Roach

Alert

Resource

Type

Power to Scatter

Hard to Squish

Whenever more than one of your ships would be destroyed, use this power to make one of those ships impervious this invasion. If that ship is on a base, jump it to another base.

When your cache would be targeted by another alien, use this power to shroud pods from your cache in your nexus, up to a number equal to your authority. Pods in your nexus return to your cache during upkeep. Persistent.

Legacy: When aliens suffer more than one casualty, one of those ships becomes impervious. If on a base, that alien jumps it to another base.

The Roaches are a reviled and vilified race that have endured much hardship to secure their position in the Cosmos. Their misfortune has made them strong and taught them how to survive in the most hostile of conditions. They intend to clamber their way to become the dominant species, even if it means simply outliving everyone else.

Any: Any
Any: Any

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As a leader, whenever more than one of your ships would be destroyed, you may discharge this flare to make one of those ships impervious this invasion.

Leader: Any

Super Flare

Whenever one of your bases would be destroyed, you may discharge this flare to jump that base to another planet in the same system that you do not occupy.

Any: Any

Modifications

Original Roach’s power is similar to Horde’s and original Symbiote’s. It starts with 20 “eggs” in its nexus (16 in a 4-alien match). When acting as defender, it can hatch up to 4 of those eggs to manifest an equal number of ships. During Roach’s warpfall, it can hatch up to four eggs and manifest an equal number of ships on a foreign base. If a hatched ship would be destroyed, it returns to the nexus as a new egg. It is also a persistent power. The power was changed to help deal with the redundancy between Roach, Horde, and Symbiote.
My version of Roach is a variation on the original power of Bulwark, an alien which I redesigned into Bouncer based on Bill Martinson’s idea due to its underwhelming reputation.
Original power is the power to Breed. Changed to better match the new power. separately.
Original Wild Roach can revive up to four ships when gaining a base as a winning sponsor, jumping them to the new base. It is more thematically appropriate to the original power.
Original Super Roach can hatch up to four eggs any time it successfully establishes a new base as invader or sponsor. Modified mine to match the new power.
Roach’s legacy offers the ship protection aspect of Roach’s power to all aliens, allowing aliens that benefit from having more ships to perform better. As with Roach’s base power, only one ship is protected, and only if multiple ships are involved. This legacy will entice more sponsors, though they may not still be incentivized to commit many ships. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Roach always suffers at least one casualty after a loss. Its ship protection offers some loss mitigation, allowing it to commit more ships more often than most aliens.
Roach is a terrible target for compensation, especially at the start of the match. It can use its power to ensure the opponent takes exactly the pods it wants them to take, while protecting any pods it wants to keep.

Development Notes

One of the primary issues with powers like original Symbiote, Roach, and Horde is their crossover with Zombie. Zombie’s entire schtick is always having access to its entire ship count, which is somewhat undermined by an alien that can start with double ships and rarely has to worry about ships at all. The more of these powers that exist, the less valuable Zombie is as a power. I picked Horde to represent the three of them as the “manifest extra ships” power, since it seems most on-par with Zombie’s. Horde doesn’t start with any manifested ships and doesn’t get them as easily as original Roach. It needs to either win as a backward or lose its ships in order to get new ones, which could potentially be less valuable than simply all of your ships being revived every invasion.
Thematically, I associate roaches more with their survivability than their ability to breed. Bill Martinson had a similar idea with his power of Hardiness, allowing one ship to survive when four or more ships would be destroyed, even protecting its base. It also revives a ship when another alien discharges a support pod. I think it works well both thematically and mechanically, but I prefer my theme of Roach scattering to protect itself, allowing both for ship and cache protection. While I do really like the four ship rule in theory, it likely won’t help protect many bases since you would need to keep four or more ships on every base for it to matter.
My version of Roach still falls within Zombie’s niche, so I wanted to make sure it didn’t overshadow it. While Roach does lose more ships than Zombie, the difference would be marginal if it only lost one ship max per commitment. If Roach lost four encounters, it would end up with 16 vs. Zombie’s 20. Roach could basically always send four ships just as easily as Zombie, which I wanted to avoid. My Roach is more about loss mitigation, with the cache protection aspect helping it to avoid being a strictly inferior Zombie.
Miser is another alien that can be compared to my Roach since it is the go-to cache protection power. My intention is for Miser to be more of a cache specialist, Zombie to be the ship specialist, and Roach to be something of a dabbler between the two. Roach doesn’t get a second cache, giving it fewer resources. Its protection is also limited by its authority, and it cannot usually protect its entire cache, though its persistence does mean it can continue its protection longer than Miser can. Notably, Miser gets its pods back immediately and can swap in new pods from its hoard, while Roach has to wait until after the invasion ends.
The original Bulwark only loses one ship, even to the point of protecting its home base on defense. Since I opted for the cache-protection aspect of the power, I decided to rework the ship-protection aspect. Aside from making the power stronger than Zombie, Roach “scattering” to protect itself doesn’t work if it stays put.
Powers like Trader and Outlaw can also be poor matchups against Roach, though unlike compensation-based aliens, they have the advantage of getting strong pods out of Roach’s cache before the encounter, since Roach cannot retrieve them until upkeep. Roach vs. Outlaw is particularly interesting since it has to determine whether to risk losing a strong cache at the cost of losing the ability to use it this invasion