Addict

Alert

Combat

Type

Power of Stimulation

Can’t Get Enough

During any destiny, if your destiny or a hazard destiny manifests, use this power to double the stimulants in your nexus. If you do not have any stimulants in your nexus, add one instead. After using this power, ravage one of your ships. If the destiny is wild, use this power to “overdose”, vaporizing all stimulants in your nexus.

As a leader or ally, during combat, your ships have might equal to the stimulants in your nexus.

Legacy: Every alien manifests a stimulant in their nexus. Whenever an alien’s destiny is manifested, that alien doubles the stimulants in their nexus. If wild destiny manifests, the alien that manifests it overdoses.

The voracious Addicts have an unusual biology that allows them to make physical contact with destiny. They use their gift in order to convert its energy into a drug and inject themselves with it to gain great power. One might think injecting yourself with destiny would set your future in stone, but they insist they can stop anytime they want.

Any: Destiny
Any: Destiny

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As a sponsor, during combat, you may discharge this flare to multiply the might of your ships by the number of pods in your cache.

Sponsor: Combat

Super Flare

As a leader, during combat, you may discharge this flare to double the might of your sponsors’ ships.

Leader: Combat

Modifications

Original alien is named Mulititude. Changed to make the power less abstract.
Originally the power of Exponentation. Changed to match the new theme of addiction and chasing highs.
Original Multitude also activates when special destiny manifests. My Cosmic doesn’t have special destiny, so I use hazard destiny as a replacement.
Original Multitude starts with its ships at 1 power like other aliens. I started it at zero to account for the additional destiny charges and how quickly it can explode out of control.
I added an additional clause to ravage a ship when the power is doubled, as a small balancing change to account for the additional destiny charges. It also reflects the negative side effects of the stimulants.
Addict’s legacy gives every alien a slightly weaker version of the original power that makes certain aliens stronger based on the destiny manifested. The more destiny an alien generates, the more powerful they become. If they manifest wild destiny, they will overdose and become unable to gain any more stimulants for the rest of the match. Each alien can gain up to 3 charges from this legacy before a reset, granting them ships with up to 8 might. The aliens that get lucky with destiny will benefit the most from this power, especially aliens like Warrior and Virus that already have strong combat abilities. This legacy makes ships especially valuable since each one is potentially worth more. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Addict has little control over its power since much is subject to destiny. Since it cannot zap itself, it can only prevent losing its power with a Paradox artifact to scramble wild destiny.
Since Addict’s power primarily comes from multiplying the might of its ships, it generally cares more about ships than pods. Aside from the small chance of obtaining the Paradox artifact, it generally aims to preserve its ship count and power.
Since Addict’s power activates when its own destiny manifests, it will almost always have at least 2 might per ship when acting as a defender. This aspect can be somewhat mitigated by the fact that the opponent can choose the target planet. If there is a planet that has already been invaded that the invader isn’t occupying, they can target it to bypass Addict’s combat power.
The more aliens participating in the match, the more opportunities Addict will get to double its ship might. It also takes longer for Addict to get its own campaign as a counterbalance, so it will certainly start getting treated like Virus once its ships each have a might of 8 or 16.

Development Notes

Addict’s combat power is the type that starts out essentially without a power and can take time to get started. However, once it starts blowing up, it quickly escalates out of control. After three uses of its first clause, each of its ships will have 8 power, whether acting as leader or sponsor. When committing 4 ships, Addict can be as unstoppable as Virus.
Since Addict gains power whenever its own destiny or hazard destiny manifests, there are 8 possible destiny clouds that will increase Addict’s power and 2 that will reset it (in a standard 5-alien match). The first number can be as low as 7 or as high as 11, but the second is always 2. All destiny charges must be consumed before a reset, so the odds shouldn’t change once the pool resets. The number of charges that do not affect Addict’s power range from 6 to 16, with the standard number being 8. The original Multitude is locked at 6, since it uses its own charges and special destiny charges.
At its luckiest, Addict could get the two wild destiny first, then all 8 “stimulating” destiny and hazard destiny in a row, followed by all 8 unstimulating destiny. Then when the pool resets, it could get all 8 of the stimulating destiny and then all 8 unstimulating destiny. Such a situation would be statistically improbably, but it would give Addict 16 stimulants in a row, which would be 2^16 might per ship, or 65,536.
Addict is an interesting case of a power labeled as green alert despite having the potential to steamroll Virus by itself. It is somewhat balanced by the luck factor, since it could be several encounters before it even gains a combat bonus. If someone were to choose Addict as their first power, they wouldn’t have much difficulty using it since the power bonus happens without their involvement. Playing against Addict could be a bit trickier, but it could also act as a “baby’s first Virus”, introducing the concept of an incredible powerhouse that makes it dangerous to get too friendly. The ephemerality of the power can also prevent it from getting too out of hand.
I chose to start Addict with 0 power to compensate for how powerful it can become. It feels more fitting for Addict to become weaker than the average alien after it overdoses, rather than go back to default. With the additional destiny charges, I don’t suspect it will have much difficulty remaining a potent threat.
Due to the nature and theme of this power, it absolutely needed to be mandatory. No true Addict would have the option to choose whether to refuse its addiction when it would be inconvenient. According to my rules, Addict cannot zap itself to avoid losing its power boost, which I think is reasonable given how strong it can become. I kept the overdose aspect’s use clause so that other aliens can still choose to zap Addict if they want to preserve that power boost to take advantage of it as an ally.
Addict only needs 3 specific destiny pulls to become as strong as Macron. Once it gets 4+, it becomes as strong as late-game Warpish or Warrior. Any more than that, and even Virus would have trouble stopping it. Pulling 4 stimulating destiny charges is half of the total number in a standard game, which should be the average time it takes before a wild destiny manifests. Though Addict can obtain some extremely high numbers, it is unlikely to stay there for very long unless it gets really lucky. It fits the idea of an Addict quite well, as only the lucky ones can survive from the side effects, and eventually they will always crash.
As a pure combat power, Addict can be compared with the biggest powerhouses in the game, such as Virus and Crystal. Addict starts with ships that have 0 might, making it weaker than the average power. But if it gets enough of the right destiny charges, it will spiral out of control to become one of the strongest aliens in the game. That power boost will last for as long as a wild destiny is not drawn, which could be only a single encounter or an entire cycle. Addict is encouraged to make the most of its combat bonus since it has no idea how long it will last.
Aliens like Dictator and Coordinator are perhaps the biggest hard counters to Addict, especially Dictator, since they can set up the destiny to go the way they want. The most Addict can do is try to become allies with them, since they can destroy virtually anyone if they cooperate. It’s rather fitting that a Dictator can oppress its would-be subjects by letting the drug addicts roam free, while being more than capable of putting a stop to them.
It’s interesting to imagine that the drug the Addict is using is derived from the destiny charge itself. As though they are siphoning some of the energy from a destiny charge and injecting it as a drug to fuel their power. They might do it with all destiny, but only their own charges or hazard are strong enough to give them power. Wild destiny is too strong and causes overdosing. There’s something deliciously fitting about becoming addicted to a drug derived from “destiny”, as the concept of addiction has a component of inevitability to it. Once you get addicted, the end state is virtually guaranteed. Only breaking the addiction can cause it to end amicably, which would involve breaking off from destiny. If Addict’s power is lost, it loses its addiction, as well as the power that comes with it. Depending on how Addict’s biology functions, perhaps that’s the best outcome for it as an individual.
The original theme of Multitude seemed innocuous enough to me at first, but I realized that it doesn’t have any flavor to it besides big numbers. It’s similar to the issue I had with Tripler, where the name doesn’t actually mean anything for me to base an alien design around. With Tripler it was the power of 3, and Multitude has the power of 2. I already have an alien that uses the power of 2 with Deuce, so I wanted to explore a different space to find a more fitting power.
Addict is the first alien design where I had to consider the age rating for the theme, due to the vague connection to substance abuse and illicit substances. I based the concept off the character Bane from Batman the Animated Series. The power of addiction is a fantastic one to tap into for an alien power, so I wanted to find a way to make it work. The mechanical aspect of the power works very well with the theme, since it deals with someone continuing to inject themselves to obtain a greater high, until they overdose and lose everything. Much like Bane, the substance in question increases an alien’s strength at the cost of their overall health. While this theme almost certainly could not exist in the main game, I think it is fine enough to exist in mine. I don’t think the power encourages players to become drug addicts any more than Extortionist or Assassin encourage their respective themes. If anything it teaches a valuable lesson of the dangers of addiction. If you keep doing something without any self-control, you will eventually suffer the consequences.
The theme of this power could have explored many different addictive concepts such as food addiction, gambling addiction, or gaming addiction. However, drug addiction is the best fit for the power since it can directly correlate to a temporary physical strength increase. Overdosing on food or gambling result in obesity or poverty, whereas overdosing on drugs causes health problems and a greater dependency on drugs.