Nanny

Alert

Diplomacy

Control

Essence

Type

Power of Discipline

Positively and Negatively Reinforces

After arrival, if you are not a leader, you may use this power to “motivate” one or both leaders. To do so, publicly gift those player(s) an N pod from your cache and a “chore” from your nexus. To complete the chore, a motivated alien must deploy either an envoy or stooge. If they do, they receive the reward listed on the chore. If they do not, they instead receive the punishment listed on the chore. Then, vaporize the chore.

If an alien “enters timeout”, that alien may not discharge pods, commit ships, enter a voice channel or use the text channel the following invasion. If an alien in timeout is the invader, that alien must skip their campaign. If an alien in timeout is chosen as the defense, destiny is scrambled. The timeout penalties expire at the end of the following invasion after entering timeout.

During any upkeep, you may use this power to claim any N pod in any other alien’s exhaust.

Legacy: If a massacre occurs, the winning leader enters timeout.

The Nannies have become fed up with all of the misbehaving ne’er-do-wells causing mischief and trying to dominate the Cosmos. They’ve made it their mission to put a stop to this eternal conflict and put all the troublemakers in timeout.

Not Leader: Arrival
Any: Upkeep

Optional

Wild Flare

At the end another alien’s upkeep during their campaign’s first invasion, you may discharge this flare to end the invader’s campaign. Burnout.

Not Invader: Upkeep

Super Flare

As a leader, after arrival, you may discharge this flare to motivate your opponent.

Leader: Arrival

Chores

Polish the Pods – Reward: Draft one pod from any forge. Punishment: Nanny ravages one pod from your cache and you enter timeout.
Tidy Up the Bases – Reward: Move your ships between any of your bases. Punishment: Nanny snipes one of your bases and you enter timeout.
Sweep the Forge – Reward: Extract the top five pods in the forge. Claim one and scrap the rest. Punishment: Nanny probes your cache and scraps your highest attack pod. You enter timeout.
Dust the Cache – Reward: Scrap any number of pods from your cache and gain a free resupply. Punishment: Nanny ravages half of your cache (rounded down) and you enter timeout.
Greet the Sponsors – Reward: Gain a boon for each of your allies. Punishment: Nanny removes one of your sponsors from the encounter and you enter timeout.
Sort the Boons – Reward: Gain a boon for each of your committed ships. Punishment: Nanny probes your cache and scraps any or all support pods. You enter timeout.
Wash the Ships – Reward: Revive one ship. Punishment: Nanny ravages one of your ships and you enter timeout.
Vacuum the Warp – Reward: Revive all ships in the warp and receive one boon for each revived ship. Punishment: Nanny ravages two of your ships from foreign bases (if possible) and you enter timeout.

Modifications

Originally the power of Consequences. Changed to be a little punchier and encapsulate the idea of both rewards and punishments.
Original Nanny’s essence uses “consequences” instead of chores. I invented all of the names for the chores to add a little more flavor. The idea is that aliens need to send envoys so they can put their ships on autopilot. This is why I also allow aliens to send stooges instead of envoys, in addition to working for certain aliens like Warrior or Warpish.
I swapped the punishments of Sweep the Forge and Dust the Cache. It seems more appropriate as inversions of the rewards.
Original Nanny’s aspect to claim N pods activates any time they are scrapped, but only one when multiples are scrapped at once. Since I added the stooge clause, I simplified the power to allow grabbing one from any exhaust during upkeep. Technically worse at grabbing N pods, but it is unlikely for N pods to be scrapped outside of the encounter phase anyway.
Nanny’s legacy invokes the timeout effect for any alien that performs a massacre. This legacy can make N pods dangerous against invaders, since they will kill the invader’s second encounter if a massacre occurs. It can create additional incentive for aliens to aliens to negotiate and greatly benefit aliens that specialize in gaining compensation like Hacker and Lawyer. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Since Nanny can target one or both leaders, it can sponsor one alien and assign a chore to the opponent. This strategy can backfire if it prompts Nanny’s leader to negotiate, especially if the opponent decides to ignore the punishment.
Not all of Nanny’s chores are created equal. Vacuum the Warp is much more impactful and requires more setup than Wash the Ships.
Nanny should tailor its chores to the alien they are most effective against. Nanny can give its ship-based chores to aliens that care about their ships and pod-based chores to aliens that care more about pods. Asking Zombie to Wash the Ships won’t nearly be as effective as telling Kamikaze.
Be wary of giving Vacuum the Warp to a strong alien when there are many ships in the warp. In a pinch, the chore can be used as a makeshift Warp Key by gifting it to an alien with any bases with 2 or fewer ships.
Nanny can use its power to effectively ensure it never gets stuck having to play its own N pods, since it can gift them away to other aliens. It can also use its power to ensure it always has an N pod on-hand against an alien like Ethic or Pacifist.

Development Notes

Nanny was one of the first “essence” aliens released as part of the Eon Galaxy. While most were released as red alert aliens, Nanny was one of the few considered simple enough to be a yellow essence alien. The power is designed around the simple idea of encouraging more players to use N pods, similar to Heart or Empath. However, instead of forcing players to use Ns, Nanny uses an incentive system that rewards players that use them and punishes those that do not. Aliens are free to ignore Nanny’s demands, but they do so at their own risk. They have to weigh the costs and benefits of both choices.
Nanny inherently creates interesting choices for both itself and other players, which is highly favorable in terms of my design philosophy. When assigned a chore by Nanny, everything about it is public. Everyone knows what will happen if they play an N and what happens if they do not, allowing them to make an informed decision about what they will play based on what they expect their opponent will play. Aliens have to ask the question of whether the opponent will accept the punishment or whether they will accept a negotiation.
Nanny has a balanced spread of chores that provide flexibility. Three deal with pods, three deal with ships, and two deal with boons and can effect either. Polish the Pods and Wash the Ships are both small incentives for pods and ships, respectively.
All of Nanny’s chores inherently carry the “timeout” penalty, which provides a threat value to even the weakest punishment. While it doesn’t mean anything on the final invasion, getting placed in timeout will prevent any invasion participation. It can end an invader’s encounter prematurely and prevent them from sponsoring the winner during the final invasion. It even prevents communication with other aliens, which can be debilitating in its own right. On the positive side, it does have a chance of exhausting your destiny charges from the pool, but that can be harmful for defensive aliens like Siren and Squee.
Wild Nanny has a strange crossover in effect with my Lightning, but I think the distinction is acceptable. Nanny’s power is noticeably more impactful on the invader because it can result in the invader not getting a second encounter.
Vacuum the Warp is the most impactful of the chores by a considerable margin. Acting as a de-facto warp key that can gift another alien potentially dozens of boons at once can almost guarantee the target will perform the chore. In addition, it and Tidy Up the Bases are the only chores that can apply pressure on the invader during a decisive final invasion. If the invader has any foreign bases with two or fewer ships, it will not win as a result of ignoring the punishment. Even if not the final invasion, any alien receiving this chore will be inclined to complete it if they have any bases with 2 or fewer ships. It is a very effective late-game chore, and it is best not to waste it on an alien with no foreign bases or when there are few ships in the warp.
Though not as impactful as Vacuum the Warp, Dust the Cache would be the second-most impactful of the chores, offering both cache pruning and a free resupply. The resupply doesn’t need to be immediately requested, so it affords maximum flexibility to allow an alien to keep the pods they want and still use them without burning through its resupplies. On the other hand, the punishment will scrap half of their pods at random without getting a free resupply, potentially destroying the current cache and making it more likely they will need to destroy their bases to get more pods.
Sort the Boons and Sweep the Forge both allow Nanny to probe your cache if you accept the punishment, which can be just as damaging as the specific pods Nanny scraps from it. Nanny can leverage this information to its own advantage.
I opted to inject some additional flavor into the Nanny essences, as the original ones have fairly generic names like “Ship Consequence” and “Reward Consequence”. Unlike Alien or Assistant, Nanny’s names are just flavor, suggesting that this action is what the alien is doing when they play the N pod, and what they are punished for not doing. Original Nanny is simply instructing aliens to negotiate instead of fight, which also works with the role of a disciplinary nanny.
Nanny doesn’t perform well against aliens like Empath, Pacifist and Diplomat, since gifting them N pods only makes them stronger. Nanny is also quite punishing against Monk, but definitely not more than Philanthropist.
All motivated aliens receive N pods as a matter of course, effectively guaranteeing that they can complete the chore. Even if an aspect like Outlaw’s power steals the N, my Cosmic guarantees that completing the chore is possible by allowing stooges to be primed.