Ignore this topic altogether and check out my new and improved home-brews in the other thread.

MUCH MUCH BETTER.

See the above post.

Do what it says.

Hello Messianic,

I think that the most interesting of these powers are Archon, Kaleidoscope and Warmonger.

Titan starts from a good concept, but I fear that I can be unpractical. First, he is very vulnerable to losing his power since he only has one home planet, if other players gang up or have good attack cards he can become powerless very soon. The second issue is that the problem of not having a place to put ships released from the warp can occur very frequently.

You should really make a revision to Sadist, that’s a very large number of tokens…

Well, the Titan's main weakness that you spoke of is there as a by-product of his main strength: Always having a default attack of 20 before allies or cards are even put in. Basically you would only put one ship in the gate as offense because putting anymore is pointless since it counts as 20 ships regardless, and your overall offense goes down very little from losing one ship. I'll have to edit that the only way his power is lost is if there are no ships on his home world.

Now I understand the concern of everyone allying against you on the first attack against you in the game and with something like the attack 40 and certain powers like Virus or Mirror making you lose your whole planet and almost ending the game for you. I think if I made a revision in the sense of making a special rule for the home world that you can only lose as many ships as total ships coming against you. This would be more fair as you'd lose ships on a 1 for 1 basis, it doesn't totally alleviate the problem if 4 players ally against you and you exactly lose all 20 ships, but it helps a lot. Of course to be fair this part would only work on your home world and not other planets. This is why it is an expert power, used right it owns, used wrong you lose the game easily and quickly.

As for the Kaleidoscope I edited it because I wanted to get some planet roating in and not just systems. Systems is now the Super Flare.

Sadist is kind of hard to establish a pure number because of amount of players in a game. It has to be a variable like (Numbers of Players)X, where X equals a constant. I am thinking maybe 12 ships per player in the game. In a 1v1 it would be 24, in a 5 player match it would be 60. I will change it so Sadist has his own numbered tokens, 4 different "1" tokens, a "5" token, a "10", a "20", and a "25", this allows any number of ships killed to be tallied between 1 and 64.

My own 10 personal favorites among my own creations are: Archon, Predator, Umbra, Elite, Grasp, Kaleidoscope, Tendril, Titan, Warmonger, Vice.

Messianic said:

As per your request, my response to your "challenge":

I don't see the value in reading through each and every alien one person has created just to see how many are rehashes, but I do know off hand that Predator and Lumine are weaker versions of Dork (Online) and Aristocrat (Eon); however, if the intent was to revise these aliens, I can't blame you. They both could stand to be a bit less powerful, though I personally like Aristocrat as-is (and Dork is obviously unusable offline). Predator is also quite similar to Magnet (Eon) -- definitely not the same, but so close that a game with both in play would be a bit boring. Again, I'm not saying yours is worse (actually, I prefer Predator to Magnet), but there are similarities.

I think the problem with a lot of home brews isn't just that they tend to be very similar to old aliens, but in order to make ones that aren't too similar, they often become too complicated and confusing to everyone but the creator. Like I said, I don't want to read through all of yours just to pick on you because that would be mean and pointless (and I know I've seen some, like Predator, that I liked), but skimming through your listing on the Warp, I saw one that took up my entire screen with its power and flares, and I just thought, Not only is this a bit overboard for one alien, but there's no way that would even fit on the flare.

Reading through The Dukester's blog article, I agree with everything he says, but I think the extent of the problem is a bit (just a bit) exaggerated. I think everyone who has posted aliens to the FFG board has offered at least one or two good ones, and like The Warp said, I think of these threads as brainstorming sessions more than alien portfolios to be judged. I've helped rework a few aliens by other forum users so far, and that has been fun, collaborating on aliens.

I don't consider it picking on me.

I'd rather go to the Warp and see the amount of Aliens dropped from 1400 where its at to 500ish.

There are so many aliens there that are almost exactly the same that all someone would need to do is group all those similar ones together, take the best ideas from them, fit it into one power, and then never do anything with those ones again and basically delete them. Also on the Warp there are like 6-7 versions of old aliens, so that's like +200 entries there.

With enough time someone could reduce that listing to a list of must have an unique aliens without anything being a ripoff. I am sure of this.

As for Predator and Lumine, I understand what you are saying about Aristocrat, in that at the very beginning of the game he choses his own hand, but that isn;t his power, it is a stupid add on that can never be repeated. His true power is always having flares to play with. In a case like that, it's better to remove Aristocrats one-time hand maker, and then have 2 different powers that are unique, as opposed to saying Lumine can;t exists because it uses the one-time act of Aristocrat in many different and useful ways.

As for Dork, it says the following:

Dork [O:CEO] blocks opponent alien's view CE Online

You have the power to annoy. When you are the main alien in an encounter you may annoy your opponent. Your lovely likeness accompanied by soothing music will appear floating across your opponent's console, strategically blocking key areas.

That has nothing to do with Predator.

As for Warmonger, the one that takes up most of the screen, that's me not simplifying my descriptions, I'll get around to that some time.

But I honestly wouldn't mind so good critiquing by people who know a lot about previous aliens and what is unique. Makes things better. I'm a huge believer in purging out the obsolete, combining and refining the similar, and striving for originality.

Dork's opponent can't invite allies because Dork blocks their input during that phase. The DONE button is constantly out of reach unless you cheat and use the Tab key to select by keyboard instead, in which case the Dork is effectively a non-entity. Predator's ability is not to allow his opponent to invite allies, right? So that is technically one subset of Dork's effects. Just for the record though, I hate Dork more than perhaps any other alien ever, so like I said, I actually like Predator -- just noting how similar it is to two previously released aliens.

And yes, I agree about Aristocrat, but it doesn't change the fact that they are quite similar. If you were in a game with both of them and both of them selected their starting hands, don't you think that would make each player feel less unique? I think each alien should make the player feel special and identify with that power, but if two players do the exact same action at the same time, it spoils the experience a bit. I agree that Aristocrat doesn't need that ability. I think Eon just made him that way because it thematically fit with the idea of being an "Aristocrat," and it was the 75th and final alien, released without any other aliens accompanying him, so he had to be extra special. I would be satisfied if FFG split him into two aliens, one being Lumine and the other just the flare-using Aristocrat power.

Adam said:

Oh, it was definitely exaggerated a bit.

I took a bit of artistic license on that one, don't you know ...

Zach is going to be helping to bring even more streamlining and better searching/screening/filtering capability to the Warp and the Power Thingy, which will help people be able to quickly see if their power idea has been put out there. I prefer having all the ideas there, but allowing people to be able to quickly find what they are looking for, and only display stuff that will interest them.

Jack, I was thinking about that very thing earlier. What about something as simple as a two-tiered system?

The first tier would be the same as it is now ... it would be every alien you've added to the database. No deletions, no major changes.

The second tier would be more of a "featured" tier ... it would be the best of the best, the top examples of many different types of powers (card manipulation, power-switching, destiny aliens, combat powers, etc., etc.). It would be a sort of Hall of Fame, chosen by you.

I figure something like 20 percent of the current database would qualify for the second tier, maybe even less. So, you've got how many in there now ... 1,200? That would be like 250 or 275 that would get featured status.

Something like that would almost be a primer in showing players (especially newcomers): "Okay, THIS is how you write a good alien homebrew."

That's a good idea... I think something like that would be doable. Zach has been peculating some ideas on how to tag and flag, and I think a featured page would be in good order... the best of, the highest rated... something.

Messianic said:

Ah, I just read Warmonger, and that is a neat idea. I'm glad to see a Tech alien that uses Tech in different ways, not just, "Here's a different way to get Tech or to research Tech" (not that those are bad -- I've made quite a few myself). I definitely think that power's text could be cut down by more than half though, and the flares are just trying much too hard. How about?:

WARMONGER [O:FFGfo] Uses Tech As Weaponry Christopher Oliveira (Tech)
You have the power of Demolition. As a main player after alliances have been made but before encounter cards are played you may declare a "demolition." When doing so discard one of your unrevealed Tech cards, returning all researching ships to bases. For each ship you had on it, send up to that many ships to the Warp from the ships your opponent has in the encounter and the same amount for each of his allies. As the offensive player, consider all ships on the defensive planet to be involved in the encounter for demolition purposes only. The encounter then continues as normal.

Restriction: Use only in a game with Tech.

Notes: The recommended experience level for this power is Advanced. This is a Combat type power.

Wild: Discard one of your unrevealed Tech, and return all its ships to bases. For each ship you had on the card, you may remove one of your opponent's ships to Warp. All ships sent to Warp must be from the same base.

Super: When you declare a demolition, you return all ships on the Tech to bases, but you do not have to discard the Tech.

I think Warmonger needs a built in mechamism for getting a replacement Tech, otherwise he hamstrings himself.

That's what I was thinking with the suggested Super change, though it may still be too much to count on getting your flare.

I think it's pretty balanced to let Warmonger get a new Tech when he uses his power... he's back to zero ships researching it, and he didn't get to use the Tech he was researching before. Perhaps the Super Flare lets him use his power and simultaneously reveal the tech, if he has enough ships on it when he does. Double whammy. It's not like he could use ths Super again anytime soon.

Read.

Other.

Thread.

thx. will try a few, seems cool.