Instant Panic Effects for Mothership
Mothership Panic effects are great and flavorful, but many are longer term consequences that might not matter so much in a one shot or short scenario.
I came up with a simple rule (adapted somewhat from Delta Green) that augments the existing table:
Whenever you fail a Panic check choose an immediate response of fight, flight, or freeze, in addition to the normal effect.
Fight: You instinctively attack the source of your fear without coordination or consideration of the situation. You must fight for 1d5 rounds or until the source of your panic is killed or flees.
Flight: You flee the immediate source of your fear at full speed for 1d5 rounds or until you feel you have reached safety. You are heedless of other danger while you do so.
Freeze: You freeze in place unable to act for 1d5 rounds or until the source of your panic is no longer present.
An ally can try to snap you out any of these conditions with an action, for which you immediately roll a Fear save, breaking out of the condition on a success.
Players always get to choose which effect when they panic, and it can be different each time.
NPC Stress and Panic
Using this simple system you can add Panic checks to NPCs easily, without having to track a bunch of conditions.
To track Stress for an NPC make four checkboxes or circles. Whenever an NPC would gain Stress (from a failed roll, or just from an encounter) mark a box. Each box counts as five Stress, so if they need to make a Panic check they will be rolling against 5/10/15/20. If they Panic, choose one of the instant effects above, then reset their Stress boxes.