Psychic

Alert

Info

Control

Type

Power of Telepathy

Sees Pods of One Type

As a leader, after destiny, you may use this power to display a pod from your cache in stasis until upkeep. All other aliens with a base in your system or whose system you occupy must relay all pods in their cache of the same type to you. You may place one of those relayed pods in stasis until upkeep. After this power is used, pods may not be activated until the effect resolves.

Legacy: Whenever aliens draft pod(s), they must reveal one of those pods before adding them to their cache.

Given the wide range of alien evolution in the Cosmos, it is perhaps inevitable that one would unlock the secrets of the brain believed to be fantastical. The Psychics bring that fantasy to life, channeling the energy contained in brainwaves to predict and counter their enemies’ moves. They are also well aware that you are reading up on them right now.

Leader: Destiny

Optional

Wild Flare

At any time, you may discharge this flare to probe the next four aur in any forge.

Any: Any

Super Flare

When using your power, you may display two different types of pods from your cache in stasis. Targeted aliens must relay all pods of both types in their cache to you.

Leader: Destiny

Modifications

Original alien is named Aura. Changed to give the power a thematic relationship with Mind.
Originally the power of “honesty”. Changed to match my Psychic theme.
Original Aura only gains the information and cannot interact with the cards. Added a minor control effect to give Psychic a minor advantage over Mind.
Psychic’s legacy makes all aliens reveal at least one pod they draft when drafting multiple pods, making it difficult to hide when you obtain a strong pod. The more pods an alien can obtain at once, the more they can stay under the radar with this legacy in effect. If you reveal you have strong pods, it can make you more of a target for compensation or less likely to get sponsors/commissions. Aliens like Remora and Leader will struggle more than Invader or Ghoul. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

If you defend Psychic from entering your system and throw your encounters when invading Psychic’s system, you can prevent Psychic from being able to invade your mind for as long as possible.
Psychic can throw encounters as a defender to help it start reading minds. However, it can’t do this too much or it will lose its power.
The standard strategy for Psychic if your opponent is targetable by your power is to target attack pods and put their highest attack pod in stasis. However, if this strategy is the only one you use, you can end up getting blindsided by flares, artifacts, distress pods, etc. Targeting these pods with your power on occasion can also be useful.
When opposing Psychic, it can be useful to adopt a similar strategy against Oracle. Having more sponsors and combat might can make it more difficult for Psychic to overpower you even if they know your highest attack pod.
Even if you don’t put a pod in stasis as the Psychic, just knowing the pod is there can help you navigate an encounter to make the best decision.
Psychic needs to have a type of pod to see it, which is another reason attack pods are usually a go-to. It can also be worth checking out who has N pods or possibly preventing an alien from using one.

Development Notes

My primary concern with the original design of Aura was how it compares in function to Mind. Mind can use its power effectively every invasion to read the cache of a leader, and it gets to keep that information to itself. Aura is limited not only by the aliens who either invade it or it invades, but it reveals that information to everyone, which lessens its advantage. Aura also only works as a leader, limiting its potency even further. I modified the design to give Psychic the ability to read minds and also manipulate them, making them feel more like a true psychic. I also changed the power to make the effect no longer public information, granting it the same value as Mind. Mind’s core advantage as a pure info power comes from its ability to see the whole cache of an alien and constantly use its power. Psychic comparatively starts with no power at all, and even as its power eventually gains more potency than Mind’s, its frequency is still much lower.
If Mind and Psychic are in the same match, Mind will start out with the major advantage of being able to see Psychic’s cache in full. But if it leverages its power to invade Psychic’s system, Psychic will be able to see part of Mind’s cache and partially manipulate it. Once both are at full power, Psychic will have the advantage over Mind, but only when acting as a leader. Mind will still have the advantage as a support alien since it can leverage its power to gain allies. I don’t think either power is strictly superior to the other, which is what I’m striving to accomplish with my alien designs.
Fittingly, Psychic is also comparable to Oracle, an alien that can see the future. By revealing all of your opponent’s pods and making the strongest one unavailable, Psychic will know what the strongest possible pod they can play is. If it has a stronger pod, it can just play a pod stronger than that. But unlike Oracle, it might play a pod that is stronger than needed, since the opponent could play their weakest pod. If Psychic tries to read that, it could underplay and end up losing. If it does reveal attack pods, it can still get blindsided by feint pods.
Psychic is also comparable to Laser, a power that limits what pods other aliens can use. In contrast to Psychic, Laser can hit more pods at once, but the pods it can target are random. Psychic can target a pod of a specific type and make it unusable for the invasion. However, it either needs to invade another alien first to target them or have them invade it.
Another alien that can be compared to Psychic is Lich, a power that takes the highest attack pod and another pod from an alien other than the opponent at the cost of the rest of its cache. Psychic may or may not be able to target its opponent at any given time, but it can always use its power as a leader to put the opponent’s highest attack pod in stasis, the simplest use of its power. All Psychic has to do is sacrifice one of its own attack pods for the invasion, which it can easily do by giving up one of its weaker attack pods. Unlike Lich, Psychic cannot use the highest attack itself. It can only deprive another alien of doing so, which requires it to either invade Psychic or vice versa.
Due to the way Psychic/Aura is designed, aliens don’t have to be concerned about commissioning, sponsoring, or coexisting with alien. It only has the chance to start manipulating you if it acts as the opponent. I can imagine this is when Psychic makes a mental profile of the alien in order to figure out how to read their mind.
I was originally going to let Psychic put a pod from each alien in stasis, but I decided there’s no need for this aspect. Only letting it target one makes the decision more engaging, since it has to prioritize. If it is targeting attack pods, it will only need to take one from its opponent, likely the strongest one. If Psychic is ever left with a single attack pod, it would have to use it to target attack pods via its power. This is the primary reason that Psychic’s power is still optional, since that could be the last pod in Psychic’s cache. We can’t have Psychic’s power forcing itself to use a stooge due to a mandatory power.
Yet another alien this power resembles is Bully, with the ability to look at a portion of an alien’s cache and snatch one for itself. While this aspect is almost strictly better than Psychic’s and also works as a sponsor, it is also limited by the ability of the opponent to choose whether to rebound their ships instead. Bully needs to commit as many ships as the opponent to be threatening, which is dependent on its ship management. Psychic’s activation condition is much easier since it only needs to either win as an invader/foreward or lose as a defender.
Psychic can be compared to loss-based aliens like Pickpocket, Squee, and Sneak, but it has no inherent ability to protect its power. Losing three home bases will still deactivating it, defeating the purpose of losing those bases.
One question that comes to mind is why this power would be green alert when Mind is yellow. The original Aura is green alert since it reveals pods to everyone and doesn’t have the stasis effect. I think the stasis effect and lack of targeting is what keeps Psychic a green alert alien, since it doesn’t have to concern itself with remembering past information to use the power. It can just identify the pod it doesn’t want to deal with and remove it from play until upkeep. Having to temporarily sacrifice a specific pod to do so
Psychics or espers in fiction have a wide range of abilities that generally originate from the power of the mind. They portray the mind as a supernatural object. When a psychic uses their power, they can do extraordinary tasks like read minds, make objects float, fight against evil spirits, and unleash blasts of psychic energy. It’s interesting to compare the power of a psychic, one who wields the power of the human mind, vs. Mind, the living brain. It’s a comparison between the supernatural unknown of the human brain vs. the raw power of intelligence that the brain is known for.
Telepathy is the supernatural ability for one to communicate with another person’s mind directly without the need for physical stimuli. In the context of Psychic, my alien uses telepathy to read the minds of its enemies. Naturally it can’t read their entire mind, or it would just see the whole cache, so it is likely using its pod as a conduit to implant an image in their minds and see pods of a similar type. It also got me to think about how Psychic differs from Mind thematically. Mind wouldn’t necessarily be about reading minds itself but using its brain power to calculate what an alien’s cache would look like, using impossibly complex calculations. Psychic has ESP, while Mind is just supernaturally intelligent.
“Aura” refers to an invisible energy field that emanates from something. In spiritualism, certain mediums can read the aura of an individual to see the true nature of something. It is a good fit for the nature of a power designed around “honesty”, but I didn’t see it as concrete enough for an alien power. The closest that came to mind is something like Lucario, a Pokémon that uses the power of aura to tell whether someone is good or evil.
It’s worth noting that it’s rare for pods to be displayed in stasis. Usually they are sealed, preventing anyone from seeing them. Psychic’s power channels a known aspect to see other aspects, like how a psychic uses a talisman to channel their power.
By having Psychic relay pods instead of reveal them, I don’t have to take the extra words in the bio to explain how long they are revealed for.
I think having to share a system with their target makes it feel more like they need to form a close bond with an alien to read their mind. It’s a good choice for the theme.