Doctor
Alert
Resource
Support
Type
Power to Heal
Revives Others’ Ships For Pods
Whenever one or more alien’s ships are destroyed, you may use this power to revive all of those ships and draft one pod per alien whose ships you revived.
Legacy: When an alien’s ship(s) are destroyed, revive one of those ships.
When the Cosmic arms race first broke out, many races faced extinction many times over. With hope looking slim for many, a lone group of wealthy benefactors made their presence known, providing their knowledge of medicine to bring hope to the hopeless. Everyone was greatly pleased with their work, until they got the bill.
Any: Any
Optional
Wild Flare
As a leader, after launch, you may discharge this flare to revive another alien’s ship and draft one pod.
Leader: Launch
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to raise your healing fee to one pod per healed ship.
Any: Any
Modifications
- Originally Healer. Changed to Doctor to avoid redundancy with the power name and better reflect the counterparts Surgeon and Quack.
- Original Healer can heal ships that Void eradicates for some bizarre reason despite the thematic issues and needless passive nerf of Void. This ruling has been removed.
- Removed some extra clauses that are covered by basic terminology, such as clarifying that healing doesn’t negate compensation.
- Since Masochist now operates the same as original Kamikaze, there is no need to modify Doctor to allow both to work in the same match.
- Original Wild Healer flare was a Cosmic Zap negator. Changed to a more limited version of the base power.
- Doctor’s legacy makes all aliens lose one fewer ship when losing ships, mitigating loss instead of preventing it. It does nothing for aliens with ships already in the warp, but it does wonders for aliens like Macron who enjoy sending few ships into their encounters anyway. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Doctor’s power allows it some of the strongest potential to draft pods, especially once it goes super. By maximizing casualties, Doctor can easily get a hand of 12-15 pods without gaining a single bounty.
- Doctor doesn’t gain more pods for more ships, only one pod per alien. This means Doctor prefers an encounter side with more ships to lose if maximizing resources.
- Doctor can heal anyone’s ships except its own, meaning it can easily end up with a ship deficit compared to everyone else if it always heals.
- Only specific powers that remove ships without sending them to the warp like Fungus and Void can guarantee ships go away with Doctor around. In a match with Doctor , Warp Keys are much less valuable.
Development Notes
- Because of the timing change to my version of Zombie, Doctor is capable of healing Zombie’s ships. Zombie is not a fan of Doctor since it makes everyone else Zombie while getting paid for it. Zombie wants to shut down Doctor’s power as soon as possible. It also gives Observer more of a niche advantage over Zombie, since Observer doesn’t let ships go to the warp in the first place.
- Doctor has an extreme anti-synergy with original Masochist, effectively making Masochist a non-power. Since original Masochist is an alt-win alien, mine is naturally different, and I modified Masochist’s power to avoid being obliterated if Doctor is in-play. Originally, the plan was to add a clause that lets Doctor’s healing be refused, while still letting Doctor collect payment. Since Masochist is really the only alien other than Warpish that would choose to have its own ships in the warp, I can leave this clause out.
- Doctor’s wild flare is of the type similar to Wild Anti-Matter, where the flare is only vaguely associated with the power and performs a completely different effect. To do something simple like reviving one ship is already covered by Zombie’s wild flare. Instead, I made Doctor’s wild flare heal one ship for one pod in a more limited capacity. Since the flare can only be used once per invasion, it’s already less potent than Doctor ‘s base ability, but one ship for one pod is still too good of a deal to be usable every invasion. Making it leader-only is a good compromise. Since the wild flare will most often be utilized in the same CE as Doctor , Doctor’s lost ships provide the potential for other aliens to use it.
- I kept Doctor’s name the same as the original FFG Healer for the longest time despite the redundancy since I thought it was the best fit. After I added Surgeon and Quack, I realized that both of those powers contrast better with the name Doctor than Healer, and it also solves the problem of the redundant power name as a bonus. Even my alien design resembles a doctor, making it a very easy change.
- Thematically, it would make sense for Doctor to be another lucre alien, since Doctors are known as one of the professions with the highest salaries. However, mechanically it’s important that Doctor’s power does not let it easily revive its own ships. Doctor is designed such that it is great at reviving other ships but cannot easily revive its own. As such, it is one of the few aliens that doesn’t even gain boons as a reward for using its power.