Tourist
Alert
Resource
Invasion
Type
Power to Sightsee
Tours Alien Systems
Setup: Manifest your “tour bus” in your system. During any warpfall, if your tour bus is in your home system, you may jump up to four of your ships from your bases to the tour bus, or from the tour bus to your bases in the same system.
After any destiny, if a hazard manifests, ravage one ship in your tour bus.
After any destiny, if no hazard manifests, use this power to move your tour bus to a neighbor’s system. Then, if the current system is the defender’s, you may establish a base using all ships in your tour bus. If you do not establish a base, “send a postcard home” instead. Rebound one ship in your tour bus to snatch one pod from the system owner’s cache.
Legacy: After winning an encounter, winning aliens each rebound a ship to snatch a pod from the losing leader.
Those who live in popular travel destinations know firsthand: When a bunch of Tourists come to visit, it can feel indistinguishable from an alien invasion. They don’t seem to know the local customs or show much respect for the wildlife, and soon enough there are more of them than you.
Any: Destiny
Mandatory
Wild Flare
Whenever a hazard manifests, you may discharge this flare to make the invader the defender this invasion and vice versa.
Any: Destiny
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to keep your tour bus in the current system.
Any: Destiny
Modifications
- The original power uses a “cruise liner” instead of a “tour bus”. Mechanically, they are identical. I liked the theming of a bus over a cruise to make it feel less ritzy. Travelling the Cosmos by bus is more dangerous than using the gate, and a luxury cruise feels a little safer to me.
- Original Super Tourist can reinforce its foreign bases with more ships if its tour bus is in the same system. I don’t see much value for this super flare in my version of the power, since aliens cannot target foreign bases in their own system. It would only have niche use against powers like Assassin, and foreign bases can be reinforced in other ways already, such as winning as a backward. I changed the power to provide a little more utility with the tour bus, allowing it to focus down one system and send more postcards from it.
- Tourist’s legacy punishes losers in an encounter by causing them to lose a pod to each winning alien, though this can potentially be a boon if they have a generally weak cache. Since a ship is automatically rebounded to snatch the pod, the legacy also punishes aliens that commit only one ship as a foreward, since it will prevent them from establishing a base. The invader and sponsors will need to commit more ships to compensate for the legacy’s effect. Aliens like Zombie and Horde that aren’t as restricted on ships can more easily handle the restriction. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Tourist has to return its tour bus to its home system to get more ships on it. This means that it can more easily gain a base in its neighboring systems than more distant ones.
- Keep track of the consumed destiny charges to get a gauge on when you can time your tour bus to enter the right system at the right time. If you are currently in the system, you won’t be able to stay there to use your power, so be mindful of how you move your tour bus.
- After disembarking your ships from your tour bus, you will have to return it to your system to get new ships on it. Be careful about moving your tour bus too far from your system if there are a considerable number of aliens.
- Tourist can move back and forth between a neighboring system and its own in order to keep its bus restocked until one of its neighbors is a defender. Be mindful of systems where you establish a base, as getting a base in every system will prevent you from gaining more bases via your power.
- Tourist prefers longer matches to shorter ones, provided it can keep its power. The longer the match lasts, the more time Tourist has to move its bus.
- Tourist should avoid committing too many ships during its encounters, since it needs to save ships for both its home bases and tour bus. Even more important if technology is involved. Since Tourist’s power helps provide it extra pods, it can focus its boons and lucre on reviving ships.
Development Notes
- Tourist is an alien that can notably take advantage of my custom Paradox artifact. Scrambling destiny up to twice can effectively ensure it dodges the hazard for the current invasion while potentially burning up to two hazards from the destiny pool.
- Mechanically, Tourist is similar to Disease and Winner. Other aliens have to assume that Tourist has 1-2 more dominion than they currently have at any time and avoid giving them that advantage. Tourist’s tour base acts as a visual indicator of how close they are to getting their next base. When the tour bus is empty, it will take several invasions for them to move it back to their system and restock, and they can only potentially gain a foreign base in a neighboring system where they don’t already have one. Even then, they have to get lucky with destiny aligning with their tour bus with the right timing, which limits their ability to get free foreign bases too quickly. Neighboring systems are much easier to tour, since it takes less time for the tour bus to move between them, which also means the bus can be restocked with ships faster.
- Tourist is also comparable to Pickpocket and Outlaw, other aliens that snatch pods. Tourist’s activation condition is a little more convoluted than the other two, but it can target the alien it wants to snatch pods from by moving its tour bus. Tourist’s neighbors are more directly at risk from this effect, since the proximity makes a big difference. It means there’s another alien other than my Neighbor that cares about who its neighbors are, a welcome addition to my alien roster.
- Tourist is another sort of idea that is designed almost entirely around its theme, making it a bit complex to analyze Tourist’s contemporaries. The power is similar to that of Disease, but also aliens like Pickpocket. The core concept is based around a power that can easily gain a base in every system. Notably, this means that Tourist cannot win through is power alone, regardless of the number of aliens in the match. It prevents Tourist from being the type of alien that acts as an alt-win alien that doesn’t have to engage with the main system of play.
- For Super Tourist, I considered a version that moves the bus twice per invasion. I concluded that this effect would be too strong in a standard match, since a Tourist starting in its own system could establish a base in any system by moving two systems in either direction. As long as the destiny isn’t a hazard, they could get a base in any system, and it would only take one invasion to restock its tour bus. Even for a super flare, that’s pretty excessive. Instead, I limited the flare to allow Tourist to stay in the current system instead of being forced to move. It evokes the idea of a Tourist staying somewhere longer, as if they are more relaxed and comfortable, or more passionate about they places they are travelling.
- Tourist’s ships can be spread super thin due to how its power works. This means that it is highly vulnerable to ship snipers like Assassin and Brute. It has to be careful about how it divides up its resources.
- Tourist’s tour bus passively loses ships every invasion, either by getting destroyed by hazards or rebounded with postcards. This aspect acts as a countermeasure to the alien’s ability to gain 1-2 dominion fairly easily. In a standard match, there will be 3 destiny charges per color plus two wild is 17 charges. That makes 17 invasions per cycle, and 5 will involve hazards. About 1 in 3 invasions will cause Tourist to lose a ship, and 2 in 3 will allow it to potentially move its tour bus. A standard Cosmic Encounter generally lasts 1 to 3 cycles, which is anywhere from 5 to 30 invasions. A full destiny reset generally occurs after about 2 full cycles, which would generally be near the endgame. This means Tourist is likely to lose about 5 ships from its power during a match,
- With Tourist’s legacy, it is good that I modified Macron’s power to be immune to rebounding. Due to the phrasing, Macron doesn’t get to snatch a pod after winning, but it is also not preventing from gaining bases and boons outright.
- Tourist is complex enough that it could be considered a red alert alien, but nothing about its mechanics make it especially confusing or dangerous. Even compared to other invasion aliens like Disease, Tourist isn’t as dangerous since its tour bus has a more predictable trajectory. With Disease, any new base is potentially many new bases.