Macron
Alert
Combat
Dominion
Type
Power of Mass
Sends One Mighty Ship
When you would establish a foreign base, use this power to instead leave your “footprint” on the target planet and rebound your ship(s). You gain 1 dominion for each footprint you have on a unique foreign planet.
Each of your ships has 4 might and 4 size. Your committed ships cannot be rebounded by aspects other than your own.
Legacy: Quadruple the might of all ships.
After gaining the power to grow in size at will, the Macrons soon learned that the Cosmos wasn’t big enough for them. After figuring out how to grow other things to suit their needs, they concluded that their dominance was simply a matter of bringing everything up to their level.
Any: Any
Mandatory
Wild Flare
As an actor, during combat, you may discharge this flare to add 1 might to your fleet for each of your committed ships.
Actor: Combat
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to make your ships worth 8 might instead.
Any: Any
Modifications
- Modified the timing and effect of Macron’s original power to be a little more coherent. Original Macron is designed thematically so that its ships are worth four by default, without any power use. The “use” clause is actually the part that prevents more than one ship from going into the gate, which seems backwards. I modified it so that Macron “embiggens” its ships whenever committing ships to the gate, which would almost always be as invader or supporter.
- Attempted to account for Macron’s huge sniping weakness by incorporating a bit of original Locust. Instead of establishing bases with its ships, Macron carves its initials into planets. It makes sense to me that Macron’s ships are too big (though it will still get a base normally if zapped). This also means that Assassin is incentivized to zap Macron if possible, if it perceives Macron to be a threat.
- Changed the super flare. The original super power that lets Macron send more ships into the gate doesn’t make sense to me. It suggests that Macron’s ships are getting smaller, when its whole identity is based around being big. So I made its ships “heavier” while keeping the same size.
- Macron’s legacy doubles the might of all ships without increasing their size, effectively increasing their “mass” without increasing the volume. This makes each individual ship in an encounter much more relevant, allowing each sponsor to contribute up to 16 might. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Though Macron’s power is designed to be fairly balanced and versatile in terms of combat utility, its primary power is being a defensive powerhouse. Similar to Virus, each individual ship makes Macron that much more powerful, whether attacking or negotiating.
- Since Macron doesn’t send many ships as offense or ally, it will generally lose fewer ships than other aliens. Since its ships are only in danger during encounters, it won’t be losing many ships unless it loses on defense.
- When attacking Macron’s system, focus on the planets that have the fewest ships for the best chance at victory. Macron isn’t particularly powerful on offense since it can only fit one ship in the gate, so it can save its stronger encounter pods for offense and use weaker ones for defense. Or it can focus on defense and rely on supporters to help on offense.
- If Macron’s power gets deactivated, it can send the normal amount of ships into the encounter. When zapped normally, Macron has already committed its ships, so it cannot take advantage of this.
- Macron gains less benefit from compensation, except on defense. It also gets less value from boons as a backward, since it can only commit one ship.
Development Notes
- Macron’s original design was geared to be more like original Symbiote or Pygmy, the kind of alien that has no “use” clause. Since all of my aliens require a “use” clause, I wanted to give it a more natural one that wasn’t a weakness. CEO fixed this by making Macron’s power activate during combat, but this opened it up to zaps in the same vein as Warrior and Virus. FFG changed the timing to fix this issue, but it still has the issue of Macron being highly vulnerable to powers like Shadow.
- I considered making it possible for Macron to self-zap so that it can send four ships instead of only two. I realized that there isn’t much practicality to doing this unless Macron simply needs to reinforce its bases, which is a pretty situational solution. I also considered the standard house rule of making Macron’s ships have two size instead of four. In the name of having an alien that sends only “one big ship”, I chose to lean toward the CEO version and add some destruction protection instead. Sending two ships doesn’t add too much consideration in terms of creating choice, since there’s really no reason to only send one ship in the vast majority of cases anyway.
- I interpret Macron to be canonically the largest alien based on its theming. Its power seems to be to make things larger and heavier, allowing it to wield the standard Federation ships that would normally be too small. Basically, it is the inverse of still-to-come Pygmy, who I consider the smallest alien (possible conflict with Amoeba and Mite). Leviathan comes close, but the size of a Leviathan is about the size of one planet. Macron is so big that it cannot even establish a base on a normal planet due to its size.
- My version of Macron overlaps with Locust in terms of design space. Both powers let you gain more permanent dominion, though Locust’s power is more potent and permanent than Macron’s. When the two are in the same match, Locust can eat Macron’s planets to steal its dominion. It makes it difficult for Macron to join any encounter as a sponsor unless Locust is the defense, since Macron would need other aliens to have ships present to protect its planets. To resolve this conflict, I added a matchup exception that prevents Locust from eating planets with Macron’s footprint.
- I added a clause to Macron’s ability to make it immune to effects like Brute and Tourist’s legacy, both of which are especially harsh on Macron. It also has some thematic relevance that Macron’s ships are too big to rebound in the gate. This has a side effect of making Macron immune to the Force Field artifact, which I don’t imagine to be a problem due to Macron’s limitations when it comes to gaining boons and compensation.