Dummy
Alert
Info
Control
Type
Power to Fool
Discharges Dummy Pods
As a leader, after arrival, you may use this power to display a pod from your cache in your nexus as a “dummy”. After contact, you may swap your driver with your dummy. After the encounter, gift your current dummy to your opponent. Your opponent may either claim the driver, scrap it, or gift it to you.
Legacy: After contact, the invader may swap its driver with another from its cache. If the invader does, the defender may do so as well.
Derided by even the Losers and the Geeks, the Dummies are possibly the most belittled race in the Federation. Their ability to create obviously fake replicas is barely considered a power, and they utilize it with such little strategic forethought, yet they still manage to win encounters. Some aliens have started to suspect them of hiding their true power, which is strictly against Federation rules.
Leader: Arrival
Optional
Wild Flare
As a leader, after contact, if your opponent agrees, you may discharge this flare to replace either driver with a negotiate pod from your cache.
Leader: Arrival
Super Flare
As a sponsor, after arrival, you may discharge this flare to use your power. Your leader decides whether or not to use the swapping clause.
Leader: Arrival
Modifications
- Original alien is named Decoy. Changed to distinguish it from Saboteur, who uses “decoy traps”.
- Originally the power of “contingency”. Changed to have the power match the theme.
- Original power doesn’t have a name for the decoy pod. I naturally chose “dummy” pod to match the theme.
- Trader’s legacy forces leaders to swap caches after arrival, making it pointless to increase the strength of one’s cache. Instead, aliens will want to make their cache as worthless as possible to gain advantage. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- As Dummy, the dummy pod you set up can lower the guard of the opponent. They can try to beat that pod and get blindsided when your real one is much larger.
- Playing a strong pod like your 30 or 40 as your dummy pod is generally inadvisable, as it is mostly just telegraphing to your opponent to play an N pod. Unless the opponent can beat your strong pod, it is clear you are going to swap to your dummy pod, as the alternative would be giving your opponent the 30 or 40 for nothing.
- One of the best uses of Dummy’s power is to flexibly throw out negotiation options. By playing an N as a dummy, you can bait the opponent into playing an N as well. If they don’t, you have your choice between compensation or potentially a combat victory.
- Dummy can use its power to prune its cache so long as it chooses a pod as its dummy that its opponent will want, or at least one that its opponent wouldn’t want Dummy to keep.
Development Notes
- The power invented for Decoy/Dummy is quite remarkable considering how late in development it was released, continuing to show the depth of how Cosmic’s mechanics. Discovered in the Venture Galaxy, Dummy introduces a power about as elegant as classic Oracle or Sorcerer, introducing new considerations that other aliens don’t utilize.
- Dummy’s general concept is having two flexible encounter pods it can switch between after reveal. However, whichever one it doesn’t use will go to the opponent, and they can either keep it, scrap it, or give it back to you. It means the power cannot be used for basic cache pruning or dumping a weak pod on the opponent. Instead, the power carries an inherent downside to contrast with the advantage of more flexible encounters.
- Oracle is a great point of comparison to Dummy. Oracle can know exactly what pod the opponent is playing, allowing it to make the optimal choice when choosing an attack pod, with the exception of reinforcement pods. Dummy’s effect is similar to Oracle’s, but it has to prepare its options in advance. When it decides which pod to use, it can only pick one of two, and it will give the one it doesn’t pick to its opponent. In terms of information, Oracle is the better power, but Dummy does have the potential to prune its cache faster, since it can potentially use up to two pods at once. Opponents are also more likely to play stronger pods against Oracle to ensure victories. Underestimating Dummy can allow it to secure victories through weaker pods than Oracle would need. There are also certain interactions with other powers that give Dummy the advantage, such as Calculator and Sorcerer. Due to the timing difference of the two powers, Dummy can swap out its pod with one unaffected by the opponent’s power. Since the powers have already been used, the swapped in dummy pod won’t be equalized by Calculator or reflected by Mirror. It can also dodge Graviton’s gravity with its dummy pod, letting it use double-digit power against heavy gravity. In short, Oracle is definitely not Dummy+, but the fact that it seems like it could be makes it very fitting to all the other aliens looking down on it.
- With this alien, I wanted to make use of the double-meaning of “dummy”. It refers to both a fake version of something and a stupid person. The Dummy sets up a “dummy” flagship to divert the opponent’s attention while planning its actual attack. However, they reveal the power of the dummy to their opponent and then leave it up for grabs to the opponent. They even take it back when given to them, like Sylvester accepting the bomb he planted under Tweety. Using the power to “fool” ties it all together, since Dummy is both fooling its opponent and is also acting the fool. “Dummy” and “fool” being synonyms adds the cherry on top.
- There isn’t really another alien power associated with direct stupidity. The closest we have is Greenhorn, with its power of Ignorance, and that power is themed around a new player learning the game, as well as someone pretending to be a new player to gain an advantage. While Dummy doesn’t wield the power of stupidity, it is likely the closest we have to the power. Otherwise it would have to be something like Cudgel, Bully, Brute, or Barbarian. Something more like “dumb muscle”, where the power is dumb in the sense that it doesn’t require much thought.
- A lot of games struggle later in development with powercreep, where new abilities and characters are either intentionally or unintentionally made stronger than what came before, in order to change up the meta and encourage customers to keep investing in the game. While alien powers do vary in terms of utility, Cosmic aliens don’t really suffer from traditional powercreep, and Dummy is great example of how new powers discovered in the Venture Galaxy still feel like they could have been released in the Prime Galaxy. The strongest standalone power to this day still might be Virus or Loser, with Cosmic’s inherent balancing helping to counteract it. It’s no small feat that my favorite game is able to avoid one of my biggest pet peeves in game design.
- I intentionally changed the original Emotion Control, which forces a combat into a negotiation in original Cosmic, since I didn’t like having an “off button” for combat. The equivalent I have is a distress pod that allows a user to transform their own pod into an N. I’m glad that the original Wild Decoy operates in a similar manner, requiring the consent of the opponent to turn a combat into a negotiation. It even allows the flexibility in how it can be used, such as offering to replace the opponent’s losing attack pod with an N to give them compensation and empty your cache. It could be tempting if the opponent needs pods more than you do.