Hacker
Alert
Resource
Diplomacy
Type
Power to Hack
Chooses Compensation
As a leader, instead of claiming compensation, use this power to “hack” any alien. Probe that alien’s cache and abduct pods of your choice, as many as you are owed.
As a leader, instead of paying compensation, use this power to gift the payee any pods from your cache, up to the amount they are owed.
Legacy: Instead of claiming compensation, aliens may probe their opponent’s cache and abduct up to the number of pods they are owed, drafting the rest.
When you’re born with a computer chip in your brain, technology just comes easy to you. In a Cosmos dominated by tech, the Hackers find that many things come easy to them.
Leader: Crash
Leader: Crash
Mandatory
Wild Flare
When you would pay compensation, you may discharge this flare to negate that compensation.
Any: Crash
Super Flare
When using your power, after taking compensation, you may discharge this flare to give the payer a number of pods from your cache, up to the number of pods taken.
Leader: Crash
Modifications
- None
Tips
- Hacker’s power incentivizes it to gain more compensation than the average alien, which means throwing more encounters. Doing so on offense can be risky to Hacker’s victory chances, so defense is Hacker’s time to shine. Hacker’s power can also persuade potential invaders to negotiate, threatening to gain compensation otherwise.
- When gaining compensation, Hacker can choose any alien to be the payer, effectively preventing there from being insufficient resources.
- Hacker’s legacy turns everyone into “half-hackers”, being able to take exactly what pods they want from compensation. This incentivizes much more compensation, as it allows both information gain and card abduction. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Development Notes
- The power can be considered pointlessly optional, as there’s virtually nothing gained from not using the power to gain compensation. The only real difference is that Hacker doesn’t see the other alien’s cache, which could potentially come into play when opposing something like Visionary but is effectively a straight disadvantage. I only chose to keep it because thematically it makes sense that Hacker isn’t forcibly compelled to hack into someone’s cache and can receive compensation normally if it so chooses.