Glitch

Alert

Combat

Control

Type

Power of Instability

Scrambles Drivers

As a leader, after contact, use this power to target a leader’s driver. Manifest a random new encounter pod. Scramble the targeted driver and replace it with the manifested pod.

Legacy: If a leader has fewer than four committed ships, its driver will be scrambled and replaced by a random encounter pod in the forge.

An ethereal being that exists simultaneously in six different dimensions, the Glitches possess a form that is difficult to comprehend. It is believed they desire some form of dominion over the Cosmos, but no one can say for certain.

Leader: Contact

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As a leader, after contact, you may discharge this flare to extract a random pod from the forge. If it is an encounter pod, you may either scrap the pod or scramble your driver and replace it.

Leader: Contact

Super Flare

When using your power, you may discharge this flare to probe the manifested pod before targeting a driver.

Leader: Contact

Modifications

Original power is named Phantasm. Renamed to Glitch to further distinguish it from Specter and Ghoul while keeping the instability theme.
Original Phantasm has the effect of my Super Phantasm, getting to see the pod before driver is targeted.
My Glitch manifests pods instead of extracting them, to keep the power on theme and inject some additional instability into the game with potentially more 30s and 40s.
Original Phantasm does nothing if it extracts a support pod. Mine is guaranteed to manifest encounter pods.
Original Super Phantasm could extract two encounter pods from the forge and choose one to scramble its driver with. Modified to avoid overcomplicating the super flare.
Phantasm’s legacy invokes the Phantasm effect to everyone if they commit fewer than 4 ships. It allows a degree of stability at the cost of risking the maximum number of ships. Aliens with weak pods can take a gamble on getting a stronger one from the legacy by intentionally sending fewer ships. Aliens with consistent combat effects such as Warrior and Warpish can benefit the most from this legacy, since they can usually offset the negative effect of getting a weak pod. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Glitch can see what both drivers are before deciding which to target. This aspect makes it worthless to play a 30 or 40 pod against it, since it can just scramble it. Glitch could potentially replace a 40 with another 40, but this is highly unlikely due to the size of the pool.
Playing weak pods against Glitch is also no good, since Glitch will simply target its own pod in hopes of getting something better. Glitch can potentially put any encounter pod to good use since it can randomize its value.
Due to its power, Glitch will preemptively quash any impending negotiation by converting one of the envoys into a brigade. It is pointless striving for deals against Glitch since the odds of Glitch replacing an N with another N are very low. Somewhere around 13%.
Inviting more sponsors against Glitch can provide a buffer against it messing with the encounter pods. Most encounter pods have values 1-20, so you can almost imagine replacing a driver with the roll of a d20, with a few notable special values that can also be rolled such as N and P.
Glitch doesn’t need to be especially concerned with the pods in its cache, since it can randomize any of them. So long as it has any encounter pods, it potentially has very strong pods.

Development Notes

Originally I considered the odds of generating any pod instead of just an encounter pod. I counted 44 different types of pods in the standard forge, not counting flares. To fit with the theme of instability, I think it makes sense for dark forge pods and flares to also be valid for Glitch to manifest, but I would want the percentage of flares to be the same as any given encounter pod, due to the high number of flares. To avoid weighting pods, I think the special N pods would suffice for preventing N from being too unlikely to appear. We could also include pods from the mutant pool to give them another use case. I count 39 more unique pod types in the dark forge and 7 in the mutant pool. 29 of the forge pods, 16 of the dark forge pods, and 1 of the mutant pool are encounter pods. Out of 80 unique pods, 46 of them are encounter pods, which would mean Glitch’s effect would have an impact 57.5% of the time. The number didn’t seem high enough for the power to feel engaging. I concluded it needs to always do something, unlike the original power, which is balanced by it sometimes whiffing.
The logic to manifest a random pod isn’t written, but I imagine it wouldn’t weight any pods based on rarity. Each individual encounter pod has the same percentage chance of being generated as any other, making regular attack pods from 01 to 20 the most common outcome.
I find it important that the odds of Glitch whiffing are not so low as to make the power worthless but also not so high that the effect destroys encounters against it. Super Glitch gives the power perfect information but it still has no control over which pod gets manifested. It will simply give itself the better pod and its opponent the worse one.
Glitch’s power mechanically reminds me most of Chosen, another alien that modifies its driver with random pods after contact. Chosen has the ability to add a pod to its own side, assuming it draws one. Glitch outright replaces a pod and can sabotage the opponent in addition to helping itself. Chosen, especially the original version, is commonly seen as the superior version of Glitch, which is somewhat apt given the Matrix inspiration in my design. I gave Glitch the key advantage of never whiffing. While the effect of a glitch may be inconsistent, a glitch is defined by always having an effect on the program.
Glitch’s theme is based around an unstable being whose form is not consistent. I designed it visually to take the form of two optical illusions that can be viewed in two different ways. As a creature that exists in multiple dimensions simultaneously, it can modify both its own driver and the opponent’s, replacing it with something from parts unknown. It makes sense to me that even things around Glitch become unstable, like a bug in the universe’s code.
In the original game, Phantasm is compared to Trickster as an encounter destroyer. Due to the timing of the original power, the user will know exactly how the encounter should play out after it swaps. Meaning if it gets an N pod, it can choose to give itself compensation or an auto-win. Since the power is mandatory, there’s always a choice to be made, but it doesn’t carry enough risk for my taste in relation to the effect it has on the match. With my version, Glitch sees the outcome and determines whether it will try to give its opponent a weak pod or itself a stronger one. There’s a risk it could punish itself or reward its opponent, but having the choice keeps the odds in its favor. The opponent will still need to play a moderately strong pod in order to compete, but they will never want to play a mighty pod against it unless they have a Cosmic Zap handy. Since Glitch’s power cannot whiff, it is more difficult to rely on drivers alone against it, especially with powers like Fodder and Volt who benefit more from choosing specific encounter pods.
I definitely think Glitch provides enough advantage to be considered a power. While it is more dependent on RNG than your average alien, many aliens depend on some degree of randomness to maximize their power.
The simplicity of the power makes me still leaning toward considering it green alert. The original is incredibly simple since you can always play it optimally, but I think my version would still be fine for someone’s first match, for the same reasons as Trickster.