Diver

Alert

DiverBorderless4

Resource

Info

Type

Power to Salvage

Salvages Pods from Destroyed Bases

Whenever one of your bases is destroyed, you may use this power to abduct an exhausted pod of your choice from the forge. Persistent.

Special Offer: Your opponent may abduct a pod of their choice from the forge. Gain 3 influence.

Legacy: Whenever an alien’s base is destroyed, that alien may abduct an exhausted pod of their choice from the forge.

Stationed away in the deepest depths of space, the Divers have developed one of the most robust life-support systems for facilitating space roaming. Capable of surviving in the lifeless vacuum for months on end, the Divers can access areas too bleak for mortals and too small for spaceships to salvage what treasure lies within.

Any: Any

Optional

Wild Flare

Whenever you lose a colony, you may discharge this flare to extract three pods. Draft one of those pods and scrap the other two.

Any: Any

Super Flare

When using your power, you may discharge this flare to abduct a pod from another alien in addition to your normal abduction.

Any: Any

Modifications

  • Original power is named Scavenger. Changed to Diver to avoid thematic similarities with my Vulture.
  • Originally the power to Scavenge. Changed for redundancy with both its original name and my Vulture.
  • Diver’s original power allows it to take a pod from the discard pile, which is a public aspect in the original game that delays pods from returning to the forge until it runs out of aur. In my Cosmic, such a concept is invisible to other aliens, but exhausted pods are still a mechanic Diver can use, and it helps keep Diver’s power from being min-maxed.
  • Diver’s legacy allows all aliens to draft four pods when losing a base, incentivizing losing more encounters in the early game as the defender. Aliens can also intentionally abandon a base when committing ships to draft pods, which can greatly benefit aliens like Machine or Porcupine who can do more with more pods. Aliens like Virus that need to protect their bases to maintain defensive advantage can be greatly punished by this legacy. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

  • Diver’s power works with both home bases and foreign bases, though it is more incentivized to lose its home bases since they don’t apply to its win condition.
  • Diver’s persistent power makes it capable of using its power more often with less risk, and its special offer helps it offset the loss of influence.
  • Diver can use its power to gain some limited information, since any pod not present in the forge must be held by one of the other aliens in some regard.
  • Diver can utilize its negotiation pods on defense to gain both compensation and use of its power, allowing it to gain the lucre it needs to revive its home bases. These effects combined can give Diver strong caches rather easily so long as the opponent doesn’t also send an envoy.

Development Notes

  • Diver is primarily a resource power due to gaining a free pod for losing a base, but it is also partly Info type due to its ability to probe the entire forge and see what pods are currently not being used by anyone.
  • Aliens focused on base-destruction have something of an inherent disadvantage in my Cosmic due to the introduction of the elimination mechanic. While it cannot lose its power as a direct result of losing bases, losing all of its bases will immediately eject it from the game, making its power useless when losing its final home base. However, my lucre system makes it easier to reclaim lost home bases, and Diver can focus its lucre spending on reviving those home bases to avoid destruction. The default amount of lucre is insufficient to revive a home base, so Diver will need to retrieve it from other aliens, likely in the form of compensation.
  • There wasn’t much I was looking to change about Diver’s power aside from the name and power name. Scavenger does work as a name, but there’s too much crossover with Vulture, as its power to Scavenge would create too much thematic confusion. The theme of Diver is less about scavenging the destroyed remains of enemy resources and more about retrieving its own destroyed resources. Its motivations come across as less predatory and more logical.
  • Diver’s theme has the double meaning of a deep-sea diver that explores the wreckage of a sunken ship, and a dumpster diver that retrieves old “treasure” that someone else threw away. There’s a certain degree of iconography with a diving suit that resembles an astronaut, so I think it fits well enough with the space theme despite there being no water. The implication of Diver’s power is that it salvages the wreckage of its destroyed base to gain material it can utilize to craft a new pod. This material wouldn’t be the aur itself, as otherwise Diver could create any pod, which would be too easy to min-max. Perhaps it is able to dive into the forge as well and use its methods to combine the two materials together. I could imagine the resulting pod being visibly distinct, lacking the professional sheen and perfect roundness of a normal pod. A crude but effective weapon that only Diver can produce.
  • Even though my Cosmic doesn’t have an official “discard pile”, I do like the idea of the forge cycling through all of its aur before recycling the old aur, allowing players to better strategize which pods are “in-play”. In the case of Diver, this detail would make it a buff on the original power, since Diver could take any pod that would be the equivalent of either the draw or discard pile. I decided to still have it refer to the equivalent of the discard pile in my Cosmic, since it keeps the power unique and stops it from being so easily min-maxed and always taking the best pod that’s not in anyone’s cache.
  • The timing of Diver’s power is important to note. Payoff occurs before upkeep, meaning Diver’s power activates before the pods in current exhausts are exhausted. This means if Diver loses the first encounter as defender, it will have no pods to target for its power, effectively “wasting” one of its bases. This also means Diver cannot claim a pod used in the current encounter, which I prefer as a concept since it distinguishes it further from Envy, Fido, and Clone.