Lovely looking Viper there.

Wish you could do this in-game. There is a mod but it is a mess and barely works.

You could still technically mind control them with your psionic at least during a battle if they would only appear that late in the game.

They still appear late game, just not that often. I often encountered them as "escorts" for an Andromedon or Gatekeeper. Oh and in the last mission, I got 4 Vipers gated in... Fun fact, you can Dominate them to bind the Avatars.
If I could use the modding tool proper, I would make a mod for them to be playeable. The current mechanism still has issues, for example, they automatically use Bind after hitting with Tongue Pull, for example.

The only parts of the mod that don't work are things like hacking planting x4 charges etc. Having glitchy animations on carrying [but can do it] and having no animations for the propaganda photshoot!

Nice, so they finally updated the mod! I gotta try it.

Apparently recent update notes claim hacking works now too, though I'm not going to attempt it just incase!

As fun as it is to use the ailiens, they're mainly useful in the early/mid game, nowhere near as powerful as a properly equipped human class!

I had ideas on how to make a proper Viper class with abilities they actually now gave to the Skirmishers, like grappling hooks... but I could not figure out the modding tool to make my mod.