Gaining Traits for Captains (and Officers)

[cerseisadvocate]

The Captain and her Officers (and also the crew but they don't matter so much here) gain additional traits now and when which is cool unless they are bad traits, when its usually feels like you are hit in the balls by rng.

Now I know that you (the developers) like to have these bad traits in the mix to pronounce that its not all fun and rainbows for a startrader and to have characters with flaws which makes them more interesting. This is basically cool but at least for me it does not work out as desired so I would like go over the flaws I see in the system and how they may be fixed.

1. Context
At the moment I usually learn about new traits for my captain and her officers when I look up there stats. I have no Idea when I got these traits and why. Of course there might be a little notification about it but I basically nether notice it. Because of this bad traits just feel like random punishement.
To improve this I would suggest that a character dialog starts every time the captain or one of her officers gains a trait. The dialog woudld give us a fluff explaination to what happened and why as well as a little crunch info.

e.G.
Fluff: The captain tells us how she cant find to sleep anymore without drinking cause all these crewmen that died under her command lately.
Crunch: She gained the DRunk trait.

2. Make no bad traits make Ambivalent traits.
The bitter pills go so much better with a little sweet. I find ambivalent tarits (like Headstrong for example) so much more enjoyable when plain bad traits).

3. More fluff less crunch.
At the moment being a drunk means my captain gains less moral and thats it. How about adding fluff elements like dialogs comming up there my officers come up with something while the captain is clearly drunk and makes nonsense comments and gives impossible orders.
In theory a trait like drunk would not need any crunch to immerse me in the situation that my captain is a drunk but it would need fluff to get me there.

4. The worst thing about getting the bad ones is not getting the good ones.

So I do not know how things work behind the scenes so if getting bad traits has nothing to do with not getting good ignore this! However every time I get a bad trait the thing that buggs me most is that I think this is taking a slot away that could have be filled with something good. If gaining a bad trait would not mean that I can now get one less good trait I would feel much better with the situation so if there is a limited number of trait slots per character I would suggest   to devide them in good-trait-slots and bad-trait-slots that do not compete with each other.

[fallen]

1. There are always notifications when a new Trait is given in the event list.
2. Sorry you dislike negative Traits. However, we are definitely not removing them from the game. Some of them you can recondition out with help of Gestalt or Chaesin.
3. All Traits do come with fluff via the barks -- the little dialogs popping up as you land, enter systems, quadrants. Traits are a primary driver of these quips.
4. Traits are generated by the events you have in the game. Lose a combat, Trait mutation based on that specific event. Win a combat, same. Encounter xeno, same. Pirate enemy ship, same. As you play, your crew, captain and officers mold to the activities you are doing.

[Cory Trese]

If you never fail a test or suffer a defeat or surrender in combat it should be all fun and rainbows!

[Swami]

Just curious shouldn't those new traits be somewhat obvious? Maybe a better chance of knowing them quickly? Especially ones like drunk.

[Cory Trese]

Yeah, definitely -- if you want that, build for it.

[vasvary5050]

I'm more of a traditional role-player than a min-maxer, so I like the negative traits. Don't take my flashbacks and spice addiction away from my captain!

[cerseisadvocate]

I never wanted to get rid of bad traits, the most important point I wanted to address is that in my opinion the traits need more context. When my captain gains a new trait i would like to be notified (in a way I actually notice) and understand why this happened.

[vasvary5050]

I confess that I have also gained some interesting traits on my captains/officers where for whatever reason I missed the notification message telling me I had gained them, ... and I would really like to know where they came from. For example, on one of my current runs I am running a non-combat ship (no weapons on the ship and no CC), and I've either retreated from range 5, used SotV, or submitted for inspection, stiff salute, etc. I'm guessing I gained the flashbacks and combat nerves following one of those encounters. Might be nice to have a simple log (even if just for the captain and officers) which says the date when a trait is gained/mutated, where the ship was at that time, and what caused it. Also, I looked, but I'm not sure if there is a blog/post anywhere that explains how traits are gained/mutated in detail with some examples.

[fallen]

Sept 13, 2019 5:46:38 GMT -5 vasvary5050 said:

I confess that I have also gained some interesting traits on my captains/officers where for whatever reason I missed the notification message telling me I had gained them, ... and I would really like to know where they came from. For example, on one of my current runs I am running a non-combat ship (no weapons on the ship and no CC), and I've either retreated from range 5, used SotV, or submitted for inspection, stiff salute, etc. I'm guessing I gained the flashbacks and combat nerves following one of those encounters. Might be nice to have a simple log (even if just for the captain and officers) which says the date when a trait is gained/mutated, where the ship was at that time, and what caused it. Also, I looked, but I'm not sure if there is a blog/post anywhere that explains how traits are gained/mutated in detail with some examples.

Looks like an area where the individual character log feature we've been working on would be a big help.