Gamer

Alert

Combat

Type

Power to Get Good

Aims for the High Score

Setup: Manifest a pod with a value of 00 and place it in your nexus.

As a leader, during combat, if your driver’s original aur value has a higher might than the highest-might pod in your nexus, use this power to multiply your pod’s might by the number of pods in your nexus and add your driver to your nexus.

Legacy: Set a value of 3 as a “high score”. If the original aur value of an alien’s driver is higher than the high score, double that driver’s might this encounter and replace the high score with the value of the higher-might driver.

Long disregarded as ineffective and spineless, the Gamers have been honing their skills over countless generations to prove they can rise to the occasion. If it comes down to it, they’re not afraid to button-mash.

Leader: Combat

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As the invader, at the start of orientation, you may discharge this flare to draft the current pod in the forge with the highest original aur value.

Invader: Orientation

Super Flare

When you add a pod to your nexus, you may discharge this flare to scrap a pod from your cache and add an additional pod from your cache to your nexus.

Leader: Combat

Modifications

Original alien is named Arcade. Changed to be more of an active concept, since the arcade isn’t the one that does the gaming.
Originally the power to Pwn. Modified to be a different gaming reference that better fits the theme.
Arcade’s original power is a variant of Winner, activating as an actor when winning by 10 or more, or when the enemy fleet reveals a negotiate pod. Arcade gets to capture an enemy ship of the enemy’s choice and display it in its nexus. Arcade wins the game automatically if it gets three ships of the same color or five ships total. Needed to modify this power due to my “no alt-win aliens” rule.
Wild Arcade allows an actor to make the enemy fleet each destroy one additional ship when winning by 10 or more.
Super Arcade can choose any alien in the enemy fleet to “pwn”, making it easier to gain three specific ships.
Gamer’s legacy provides a more universal quest for the high score to all aliens. If an alien plays a driver with a higher might, they get double might and the score increases. After a 40 is set as the high score, the legacy is effectively turned off, since there are no other pods with higher might. Aliens that are capable of gaining many pods are more likely to benefit from this legacy, since they are more likely to get strong pods. However, any alien can play the 40 at any time to disable the legacy, preventing one alien from abusing it. While it can be incredibly impactful, it is unlikely to last very long due to the prisoner’s dilemma it invokes. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Gamer can benefit immensely from this combat bonus, but it can render it useless if it overcommits too early. Forcing Gamer to use its combat power can cause it to lose it entirely, without even disabling its power.
Gamer is at its strongest when it can play a clean curve of weak pods and transition into stronger ones toward the late-game. Gaining pods through compensation and backer boons early-game can be highly advantageous.
Gamer’s combat bonus is so potent that it can waste many of its ships early game without much concern. Other aliens could potentially take advantage of a reckless Gamer and get its power deactivated.
Any pods Gamer places in its nexus will remain there until the end of the match, unless it is eliminated. Gamer can use this feature to effectively vaporize pods that only have one copy in the forge.
Gamer is most dangerous when using the 40 pod, but it also means the end of its power. Zapping Gamer when it uses the 40 will remove its incredible power bonus but potentially allow it to continue using its power in the future.

Development Notes

Arcade is considered an average alt-win alien mechanically, but it is mostly decried for its name and power name. While my version has an equally referential power name, it applies a more active idea for its theming that feels more appropriate for gaming.
My original concept for Gamer was based around Bill Martinson’s idea of basing it around cheat codes. Gamer could scrap pods containing a combination of 0’s and 1’s in its ones and tens digit to produce different effects. While it was complicated to explain, the power seemed functional. My primary issue was that it didn’t feel representative of a gamer, since real gamers don’t cheat.
I opted to have Gamer join the ranks of high-danger powerhouses Virus and Crystal, two other powers capable of reaching triple digits with the right set of cards. I wanted to find another avenue in which Gamer can reach high values while having a built-in limitation. Virus is limited by its ships, and Crystal is limited by its pods and allies. With Gamer, there is more of a hard limit on how many times it can use its power, based on its pod curve. If originally starting with many low-might pods, it can build up a good number of pods in its nexus, setting it up to be a powerhouse with even an 08 or 10 pod. However, once it hits the double digits, it will have trouble consistently using its power. Once it plays the 40 pod, it will be completely unable to use its power for the rest of the match.
Aside from the high-value aliens, it’s interesting to compare Gamer to Warrior, as both are aliens that start out slow and grow over time. Warrior’s power is slow but consistent. It doesn’t produce values anywhere close to Gamer’s, but it always has access to them. Gamer can take on every enemy at once without much difficulty, but it is limited in how much it can use its power. In the late-game, Warrior is more likely to be in a better position than Gamer unless Gamer gets very lucky with its pods and manages to save a 40 pod for its final campaign.
Suppose Gamer plays 01, 04, 06, 08, 10, and 20, then finishes with a 40 pod. Including the starting 00 value, the values of those pods would be 01, 08, 18, 32, 50, 120, and 280, respectively. Virus can only compete with such a score as a defender if it gets more than 4 ships on a base. Crystal can only beat such a score by refracting a pod with a value of 18 or 20. For all three aliens, totals of that magnitude would likely only happen once per match at most, which is a good position for them.
The phrase “get good” or “git gud” is popular in the gaming sphere, often as a response to people complaining about a game being too difficult. It can be utilized both in a derogatory sense and a supportive one, either as a way of insulting a person for lacking skill or encouraging a person to keep working at it. In the context of my alien, I use the phrase to capture the idea of a Gamer working to develop their skills to achieve a high score.
Gamer is perhaps the only alien in the game capable of losing its power without it actually being zapped or deactivated. Nothing can remove pods from the nexus, so nothing can undo the 40 being placed there. I considered giving Gamer the ability to remove a pod as part of its Super power, but I think it’s more thematic that Gamer is always trying to outdo itself. A true gamer never wants to go backwards.
This concept also takes inspiration from speedrunning, wherein one attempts to beat a video game as quickly as possible. It is a highly competitive field where people can spend months or years to reduce the current best time by a few seconds. When a speedrun has become so optimized that a faster time is physically impossible, the game is considered “dead” from the speedrunner’s perspective. This idea is captured by Gamer’s power maxing out when it reaches the highest possible score.