Love

Alert

Support

Resource

Invasion

Type

Power of Affection

Spreads the Love

After any launch, use this power to give one other alien a “kiss”. Any leader that commissions the kissed alien this invasion gains one boon. After commission, gain one boon for each other leader that commissioned the kissed alien.

After any arrival, if every other alien is an actor, use this power to declare a “group hug.” Revive all your ships from the warp and make all ships impervious this invasion. Then, if you are a bystander, you may sponsor either leader.

Legacy: Aliens who are not commissioned by either leader gain a boon. <3

The chaotic bid for universal Cosmic power has wounded many a heart in the eons that have transpired. The Love have witnessed such tragedy firsthand and think the conquest scene needs a little more compassion. Ever the optimists, they assert that any love they give will be returned to them in kind tenfold.

Any: Launch
Any: Any

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As a leader, after commission, you may discharge this flare to target one other alien that you did not commission. Both you and that alien draft one pod.

Leader: Commission

Super Flare

After any launch, you may discharge this flare to kiss a second alien with your power, including yourself.

Any: Launch

Modifications

Originally the power of Joy. Changed to “affection” to better reflect the idea of caring about others, to more directly oppose my changes to Hate.
Love’s FFG power is designed as a counterpart to FFG’s Hate. Love scraps a pod at the start of its own campaign, and every other alien may scrap a pod of the same type. If they do, they free all of their ships in the warp. If everyone does it, Love gets all the pods. If anyone doesn’t Love gets a free base in one of those aliens’ systems. Since I reworked Hate to be more about preventing sponsors, I needed to rework Love to be more about encouraging sponsors.
Wild Love can target any alien that either leader did not commission. Changed to specifically be ones that you did not commission, since enemy commissions are private information in my Cosmic.
Super Love can show a pod to everyone instead of scrapping one. Gave Super Love a completely new effect since Love’s power no longer scraps pods at all.
Love’s legacy gives all aliens a small bonus if they don’t get commissioned. It incentivizes aliens to commission everyone more often, which results in more overall sponsors. Aliens that are undesirable targets for sponsors like Parasite or Gorgon may benefit more from this legacy. It will at least help offset the negative side of getting commissioned less often. Since the choice is completely in the hands of the leaders, the aliens that benefit from the legacy can only influence it through the social aspect of the CE. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Love can use its power “dishonestly” to deter another alien from acting in the invasion at all. Love is not deprived of anything if the bystander chooses not to become a sponsor. Only if the leader chooses not to commission them.
Due to Love’s group hug clause, it cannot be left out of encounters by itself. Inviting everyone except Love means also inviting Love. This aspect is more meaningful when there are only 2 or 3 potential sponsors, including Love.
Love’s biggest weakness is the benefits it provides other players as it attempts to help itself.
With few aliens in the match, Love can be incredibly reckless with its ships, as it will easily be able to keep its ships well-stocked. With more aliens, it will have a tougher time securing those group hugs.
Aside from participating in matches with many aliens, Love is most disadvantaged when aliens like Ace and Virus are in the match, strong aliens that most won’t want to sponsor. In such cases, Love can focus more on gaining boons with its power, targeting aliens like Animal or Scholar that aliens want to commission anyway.
If everyone gangs up against Love, Love won’t lose any ships from the resulting attack.

Development Notes

In my view, the real test for the effectiveness of Love’s power is how interesting it is when placed in a match against Hate. Since the power is designed as a direct counterpart to Hate, it is important that the two interact well together, with neither necessarily triumphing over the other. Hate gains a boon for each leader with no sponsors. Love gains a boon if a particular alien gets commissioned. The two bonuses are mutually exclusive, allowing both to gain maximum rewards from the same invasion since the target alien may sponsor neither leader despite being commissioned by both. Hate’s goal is to generate animosity throughout the match so that aliens cannot commission one another, while Love is trying to get everyone to participate in an encounter for hugs. Hate’s power can disrupt Love’s by limiting how many boons Love can earn from a target. Love can disrupt Hate by creating encounters where no one loses ships, preventing Hate from generating any animosity. If every encounter involves a group hug, everyone’s ships will always be impervious, and Hate can never use its power.
Love’s group hugs are punishing to any alien that specifies in dealing extra damage from a win, such as Brute, Fungus, Void, and Crusher.
Originally I had a system where Love’s marks acted as kisses, and it could consume those kisses to sponsor an alien like Parasite. The group hug mechanic was originally reserved for the super flare, but I decided I liked the base power involving “hugs and kisses”. Love being able to kiss itself with its power reminds me of the “making out with yourself” gag from old romance movies.
I considered whether Love should be any encounter or only when not a leader. Ideally I wanted to mirror Hate’s power as much as possible, and that power activates every encounter. However, I wanted to make sure Love does not generate too many boons too quickly. I picked Healer as a good comparison case, another alien that gains pods every encounter. Love gains up to 2 boons per invasion, while also granting boons to other aliens. Healer can easily gain up to 4 pods per encounter, though both powers could potentially get nothing depending on the circumstance. Animal is another point of comparison, an actor-only power that punishes aliens that don’t commission it and gives every ally a boon if they win. Animal’s power incentivizes everyone to commission it, while Love incentivizes other aliens to be commissioned. I think the selflessness of Love’s power helps justify it getting more boons.
My changes to Love put it in a similar category as Parasite and Zipper, which is generally an untouchable design space in base Cosmic due to Parasite acting as the apex predator. Any alien that can do less than sponsor any alien all the time is strictly inferior to Parasite. However, since my version gives Parasite a downside to offsite the free sponsorship, it provides more room to maneuver within the design space. With Hate’s power specifically reducing sponsors, I knew I needed Love’s power to increase them. It’s a bit tricky as an idea since getting other aliens to commission other aliens is not a power in itself, whereas getting other aliens to not commission other aliens can be beneficial.
As with Hate, it is required that Love be a mandatory power. Both are driven by emotion, and the alien shouldn’t be choosing when they do or do not feel that emotion. The choice comes from which alien Love chooses to target, whether the leaders commission it, and whether the target alien becomes a sponsor. Love is dependent on the decisions of other aliens, which fits into its highly social themes of affection and love.
Love starts out without the ability of Parasite and Zipper to sponsor others for free. Its ability to gain this effect is dependent on everyone being commissioned and everyone deciding to participate, creating two barriers to entry. Parasite and Zipper can use their power infinitely and at-will, putting them in a completely different boat design-wise. Parasite saps might away from its host, reducing the chances of success, while Zipper also opens the door for every other bystander to sponsor, which could be a bad idea in some cases. Zipper and Parasite also don’t have the potential to gain free boons through proper matchmaking, which help Love to perform better during its own matches.
I really like the theming of Love and its opposition to Hate. Love encourages a match where more aliens sponsor one another, especially Love, while Hate encourages a match where no one commissions anyone except Hate. In order to stop Love, you have to abstain from friendship and teamwork, avoiding either sponsoring or commissioning the aliens Love targets. To stop Hate, you have to overcome the animosity by triumphing with your teammates against Hate, or letting Hate join you in an “embrace your demons” sort of way. The ideal thematic bonus would be that Hate eventually leads to a match where everyone hates everyone, and Love leads to a match where everyone loves everyone. The latter would most logically result in a match where everyone becomes Parasite, but that sounds like a nightmare experience even if it were made only theoretical. I chose to handle it in a more roundabout way, since Love is incentivized to make sure one or two specific aliens get commissioned each invasion.
Super Love is the vehicle I used to give Love a bonus if everyone joins the encounter. I considered adding it to Love’s main power, but I think it gives base Love too many benefits. I’d prefer to restrict it to boon gains and sponsorship gains.
My Love doesn’t actually work in a 3-alien match, but this is acceptable since the minimum number of aliens in my Cosmic is 4. With 4 aliens, Love’s power is somewhat automatic, since it only has one alien to target with its kisses. It’s also incredibly easy for Love to cause a group hug, since it will be invoked if that other alien sponsors either side. In such a situation, Love is effectively Zombie, but it also pretty much makes everyone else Zombie too. Defenders won’t even lose their bases since the ships become impervious.
Love’s original two use clauses both related to its kissing clause, since Love originally gave its targets marks as “kisses”. I changed this aspect to better fit with Electrician, who activates its power every time another alien uses theirs.