Patriot

Alert

Invasion

Diplomacy

Type

Power of Homeland

Makes Itself at Home

Whenever you establish a base, you may use this power to jump that base to another planet in the same system. Any planet you occupy grants you the same authority as an occupied home planet and cannot grant authority to any other alien. At any time, you may disable an alien legacy for the rest of the encounter.

Special Offer: Re-establish a home base for 3 influence.

Legacy: Aliens whose powers are deactivated are immediately eliminated.

The Patriots are born with a flag in their hands, and they learn how to salute before they take their first marching steps. With fierce dedication to the pride of their homeland, they have struck out to help the entire Cosmos appreciate its beauty.

Any: Any

Optional

Wild Flare

As the invader or foreward, after winning an encounter, you may discharge this flare to draft a pod or revive a ship.

Invader or Foreward: Encounter

Super Flare

At the start of every campaign, you may discharge this flare to force every alien with a planet you occupy to “salute” you. Those alien(s) must gift you a pod from their cache. If you accept the pod, add it to your cache. Otherwise, scrap it and snipe one of that alien’s ships.

Invader: Launch

Modifications

Original Patriot has the power of Loyalty. Changed to better fit my rework of the power.
Original Patriot’s power can relay a pod from its cache to another alien once per invasion as a show of loyalty. The other alien can either accept the pod or gift one of its ships into Patriot’s nexus. Then, as a leader, Patriot can rebound all of the opponent’s ships from its nexus to transform both brigades into envoys. The power is considered one of the most bizarre in terms of matching the theme, in addition to being a needlessly complex version of Empath. My version is a complete rework.
Original Super Patriot can destroy enemy ships equal to its committed ships after contact. Modified to better fit my version of the power.
Patriot’s legacy immediately eliminates any alien that gets deactivated, causing them to be eliminated much earlier. The legacy is favorable to persistent powers, since it doesn’t affect them at all. Aliens like Squee who can preserve bases can also benefit from this legacy. Aliens like Kamikaze and Amoeba that can destroy their own ships quickly may have to be more careful with their powers. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Patriot’s victories can be devastating to an enemy alien, effectively taking out two home bases at once. With Patriot in play, every alien is in danger of losing their powers very quickly, resulting in Patriot gaining them.
Patriot can stack up a ton of authority with a few victories, gaining an advantage in negotiation. Attempting to play compensation against Patriot can be risky due to the therapy distress pod.
If Patriot eliminates an alien, it can manipulate the resulting legacy at will, allowing it to use it as a secondary sort of power.
Patriot’s power can be intimidating, as it can wipe out an alien in three encounters instead of five. However, since it lacks a persistent power, aliens can rally against it to take back the planets Patriot usurps.

Development Notes

When designing Patriot, my goal was to make a power that takes advantage of the elimination mechanic, which is unique to my Cosmic. There is little chance of redundancy, since the original game will not utilize it, and Tick-Tock is the only other relevant alien. Tick-Tock is focused on stalling out the game to eliminate aliens, so there shouldn’t be any issue.
My two primary issues with Patriot’s design were the power being unfun to play against and the power being too inconsequential for similar reasons as original Locust. Originally the power also stole powers when deactivating or eliminating another alien, but it simply seemed like a weaker Plant without doing enough to differentiate it.
In your average game, aliens lose their power after losing three times on defense (unless the same planet is targeted multiple times). With Patriot, the stakes are raised, as those three losses can mean outright elimination, with Patriot getting a passive advantage of controlling the resulting legacy.
As part of wielding the power of elimination, I wanted Patriot to have some control over the resulting legacies. Since legacies come in many shapes and sizes, it is difficult to give an alien specific control over it. For instance, Trader’s legacy swaps caches of two leaders, making it impossible for it to target one leader and not the other. Patriot also wouldn’t benefit much from simply preventing legacies, since they could be beneficial or harmful depending on the context. Instead, I think a blanket “on/off button” is the best form of control over such a power. This way, Patriot can turn it off if it is harmful and keep it on if helpful. Turning it off for the entire encounter helps put more weight into the decision and makes it easier to track. Also, if there are multiple legacies in effect, Patriot can only affect one at a time.
I find the question of whether Patriot is “fun” to be an important one. Most players don’t find the idea of losing their powers to be fun, and fewer would say it’s fun to be eliminated. However, I think people do have fun going up against a dangerous villain, and Patriot would occupy a different sort in comparison to a Virus or Loser. Patriot can be unassuming in its potency, and its power can be leveraged against a specific target. It opens the door for Patriot to gain advantage socially, which can make it incredibly dangerous. They could be the powerful conquistador that’s eliminating the defenseless natives or the rebellious hero helping to take down the powerful Dictator or Emperor. In the real world, Patriot is a term associated with strong positive and negative connotations depending on the country the Patriot serves. It’s fitting that they have the potential to be both the hero and the villain.
Thematically, I was aiming to capture the power of one who is fiercely loyal to one’s homeland, one who sees every land as his own land. By planting down its “flags”, it takes authority over the region, superseding whatever authority came before. When aliens leave behind their legacies for future generations, it feels free to trample all over them in favor of its own legacy. While the Patriot isn’t necessarily trying to eliminate other aliens, it has no qualms about doing so for the betterment of its kind. The power contrasts well with original Cosmic’s Xenophile, which was reworked into my Fan. While Fan loves other aliens coming to visit, Patriot doesn’t want any aliens trespassing on its sacred homeland and disrupting its important mission.
Patriot gains a passive starting advantage in any dimension that starts with legacies, since it can freely choose to turn them on or off at will without actually using its power.
My version of Patriot effectively destroys two home bases at once as invader or foreward, while only gaining one dominion as normal. It is incredibly punishing to defenders but balanced by the fact that Patriot has no combat power. Unlike original Locust, it doesn’t have to win encounters alone to use its power, and it doesn’t hurt other aliens to join forces with it. In fact, such a power can be invaluable against major threats, since they only need to win two encounters with Patriot in tow to deactivate them (unless persistent).