Sorry, the past week has been crazy for me. There were some good submissions here and I'm sure we will be seeing more than one of them get picked over the next several rounds. I had hoped to find the time to regroup and go through all the submissions one more time, but rather than hold things up I'll go with my first instinct:
DRONES
Game Setup: Take the ten drone tokens and place them next to any of your home planets of your choice. Place each token next to only one planet. Arrange your ships among your planets as you wish, but place at least one ship on each.
You live in a Monitored System. Whenever another player aims the hyperspace gate at a planet that has drone(s) next to it, that player must immediately draw as many cards from the deck as the number of drones next to that planet, placing those cards on the discard pile. If any negotiate cards were drawn, the offense immediately loses the encounter and the defense wins.
If no negotiates were drawn, the encounter continues. After alliances are formed, each offensive ally in turn must also draw and discard cards equal to the number of drones next to the targeted planet. If the ally drew any negotiate cards, his or her ships in the hyperspace gate are immediately sent to the warp.
At the beginning of each of your encounters, you may rearrange your drones among your planets.
If one of your planets is removed from your system in any way, all drones next to it are removed from the game.
by Chris Oliveira
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(Yes, those drone tokens are miniature Lunar Cannons shifted greenward.)
I'll get the discussion started with a few of my thoughts:
• I'm thinking the sentence in blue is not needed (compare to Saboteur).
• What if the movement of the drones required something like discarding a card from your hand? If they're something that already existed in this system before your people came along, or mysteriously popped up one day 857 years ago — rather than an aspect of your alien race, which would make them feel more like an alien power — maybe you need to "bait" them with something to lure them to a different world. Just a thought to try to answer the question, "how is this thematically different from an alien power?"
• Other possible ideas for the flavor text:
Game Setup: Take the ten drone tokens and place them next to any of your home planets of your choice. Place each token next to only one planet. Arrange your ships among your planets as you wish, but place at least one ship on each.
You live in a Monitored System. Whenever another player aims the hyperspace gate at a planet that has drone(s) next to it, that player must immediately draw as many cards from the deck as the number of drones next to that planet, placing those cards on the discard pile. If any negotiate cards were drawn, the offense immediately loses the encounter and the defense wins.
If no negotiates were drawn, the encounter continues. After alliances are formed, each offensive ally in turn must also draw and discard cards equal to the number of drones next to the targeted planet. If the ally drew any negotiate cards, his or her ships in the hyperspace gate are immediately sent to the warp.
At the beginning of each of your encounters, you may rearrange your drones among your planets.
If one of your planets is removed from your system in any way, all drones next to it are removed from the game.
by Chris Oliveira
(Yes, those drone tokens are miniature Lunar Cannons shifted greenward.)
I'll get the discussion started with a few of my thoughts:
• I'm thinking the sentence in blue is not needed (compare to Saboteur).
• What if the movement of the drones required something like discarding a card from your hand? If they're something that already existed in this system before your people came along, or mysteriously popped up one day 857 years ago — rather than an aspect of your alien race, which would make them feel more like an alien power — maybe you need to "bait" them with something to lure them to a different world. Just a thought to try to answer the question, "how is this thematically different from an alien power?"
• Other possible ideas for the flavor text:
You live near Precursor Defenses.
You live under the protection of Automated Drones.
You live under the protection of Robotic Guardians.
You live under Orbital Protector Drones.
You live on planets with Automated Defenses.
You live near a hive of Ancient Drones.