Option Paralysis is a phenominon that occurs when there are too many choices. In theory, you’d think that having a lot of choices would let you make an optimal decision, but in practice that often doesn’t happen because of indecision, because making the “best” choice begins to outweigh making a “satisfactory” choice, etc.
Like, last night. Amorpha and Psi-clone against some Carnies. No sweat. Under control.
Then we ended up in one of my least favorite maps (large room, couch set in one corner, cubes in another corner, glass-walled meeting room and coffee area on the opposite wall, lots of pillers). We started in, standard strategies —
— and things began to go all pear-shaped —
— and things began hitting me. Like hitting me for 90-100 points. Then 100-200 points. Then —
— Carnies running around all over —
— big freakin’ weightlifter in my face and girls throwing stuff —
And option paralysis set in. Any number of things I could have done. Crey freezing pistol would have been good to lock down the strongman. Call in Phred, or Phred’s Army. Bug out. Hit the phase ring. Hit the wedding ring. Pop various shield chicklets (since I was out of greens). Try —
Well, you see the problem. Any number of good things. And while I tried to decide I kept getting hit and trying to heal myself and eventually ended up chewing on carpet that tasted vaguely of stale cotton candy and popcorn.
*sigh*
Margie was extremely apologetic, as though it were her fault for not taking out the entire room. But it was really my fault.
Need to work on some of those stratgies. Maybe having three trays of powers and temp powers isn’t such a good idea …
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***Dave Does the Game
Whereas I tend to forget options, until I am on the floor watching the battle rage on around me.
“Oh, I should have hit the Wedding Band…that would have been helpful.”
Yes. It’s way too easy to forget those temp powers.
I tend to keep my temp powers off of my command trays. Some most of them are of limited duration or very situational I tend to not want to use them up and end up hoarding them and never using them.
The only ones I actually have ever used I think are my Beanbag Gun when I needed to stack more disorient alongside Bonecrusher and Total Focus to disorient an AV, the Shivan pet (because you can get a new one by doing the task again), and the fire extinguisher because it is needed for the arson task.
Accolade powers though… Those I keep kicking myself for not using. Eye of Magus I wish I had gotten at a lower level then I did so I could exemp down to help with AVs and have it around more (huge resist bonuses, acc penalty but a yellow tab and Aim cover for that) and the Vanguard one to help get my disorients to stack up.
I used to keep all the temp powers up out of the way. So, yes, I never used them.
So I’ve been trying to keep a couple in the main trays. Crey pistol by other combat powers (once per half-hour, but, heck, that’s a mish or so). Wolf whistle (I have 2 uses left, I think).
And since I have some boffo defensive powers, I’d like to keep them someplace where I can immediately use the — if I think of it and can decide to do so in a crunch.