Sunday special: Going digital (part 1 of 3)

With Symbiote and Tick-Tock having been announced as "under development" at Cosmic Encounter Online, it's a good time to look at what other aliens might be good candidates to become digitized.

"Hulk SMASH!"

What follows (in three parts) is a look at 11 good candidates from the Fantasy Flight Games edition (FFG being the currently "in print" edition of the game) who would likely make good aliens at CE Online. Why 11? Well, why not? Top 10 lists are so routine and mundane ... it's time to break free of those shackles.**

But we can't just throw the kitchen sink at this exercise — not all CE aliens would be fun to play at CE Online. So what does make for a strong digital alien? These are some of the leading factors:


Flexibility: A good CE Online alien should be easy enough to play for most newcomers, yet challenging to play for CE veterans. Sorcerer is a good example of this. Anyone can understand a simple switching of cards; playing Sorcerer well, though, requires some experience.

Relative simplicity: Hey, I like both Plant and Insect a lot, but there's some good reasons they aren't included (yet) at CE Online. They are complex aliens which introduce a metric butt-load of obscure rules issues, for one thing.

Ease of coding: This is certainly not my area of expertise, but I do know "simpler" when I see it. I know intuitively that Zombie would be easier to code than Reincarnator ... I know the simple math of Virus would be easier to work with than the invisibility factor of Ghost.

So, keeping the above in mind, here's five good CE Online candidates, in no particular order, from the FFG base set:

• 1. Cudgel. A simple smash-and-grab alien. Losing ships is something all CE players can easily understand. I'd think it would be a breeze to code, too.
• 2. Mirror. I'm personally not a huge fan of this sort of number-manipulation, but I can where others might think it's very "cosmic." Plus, being able to turn a bad hand of cards into a great one is a dream come true for all CE players. Even easier to code than Cudgel?
• 3. Masochist. Hey, we've all lost a ton of ships when we didn't mean to ... why not finally be rewarded for it?
• 4. Hacker. The first part of the power is similar to how Mind works, so it's already kind of in the game; the second part would require some new code, but it doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem.



"My best friend is Void"

• 5. Amoeba. Scores extra points for being one of the few original Eon aliens not already present at CE Online. Some sort of dialogue box would need to be added, but that doesn't seem insurmountable.

There's certainly some good honorable mention candidates, too, that I left off the list for various reasons. Fodder and Fido would be fun to play, but have more steps than are usually seen at CEO; Grudge is pretty simple, but would introduce the concept of tokens for the first time; Human couldn't possibly be simpler, but is almost universally loathed; and Spiff would be fun, but desperately needs a name change, which is a subject for a different day.

Coming next week: Three aliens from the Cosmic Incursion expansion who should be digitized.

**Actually, that's not it at all. I'm trying to take the FFG releases proportionally ... so, five from the core set, and three apiece from the two expansions.