Merchant

Alert

Resource

Combat

Diplomacy

Type

Power of Commerce

Gains Lucre to Hire Ships

Setup: Add 3 additional lucre to your starting provisions.

As an actor, after arrival, you may use this power to spend lucre up to your influence and manifest an equal number of “hired ships”. Commit all hired ships to your fleet. Hired ships have 2 might, 1 worth, and 0 size. Hired ships are vaporized during upkeep.

At the start of each warpfall, gain 1 lucre.

Special Offer: X influence – Gift your opponent X lucre from your cache.

Legacy: At the start of each warpfall, the invader gains 1 lucre.

The Merchants left their homeworld long ago in search of profits and opportunity. While not the strongest in a fight, their connections and wealth ensure that their precious cargo never goes unguarded.

Actor: Arrival

Optional

Wild Flare

As a leader, after contact, you may discharge this flare to add 1 might to your total for each pod in your cache, including this flare.

Leader: Contact

Super Flare

When using your power, you may discharge this flare to commit two additional hired ships to your fleet.

Actor: Arrival

Modifications

Original Merchant has the power to “hire”, specifically focusing on the hiring part. My version has a few more supplemental effects, so I went with “commerce” to tie it all together.
Original Merchant can hire ships with any of its pods and gets them back if winning the encounter. It also uses the pods as ships directly. Since my version has the capability to manifest and vaporize ships at will, this abstraction is no longer necessary, especially since Merchant doesn’t get the pods back afterwards.
Original Merchant has no restriction on hired ships. My version has a limit equal to your influence to distinguish Merchant further from Fury. It keeps Merchant from being able to stall and stockpile its lucre for one huge invasion, limiting it to 9 hired ships or 18 power maximum, which it has to earn through great encounter performance.
Increased hired ship might from 1 to 2 since the ability to use hired ships is more limited.
Added a lucre-gaining aspect to Merchant’s power, allowing it to gain a profit from encounters and maintain use of its power. Original Cosmic has no lucre.
Altered the timing of power use. Original Merchant activates after approach. Mine activates after arrival, giving the opponent more of a warning and the ability to react. Thematically, it makes more sense that Merchant would hire its ships ahead of time, rather than them swooping in at the last second like reinforcements.
My version of Merchant starts with extra lucre. FFG Cosmic has no lucre, instead incorporating the Lux mechanic.
Slightly nerfed the wild flare to be leader-only instead of actor-only. The original wild flare is better than Porcupine’s power if the user has good pods, so restricting the timing gives Porcupine more of an edge.
Merchant’s legacy gives everyone 1 lucre each encounter, supplementing everyone’s resources so that no one ever goes “hungry.” Aliens that otherwise have no means of gaining resources can benefit from this one. Barbarian’s a pretty big fan. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Merchant’s goal is to be making a profit at all times. As Merchant, always try to be making more lucre than you lose.
Since Merchant gains passive income over time, it is incentivized for matches to last longer. The more lucre it builds up, the more vulnerable it becomes to compensation, so it needs to balance its spending and saving.
By sending more ships, Merchant declares itself as a two-fold threat. It increases the compensation it would receive from a massacre while also increasing its might as a brigade. Hired ships also make a good defense against trojans.
Merchant gains strength over time as it gets more dominion. At the start, it only has its base lucre, but once it has 4 foreign bases, it can generate a potential 4 lucre per turn. Not only can this guarantee 8 might or 4 extra compensation per encounter, but it can potentially make Merchant immune to getting deactivated, provided it can reach this point before losing its power.
Merchant can leverage its lucre in many different ways, including by bribing its opponent to let them win or force a negotiation or spending it normally to gain pods, ships, home bases, and resupplies.

Development Notes

I’m a big fan of the concept of the hired ships providing general utility to merchant’s caravan. Lacking a combat power themselves, they use their resources and connections to hire some muscle to protect them from harm or gain more compensation if damaged.
Unlike original Merchant, my version can’t use its hired ships to make a huge profit as a backward. Instead, it can use the backward bonus to gain additional rewards from all of its hired ships. Going all-in like this can be devastating if you lose, but it depends on how many hired ships you have. It can certainly entice defenders to invite you.
I love the thematic relationship between Barbarian and Merchant. Since Merchant specializes in lucre, Barbarian can seize Merchant’s caravan and take it all for themselves. The amount of ships Merchant chooses to hire gives Merchant the combat edge, but it can also choose to be stingy in order to preserve them for later. Original Barbarian does still wipe out Merchant’s cache, but it means less since they can just request a resupply. Since my version focuses on lucre, that which Barbarian takes is not so easily regained.
Originally the idea was for Merchant to get lucre equal to its authority when establishing a new base, but I like the idea of Merchant having a trade route and setting up marketplaces as its bases. I think gaining lucre over time helps sustain Merchant’s power and gives it more freedom to use it. Giving Merchant too much lucre will simply make it a stronger Fury, since both are designed to gain power from a consumable resource. I designed it such that Fury has the higher combat potential, while Merchant has more flexibility.
I elected to make the lucre-gaining aspect of Merchant’s power unzappable while making the ship hiring the ‘use’ part. Merchant needs to use its power and influence to hire ships, as otherwise anyone could hire ships for lucre. The lucre gaining is just Merchant selling its wares, which is too mundane to zap. As long as Merchant’s in business, it can keep selling.
The major issue I have with original Merchant’s theme is how it gets refunded after hiring ships, provided that it wins. While this mechanically fits the base power very well, making for a potent power that’s widely considered to be incredibly strong, it doesn’t feel like Merchant is “spending” its money on these ships. I structured Merchant to be lucre-based so that it can gain a steady income of pods without “gaining pods” in the same vein as Healer or Remora. Since lucre can’t be used to gain a ton of pods at once, those aliens still gain pods faster, unless Merchant chooses to burn many of them at once for compensation.
Originally I gave Merchant the ability to commit as many hired ships as it could afford. I decided to restrict it by influence instead, the dynamic restriction being more flavorful and engaging than a static one. It gives Merchant a starting combat potential of 10-12, which lets it easily pass the Human Test. However, since Merchant gains its passive lucre slowly, it is not recommended to use too much lucre at once too early.
Since Merchant gains lucre at a steady pace, it could also use its power to obtain more vouchers instead of focusing on the combat perks. Vouchers are meant to be the more enticing use of lucre, and I think the flexibility helps offset my Merchant being weaker than the original.
Similar to Trader, I definitely needed to make sure a businessman like Merchant had a special offer. It makes sense to me that Merchant can offer a straight-up bribe of 1 lucre for 1 influence. I considered whether this offer can be made multiple times in a row, but I think I want to restrict special offers to one per negotiation to avoid potential issues caused by gaining too much influence.