Psionics in Beyond Earth?

[DefiantMars]

This concept was sparked by Barathor.

On the Internets, I've found that people tend to be divided on the matter of Psionics. However, it is a recurring trope in science fiction settings. So I wanted to know how all of you feel about a stronger psychic presence.

Personally, I think it would be a nice addition.

There is light reference to a neural link with the Mindflower and such, but there is no "hard" psionics. I think that all Affinities have the potential to have psionics, but I think it works best as one of the foci of Ascendancy (Harmony/Purity).

Here is a short list that I cooked up toying with the idea of "sources" that would power each of the affinity's psionics.

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Harmony
Being in tune with the planet, Harmony is able to tap into the planet's existing hive-mind and its vast reservoir of psionic energy. Ever reverent of the planet, they are gentle in their interactions with it. Harmony uses this psychic link to gain a better understanding of the planet, both "speaking" to it and learning from it. Occasionally when the need calls for it, Harmony Psionics (sometimes referred to as Druids or Shamans) will shape the raw power of nature into a powerful psychic abilities, summoning waves of miasma or calling native lifeforms to help them.

Ascendancy - (Harmony/Purity)
The Harmony+Purity Hybrid elevates their citizens with powerful genetic engineering. Ascendant societies view psionics as the next step in human evolution and strive to make the most use of it. Of all the affinities Ascendancy has the greatest level of standardization and numbers of psychics. Most have a few low level abilities but a few gifted individuals go on to become masters, typically Dyads.
Ascendant societies have even gone so far as to create an artificial psychic construct superimposed with (but not harmful to) the planetary hivemind used by Harmony. (Think of the Protoss Khala from the Starcraft universe.)
Ascendancy is the most open and direct with their powers. They uphold a stronger tradition of combat-level psionics: telekinetic rifts, restorative mending, etc.

Purity
With Purity, humans have tremendous amount of hidden psionic potential. "Gifted" citizens are given the opportunity to go through intense training to hone their skills, becoming formidable even without the drastic genetic modifications that Ascendancy uses. sheer force of will. Those of Purity that can utilize the power of Psionics are highly disciplined. The psionic power comes from the individuals and is amplified by the memetic wave of their society. Purity primarily uses psionics as a means to remember the past and the present that will be the past and teach it. In fact a few individuals become "keepers of history". Psionics are perhaps the penultimate medium to preserve history, in the thoughts of another human that can share in both the thoughts and feelings of those around them. They then preserve the thoughts of their fellow man and share that knowledge and emotion with others to preserve their culture.

"A computer can store information, but it cannot (In Purity's mindset) love a song written 200 years ago and keep its memory alive for future generations."

- Galgus

Mastery - (Purity/Supremacy)
For the Purity+Supremacy Hybrid, view psionics merely as another way to interface with and direct machines. Mastery societies create external psi-amplifiers to augment and bolster the powers powers of humans. Operators generate the psionic energy and use that as an armature to direct machines or using machines as conduits for Human driven powers. To them Psionic energy is merely another tool. Mastery uses psionics as a means to order their units speaking to the machine code through directly with their thoughts. Alternatively, Mastery societies have been known to have psychics operating surrogate bodies remotely. Controlling warmachines such as the Golem in full scale combat zones.

Supremacy
The line between man and machine doesn't exist to Supremacy. The same goes for the line between technology and mind. Supremacy has the least interest in the use of Psionics out of all the affinities. But a channel is a channel, and Supremacy uses psionics to improve their communications networks. That said, though Psionics, Supremacy possesses the most rapid communication of huge amounts of information. Even in psionics, they are efficient.
Supremacy links minds into powerful collectives that they are able to induce psionic phenomenon, interlacing the psychic signal and driving it with collective "thought-nodes&"; linked to the network. This propagates through the machine links essentially making an "synthetic psi-wave";.

(Harmony possesses the greatest scope, Purity possess the greatest "depth", and Supremacy possesses the greatest speed.)

Voracity - (Supremacy/Harmony)
Voracity uses artificial structures and devices (Psionic Resonators) to harness the power of the planet's hivemind "hijack" the planet's natural system, using technology and artificial means to control it. As opposed to the "organic" psionics of Harmony or the artificial psi-wave of Supremacy.
The ways in which Voracity utilizes psionics may be viewed as a bit crazy, but at the same time, they are innovative and use psionics in ways no other affinity would have thought of. Anything they can get away with they will try. Voracity taps into the psionic energy of the planet for their own purposes, creating psi-generators much to the disdain of Harmony colonies who express outrage over their use as Voracity utilizes the wondrous psionic network for things as crude as power generation for their cities.
They view it as essentially the same as a geothermal well, the perfect combination of innovative and irreverent.

A big shout out to Galgus, for sharing thoughts.

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With Ascendancy's desire to maintain the human form, I can see them enhancing both their minds and bodies. I feel like this is a natural progression for the Hybrid as it takes the strength of the Immortal and Architect and takes it even farther. On top of that, I never felt that a bubble of Architects really counts as an Ultimate unit for the hybrid. I would like for Firaxis to go full XCOM (1 and 2) with this Affinity.
It would provide a nice foil to Supremacy's full mind-in-machine to have an "evolved human" capable of going up against an ANGEL.

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I'm at a bit of a loss as to how one would represent this in term of game mechanics...

 

[Barathor]

Love it! Great concepts here. Giving each affinity their own unique and flavorful take on psionics originally seemed like a tricky thing to accomplish, but your ideas here are pretty solid. Hopefully, this helps to inspire ideas for any future work on the BE franchise.

Also, yeah, I can totally see an Avatar as Ascendancy's ultimate unit too. The Throne just isn't really that impressive or creative (which is probably why it was intentionally left out during the first hybrid unit reveal, haha).

 

[DefiantMars]

I mean, the Throne is cool, but its just a stronger version of the Architect that hovers, (in terms of combat function).

I really like how my Dyad concept turned out, I just need to figure out the tuning. I feel like this fills the "Avatar" type quite well.

Tier 5 - Dyad

Spoiler :

Unlocked at: Artificial Evolution
Requires: Artificial Evolution
Harmony 10 / Purity 10
3 Xenomass, 3 Floatstone

• Levitates over Terrain
• All movement costs 1
• Rift - Deal 30 damage to 3 targeted tiles
• Renewal - Heal a targeted unit by 25
• Powers share a 2 turn cooldown

Upgrades:
Rift will remain for an extra turn. Dealing 10 damage to any unit starting their turn in the Rift.
OR
Renewal will restore a targeted unit to full HP.

History:
<Purity of Form and Thought>
<Harmony of Mind and Body>

The Dyad is a breakthrough in Ascendent research on applied Artificial Evolution. The Dyad takes on physical strength and fidelity found in the Immortal and combines it with the mental prowess of the Architect to create a lethal psionic specialist. Due to longstanding genetic modifications, emergent psychic powers like empathy and proto-claircognizance are not unheard of in Ascendant colonies. However the Dyads are on a level unto themselves. Their wills are so powerful that they are able to induce particle phenomena and subsequently manifest psionic abilities.

Candidates are screened throughout puberty to find any latent talent for neural-induction. When they come of age, a local military hero personally visits the candidate and offers them a position among the Dyads. But a candidate is never forced into joining. Studies have proven that an unwilling mind will be unable to withstand the rigorous gene therapy and mental training required. However, becoming a Dyad is viewed as a high honor and as such it is seldom that candidates turn down the offer.

Dyads, as implied by their name, consists not of one soldier but a pair of soldiers. As the combination of complimentary personality types vastly increases the strength of their psionic ability. Having another mind bolsters the strengths of the individual and makes up for their weaknesses. And on the battlefield a Dyad is capable of wreaking untold havoc on enemy lines. With their shared might, a Dyad unleashes a surge of destructive psionic energy. This power, colloquially referred to as the Rift, is equally effective on biological targets as it is mechanical ones. <While most Rifts are usually telekinetic, this can also be based in thermal quanta or electron transfer.> Alternatively a Dyad can extend their thoughts to their allies, mending flesh and armor. Reassuring their compatriots with the technique of Renewal.

Shining examples of human form and will, Dyads are veritable demigods walking among us.

In any case, we must construct additional Pylons.

 

[Barathor]

In any case, we must construct additional Pylons.

Maybe they can combine too.

"The merging is complete!" "Power overwhelming!"

Very cool unit; I love reading your "Civilopedia" entries for units and concepts. It's tough in BE (for me, anyway) because you have to actually be creative and tell an interesting story, rather than in Civ where you copy information and history from wiki's and tweak/streamline the text.

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Yeah, it's hard not to be influenced by Starcraft when dealing with Beyond Earth's main triad.

My own redesigning of Harmony is so unintentionally Zergy (unit-wise and tactically).

 

[DefiantMars]

Very cool unit; I love reading your "Civilopedia" entries for units and concepts. It's tough in BE (for me, anyway) because you have to actually be creative and tell an interesting story, rather than in Civ where you copy information and history from wiki's and tweak/streamline the text.

I feel you, there are still a number of pedia entries of mine that feel like they have broken grammar. Where as others (like the Dyad) have almost too much text. I guess its an indicator of how invested I am in each idea. I need to go back in and improve some of the lore. My tenses are really off. But anyway, I'm really happy with how all the units turned out in any case. Still need to tune the upgrades and such.

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Yeah, it's hard not to be influenced by Starcraft when dealing with Beyond Earth's main triad.

My own redesigning of Harmony is so unintentionally Zergy (unit-wise and tactically).

The funny thing is that those ideas stretch past even Starcraft into Warhammer and further still into older literature. Which goes to show how powerful and old the tradition is.

I can feel the Zerginess in my Harmony units too. The gene manipulation to "perfect" the aliens, the spread of Miasma like Creep.

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If psionics were to be a feature of the game, I think that I'd have to rework a few of the units to fit. And I'm really not sure how to represent it in game mechanically. Someone on reddit suggested Psionics replace Faith and Religion, which is an interesting idea. Instead of Faith you accumulate PSI or something.

 

[ElfCitizen]

I feel you, there are still a number of pedia entries of mine that feel like they have broken grammar. Where as others (like the Dyad) have almost too much text. I guess its an indicator of how invested I am in each idea. I need to go back in and improve some of the lore. My tenses are really off. But anyway, I'm really happy with how all the units turned out in any case. Still need to tune the upgrades and such.

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The funny thing is that those ideas stretch past even Starcraft into Warhammer and further still into older literature. Which goes to show how powerful and old the tradition is.

I can feel the Zerginess in my Harmony units too. The gene manipulation to "perfect" the aliens, the spread of Miasma like Creep.

- - - - - - -

If psionics were to be a feature of the game, I think that I'd have to rework a few of the units to fit. And I'm really not sure how to represent it in game mechanically. Someone on reddit suggested Psionics replace Faith and Religion, which is an interesting idea. Instead of Faith you accumulate PSI or something.

As of displaying psionics in game mechanics, I have such idea. Maybe, we can give them psi-units special actions like mind controlling, or something like this?

 

[DefiantMars]

As of displaying psionics in game mechanics, I have such idea. Maybe, we can give them psi-units special actions like mind controlling, or something like this?

Definitely. Looking at the realm of Firaxis alone, XCOM would be a good place to draw from.

The only reason I had reservations is because I spent months working on the making more unit ideas for the affinities and not including Psionics in all but two made things awkward. BUT if we're starting from scratch, it's much more manageable.