energistic feedback blasts across their psyche, cancelling their active power and dealing damage to their brainloss relative to their willpower debt. Should this damage prove lethal their head will explode, a la scanners.

The Holes:

Currently, there are no mechanisms for receiving or developing psionic powers. A mechanism for increasing willpower or ranking up is nonexistent. Many of the powers are coded, but some others remain uncoded, and some are clearly phoned in or poorly categorized. Ultimately, this thread serves as both a feedback thread and a suggestion thread for developing this idea to maturity or axing it before it damns us.

[Kaed]

I think chief among my critiques for this idea is making certain races better or worse at it. If you were going to create something with this much potential to be cool and fun, making it much more likely to happen on certain races creates an elitist scenario for them. I personally would be offended as an unathi player if I never got these powers because of an arbitrary decision that says unathi have low willpower. Skrell and vaurca would become snowflakes with more superpowers by contrast.

That aside, do you want this to be a non antag mechanic that anyone can theoretically get?

[Kaed]

After thinking on it, I actually have more input here. Rather than axing the racial affinity for psionics thing entirely, what if certain races were better at some things than others, and worse at other things. For instance, Vaurca are generally not very assertive, so they might have almost no affinity with stuff that is overt or forceful, but would be good at subterfuge and telepathy sort of things. Skrell are very cerebral, so might have little ability with psychokinesis, but be good at manipulating energies and so on and so forth.

As for 'becoming' psionic, I honestly after thinking a bit am very keen on the idea of a new 'psionics' department, as a potential replacement for the oft maligned genetics that keeps being thrown in the bin for being awful. Here's the summary of my spitballing for how it would work.

-The psionics department is not an active branch of research by default. It is going to be, by default, a very passive and theoretical section of research. Much of the time, it will sit collecting dust, because:

-Finding an unawoken psionic individual should be a special, moderately rare event. The way I visualize it is that nanotrasen knows honestly very little about psionics. There is some tangential research data they have that provides them with the gear to detect someone on station that is capable of awakening. There should be a distinction here between 'unawoken' (potential of awakening) and 'nonpsionic' (no chance of awakening under normal circumstances)

-What this means is that psionics is usually going to be a sort of 'radar' device that is turned on at the beginning of the shift, and occasionally checked on. It picking up someone that is worth investigating should be a cause for great excitement in the science department. There should be some sort of new variable that is created for every character at round start, and they are only 'unawoken' if they meet a very special criteria (something like 5% or less of the time)

-Even if they have detected a viable subject on the station, they still have to figure out who it is. There should be some method of locating them, but it should not be precise. Somewhere along the lines of how finding artifacts works in xenoarch. What I'm imagining here is a scenario where some rando janitor cleaning the floor suddenly has a posse of excited scientists swarming him and scanning him with weird devices while he blinks confusedly and tries to hide behind his mop, then they try to whisk him off to science to experiment on him.

-There should be tools to experiment and try and awaken someone's psionic powers. I feel like an array of different options should be open, from the benign and gentle like certain chemicals to 'expand their awareness' (you laugh, but you've probably heard the stories of LSD being used in psionics experiments) , to brutish, questionable things, like electroshock therapy. Some of these are safe but have a low chance of accomplishing anything, others have a higher chance but might have Bad Effects, like shorting out their psionic potentional entirely, or making them have a catastrophic psionic overload and blowing up all electronics for a distance. Maybe even causing the test subject to die unclonably in the process because their brain became jelly. (This should not be something that the science department just gets a slap on the wrist for, if they took a risk they should be punished for harming someone like that, unless some sort of wavier was signed by the unawoken that stated they clearly understood the danger)

-Once someone is successfully awoken, IF it happens (which should not be a guaranteed thing), there should be some sort of progression mechanics for their powers. I'm not going to speculate too much on it right now because I already wrote a fuckton here that needs to be picked apart.

[Butterrobber202]

Someone has been playing Stellaris.

Anyway, ye sounds cool and I’m all for racial affinity because it makes sense. But, you should only be allowed to have one psychic character per player, and the whitelisting process should be super extreme. Other than that, go for it.

[Kaed]

Someone has been playing Stellaris.

Anyway, ye sounds cool and I’m all for racial affinity because it makes sense. But, you should only be allowed to have one psychic character per player, and the whitelisting process should be super extreme. Other than that, go for it.

 

I hadn't actually even considered the idea of it being a metaround thing. It sounds really cool, but it opens up a whole can of worms on how it would even work. Most whitelists require you to show some basic aptitude for lore or behaving yourself, roleplaying well, etc, and once you're accepted, you can just BE the things you were whitelisted for. A psionics whitelist would only be an opting in to potentionally become psionic, if you are really lucky. Some people might never even GET a psionic character even after applying.

And what criteria would you have to even meet to be approved to be a potential psionic? It's not a race or position of power, it's just entering the superpower lottery, p much.

And I'm not super sure how you can manage something so tangible between rounds when any round that has antags in it can largely be considered noncanon. Does your character just handwave all the times he learned something new trashing a wizard with his mind powers?

Also, how would we deal with power creep? If it lasts cross-round, we may eventually have a situation where everyone who has been playing for a long time on the server is psionic now, and all the new players are turned off because they're surrounded by X-men and are out of their depth.

Personally, I think the best idea for limiting that is to have a cap on psionic character that can actually be in a round. like, 2-3 tops. There could be some sort of vague regulatory mechanic in place, where only so many employees are permitted to have active psionic powers at a time (this should only come into play after there are enough psionic characters that it becomes a problem, because why would Nanotrasen make such a regulation when it's still a theoretical branch of research?), and everyone else has to have a psi dampener implant or something (that is illegal to remove for that shift) from round start if they want to play that psionic character for that shift after all the slots are taken. There should be an option to opt out of joining on a psionic character if you can't be psionic so you don't just have to cryo immediately in a huff because you didn't get to be one of the psionics on shift.

[Garnascus]

Strongly against psionics. The crew are not special outside of gaining antagonist abilities in non-canon rounds. A mechanism for gaining and developing powers sounds like an administrative and balance nightmare. Too little and it becomes cliquey and incredibly rare. Too often and we basically become Hogwarts. I do not think either is very appropriate for our setting in canon rounds.

[Alberyk]

I agree with garn, but I am fine with this being a wizard/antag/adminbus thing.

[Kaed]

I dunno, I think I and butters introduced some ways that it wouldn't become a ridiculously overbalanced thing, it's not impossible to do. Something being difficult to manage doesn't mean we shouldn't even try it.

'No one is allowed to be special unless they're an antagonist' is kind of a tired concept, I'd like it if the server would try and stretch it's legs a little bit out of the self contained antagonist round being the only thing that ever happens. Why must the server be only defined by the current round type?

There's nothing that says we can't roll it back later if it's a nightmare, like genetics apparently was. Hell, we could even rule that you can't 'progress' (how would you even level up? xp mechanics? Something more abstract?) in psionics unless it's a canon (extended) round, or something, to stagger out things. That might be too restrictive, though. Dunno.

[Garnascus]

I dunno, I think I and butters introduced some ways that it wouldn't become a ridiculously overbalanced thing, it's not impossible to do. Something being difficult to manage doesn't mean we shouldn't even try it.

'No one is allowed to be special unless they're an antagonist' is kind of a tired concept

 

No, i am sorry but i disagree. Generally when i look at a fancy new feature or a new set of mechanics i have to ask two questions. How difficult will this be to administrate effectively and what area of the server is this improving upon? Lets assume for the moment that it is an objective improvement for the server. I would still be against this wholeheartedly. In my two years of doing this job i have learned that no matter what boundaries you set they will be challenged. Often in frustrating ways. The question shifts from "how can i make a reasonable character" to "how unreasonable of a character can i get away with"? A blanket policy or a giant line drawn to cover everything is rarely effective in the game of roleplay. You have to make distinctions based on different situations. Its abusable to a huge degree but its part of the job and something myself and the rest of the staff team can deal with.

Psionics is not something i am comfortable dealing with because i think it will a much bigger problem to deal with than the situations i just described. Suddenly we have to arbitrate policy on X situation or Y situation because of Z power. Can we reasonably expect a character who can turn into a hulk to NOT use them to fight the antags? Should we curtail the powers with arbitrary RP guidelines? I can tell i certainly do not miss genetics for all of these reasons. It was a giant headache at worst and a semi-funny meme at best.

[Kaed]

I can see where you're coming around, but I still assert it could be possible to make it work as a concept, with careful thoughts towards the concepts that you introduce in psionics. The one of the key points is they never should be something that can overshadow an antagonist, and should be something that can introduce an interesting scenario, rather than a powergaming validhunt. Some of the stuff that Fowl came up with, like a 'null beam' can that penetrate walls and people, would have to either be not very strong, have a very high cooldown or penalty, or just not be in the game for the most part outside admins gifting it to antags/event characters. Stuff that turns you into a hulk or makes you invulnerable or murders a guy shouldn't be a thing in psionics. There should be things that curtail the use of use of psionic powers to brief spurts or limited uses or risk hurting yourself, rather than it just being 'something you can do all the time because you're a magical special snowflake now', as genetics encouraged.

Things like being able to constructively use telekinesis for a limited period in an interesting fashion, such as pushing a dropped gun down a hole unexpectedly, or forces open a door with his mind during a critical situation to save his coworkers, would be a lot more interesting to see than some twat who just shot himself up with a gene code and spends the rest of the round moving around objects to fuck with people until security arrests them for some regulation about not using powers outside of genetics.

[Sytic]

What? No, this is ridiculous. The amount of power you would need to bend reality to your will is immeasurably powerful, and that shit doesn't just start happening globally everywhere. That and it'd shift the mood of the server with psionics being a thing, and make the application process a power thirsty powergrab to make their characters more special than others in comparison. That and the lore implications. Potentially you could rule that it'd work like the Warp in 40k, but even then, if you're using bluespace handwavium magick to influence the universe, why did we not find any signs of this sooner? Any idea that bluespace could pull this type of shit. Or maybe it's entirely unrelated, there still should have been some mention. Plus, with the way that this class system works, you have an idea that you'd be mastering this skill of the psychic shit. Except, if Psy powers were to spring into existence, nobody would know how to control them, much less use them in any meaningful way, or in the way you want to use them. And if you can control them so easily, why can't others do it? And what happens when you do you get better? What's the limit on BENDING THE FABRIC OF REALITY TO YOUR WILL.

If you feel like your characters need to be more special, make them better, don't just be that one guy who can pull energy swords out of their ass because they're a psyker, and NOT have the courtesy to have a chance to be slaughtered in the ass by a Greater Daemon every time they try and pull that shit. (By the way: "wokeness". While you are worrying about relationship problems in the bar, Hitlercat continues to slaughter the rights of every Security Officer to hold .45 weaponry. #STAYWOKE, am I grandmaster nowe?) On a different note, this would be a cool idea for a wizard-like, but with psionics.

[Zundy]

Why not just have magic? It literally already exists in the setting with the wizard, cult and vampire.

Why not have low key, largely o understood powers available that manipulate the veil or whatever magic thing. Powers like influencing a characters emotions (calming them, angering them) and minor boons (removing pain temporarily, being able to enter a stasis state to survive a blast into space). Player characters shouldn't have access to any high level stuff and personally I think linking these powers to a job role would be nice. Either giving roles we already have some abilities (Librarian, Chaplain and Psychiatrist) or create a new "Empath" job or something similar.

Regarding the Empath role, this could be a whitelist "Command Assistance" role in which they can "predict potential future events" i.e. get cryptic message relating to what the round might be about. "You sense a weakening of the Veil" (Cult), "For a moment you sense a dark presence in the area, then nothing." (vampire). Perhaps they could receive hints from the admins/mods?

Tl dr: Why not just use the already established magic and keep the powers low key?

[Scheveningen]

Psionics with drawbacks/consequences would be necessary to have them make sense. Granted, I love psions, alright? I hate when people are reductive and just say it's space magic though. I'll use their rhetoric against them to make a mildly entertaining post or something. But, for the sake of examples and setting tone.

Take the StarCraft universe for instance. Similarly to how this is proposed here, every living being is capable of psionic potential, though some individuals may be born completely numb to it whereas others are like tuning forks to psionic energies. Both of these extremes have their negatives and positives, as do some of the moderate cases.

Humans/terrans can exhibit powerful psionic potential and are merely a few steps away on the evolutionary scale to actually becoming a formidable psionic power to compete with the other races in the game universe, though few are capable of actually wielding it. Those that can are often whisked away by government agencies to be forced into the Ghost Program, in which they become powerful psionic operatives for their associated governments. The Terran Confederacy and the Terran Dominion in the canon both enforced this to a degree that very few psionic-capable children slipped through the cracks in being pressed into the ranks of the Ghost Program, those that did were more than likely inhabitants of the Frontier worlds. Despite this, few humans surpassed the Psi Index scale of being able to harness pure kinetic energy with their minds. Which, if left unchecked, is capable of destroying entire populations or worlds.

Contrasting to the protoss in the StarCraft canon, who are so familiar to psionics that the only reason they don't obliterate shit on a more regular basis with their psionic capabilities is that they've existed for an extremely long time and have likely already been there and done that, that they've embraced the futility in wanton destruction and merely use their psionics to promote a better way of life for their people and develop new technology to do so. The protoss are considered so psionically adept that nothing short of an even more powerful psionic precursor entity is able to overwhelm their psionic latency. They are equal parts highly sensitive to psionics but also adept with it, that their sensitivity cancels out for the most part when facing less adept psionic foes.

Then we have the cliche Devouring Swarm of the Zerg. The Zerg are comparative to a hiveminded race of pack beasts that hunt together, think together and overwhelm together.

Limited telepathy interlinking every organism in unison obviously implies psionic potential. They're highly sensitive to psionic energies (and highly powerful psions themselves) and thus are drawn to it naturally. It's a theory in the fanbase that the only reason they evolve at such a ridiculous rate in response to certain stigmas of environmental conditions is due part to a limited psionic latency in addition to their inherent sensitivity to it. Various Zerg organisms have different roles in the Swarm and may have various psionically-charged capabilities in order to help them devour organisms in their never-ending quest to evolve to a swarm of apex predators. If the Zerg were capable of actually besting their more powerful psionic opponents and consuming their essence in order to adapt new techniques, it's very possible they could become deadly psionic opponents themselves. I should also mention that their psionic sensitivity leads them to be very vulnerable to certain psionic techniques, such as psionic storms ripping their brains apart in instants,. The same-ish sort of happens to humans affected by the same psionic power.

Tl;dr to the above, shit is different depending on the race when it comes to psionic latency vs. psionic sensitivity. A psionically latent being is always going to be an equally sensitive one, but a psionically sensitive being does not have to be a equally psionically latent one. Interesting, huh?

Now we arrive to the problem.

Even in the StarCraft universe, your average terran marine or scientist is not going to trip above a 2 on the Psi Index. No powers. Sensitivity, maybe. If you trip a 3 the only special thing you can do is detect more powerful psionics. In StarCraft, these people get recruited as Wranglers in order to capture rogue psions or bring in psionically latent children. Depending on how they rate on the Psi Index this either can be a very easy job or it's a suicide mission.

You trip over 5 and you're capable of telepathy. The power of the telepathic latency varies between 5 to 8. 5 is a "These are not the Shells you are looking for", 8 is a "I literally can control your mind to such a skilled extent that I'm able to manipulate your bodily functions to shit your drawers, take out your gun and blast your friend beside you in my cell, release my restraints, then I can tell you that everything that just happened was all your fault and I can hypnotically suggest that you need to space yourself outside an airlock." That's how fucked some Teeps can be, and it is why the Terran governments in the Koprulu sector jump at the chance of acquiring or kidnapping psionically latent humans if they have to, because 99% of the time they're either going to put a handicap on them and just use them as a slightly neutered psionic operative, or they're going to turn the dude loose on the galaxy after sufficiently brainwashing them to serve the cause.

You trip over an 8 and you're a teek, or a psion who is not only capable of telepathic suggestions or controlling minds, but you're also capable of manipulating psychokinetic energies out of fucking nowhere because space magic, which depending on your rating between 8 to 12, can mean you can shoot cute fireballs at terrorists or you can rend an entire planet barren with a psionically-charged explosion that wipes half the entire planet back to the Stone Age. The protoss are considered on this scale due to their adept usage of psionic storms and usually average between 9-11. Only one human has ever reached 12 or beyond that level but that's completely irrelevant because it has more to do with a typical anti-hero story where they gain the power of a psionic God to save the universe.

So, tl;dr for the above at this point, psionics in this universe would hardly be treated differently by the local governments. The Alliance would see them as freak mutations that turn average people into genetic abominations capable of mind/world-destroying space magic if left unchecked, as a major example. But everyone's a hypocrite even in-lore, so obviously if the Alliance has a chance to gain a mind-destroying teep on their side to use and abuse for covert operations they would do it because god damn who in their right god damn mind would put power like that to waste. At least in the context of humans.

Baby jesus, take the wheel, because there's a second issue.

So assuming psionics did exist in-game, -- which honestly I am still wholeheartedly supporting as a concept! -- It needs to be understood that not everyone who comes into work is going to have even a lick of psionic latency. Those that do, it is in incredibly minimal amounts that it goes completely undetected due to how lacking in fantastic abilities they are in the first place beyond having a minor inkling that the dude waving their hands around and convincing people to go space themselves out an airlock might be a little too unusual. Teeps and teeks? You wouldn't see them on station. They would get hunted down like dogs by the initially conscripted government-agent psions whose job is to make another rogue psion disappear from the public eye.

Unlike in the StarCraft canon where everyone and their mother knows what a psion is because they've experienced having their colonies zapped by space magic or overrun by deadly telepathic space dragonlizardbugthings for the past several generations, having it be common knowledge that psions exist in this universe is a bit of a dubious proposition to be making. Maybe command staff can know about the rumors of it or something, but they aren't allowed to tell anyone else about it under penalty of being whisked away by NanoTrasen mysteriously. Then have it so that people can learn about them as lore progression goes along as psionics are finally unveiled to the universe through super fantastic governments failing to do their job correctly in suppressing the media about those dangerous space brain magic users causing a lot of hubbub in the local galaxy.

It's a neat idea. Wholeheartedly support the idea but I believe it needs to be taken at limited steps at a time, because unloading psionics onto the server immediately will cause some havoc on the server culture and the overall state of the lore. Hell, it'd be neat if there were Zerg knockoffs in the sense of predatory animals hunting down very latent psions or something, as they're drawn to that sort of sensitivity or whatever.

*Disclaimer, for anytime I've said "space magic" in this post, I have not meant it literally. Psionics is referred to ignorantly in the canon by observers as space magic without understanding the major appeal that comes from psionics is that it is induced entirely by the mind, and not by completely unexplainable means.

[AllyBearsley]

I think psionics are a cool idea.

I am really not ready for the floodgate that opens when making them prevalent and very important.

[LordBalkara]

Most of the Psionic powers suggested in the OP sound like antag-tier powers, and something that shouldn't be given to random crew.

I do like the idea of Psionic powers being a thing, but they should be so weak so as to be almost useless, or with massive drawbacks, like causing brain damage or traumas on the user. Or maybe with both of those, so that you have a weak, almost useless version of the power, and then can "overload", causing brain damage to yourself and entering halloss crit, and with a massive cooldown, thus meaning its not something anyone can spam, or would even be willing to. Hide it behind a whitelist too, to help in preventing chucklefuckery.

Examples:

Telepathy, but only with people already in your line of sight. Useful in vacuums, or to the mute, but otherwise pointless. Could be "overloaded" to talk with someone further away, but this would come at heavy cost.

Telekinesis, but can only be used on normal or smaller sized objects, has a decent cooldown to prevent it from being used much in combat, and can't be used through windows(Maybe it works as you using the power, and then a "telekinesis grab" item spawns in your hand, with you click an object with, and then can use to throw said object). Can be overloaded to be used again before cooldown ends, but at heavy cost.

Sensitivity, literally just the ability to see if someone else is psionic when shift+clicking them. Cannot be overloaded, tells you nothing else.

Additionally, Synthetics should not be able to use these.

EDIT: Fuck, just remembered Dionae, a species that can't feel pain or get brain damage exist. Maybe just have them not be able to use it because of their collective style consciousness not working for it, or something?

[Sytic]

I just think, while psionics are friggin' cool as a general idea (i fucking love 40k) I'm saying that it goes against the general lore we've created here. It'd require a timeskip to make sense, even. Because of aforementioned time issues. Which is all fine and dandy, but there's a point where eventually you start basing the whole thing around psionics, because once you start explaining the space magic, all the more important it becomes and all the more things holding it together there needs to be. Such as the many cosmological planes of the D&D universe to explain the various gods. As soon as lore was required to dig into them, all the more important it became, and it overall became more larger and more important than the original product, being whatever D&D realm you had.

Also, fuck off, space magic is a wonderful term for my psionics, given that the definition of magic is as follows:

 

 

this makes total sense as using the powers to piggyback off of another realm's ability to shape its own reality in order to shape yours is mysterious as fuck and it's usually conducted far into the future when creatures just start unearthing this potential, after people/technology has evolved to the point where they notice they can pull this kind of shit off. and they'll probably be in space by then.

If you really wanted psionics without jeopardising the setting (at least for now) and creating an immediate tone shift, you could timeskip the universe forward in order to segway for the human civilisation and shit to get acclimated to psykers for all this tomfoolery to happen, but that'd be kind of a dick move. Another option is to create a xenos species to do it, but everyone's going to want to play as them and it'll have a load of lore shittery attached, mostly based around the extent of their psionic powers if there's an entire race dedicated to it. Finally, as psionics would be expanded upon due to the "mysterious and malleable" element of it, lore would be pushed in a tremendous way to it and overall psionics would slowly become much more important until it's pretty much psionstation 13.

Like it or not, this is a tone shift, and would also be a very large balance shift, in favour of the crew rather than the antagonists, which would force the antagonists to be made much more powerful, and overall both of this increases the likelihood of them deciding to kill each other the moment they see each other. I don't think this would have much roleplay benefit other than "look at my space magic" and a crapload of lore and would overall be a massive pain in the side to anybody trying to keep a coherent grip on balance. It sounds something great on paper. I don't think it'd be as good in practice.

that's just my two cents though

[Kaed]

I think you're fixating a bit too much on warhammer psykers and space magic, Sytic. A system of drawbacks for benefits is a workable format, and I'm sorry, but your definition of magic there excuses itself from what we want to put it in by labeling it 'myserious and supernatural'. Psionics does not need to be a mysterious thing, and it could very well be a part of the science department to study and research it. It would be like calling a laser beam 'magical', Sytic. We aren't cavemen anymore in this setting, we are capable of comprehending the idea of latent psionic powers without screaming 'SORCERY!'.

And as for a time skip, not needed. There's already precedent in the game right now for telepathy and telekinesis in the game right now. If we still had genetics, no one would be blinking an eye at them, they would just be eyerolling at another power abusing geneticist who gave themselves all the powers.

This is just fleshing out the concept into something somewhat less abusable.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Guest

[Butterrobber202]

holy shit this got heated really quickly

[Faris]

I cannot support this as is, I am not opposed to providing this as a thing for antagonists which they can get depending on which role they are. It has the potential to be a cool and neat thing, but I'm generally not fond of the idea of crew members being overly special, which I feel will result, eventually becoming a normal thing.

-1

[Scheveningen]

I'm not sure what the outburst was for, Sytic. That seemed quite unnecessary and immature.

I'm also not sure if we should be using Warhammer's psykers as a format for psionics, considering how Warhammer does not merely border on absurdity in mechanics but thrives in it for the sake of entertainment value, at the cost of roleplay immersion. StarCraft, Bioshock would generally be better to source from, as psionics is traditionally a sci-fi narrative motif rather than a science fantasy one.

All of what Kaed said in their recent post is effectively my thoughts on how it could be implemented in a fashion that makes sense, in a way that simply says, "It already existed, but the potential for psionics was completely untapped until recently".

It'd be an interesting way to revive genetics into something far more fleshed out and actually unique to our server, at least, provided it becomes realized.

I believe an easy way to handle this is by not allowing anyone to be granted these psionic capabilities roundstart and deadlocking it through a unique branch of research instead. Especially not anything near an operative level, considering the implications.

[Sytic]

holy shit this got heated really quickly

 

I'm not sure what the outburst was for, Sytic. That seemed quite unnecessary and immature.

(snip from here)

 

no I just swear a lot, sorry if that's taken as harsh. it's an australian thing, I'll tone it down

 

I think you're fixating a bit too much on warhammer psykers and space magic, Sytic. A system of drawbacks for benefits is a workable format, and I'm sorry, but your definition of magic there excuses itself from what we want to put it in by labeling it 'myserious and supernatural'. Psionics does not need to be a mysterious thing, and it could very well be a part of the science department to study and research it. It would be like calling a laser beam 'magical', Sytic. We aren't cavemen anymore in this setting, we are capable of comprehending the idea of latent psionic powers without screaming 'SORCERY!'.

And as for a time skip, not needed. There's already precedent in the game right now for telepathy and telekinesis in the game right now. If we still had genetics, no one would be blinking an eye at them, they would just be eyerolling at another power abusing geneticist who gave themselves all the powers.

This is just fleshing out the concept into something somewhat less abusable.

 

Okay, you have a valid point that it doesn't need to be of the 40k lore, but if you need to study something, you're already decreeing that said thing is a mystery to you, so you need to study it. bam, space magic- Just kidding. I mostly just want to say that a laser beam does not need to be researched at all at this state of the universe because it has already been researched entirely, while if psionics just pops up, it will be an across-round effect on characters that has an effect much outside the bounds of some idiot getting TK through the weird genetics system. the precedent would have to be much more solidified. plus, this still does not touch upon the effects of game balance, the tone shift, and the overall amount of lore this would require if you want to write it as accurately as possible. It's far too much work for the server unless you want psionics to be upon the level of a gimmick per round EDIT: Or the main focus of a server (which would actually be pretty cool) and that in my honest opinion would be pretty shit.

-1.

[LordBalkara]

I believe an easy way to handle this is by not allowing anyone to be granted these psionic capabilities roundstart and deadlocking it through a unique branch of research instead. Especially not anything near an operative level, considering the implications.

Maybe its just me, but I don't know if that's the right way to handle it.

By making it so the drawback is difficulty/time to obtain, instead of something more direct, people will just either become efficient enough at it that they get something big early on (and then do the same things people did when genetics existed), or it will be seen as a waste of time, where theoretically you could produce something useful, but it would take a lot of time, luck, and skill (Like virology, where it's incredibly difficult to get anything useful/worthwhile out of a virus).

I feel like if you made it so the abilities themselves weren't all that spectacular, or came at a great cost to even use, there would be much less mechanical incentive to try and get them.

[Scheveningen]

I mean.

If it was tied to the database for characters or something and their attained powers/trees save permanently to that character after the initial modification done in science, that would be fine with me, provided that the maximum limit of psionic powers that can be carried over to the next round is at an adept level and not an operative one.

Powergaming the higher levels in a round and succeeding in levelling up to that degree with willpower should cause some serious shit to happen as a consequence, though. Such as random psion hunters deploying from ghosts to kidnap and/or permanently disable those psions because of how much of a threat they could become with that power.

[Kaed]

I don't think it should be something that you can game in a round, though.

I'd much rather prefer a very slow climb that spans multiple rounds. I really hate using 'xp' as an analogy, and would really prefer something a little more appropriate, like 'psionic expansion', but for the sake of making this explanation simple, I would rather you can only earn so much 'XP' per round, and it's added to your pool when you finish the round alive. Leaving early, dying and not getting cloned, similar situations cause you to forfeit your progress in psionic growth. So you can be a big hero and save the crew with your powers, if you want to, but be aware that if the antag then murders you for fucking with them, you're not going to get anything out of the round, psionic progress wise.

There should definitely be a functional cap on how much a non antagonist can have, and while you can 'obtain' more cool and powerful abilities, stuff above a certain point is 'locked' behind being (certain types of) antagonist. (You could explain this away with the mandatory psi dampener implant concept I mentioned earlier, like they do in Starcraft) This way, you don't have to hassle admins to give you powers as a psionic character when you're an antag. You've already unlocked then, and they're just accessible now. There would probably be some kind of trade off for choosing to be a psionic antagonist, so you don't have your powers ON TOP OF your current antag mechanics (example: -15 TC as a traitor), but that can be workshopped.

[LordFowl]

At this point I am leaning towards shifting the discussion on the thread to methods of implementing Kaed's/Schev's suggestion of a psience department role based on detecting psionics, as it seems to be the best method suggested so far, compared to say a "psionics whitelist" or a species with psionics power (which, coincidentally, was the original implementation for lavaland but really wouldn't be suitable except in the context of map rotation). With this context in mind, I'd like to hear some feedback on how involved a role this "pysker detection squad" jobslot would be, some discussion regarding the psience department is their classification, the extents to which they can go to pursue the development of psience, their legality, etc. Further considerations are exact mechanics of developing psionic power (As this seems to be shaping into an inheritor of the genetic's department, I'd like to avoid inheriting the flaws of the genetics department) and the actual potency and application of psionic powers themselves. Feel free to continue with feedback on the idea as a whole as well, including specific powers and suggestions for other powers.