Psionic Labs

The Psionic Labs are a facility in XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

In-Game Description

“	This facility will allow us to discover and develop the latent psionic abilities of our soldiers. If they have any such capabilities, using them in the field will increase their strength.	”
– Engineering description, XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Facility Requirements

Prerequisites: Interrogate Sectoid Commander or Sectoid Commander Autopsy
Time to Build: 14 Days (7 days with Advanced Construction)
Facility Cost:

• §200
• 3 Power
• 20 Elerium
• 20 Alloys

Facility Maintenance: §30 per month

Psionic Testing

Once this facility is complete, you may test your soldiers for Psi-Abilities. All testing is done by selecting "Visit The Psi Labs" from the Barracks menu. Up to three soldiers can be tested at the same time. Psionic testing will take 10 days to complete; whether or not a soldier is psionically "Gifted" is revealed at the end of this period. Soldiers that are undergoing testing cannot be sent on missions unless removed from testing early; however, doing so means that retesting will require completion of a new 10-day testing period.

Notes

• Having a soldier with Psi-Abilities is essential to completing the game.
  • The Second Wave option "The Greater Good" (unlocked by completing the game on Normal difficulty) prevents the Sectoid Commander Autopsy from unlocking this facility.
• The coding for an individual soldier's chance of having the Gift can be seen here.
  • The basic formula gives a soldier's chance of becoming Gifted as their Will stat divided by 4 (the default PSI_GIFT_CHANCE value); so a Colonel with 108 Will would have a 27% chance.
  • If any Gifted soldiers were not found, or only one was found, then your highest-Will soldiers receive a bonus to their chance.
    • The top 4 highest-Will soldiers get an additional 75%, 55%, 35% and 15% bonus respectively if a Gifted was not found; whereas if you've only found one Gifted, then your top 2 highest-Will soldiers get 35% and 15% bonuses respectively.  
    • When ranking highest-Will, soldiers that already have the Gift ARE included; so if only one soldier with the gift was found, but it is the soldier with the highest-Will, then there is only one other soldier who could get a bonus, at 15%.
  • How ties are broken when soldiers have the same Will is unknown, but it is likely simply the order the soldier appear in the Barracks listing. [Confirmation needed]
• The values for which an individual soldier's Gifted status is determined appear to be influenced by who else is tested at the same time as well as what slot order they are placed in (See Random vs Seed Guide for more information):
  • So if you have a set of three soldiers that really need Psi-Abilities, you should save first when placing them in the Psionic Lab. Test if any of them are Gifted, and, if at least one of them is, reload, "cancel" the others, then put them back into the testing list (without removing the Gifted one), and then repeat until you have them all Gifted (the "Gift" resets when you remove someone and then add them again).
  • In turn if you really want a single soldier to acquire Psi-Abilities, you can save before testing him and reload, if he is not Gifted.
  • Note neither of these are possible to perform if you are playing in Ironman mode.

Gallery

Cinematic

Headquarters view