Psychic harmonizer

The Psychic Harmonizer is a special psychic implant that projects the mood of the user to other pawns.

Acquisition

Psychic harmonizers cannot be crafted, and instead must be acquired through trade or as a quest reward.

Summary

Once implanted in a pawn, the harmonizer projects a psychic effect with a radius of 30 tiles that affects nearby pawns with a moodlet whose value is dependent on the current mood of the implanted pawn. It base value scales from -? at 0% Implantee Mood up to +10 at 100% mood.

This value is further proportionally scaled by the psychic sensitivity of both the implantee and the subject of the effect, so a pawn with 200% psychic sensitivity affected by a completely happy implantee would have a +20 mood buff, and that buff would increase to +40 if the implantee's sensitivity was increased also increased to 200%.

It only impacts members of the same faction, and pawns without a psychic harmonizer of their own. Mood bonuses from different harmonizers stack on pawns that meet the prior two criteria, however.

Slaves are considered to be part of their owners' faction for the purposes of the psychic harmonizer, not of their original faction.

Installation

Installing the part requires ?? of work, ?x medicine of ?? quality or better, and a Medical skill of ??.

Removing the part requires ? of work, ?x medicine of ?? quality or better, and a Medical skill of ?.

If the operation fails, the part has a chance^{[What Chance?]} to be destroyed.

Analysis

Psychic harmonizers can be an extremely powerful tool to keep your pawns happy if you install it in a pawn who is easily pleased however as the description states, it can easily cause problems as well.

Traits

Several traits lend themselves to use with the Psychic Harmonizer:

Positive Natural Mood traits: The Sanguine and Optimist traits obviously synergize ideally with this implant, providing both a better effect and greater resistance to negative moodlets.
Masochist: Exceptionally easy to buff their mood and not only eliminate one of the biggest risks i.e. injury lowering the mood of the harmonized pawn, but turn it into a benefit. Some of the pawns non-mood effectiveness is lost because of pain's effect on consciousness however.
Psychopath: Immune to many of the largest mood penalties.
Bloodlust: Similar to psychopath, they are immune to many penalties but also often get significant mood buffs just by participating in raid battles.
Body modder: Perhaps the best pawn to have it in, since it counts towards an implant total improving their mood but also exceedingly easy to keep happy. Bionics also improve the base pawns efficiency as well as their mood, so there is not the trade-off seen with Masochist.
Psychically hypersensitive: As the mood buff scales with psychic sensitivity of the implantee, this directly increases the mood buff by an additional +4.

Most of these traits' benefits stack, making ideal candidates.

Traits that harm the default mood, such as Depressive should obviously be avoided, however traits like Nervous that affect Mental Break Threshold are largely irrelevant to harmoizer effectiveness.

Pawn jobs

What the pawn does besides act as a mobile psychic emanator is a valid question - ideally the best jobs for them involve the least upsetting interactions and the most interaction with other pawns. Thus, corpse burner is likely out because of the former, while growers or caravaneers are likely out for the latter reason. There are several options however.

Having your implanted pawn being a psycaster has merit - as meditation is recreation, they can be kept meditating all day and ensuring that:

They are in an optimum position to grant the buff to the most pawns
They maintain a full recreation bar, resulting in another mood buff despite tolerance slowing it.
They maintain a full psyfocus bar, allowing repeated and/or ready use of powerful psycasts like Berserk Pulse or Word of Inspiration

Dumb-labor-only pawns are also options - drugs, pain, and joywires might slow the work of cleaners, haulers and stonecutters but they don't significantly impede their effectiveness otherwise, allowing stacking of mood buffs with little regard to side-effects.

Passionate crafting pawns are also strong candidates - they can sit in a chair all day, in a central location for maximum effect, benefiting from both the comfort bonus and the passion bonus.

Other strategies

A joywire can be installed to keep the mood high, however this comes at a significant detriment to a pawn's effectiveness in almost all matters due to the consciousness penalty.

As the effect scales with the psychic sensitivity of the pawn implanted with the harmonizer, another efficient method is to enhance the psychic sensitivity of a pawn. A full set would look like the following: eltex skullcap, eltex shirt, eltex vest, eltex robe, eltex staff, psychic sensitizer, Psychically hypersensitive trait. This significantly increase the mood effect, up to +50 on highly sensitive pawns, but also receive increased modifiers from psychic drones, soothe pulsers and Word of Joy psycast.

Drugs can be used to increase the mood of the pawn, however this is expensive and tolerance will lead to diminishing returns. Further the risk of overdoses and organ damage exist. Thus, they are best kept for emergencies where they can turn a single dose of yayo into a colony-wide effect.

If the implantee does end up with a negative mood, exiling them in a self contained area more than 30 tiles away from other colonists may be possible.

Comatose pawns

A pawn's mood does not change when it is unconscious. Thus, a significant and permanent mood buff can be obtained by stacking mood and psychic sensitity buffs on a comatose pawn, with the only recurring cost being nurses to feed the pawn. This strategy stacks with many of the other strategies listed here.

A simple way of creating such a pawn is to wait for a pawn to become brain-damaged. Ideally their consciousness will be below 30% and result in unconsciousness, but if not penalties from other items such as the -20% from a joywire or the -15% from a circadian half-cycler can be used to lower it below the threshold. If the brain-damage itself is sufficient to induce unconsciousness, dosing the pawn with wake-up and/or go-juice will temporarily allow them to operate. Regardless of whether it is pre-op or while dosed, while they are conscious they should be equipped with eltex apparel, as it cannot be done once they're unconscious at the time of writing, and their mood should be made as high as possible so that when they fall unconscious once again their mood is locked at the highest possible.

Artificial body parts

Arm/Hand: Archotech arm • Bionic arm • Power claw • Prosthetic arm • Wooden hand • Drill arm • Elbow blade • Field hand • Hand talon • Venom talon
Head: Archotech eye • Bionic eye • Bionic ear • Bionic tongue • Cochlear implant • Denture • Aesthetic nose
Head implants: Joywire • Painstopper • Circadian assistant • Circadian half-cycler • Gastro-analyzer • Learning assistant • Mindscrew • Neurocalculator • Psychic harmonizer • Psychic reader • Psychic sensitizer • Venom fangs • Control sublink (Standard, High) • Mechlink • Mech gestation processor • Remote repairer • Remote shielder • Repair probe
Spine: Bionic spine
Stomach: Bionic stomach • Nuclear stomach • Reprocessor stomach • Sterilizing stomach
Organs: Bionic heart • Heart • Kidney • Liver • Lung • Prosthetic heart • Detoxifier kidney • Detoxifier lung
Visceral implants: Death acidifier • Aesthetic shaper • Coagulator • Healing enhancer • Armorskin gland • Stoneskin gland • Toughskin gland • Immunoenhancer • Love enhancer
Leg/Foot: Archotech leg • Bionic leg • Prosthetic leg • Peg leg • Wooden foot • Knee spike
Related: Psylink neuroformer • Xenogerm
Deprecated: Scyther blade • Psychic silencer