Dark Archotechs – Psycasts

Deep in the vacuum of space, hurtling through the darkness, a piece of a Dark Archotech planet chunk floats, beckoning it’s newest challenger…
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This mod adds 1 new Psycast path, with 4 brand new Psycasts! But obtaining them won’t be so easy…

To start, you’ll have to access an ancient danger. Inside, there’s a random chance of a new structure spawning. It will stand out from the others, so you shouldn’t miss it. Examine the structure, but make sure that whoever you choose to do so is sufficiently capable. You’ll only get one chance at this!

You’ve arrived on Beta’s Comet. While there, you’ll notice several towers scattered about. Interact with them, and prepare for what comes next!

I won’t spoil anything, but just know that the boss battle is meant to be pretty difficult. Don’t send a weakling. You’re fighting for not only your life, but the anointing of Beta!

After completing the comet sequence, you’ll be transported back to your colony with your newly anointed pawn. They will now have access to Beta’s Psycast path, granting them access to 4 new abilities:

1. Bloodfall – Tear open a pinhole sized portal into Beta’s Darkness, releasing a gushing beam of psychically charged blood. The caster’s blood loss increases with each use.

2. Melder Genesis – Sacrifice one lung at a time. A singular Dreadmeld bursts from each, defending your allies and immediately attacking hostiles. Dreadmeld’s spawns are hostile to everyone.

3. Soul Render – Tap into the chaotic symbiosis or Beta’s darkness, mirroring psychically self-inflicted wounds onto others.

4. Beta’s Ushering – Darken the sky, shake the earth, and summon the comet! Annihilate the entire map, including the caster and everyone on it. Other pawns worldwide enter a psychically-induced quantrum of darkness.

Pawns that come back from the comet will have a new hediff similar to the Void Touched one you would get from the Anomaly DLC endgame. The buffs aren’t as strong, but are still pretty good in addition to the new Psycasts.

Beta’s blessings come at a price, and so naturally each Psycast ability does harm not only to the target, but also the caster as well. Some abilities come with brand new casting windows (Soul Render is my favorite), and if you so choose to use Beta’s Ushering, just know that there is no escape from Beta’s darkness!

While this mod doesn’t explicitly go into depth about who or what Beta is, there are tidbits of lore sprinkled around that I hopefully plan to expand on in the coming future. If it’s not a bug, it’s an intended feature. LONG LIVE BETA!

The settings salutes you. If you don’t care about my custom lore and just want OP Psycasts, you can toggle a switch in the settings page to unlock the new Psycast path for anyone to unlock via Psylink levels, just like a regular Psypath.
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The textures were almost all completely made by myself from scratch in Photoshop. The exception for this mod was that in the Psycast path, I reused Vanilla Psycast Expanded’s border so that the Psycast path would feel at home in the Psycast window list. The actual inside of the border I made myself. For the alternative texture, I generated an image using ChatGPT.

The Bloodfall Psycast was made by myself in Photoshop, but based off of the Frost Ray ability from VPE. I tried to make it look similar to their Frost Ray. The code for the ability was pretty much a copy of their code with minimal changes. If the Vanilla Expanded team has an issue with this, I’ll gladly change the textures/psycast ability in this mod.

The new boss battle "mechanoid" was based off of a fusion of a mechanoid from "Alpha Mechs" and "Mechanoid Invaders". I didn’t reuse their textures at all, but did my best to mirror the look of their mechanoids. If either of the mod authors have an issue with that, I’ll gladly change the texture of the mechanoid in this mod.

Beyond those things, I’m a texture person, not a coder, so I used ChatGPT for the majority of the XML and C#.

Performance shouldn’t be an issue. The Psycast abilities only do things when used, and the Comet location logic only runs while there. If you unlock the Psycast path for anyone to use, and multiple people call the comet though, it will most surely destroy your framerate. So avoid that. But beyond that, there shouldn’t be any major performance issues.

Compatibility shouldn’t be an issue either. This mod doesn’t really interact with anything else as everything is additive instead of altering.

TL;DR: Minor performance issues, no compatibility issues.

MASSIVE, MASSIVE credits to the Vanilla Expanded team for their Psycasts mod and textures, Elseud & Sarg Bjornson for mechanoid texture inspiration, as well as Neronix17 for their awesome Archotech Genetics mod that started my interest in making all of this to begin with. I have massive respect for all of these creators, and would strongly urge you to check out their uploads! And as mentioned prior, if any of these creators have issue with anything from this mod, I’ll do my best to accommodate where I can!
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Q: Mid save compatible?
A: I would err towards a new save.

Q: Mid save removable?
A: I wouldn’t. It’ll throw a bunch of errors.

Q: AI!?
A: Yes.

Q: Only 1 person can go to the comet?
A: Yes. The new Psycast path (unless unlocked in the settings) is exclusive to one pawn.

Q: Only 1 chance for the Boss?
A: Yes, and it’s a hard fight. Seriously. You can theoretically send a non-psycaster to fight (you’ll still get the new psycasts), but I would HIGHLY recommend not doing that. Not only do you spawn naked, but there are no weapons on the comet. Up to you though.

Q: But why only 1 chance?
A: The Psycasts are pretty OP. I tried to balance them out with Psyfocus cost and whatnot, but at the end of the day, they are still incredibly powerful compared to normal Psycasts (especially Soul Render, and ESPECIALLY Beta’s Ushering).

Q: The mechanoid has human parts.
A: Yup.

Q: Some parts don’t have a fatality warning but cause death when using Soul Render.
A: That’s a vanilla quirk. Subparts (think Brain inside the Head) are affected by damage to the part they are linked to.

Q: I can use the comet ability multiple times.
A: The comets are psychically generated in the darkness of Beta’s quantum foam. But YOU shouldn’t know that. A true Herald would die with the ship! Shame on you for running away!

Q: If my pawn dies and comes back to life, will they still have access to the Psycast abilities?
A: Yes.

Q: How long does the Post-Comet Darkness last?
A: 15 days.

Q: I found a bug!
A: Please give me a log, and I’ll do my best to fix it!

Q: CE?
A: I can’t see why not, but use at your own discretion.

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