Waterskip

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Waterskip

Waterskip

Douse a target area in water, extinguishing fires. The water is archotechnologically skipped from distant bodies of water or underground aquifers.

Base Stats

Type
Psycast

Ability

Psylink Level
2
Psyfocus Cost
1.5%
Neural Heat Gain
25
Casting Time
60 ticks (1 sec)
Range
24.9 tiles
Effect Radius
1.9 tiles
Caster Must Be Capable of Violence
False

Waterskip is a level 2 psycast that creates water in its area of effect, putting out fires.

Acquisition[edit]

There are two ways to acquire the psycast Waterskip:

  1. 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.
  2. Waterskip can also be acquired from a psytrainer naming it. See the psytrainer page for further details.

Summary[edit]

On cast, Waterskip instantly extinguishes all fires within a 3x3 area centered on the target tile, including burning pawns. Additionally, a water puddle is left behind on all affected tiles for a variable duration between 7 - 10 ingame hours (approx.). While they persist, these puddles effectively reduce the flammability of a tile to 0, preventing fires from forming on or spreading to the tiles they're on. These puddles do not affect pawns, and thus do not protect against pawns being set aflame.

Analysis[edit]

Waterskip is niche psycast that provides a free but less effective alternative to firefoam. Compared to a firefoam pop pack, Waterskip has significantly less coverage (only a 3x3 squares compared to a 6 tile radius circle for the pop pack). This low range is compounded to the small cast time for Waterskip, compared to the instant activation of the pop pack, making extinguishing flames in large quantities comparatively much slower. Crucially, the puddles left behind by Waterskip also do not prevent pawns from being ignited, whereas firefoam reduces a pawn's flammability to 0 while they remain within it.

However, Waterskip has the advantage of a massively increased effective range, being able to target any location (within line of sight) up to 25 tiles. Additionally, unlike the pop pack, Waterskip can be cast several times consecutively (as neural heat and psyfocus allow), whereas a pop pack must be reloaded between uses. Finally, the pack takes up the valuable Utility slot for a capability that may not be useful every time, introducing a significant opportunity cost.

This gives Waterskip a role in unexpected emergencies, combating widespread fires, or small fires that are out of reach of your pawns. It can also be used to extinguish burning pawns that have, in their panic, run out of range of other methods of extinguishing them. However, as Waterskip can only target tiles and not pawns, it can be difficult to extinguish pawns that are moving, though aiming time reductions such as trigger-happy can make this easier.

Version history[edit]