Pirate
Alert
Control
Resource
Diplomacy
Type
Power to Plunder
Plunders Ships for Booty
As an invader or sponsor, after winning in combat, you may use this power to rebound any number of ships from the encounter and abduct the same number of ships in the opposing fleet. Display those ships in your nexus.
Once per warpfall, you may destroy up to four abducted ships in your nexus to gain one boon for each. Alternatively, you may haggle with another alien to rebound X of their ships for X influence.
Special Offer: Rebound X of the opponent’s abducted ships for X influence.
Legacy: When a leader wins in combat, they abduct one committed ship from each enemy in the opposing fleet and display them in their nexus. Once per warpfall, aliens may scrap an abducted ship to gain a boon.
Avast and shiver ye timbers! Thar be Pirates in these here galaxies. They be looking to make off with yer treasure, so mind yer starboard. One wrong move, and ye’ll be walkin’ the plank.
Invader or Sponsor: Combat
Optional
Wild Flare
As a backward, after winning the encounter, for each boon you gain, you may discharge this flare to snatch a random pod from the opponent’s cache instead.
Backward: Encounter
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to abduct up to two enemy ships for each of your rebounded ships instead.
Invader: Contact
Modifications
- Originally the power to “raid”. Changed to “plunder” since it evokes more of a pirate feel.
- Original Pirate can both haggle and destroy ships each warpfall. I changed it to be one or the other to streamline the action. I also gave Pirate the special offer for additional flexibility. Original Cosmic has no special offers.
- Pirate’s legacy creates additional incentive for leaders to win, whether as invader or defender. They will abduct one ship per enemy, which can be either scrapped later for boons or kept indefinitely to deprive the opponents of valuable ships. Though fewer ships are captured than Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Pirate needs to commit at least two ships to be able to use its power while still gaining rewards from the encounter. Since Pirate wants to commit more ships on average, it can leverage its wins to help offset its losses.
- Pirate can generally abduct three ships at most from an encounter, unless planning to give up its rewards. Since abducted ships can be converted directly into boons, this decision is more viable as a backward.
- After abducting ships, save them for later if you don’t need the boons. Since the abducted ships can be exchanged any warpfall, they are generally more valuable as abducted ships than boons, since they can also be leveraged during negotiations or haggling.
Development Notes
- Pirate is another alien that forays into the world of ship abduction, alongside Fungus and Remote. All three of them perform abduction as a result of winning encounters, with Pirate having an abduction rate that is higher than Remote’s but lower than Fungus’s on average. What helps the three aliens stand apart is that they all get different benefits from the abducted pods. Fungus gets combat power, Remote gets sponsors, and Pirate gets resources.
- Mechanically, Pirate’s power grants the delayed boons one would receive normally as a backward during every encounter. When viewed in this manner, it is comparable to Mercenary. FFG Mercenary gains boons directly, while my version gains lucre instead. It can also be compared to Ghoul, who gains direct boons for each enemy casualty. While Pirate’s power doesn’t allow it to gain as many boons as Ghoul, it has the flexibility of being able to leverage them diplomatically to goad the opponent into negotiating, as well as keep them abducted in perpetuity to effectively vaporize them.
- I considered if I wanted to leave out the haggling clause for simplicity, but I settled on making it a choice between gaining boons or haggling. Starting with the Dominion Galaxy, many aliens started introducing the equivalent of haggling and special offers into alien powers, and the distinction between them is important. Pirate doesn’t really need the special offer if it can freely haggle every warpfall, but having it helps Pirate get more influence during negotiations. Perhaps not every alien that can haggle for an aspect should also have a special offer, but it seems fitting to the theme for Pirate to be one that can.
- Unlike Fungus, Pirate’s captured ships cannot be freed by deactivating its power or destroying Pirate’s ships. Only eliminating Pirate can rescue the ships if Pirate doesn’t want to give them up willingly, since it would destroy the nexus and send all ships on it to the warp.
- I considered whether Pirate should be able to use its power as a defender. It’s the only time when an alien gets no rewards for winning an encounter, and it is also the only time an alien doesn’t choose how many ships to commit. Pirate is never forced to use its power, so it shouldn’t matter how many ships Pirate is forced to use. I think this decision was made more for flavor than balancing, similar to why Barbarian is invader-only in FFG Cosmic. Pirate has to “set sail” to a foreign land to use its power, which makes enough sense for me to keep it that way.
- When people mention pirates, the nautical variety are the first to come to mind, but space pirates are perhaps just as common in the world of science fiction. In both cases, the concept is the same. They are known for boarding ships and stealing their wares. The rebounding aspect of the power can refer to the pirates taking the time to plunder the ships instead of showing up to gain boons or establish a base. Mechanically, the rebounding serves the purpose of restricting the number of captures. Pirate cannot capture anywhere close to the number of ships that Fungus can, but Pirate would be much stronger than Fungus if it could capture as many ships as Fungus can. Even if it were perfectly balanced for Pirate to simply abduct ships equal to its own committed ships, it is more interesting for the power to require that additional decision of rebounding ships.