Vertigo pulse

Vertigo pulse is a level psycast that causes pawns in its area of effect to stumble around randomly and repeatedly vomit. 
== Acquisition ==
== Summary ==
Upon casting, Vertigo pulse inflicts the Psychic Vertigo hediff for , scaling with the target's Psychic Sensitivity, on all psychically sensitive pawns within a 3 tile radius of the casting location, which can be any location within 25 tiles, respecting line of sight. 
The Psychic Vertigo hediff causes affected pawns to vomit (if able) with a MTB of approximately 3 ticks, or 0.05 seconds (see the above Psychic Vertigo page for the exact duration). Additionally, pawns moving while affected by Psychic Vertigo will periodically move to a randomly selected tile within a 3 tile radius of themselves, with a MTB of . This movement cannot be cancelled or interrupted, save for preventing the pawn from moving entirely. This movement will last for , regardless of whether or not the pawn arrives at their destination or moves at all - if the pawn reaches the selected tile before the full time elapses, they will remain in place, and be prevented from taking further action until the duration expires.
A vertigo pulse will immediately cause any devourers in its radius to regurgitate any pawns they have swallowed, and will reveal any invisible revenants in the area of effect.
Additionally, note that Vertigo pulse is considered a harmful ability, and will incur a goodwill penalty of when cast on pawns from a neutral or allied faction. However, Vertigo pulse will not apply a goodwill penalty if used on temporary colonists, such as quest lodgers or an imperial laborer gang.
== Analysis ==
thumb|right|175px|Area of affect of Vertigo pulse. Cast location has been marked in yellow, surrounding affected tiles in white, and unaffected tiles in red.
Vertigo pulse is one of the best psycasts in the game in terms of crippling an attacking force. A vomiting pawn is effectively stunned for several seconds at a time, and the extremely low MTB of this effect often results in affected targets spending nearly the entire duration of the effect standing in place and vomiting endlessly. This combined with the sizable area of effect and moderate allow Vertigo pulse to debilitate swathes of enemies for an extended period of time in a single cast, and the low psyfocus cost and neural heat gain make repeated casting a non-issue. Despite being a level 3 psycast, Vertigo pulse ranks among the most powerful of the roster.
In spite of these qualities, Vertigo pulse is not without flaw. The primary and most critical weakness of Vertigo pulse is its near inability to affect mechanoids, who already rank as one of the most dangerous factions. Not only do mechanoids have reduced psychic sensitivity compared to the average raider, thereby drastically reducing the duration of Vertigo pulse, but they are incapable of vomiting, rendering them wholly immune to the primary effect of Vertigo pulse. Additionally, as most ranged mechanoids will not move once they have reached a firing position, they will no longer trigger the random wandering effect, and thus be almost completely unhindered by Vertigo pulse. However, Vertigo pulse can still see some use, albeit in a heavily reduced capacity, against groups of approaching scorchers or scythers. 
Beyond the obvious use as a crowd control tool for enemy raiders, Vertigo pulse has some unique interactions with several entities from the Anomaly DLC, making it a valuable tool in several encounters. The first and most interesting interaction is with devourers, as Vertigo pulse will instantly force them to expel any targets they are currently digesting, which eliminates their most dangerous ability entirely, and renders them nearly harmless to sufficiently capable defenders. Additionally, Vertigo pulse can also be used to reveal any invisible revenants. Not only does the large area of effect make it reasonably well suited for the task, but the random wandering it inflicts being triggered by a revenant's propensity to run away when discovered, combined with a revenant's 200% psychic sensitivity when discovered make Vertigo pulse an excellent choice for finishing off a hiding revenant. Additionally, both the revenant and the unnatural corpse are susceptible to the random wandering inflicted by Psychic Vertigo while performing their hypnosis attack on a target, making Vertigo pulse a fairly (though not fully, unlike alternatives such as Skip) consistent way of interrupting their main forms of attack. On the subject of the unnatural corpse, it is susceptible to both the wandering and vomiting effects of Vertigo pulse, making it a fairly effective method of dealing with said threat. However, the ever-increasing speed of the unnatural corpse can make targeting it difficult if cast by targeting a tile. Conversely, if one chooses to target the corpse directly to ensure it hits the mark, the corpse's considerable movement speed can run the risk of it reaching your pawns during the cast time of Vertigo pulse, which would result in all of one's pawns near the corpse being affected by Vertigo pulse, throwing their ranks into disarray during an extremely high-stakes encounter.
Lastly, the large area of effect of Vertigo pulse make it one of the few psycasts capable of affecting targets behind up to three tiles of walls. While in most circumstances the applications of this property are fairly limited, it is possible to take direct advantage of it using certain killbox designs. While affecting targets behind walls isn't particularly useful on the surface, it can be used as a tactic to impede the movement of raiders through killboxes which kill not by traditional means, but instead by merely remaining within. Some such methods of which include tox gas, or more commonly an "oven", which kills via the damage caused by superheated air. However, the applications of Vertigo pulse to said designs are fairly limited, as the former isn't a particularly effective mode of defense to begin with, while the latter can be frighteningly adept at dispatching raiders to the point of requiring no assistance whatsoever.
== Version history ==
* Royalty DLC Release - Added.
* 1.1.2571 - Vertigo pulse range reduced from 25 to 20, cost increased from 25 to 30.
* ??? - Range increased from 20 to 25.
Category: Psycasts