Neural heat dump
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Neural heat dump
Instantly dump all your neural heat into someone else. As a side-effect, the target will fall into a debilitating but non-damaging coma for about a day. The target must actively accept the psychic invasion, so only conscious allies can be targeted.
Base Stats
- Type
- Psycast
Ability
Neural heat dump is a level 2 psycast that removes all the neural heat from the caster, at the expense of rendering the target colonist comatose.
Acquisition
There are two ways to acquire the neural heat dump psycast:
- Upon reaching psylink level 2, a random psycast of level 2 is granted regardless of how this level up is achieved. This won't apply if the psycaster already knew one or more level 2 psycast.
- Neural heat dump can also be acquired from a psytrainer naming it. See the psytrainer page for further details.
Summary
Upon casting, Neural heat dump will instantly reduce the caster's Neural heat to 0, while inflicting the Psychic coma hediff to the target pawn for 60,000 ticks (16.67 mins), or one in-game day. Valid targets include any psychically sensitive, non-downed colonists within 25 tiles, respecting line of sight and including slaves
, while disqualifying those in a mental break. Note that despite the psycast's seemingly harmless effects, Neural heat dump cannot be used by pawns incapable of violence.
Analysis
Neural heat dump is a largely middling psycast which can see some use, but more often none at all. Its benefit comes at a substantial cost, and becomes largely unnecessary as colonies progress.
The primary, and most obvious use for Neural heat dump is to allow a psycaster to sidestep the limitation on the number of psycasts one can cast in rapid succession imposed by Neural heat, which in turn allows one to massively cripple raids by chaining together high-impact psycasts, such as Berserk and Berserk pulse, Invisibility, and Skip. However, this comes at the not-insubstantial cost of rendering one of your pawns incapacitated for a full day, preventing them from helping fight back against the immediate threat, or aiding with the tending and cleanup that follows. While this can be a significant drawback for colonies with low numbers of colonists, more developed colonies will be far less troubled by the temporary sidelining of a single pawn. Additionally, it is unlikely (but not impossible) to have access to a psycaster who is both capable of casting Neural heat dump and high-tier psycasts worth using it for in the early days of a colony (outside of Tribal colonies making use of the Anima tree). As such, by the time one has such a pawn, the downsides of Neural heat dump are likely a minor inconvenience at best.
In any case, when using Neural heat dump, it would be prudent for one to prioritize non-essential or non-combatants when considering targets to incapacitate. Pawns which are incapable of violence or slaves are choice targets for Neural heat dump, as their contributions to combat are likely to be minimal at best. However, Neural heat dump's downside can additionally be leveraged as a tool to instantly remove an injured colonist as an active combatant, stopping most enemies from attacking them and protecting them from further, potentially lethal injuries. This is most useful against manhunting animals and mechanoids, as they will not target downed pawns. However, against the typical raider factions, there is the possibility of them attempting to kidnap the downed pawn. As such, caution should be taken when casting Neural heat dump on exposed pawns which would make easy pickings for an opportunistic raider.
Lastly, Neural heat dump's coma can also be used as a method to temporarily incapacitate a problematic colonist, such as one on the verge of an extreme mental break, acting as a pseudo-Word of serenity; though the preemptive nature of its usage can render it difficult to use effectively. Additionally, more accessible alternative methods to accomplish a similar result (such as anesthetic or imprisonment) render this fringe benefit fairly irrelevant.
Version history
- 1.1.2647 - Added.