Locust
Alert
Destroy
Dominion
Type
Power to Devour
Devours Planets
After establishing a foreign base, you may use this power to “devour” any planet in the same system with fewer total stationed ships than those on your foreign base. Vaporize that planet and destroy all stationed ships on it. Then, abandon your base.
You gain 1 dominion for each devoured planet.
Legacy: Each alien must vaporize one of their planets, destroying all ships on those planets.
Moving in swarms, the Locusts have a voracious appetite that cannot be satiated. When they say “I’m so hungry I could eat an entire planet,” consider going off-world for your next vacation.
Any: Any
Optional
Wild Flare
During any warpfall, you may discharge this flare and destroy 4 of your ships to destroy any planet in any system except Locust’s system. Burnout.
Any: Warpfall
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to devour any planet in the target system.
Any: Any
Modifications
- Original Locust is yellow alert. The changes I made to my version bring it up to red alert. A new player probably shouldn’t start with my Locust in play.
- Original Locust’s power is mandatory. Mine is optional, to prevent potential self-destruction due to power use.
- Original Locust’s power is much more restrictive. It is invader-only and has to win the encounter with no sponsors, which allows it to devour the planet it establishes for 1 dominion. My version lets Locust devour any planet in the system, as long as the planet has 3 or fewer ships.
- Cosmic Odyssey released an alternate version of Locust that works much better than the original. It allows offensive allies to establish a different planet and only allows consumption if the target planet only had the opponent’s ships on it, making Locust no longer required to win solo and incapable of betraying its allies. I opted to keep my version of the power that makes Locust more of a threat to unguarded bases, similar to Bully or Assassin.
- Locust’s legacy effectively gives everyone one fewer planet to work with. If starting the match with this legacy, everyone simply has one fewer planet. If it happens during a match, aliens can wipe out enemy foreign bases in their systems. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Locust is a verifiable base smasher, capable of destroying two home bases in a single invasion. Two losses to Locust can potentially wipe out an alien’s power, leaving them with three planets and one home base.
- Locust prefers targeting fully stocked enemy bases so it can use its power on one that hasn’t been captured yet. It can also devour the planet it lands on if its allies commit 3 or fewer ships in total.
- Locust encourages other aliens to invite sponsors to reduce the odds of their planet ending up with 3 or fewer ships. Sending 4 ships keeps Locust away during the inciting encounter, but you’d need to keep the ships there to protect it in the future. If you have more sponsors, you have more freedom to jump those ships elsewhere.
- Locust can only devour when establishing the base, so choose your target planet wisely. If you have nothing to devour, you’ll establish a normal base. If the only thing to devour is an enemy base, you can end up making an enemy or two.
Development Notes
- Original Locust is considered one of the least effective anti-powers in original Cosmic, an extremely underwhelming invader-only win-based alien with no combat support and an effect that isn’t even that noteworthy if pulled off. My version attempts to fix the design problems of the original while keeping the spirit of the idea intact.
- One of my first key changes was to give Locust more capacity to devour planets. Letting Locust devour as a foreward as well as invader gives Locust more options, but players would never invite Locust if it meant losing their base. The key to fixing that issue is the 3-ship maximum. This means that an alien can send 4 ships and invite Locust to guarantee their base won’t be destroyed and also punish their opponent severely, which can be very useful if they have an obnoxious power you wish to deactivate.
- It’s important in the effort to make Locust more threatening that I don’t go the opposite direction and make it Brute 2.0. Locust still needs to establish foreign bases to use its power, meaning it can’t devour at all if it never invades. In addition, it’s restricted by the 3-ship rule, as well as the timing of its power. If Locust goes first, its target will have 5 planets with 4 ships apiece, preventing it from using its power unless it attacks alone or its allies send 3 or fewer ships. Interestingly, Locust encourages those who ally with it to send more ships, as Locust in that case would have to use its power to devour the planet and destroy its allies if it sent one ship and two sponsors each sent one as well.
- Locust gains the same sort of advantage as my Macron, where it gains “permanent” dominion instead of destructible bases. Funnily enough, since Locust devours planets, it could potentially hard-counter Macron, giving Macron no recourse to do anything about it. To fix this, I added a power dynamic between Locust and Macron. Macron’s mark is equal to four ships in terms of determining Locust’s power, preventing Locust from devouring these planets. Locust’s legacy and wild flare can still destroy these planets though.
- A common house rule for original Locust is to make devoured planets worth 2 dominion instead of 1. While this does mechanically make the power more threatening and let it fill the design space,I see it as more of a duct tape sort of fix. Thematically, there’s no real reason a devoured planet should count for more dominion than normal, and it doesn’t address Locust’s natural issue of needing to win encounters with no sponsors or combat power. A power designed to fight alone seems like it should be based in combat, like Virus.
- Another major question to consider is whether this power should be optional or mandatory. Making it optional puts more blame on Locust for destroying another alien’s power and gives its user more control over it. Destiny can cause Locust to attack a system where it might have to devour a planet with its own base on it, which is mechanically the biggest reason to make it optional. Thematically, the reason to keep it mandatory would be that Locust cannot control its hunger. However, it’s also perfectly valid to imagine that Locust doesn’t devour simply out of hunger.
- One of the biggest issues thematically with my version of the power is why Locust can devour a planet that’s supposed to be lightyears away from the one it lands on. This falls under the same kind of abstraction that allows powers like Disease and Cudgel to work, despite them not making literal sense. My rationalization is that the 3-ship maximum is the deterrent to Locust’s power, once they get past the enemy flagship. Locust can then summon its swarm and jump to whichever planet it wants.