Shark

Alert

Support

Resource

Combat

Type

Power to Loan

Loans Ships

During any invasion, after contact, you may use this power to privately offer to “loan” a specific number of your ships to each actor in the invasion, up to the number of that actor’s committed ships. To each “debtor” that accepts your offer, loan the specified number of your uncommitted ships to the debtor, stacking them underneath the debtor’s committed ships. While ships are loaned, they are treated as the debtor’s ships.

Loaned ships have two base might and two base worth. Loaned ships must remain stacked onto non-loaned ships. If they are not, they are rebounded to you. At any time, you may cancel a debtor’s loan, rebounding all of that alien’s loaned ships to you. At the start of any debtor’s orientation, gain one lucre for each of that debtor’s loaned ships.

If your power is lost, all loaned ships are rebounded to you.

Legacy: When spending lucre, aliens may spend two lucre to manifest four ships.

Low on ships? A lack of warp keys got you down? Come on down to Shark’s emporium and they’ll fix you up with the newest top-of-the-line models. Sign on the dotted line, and you’ll be cruising in the vehicle of your dreams for a modest sum. Offer only valid in participating galaxies. No refunds after point of sale.

Any: Contact

Optional

Wild Flare

At any time, you may discharge this power to offer to loan your power to another alien. If they agree, that alien assimilates your power until the end of upkeep. If that alien wins this encounter, snatch two of their pods during payoff. Otherwise, snatch one.

Any: Any

Super Flare

Whenever you use your power, gain three marks per debtor instead of one.

Any: Arrival

Modifications

Original alien is Hurtz. Changed to give the power a clearer theme.
Originally the power to “lease”. Changed to “loan” to match the loan shark theme.
Hurtz is an another alien from the Eon Era that was redesigned for FFG. It was originally a lucre power, My version attempts to make it a lucre power again, based on my own ideas for lucre.
Original Hurtz does not privately offer to loan ships since this is not really possible in the physical game.
FFG Hurtz can use its power either after contact or during the encounter, giving it two marks if done during the latter. I wanted to reduce the complexity of the power given the amount of moving parts.
FFG Hurtz gains its marks when leasing ships. The marks can be vaporized to either cancel a lease or get double backer boons. FFG Hurtz is not a lucre power.
Shark’s legacy provides another option for spending lucre, allowing two lucre to be converted into four manifested ships. The legacy is incredibly valuable for lucre aliens such as Merchant and Mercenary. It is also valuable for aliens that rely on their ship count, incentivizing them to obtain more backer boons and resupplies. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Once you accept a loan, the loaned ships are difficult to remove intentionally. Since the ships are more valuable than average ships, it can be worth staying on Shark’s good side to dissuade it from cancelling your loan.
The debtor doesn’t actually lose anything for maintaining its loan. It simply gives Shark more lucre during their orientation as an invader the more ships they borrow.
Shark is capable of cycling its loaned ships between debtors in anticipation of their campaign, though this strategy can backfire if the debtors refuse Shark’s loaned ships.
Shark’s ships are more valuable when loaned than when Shark is using them. Shark can leverage this aspect by allying with debtors to gain combat advantage. If opposed by debtors, Shark can cancel the debt at-will. As such, aliens are disincentivized from using their loaned ships against Shark when possible.

Development Notes

As far as I can tell, the name Hurtz is a reference to the Hertz car rental company. It was founded in 1918 in Chicago, IL and continues to have presence into the modern day. While I am not opposed to obscure references as names for alien powers, I wanted to evoke something that was a little more intuitive in my mind. I had the idea to base the power off loan sharks, as well as people who exploit or swindle others.
Loan sharks offer loans to other people with predatory and often illegal interest rates. They generally run illegal businesses themselves and operate under the table. Since they don’t have legal recourse to get the money back, they often resort to intimidation and violence to ensure the debtors pay up.
The basic idea behind Shark is that it loans out its ships to other aliens, giving them more value than regular ships. Though they cost Shark some ships, they act as passive income, providing lucre for each alien that has any loaned ships. Aliens are unable to cancel the loan themselves unless they remove all of their non-loaned ships from the same base, destroying the base in the process. Since loaned ships must move alongside non-loaned ships, it is impossible to do the reverse. Even if the ships go to the warp, they still provide income to Shark, and Shark can immediately pull all of those ships from the warp by cancelling the loan.
My original idea for Shark was for it to gain lucre per debtor each orientation, but I wanted it to have incentive to still loan ships even if an alien already has them. If it is based on debtor, Shark doesn’t get anything else from loaning more, and the cost of the loan doesn’t scale with the amount of ships. Instead, I chose to reduce the timing and increase the lucre gain, allowing the power to gain fewer big bursts instead of many smaller ones.
As part of my design philosophy, I want to ensure that no alien completely dominates its design space with no tradeoffs. As a lucre alien, Shark is competing with Barbarian; Mercenary; Merchant; Oligarch; and my custom aliens Artist, Boss, and Sphinx. With Shark gaining lucre passively, it is most comparable to Merchant, Artist, and Boss. Shark gains lucre every orientation, which is slower than Merchant or Artist, but it can gain more lucre the more ships it loans out. Shark can always cancel the loaned ships to make itself impervious to them, though it will cost itself lucre if the alien’s campaign hasn’t come up yet. Shark may struggle to loan ships to an alien again after cancelling their previous loan, so it has to be careful about cancelling loans too liberally. Mercenary gains a steady one lucre per invasion, while Artist gains a more variable amount based on who is occupying it. Shark can start loaning out ships immediately, though it is limited in its gains to the turn cycle, in addition to being limited by its ships.
Theoretically, Shark could loan out four ships to every other alien and still have 1 ship left over to keep its power active. This setup would be highly precarious though Shark could freely gain ships back at any time by cancelling a debt. If Shark employed such a strategy, it would gain 4 ships per orientation other than its own, averaging 2 lucre per invasion. That would be more than Merchant gains, which should be fine since it’s more situational. Artist seems to still be most likely to gain the most lucre out of any of these aliens, which seems acceptable since gaining lucre is the primary focus of its power. Boss might also be a contender for similar reasons.
I wanted this power to evoke the feeling of a predatory loan shark taking advantage of other aliens and putting them in debt. While it doesn’t capture the idea of constantly increasing interest rates, aliens who enter the contract have to pay a great cost to escape it, with Shark having all the power to cancel the loan if it stops benefitting from the situation. When it does cancel the loan, it immediately takes back its ships “by any means necessary”, even if they are in the warp. What I like most about the power is how it captures the motivation behind taking on debt. I take a benefit now and don’t have to pay the cost until later. In the case of Shark, the cost is simply a benefit for Shark. I think this aspect is necessary so that the loans are more attractive from the debtor’s perspective. If Shark snatched pods or stole lucre, aliens would be less likely to accept the loans in the first place.
In a standard match, Shark can gain as much as four lucre per campaign, an amount which can potentially be more than double what Merchant gains. It can also obtain the rate faster than Artist, who can take longer to start getting as much lucre.
I wanted to add the extra clause that makes Shark’s loans private information, so aliens won’t know who else is getting a loan when it is given the option to accept one. It puts additional psychological pressure on the user to accept the ships, since they won’t be sure if the opponent won’t also receive them.
The original alien “Hurtz” is similar in my mind to “Lloyd”, as both have unusual names and involve powers related to financial institutions. Hurtz has leases while Lloyd has insurance. I changed both of their names to make them easier to tell apart, similar to the changes I made to Ninja and Soulbound.