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. | ” |
Facility Requirements
Prerequisites: Interrogate Sectoid Commander or Sectoid Commander Autopsy
Time to Build: 14 Days (7 days with Advanced Construction*)
Facility Cost:
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 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. However, it takes 10 days to receive the actual results. 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.
- There is a Second Wave option that prevents 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. Soldiers under Major Rank use a modified formula that can grant a boost to this chance but that boost is reduced by their Rank and the current number of Psionic soldiers on your team. The modified formula looks a bit like this: Will/4 + (75 - 20*(Rank value) - 40*(Existing # of Gifted Soldiers)); thus, a Squaddie (Rank value 1) has the highest chance of becoming gifted when there are no other Psionic soldiers available because they will receive an additional 55% (75 - 20*(Rank value 1) to their chance of becoming Gifted.
- 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 really want a soldier to acquire Psi-Abilities, you can save before testing him and reload if he is not Gifted, if you are not in Ironman Mode.
- Also, if you have a set of 3 soldiers that really need Psi-Abilities, you can save when you first put them in the lab, then see if any of them are Gifted, and, if at least one of them is, you can reload, "cancel" the others and put them back to the list (without removing the gifted one), and repeat until you have them all Gifted (the "Gift" resets when you remove someone and then add him again).