Hologram

Alert

Combat

Support

Type

Power to Project

Projects Holographic Ships

Setup: Move one ship from each of your planets into your nexus.

As a leader, during combat, use this power to add two might to your fleet for each ship in your nexus. As a sponsor, during combat, use this power to add one might to your fleet for each ship in your nexus instead. Your ships cannot add might to your fleet.

Whenever you rebound your ships, you may move one or more of those ships to your nexus. Ships in your nexus are considered free ships. If your power is lost, rebound all ships in your nexus.

Legacy: Leader ships do not add might to the fleet.

The Holograms are an unusual race of aliens whose physical form has yet to be confirmed. Wherever they go, they send a holographic projection of themselves as a proxy. Though their home planet is officially mapped on star charts, some cursory investigation revealed that too to be a hologram.

Leader: Combat

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As a leader, during combat, you may discharge this flare to commit up to four of your free ships to your fleet, exceeding capacity.

Leader: Combat

Super Flare

As a sponsor, during combat, you may discharge this flare to add two might to your fleet for each ship in your nexus instead of one.

Leader: Combat

Modifications

Original power is Phantom. Changed to Hologram to distinguish it from my Ghost.
Original Phantom has the standard one base might as a sponsor and doesn’t use its power. I changed it to make the power more consistently adherent to the theme.
Phantom has the power to “materialize”. Changed to the power to “project” to match the Hologram theme.
Hologram’s legacy disables all might provided by the ships of leaders, including might provided by other legacies such as Macron or Anti-Matter. The legacy can be incredibly punishing to aliens like Symbiote, Macron, and Lizard, who draw their combat power from their ship might. It also adds more value to sponsor ships, which will contribute more value to a fleet’s might since leader ships add none. Since leaders don’t contribute more might from ships, invaders can always commit a single ship, preserving their ships for when they are more useful as sponsors. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Hologram’s ships are generally much more valuable in its nexus than on its bases. As long as it has the bare minimum to maintain its power, it prefers to put as many ships in its nexus as possible to maximize its combat power.
Hologram can gain more combat power whenever it rebounds its ships. The simplest way to accomplish this objective is to win as a backward, giving Hologram more incentive to sponsor the defender.
Even though Hologram doesn’t gain more combat power from committing more ships, it wants to commit more ships as a backward to gain more boons and increase its combat power.
Commissioning Hologram is more consistent than your average alien since you will know beforehand how much might they will contribute. If you win the encounter as a defender, you will be making Hologram more powerful.
Hologram can use the force field artifact or escape pods to rebound its ships to charge up its power.
If Hologram is zapped, its ships will temporarily gain physical form and add might, helping to mitigate the loss of power from being zapped. Keep this in mind if you are planning to zap Hologram to reduce the combat potency.

Development Notes

Hologram effectively removes its ships from play in exchange for gaining a Warrior-style combat bonus. Since it requires at least 3 ships to maintain its power, it potentially maxes out with a combat bonus of 34. Minus the 5 ships it needs for dominion, the bonus reduces to 24. In a small match, it has 4 fewer ships and needs one less for dominion and power maintenance, reducing the total max power to 20. As a sponsor, this max power is cut in half to 10. Since the power starts with 4-5 ships in its nexus, it starts with 8-10 base power, allowing it to pass the Human Test needed to make it qualify as a combat power even when factoring in the loss of its base power.
Interestingly the short text for FFG Phantom is to have holographic ships, which seemed a little strange to me. I would have thought they would be ghost ships to match the Phantom theme. In either case, my Cosmic is looking to re-implement Ghost for the ghostly theme, so I wanted to draw a distinction between it and Phantom. Hologram is a perfect fit, as a more technological explanation for an alien having immaterial ships.
Hologram mostly gains combat power from winning as a backward, but any aspects that rebound committed ships can grant Hologram more power, including escape pods and force field artifacts. The specific focus on rebounding gives it an interesting niche that not many aliens use.
It’s worth considering why Hologram’s ships go to the warp if they are meant to be immaterial. Aside for balancing reasons, I think it makes sense that Hologram is simulating the physical object they are projecting. Whether they are simply following the rules of the encounter or imitating what would happen if they were real ships, having them project the ships into the warp adds an interesting bit of flavor. Even though they could pull the ships out of the warp, they are choosing to have them accurately reflect physical objects. They just lack the physical matter to have might in encounters.
The flavor for Phantom/Hologram is quite an elegant idea. Hologram’s ships have no physical presence. They are just projections of light made to look like ships. However, the light projector from its point of origin increases in intensity the more energy it uses to charge it, giving it a base combat power to fire in addition to its driver.
Though starting with +10 might as a leader, Hologram effectively gains +6 since it loses out on the base might of its ships. As a sponsor, it starts with 4-5 might, which is about on-par with a normal sponsor. Hologram is a little better than your average sponsor since you can be sure how much might they will contribute.
Due to my change to make Hologram’s ships never add might to the fleet, it can be directly compared with my Observer, which also has this clause. Unlike Hologram, Observer is not a combat power. It instead provides the advantage of protecting ships, which is meant to make them more attractive as an ally, whether leader or sponsor. I also like that the two aliens have very different reasons for having zero might ships, with Observer being based on a code of ethics and Hologram based on being physically incapable of dealing damage.
Perhaps it seems a bit unintuitive for an alien called Hologram to be a strong combat power, as opposed to something like Warrior or Kamikaze. If an alien’s ships aren’t even real, how are they dealing more damage than real ones. With Phantom, the idea feels a bit more intuitive, since the immaterial form of the Phantom is drawing power from an unseen force. With Hologram, the equivalent would be the light that is producing the Hologram. As the light increases in intensity, it would naturally heat up, possessing the power of a miniature sun. That’s where I perceive Hologram’s combat power is coming from.
With my change to let Hologram use half of its power as a sponsor, it can be directly compared to Scholar as well. Scholar can very easily surpass Hologram in combat as a sponsor since it gains wisdom from every encounter it sponsors. Hologram has the advantage of having a combat bonus as both leader and sponsor, which makes sense as the more balanced of the two. Similarly, my Warrior can quickly outpace it as a leader for the same reasons. Perhaps a more fitting comparison would be Human, who has a base combat power in all encounters ranging from 1 to 9. Since Human keeps its ship count, this would effectively be a range of 7 to 13 for Hologram. Since Hologram maxes out at 20 power, Hologram does have a higher ceiling than Human, but it lacks the zap synergy that makes Human unique, as well as the power’s persistence. The two powers also feel very different to play, since Hologram doesn’t value its committed ship count as much, except as a backward.
Wild Hologram is similar in nature to Wild Amoeba. Both are capable of exceeding gate capacity as a leader. It has the advantage of being usable during combat, but it lacks the ability to remove ships from the encounter.