Psychic reader

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Psychic reader

Psychic reader

Gives limited mind-reading ability, improving the user's ability to get the upper hand in negotiations and social situations. The effect is proportional to the user's psychic sensitivity.

Base Stats

Type
Medical ItemsBody Parts
Market Value
1000 Silver
Mass
4 kg
HP
50
Flammability
100%
Technical
thingSetMakerTags
ImplantEmpireRoyal
techHediffsTags
ImplantEmpireRoyal
tradeTags
ImplantEmpireRoyal


The Psychic Reader gives a pawn that's been implanted with it a bonus of 50% Negotiation Ability base, scaling proportionally with the user's psychic sensitivity. Negotiation ability affects the speed of prisoner recruitment, impact on faction relations when giving gifts, and the outcome of peace talks.

Acquisition

Psychic Readers can only be acquired through trade or as a quest reward. They cannot be crafted.

Analysis

The psychic reader does not affect trade prices, as that is controlled by Trade Price Improvement, instead it affects the Negotiation Ability which, despite the misleading name, only affects the speed of prisoner recruitment, impact on faction relations when giving gifts, and the outcome of peace talks.

The value of Silver 1000 and the limited niche for its application makes it a low priority for targeted acquisition. However since there are no negative effects of having one installed, if one is available, installing it on the colony's Social pawn is a good idea, as they will likely be recruiting prisoners and be the one giving gifts when on caravan. The improvement is approximately equal to 7 additional levels of Social skill, and scales directly to the pawn's Psychic Sensitivity e.g. 200% sensitivity results in +100% to Negotiation Ability.

Therefore, it performs best on pawns with the Psychically Sensitive and Hypersensitive traits and synergizes with equipment that buffs Psychic Sensitivity such as the psychic sensitizer and Eltex equipment. At the maximum possible psychic sensitivity of 408%, it provides the equivalent of 27 levels of Social skill, meaning that a skill 0 pawn will outperform a skill 20 Legendary Master when it comes to recruitment.

Should the player wish to employ a strategy involving recruiting pawns with with high recruitment resistances, such as hiring Tribal pawns as a New Arrivals colony to exploit the Anima tree for Psycasting, or hiring large numbers of pawns over the soft limits imposed by their AI storyteller then the value of the psychic reader increases. Outside of these niches, or chance acquisitions however, the use of the reader is limited.