Janitor
Alert
Destroy
Info
Type
Power to Sweep
Cleans Up After Battle
Before any crash where you did not lose the encounter, use this power to probe the cache of any one losing leader and scrap one pod in their cache.
Legacy: Aliens that lose an encounter must reveal their cache until the end of upkeep.
Moving in silence, the Janitors complacently clean up the aftermath of alien invasions. Though they perform their thankless duties diligently, sometimes they end up throwing someone’s possessions away by mistake. Usually it’s nothing significant.
Any: Crash
Mandatory
Wild Flare
Whenever another player scraps their cache to receive a resupply, you may discharge this flare to seize any of those pods.
Any: Any
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to target every alien in the losing fleet.
Any: Crash
Modifications
- Janitor is my own alien design and cannot be found in base Cosmic.
- Janitor’s legacy forces aliens to reveal their cache if they lose, providing valuable information to every other alien. This can be devastating with an alien like Inquisitor or Angler sniffing around for that info. Aliens like Mind and AI that specialize in that information aren’t too fond either. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Janitor raises the stakes when it is either siding with you or not involved. You have to either make sure you win or risk losing your strongest pod.
- Janitor can scrap any pod it wishes, whether it be strong or weak. Scrapping the enemy’s strongest pod can be valuable, but it could potentially be more useful to scrap an annoying flare.
- Aliens can avoid Janitor touching their flares by discharging them before the crash phase. This makes it easier to protect leader-only flares, or flares that can be utilized during any invasion.
- The only way for Janitor to guarantee use of its power is to sit out. Otherwise, it has to try and gamble on the winner like normal aliens do.
Development Notes
- Janitor’s dynamic with Clone doesn’t actually hinder Clone when Clone has a strong pod. Due to the timing, both effects activate at the same time, so Clone’s pod wouldn’t yet be available for Janitor to sweep away. This is preferable to Janitor being oppressively dominant over Clone whenever Clone loses.
- Janitor can be considered a variant of Mind, with the addition of touching the player’s cache, as opposed to just seeing it. This would easily overshadow Mind if it could use its power with more consistency and speed. It’s possible for aliens to go an entire match without Janitor seeing their cache if they only ever lose while Janitor is on their side. Mind is also much better at adapting to aliens who can easily scrap their cache and get resupplies since the info it obtains is always fairly recent.
- Janitor is an “insult to injury” sort of alien, punishing the losers for losing. Since it has to use its power, this can potentially be a blessing in disguise by Janitor sweeping up an alien’s final pod, allowing them to request a resupply.
- I considered if Janitor’s power needed to be retooled to involve the exhaust in some way. Janitor could have been an alternative name for Envy, sweeping up the enemy’s pod from the exhaust. However, I like the idea of Janitor being a thankless job that specializes in gaining information rather than getting paid. Janitors have a reputation for knowing things.
- I like that Janitor is incentivized to side with the winning alien instead of the losing alien. It would be a waste if Janitor’s power activates when it’s either a bystander or on the losing side, since Janitor gets no direct benefit to itself from its power aside from information.