Tech Tantra Thursday - Bill Eberle

Cosmic Encounter® encounter outcome matches

This is a follow-up article . . . actually just the start of a follow-up article on the subject of creating new aliens.

Trying a free association approach first, what kinds of aliens have never been thought of; what areas of Cosmic Encounter® or Cosmic Encounter® Online have been left untouched.

For example, for Power related aliens we have Changeling which swaps powers, the Insect which copies other powers, the Plant which accumulates powers, the Reincarnator who reincarnates as alien powers not in the game, but we don't have any aliens who tell other players which alien they have to play for each encounter (my apologies if this is an alien someone has created out there - tell me about it and I'll add info. about it here). If it's new perhaps we could call it The Director, or The Therapist or . . .

And I don't think we have an alien who “swaps players” . . . perhaps an alien that would pull the player with the most colonies, and most pods (or cards) if there is a tie for colonies, and . . . (as many tie breaker criteria as needed) at the beginning of each round. Pods (cards) would stay with the player (of course). Current working alien name: Original name was Electro-Magnet; that has now been changed to Peter's suggestion, The

Ah, there are so many possibilities.

What have we left undone?

Some aliens which I think pushed the Cosmic envelope into new areas: Aura, Changling, Demon, Diplomat, Disease, Doppleganger, Fungus, Gambler, Ghost (Online only), Judge, Loser, Machine, Pacifist, Parasite, Prophet, Reincarnator, Schizoid, Seeker, Sniveler, Sorcerer, Void, Warpish, Will, Wrack . . .