Ticktock

Alert

Destroy

Dominion

Control

Type

Power to Count Down

Makes Match End Sooner

Setup: Place one of your marks on each planet in every other system as a “countdown marker.”

At the end of each encounter, if the invader loses the encounter, use this power to remove one countdown marker from each alien in the losing fleet.

When other aliens request a resupply, they receive three pods, plus the number of countdown markers they have remaining (not counting lucre). If an alien has no countdown markers on any of their planets, eliminate that alien and gain one dominion.

Legacy: After an encounter, if a leader loses, they must destroy one of their home bases.

The passage of time wears all down eventually. Rather than run from this idea, the Ticktock have embraced it, weaponizing entropy to instill some primal fear into their enemies. Their conquest is only a matter of time.

Any: Encounter

Mandatory

Wild Flare

When you claim this flare, reveal it until upkeep. Whenever the forge is reset, you may discharge this flare to establish a base in any system.

Any: Any

Super Flare

At the start of your campaign, you may discharge this flare to remove one countdown marker from every other alien.

Invader: Orientation

Modifications

Originally Tick-Tock. Changed to Ticktock to avoid hyphenated names.
Original Tick-Tock is an alt-win alien that starts with 10/8 tokens (for 5/4 alien setups respectively) and removes one token every time the defense wins or a deal is made, winning the game when all tokens are removed. The main goal is the same as my version: to give the game a stricter time limit.
Changed from the power of “patience” to the power to “count down.” More fitting to the theme and matches the sense of urgency Ticktock’s name creates.
Modified Super Tick-Tock to remove one countdown marker from every alien once per cycle, further reducing the time limit.
Ticktock’s legacy continues its promise to make the match end faster. Every time a leader loses an encounter, they lose a base. For the defender, they can simply destroy the base that would have been lost anyway, but a losing invader has to lose their base in addition to their ships. Failed deals become especially dangerous for invaders for this reason, granting defenders some more leverage. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

It requires 5 losses (4 in a tiny match) to be eliminated. Unlike losing home bases, losing countdown markers will not incur any penalties aside from getting fewer pods from resupplies. As long as you have one countdown marker, Ticktock cannot touch you.
Making deals allows aliens to bypass Ticktock without progressing the countdown. The invader can leverage this aspect to help negotiate a peaceful victory through negotiation.
Acting as a sponsor is the only time you will be safe from Ticktock’s omnipresent gaze. If you’re running behind on dominion, try acting as a foreward when possible to catch up. Alternatively, act as a backward to avoid needing resupplies as often.
Since Ticktock’s focus is elimination, it needs to be mindful of the other aliens’ legacies. Certain legacies can increase the power level of other aliens, making it more difficult to eliminate them.
Ticktock enjoys seeing the defender win whenever possible, since it stalls the match in addition to counting down. Don’t play too strong of a defensive game if you hope to defeat it.
No matter how much authority an alien has, 5 losses as an invader or sponsor means they automatically lose the Cosmic Encounter.
Even though resupplies will be reduced, lucre will still be granted in full. This means that lucre can be spent in an emergency to increase your minimum cache size to 6, since having 1 countdown marker left will give you four pods plus two lucre.
Ticktock’s power is not persistent. Destroying enough of Ticktock’s bases will restore the full size of resupplies and prevent the loss of further countdown markers.

Development Notes

Sometime around 2007-2008, I was in the phase of dreaming up new Cosmic alien powers and posting them on the CEO forums. One of the aliens I came up with was named Countdown, a power that simply won the game outright after 10 turns passed. The original Ticktock first premiered December 2008, greatly refining my original idea while keeping the spirit of the idea. I always thought it would be cool if I unintentionally helped inspire one of the official aliens, especially one I’m now rather critical towards.
One of my primary issues with original Ticktock is that its passive power allows victory without actually playing the game. While Ticktock can help influence results, any match could potentially result in a Ticktock victory, even one that Ticktock isn’t playing in. My version could still potentially have this issue with 6 or more aliens, but my Ticktock will most likely need to establish its own bases to win.
In addition to the passivity issue, Ticktock’s original power is crippled by the “one token” dilemma. If the match ever reaches a point where Ticktock needs one token to win and no one has any zaps, then the defender always has to either let the invader win or give Ticktock the victory. This railroads the match to a predetermined outcome, with zaps being the only means to deterring it. Being dependent on zaps goes against my design philosophy, so I am opposed to the concept due to the unreliability of zaps as a countermeasure.
My original idea for a Ticktock rework was to have the leader lose a countdown marker if they lose the encounter, effectively guaranteeing that a marker would be lost each invasion unless a deal is made or Ticktock is one of the aliens. I decided this design is too oppressive even for a red-alert alien, making it too punishing to aliens with defensive or lose-based powers like Citadel or Sneak. It seems almost guaranteed for at least one alien to be eliminated in a match, which means a free base for Ticktock. The reworked version of the idea is more like a scoring system. When an alien attempts to earn dominion, either as invader or foreward, their attempt result goes on the scorecard. The goal for every other alien is to win 5 of these encounters before they lose 5. Ticktock can side with the defender in order to help run out the clock and gain boons for its own encounters, and other aliens can side with Ticktock to help eliminate specific aliens. While it does place a time limit on the match, it is closer to the original version of the power and still allows the lose-based aliens to lose without triggering the countdown.
Thematically, Ticktock acts a euphemism for death, specifically death by entropy. It captures the idea of needing to determine what really matters in life when running on limited time, and it incentivizes aliens to be more cooperative to meet their goal faster. If every alien is stingy about commissioning other aliens, refuses to negotiate, and tanks too much, Ticktock has a much greater chance of securing a passive victory. With Ticktock representing death, it’s very fitting for everyone to see it as a Virus-level threat and unite against it. It brings to mind the theme of the White Walkers in Game of Thrones, or the symbolism behind Peter Pan’s Ticktock.
Ticktock’s resupply restriction puts pressure on aliens in combination with my resupply limitation. If aliens exhaust their free resupplies, they will have to give up a base to get more. If it’s a home base, they become closer to being eliminated through authority instead of Ticktock’s power directly. Invaders can take advantage of this lost base to win an encounter more easily.
My goal with Ticktock was to create a power that made use of a design space specific to my version of Cosmic: the elimination mechanic. It’s another tricky one to balance, because it’s very easy to run into situations similar to the “one token dilemma.” There’s no point in continuing to play if it’s impossible for you to win, and what fun is a match where the choice of whether Ticktock or Parasite wins is determined by Grudge simply choosing one or the other? Suppose we had a situation where Ticktock and the invader both have 4 bases, and the invader has one countdown token left. The invader has no incentive to negotiate, so this combat will likely determine the winner. If the invader wins, they win the match. If the defender wins, Ticktock will win (unless zapped). The defender has no chance of winning either way, so they essentially choose who wins the match. However, unlike the base version of the power, it’s not entirely dependent on the countdown markers. For such a situation to occur, Ticktock has to have 4 bases, meaning it could be invited to join the invader for a shared win. Being able to side with the defender to still win is simply a bonus option granted to it thanks to its power.
Though Ticktock’s power acts mostly on its own, Ticktock is capable of influencing who loses encounters using its pods and ships. As with the original power, my version of Ticktock prefers acting as a backward to delay the match and load up its cache with powerful pods. However, it still needs to win at least one match on the invasion side to win a standard match. If it eliminates all other aliens while having no bases itself, the match will result in a stalemate, since Ticktock has no ability to get more dominion.
Ticktock has a unique interaction with planet destroyers like Locust and Dragon. They can uniquely destroy countdown markers faster without the use of Ticktock’s power, allowing aliens to be eliminated faster. It uniquely benefits them since they aren’t subject to being hit by their own power. It’s another case that would quickly become oppressive if Ticktock removes a marker from any leader following a loss.