Psi Lab questions and opinion

[Stygian]

Say construction is completed on a PSI Lab on August 15th. What logic prevents assignment of trainees to the PSI Lab on this date, rather than being forced to wait another 16 days? Is this just "programmer convenience logic"?

 

Is it more foolish from my perspective to hack the 64th bit to "1" of each one of my soldier units that I've designated to go to Psy training (to set the Psy training flag equal to true) and get said unit into Psy training 16 days earlier or rather more foolish to pay another month's maintenance charges for an unused PSY Lab and salaries of idle soldiers units that I've designated to go into Psy training when the lab became available, just because of lunatic programmer convenience logic?

 

If I go with patiently waiting, at the end of August do I pay a prorated maintenance fee on the unused PSY Lab (my bean counters insist that it has not been available the entire month, thus want to only pay for (Maintenance cost / 31) * 16 days, or do I pay a flat rate?

[Zombie]

The end-of-month assignment for psi training is part programmer convenience, true. But could you imagine how confusing it would become to keep track off everything? Psi Lab training would now run on a month dictated by when you built the facility. If you have enough Psi Labs bulit on different days, a training regimen would become due almost everyday. And if you are going to allow that, then all facilities should run on their own schedules too.

 

And if you would allow the ability to assign soldiers whenever you wanted, it would be an exploit since your men would only have 16 days of psi experience and would still be considered "trained" at the end of the month.

 

Luckily, maintenance fees are not applied till the end/beginning of a month so you aren't getting screwed.

 

- Zombie

[Stygian]

Maybe I should frame two thoughts regarding this issue:

 

1) "Be patient! One day in the near future gaming wise, your PSI-enabled troops will start making mincemeat of your opponent to the point where you will remember--with great fondness--the good old days of fighting Ethereals without reaction shots (move unit, drop weapon {alien turn} pick up weapon, move unit, drop weapon {alien turn}, repeat...) So don't be in such a rush to get PSI. Swallow that month's maintenance cost x 2 for two unused PSI labs. It is such a small price to pay for a greater HOLY CRAP feeling obtained when winning a battle by the skin of your teeth.

 

2) Your job is to quickly eliminate the enemy. Getting Psi-enabled units to the field in 16 days versus 46 days is a no-brainer. But why stop at 16 days? Use Xcomutil to hack all troops to "1" in skill and skip the PSY Lab stuff altogther.

 

==========

 

I don't like the patient route, but I screwed the game experience back in '96 when I first played XCOM by hacking and too much XCOMutil use, so I think I'm going to do the waiting thing.

 

Maybe someone should hint in Base-building tips for builders to not add the PSI Lab after the 1st week of the month; I wouldn't have two idle buildings and 20 idle soldier units if I'd read that one.

[Zombie]

Since the Psi-Lab takes 24 days to construct and a month is usually 30 days long in X-COM, the optimum time to build one of these facilities is the 5th of every month. This gives you plenty of time to get the necessary resources together to recruit some soldiers to fill it.

 

- Zombie

[NKF]

The month long wait for mistimed construction can be excruciating. Happens to me far too often, and I've played this game plenty too.

 

But look at it this way. Even if you got it built a day before the psi lab placement is made, you're not going to be getting straight 100's across the board on your first try.

 

Unless you're very lucky, it takes time to pick and match your soldiers until you get a generous sized team impervious to general psi attacks. Since it's going to take a lot of time anyway, so what's another month?

 

That's just how my feelings about the stupid psi lab downtime have formed over the years. To make up for it, I just screen large batches of non-active soldiers every month. It's a slow start, but it works out fairly well unless you're being hammered left and right by ethereals.

 

- NKF

[Zombie]

Well, I have been using the 5th day of the month for constructing the Psi Lab for a while now and its just like clockwork. Build the facility, wait, wait, wait some more, hire some soldiers, wait again, go on a terror mission with them, put them in training. Fin! One month later I know their Psi stats. If I want to keep some of the higher Psi soldiers in training, I build another Psi Lab on the 5th to continue the process. The nice thing is that you can gauge your funding for the start of the next month and decide if you can afford the overhead of hiring more soldiers and building another Psi Lab.

 

Never really expect everyone to get 100's in Psi. In fact, I'm happy with one guy out of 10 having 90. Heck, 85 is still good. Anything lower than that, and they get my standard treatment: cannon fodder or guinea pigs for Chryssalids.

 

- Zombie

[Solarius Scorch]

I don't want to offend anyone, but what's the problem? That you have to pay one more month for the unused psi training facility? Come on, this game is Eldorado after a few months; when you have the option to actually build a Psi Lab, you should have at least 20 mln on your account.

As for picking soldiers, I always try to have training room for every soldier in a base, so I tend to build at least two labs per base. If there is more than 20 men and women to train, I send the weakest ones to other duties, but only when I really have to!

[Zombie]

There really isn't a problem, per se. But some of us are penny-pinchers even when funds and income are huge. I guess it's the micro-economics strategy most people use at the beginning of the game which seeps over to the later parts of the game. At least, that's what it is for me.

 

- Zombie

[Solarius Scorch]

There really isn't a problem, per se. But some of us are penny-pinchers even when funds and income are huge. I guess it's the micro-economics strategy most people use at the beginning of the game which seeps over to the later parts of the game. At least, that's what it is for me.

 

- Zombie

 

Aha, I see now - this is perfectly understandable indeed. Still, when I am concerned, I would rather put a stun rod through my brain than go to such painful calculations, thank you very much

[NKF]

It's thanks to all these little eccentricities that we are able to come up with a lot of the advice we offer. A little knowledge on what's happening under the hood never hurt - even if it does hurt us immensely to figure it out in the first place!

 

- NKF