Less boring traits, more traits like Decadent

[Sapidianus]

I like what devs did with the Decadent (-10% output without slaves) trait and I hope they will add more similiar traits in the future. Flat bonus or malus traits are boring and have the minmaxing element, while traits like Decadent actually force you to roleplay, this trait makes you enslave aliens and even your own citizens, because your people *need* slaves to function properly.

 

[ringhloth]

I don't agree with less boring traits, but I agree with more traits like decadent. You need both, IMO, to have a good feel. Cosmic encounter comes to mind, where you have a bunch of relatively sane alien powers and a handful of insane ones.

 

[Smiles_]

Endless Space had a nice variety of "traits" I think they were called, for custom race setup with the buy/sell mechanism. It's been a while since I've played that though. Some don't translate to Stellaris, but some do.

(Scroll down to "traits")

There also could be things a little more outside the box that could be taken from games that have traits that are given to individual characters, like

"Ingrained Learning" which could mean "x% more experience for scientists, general, admirals, upon mission completions."

Or "Hearty Warriors" which could mean some sort of battle modifier for ground troops or planetary defense.


Smiles

 

[Drow7]

I think they need traits that include both positive and negative effects.

That way they could put in more unique powerful effects and balance them at same time.

 

[Sapidianus]

I think they need traits that include both positive and negative effects.

That way they could put in more unique powerful effects and balance them at same time.

Agreed, something like + to army strenght when attacking, but you lose a certain percentage of buildings when you annex a planet or bonus production output but the buildings worked by the pop require more upkeep

 

[Vasious]

Yes a bonus and malus paired up always makes things interesting.

Long lived but lower reproductive rate, and vice versa, short lives but more rapid population growth.

Life spans might effect War Exhuastion tolerance as well, long lived sopecies more concern with the deaths of their own kind that will take a long time to replace, where as species that have lots of kids can accept a few more losses.

Conformists might lose some science as it goes a long with not asking to many questions on how things are done.
Better Researches have greater ethical divergence as people explore different ideas.

Popluations that are constantly consuming recreational drugs have higher happiness but lower productivity, or might need more food to present the drug crops being grown

 

[BrokenSky]

I think they need traits that include both positive and negative effects.

That way they could put in more unique powerful effects and balance them at same time.

I was thinking something like "laid back" which gets halved penalties to production due to unhappiness, but also halved halved bonuses due to high happiness. What do you think?

 

[Oscot]

Flat bonus or malus traits are boring and have the minmaxing element, while traits like Decadent actually force you to roleplay, this trait makes you enslave aliens and even your own citizens, because your people *need* slaves to function properly.

Yes a bonus and malus paired up always makes things interesting.

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

You make the mistake of thinking of traits one-by-one. Traits do not exist on their own. Traits exist in a bundle which sums to +2 and all together characterize a species.

This is what makes decadent the worst trait from an RP perspective, not the best one. It should be 2 traits, one of them a flat -10% resource output for maybe +2 and one of them +10% resource output if there are slaves for maybe -1. Then you can bundle it together if you choose, and RP your empire as decadent slaveholders. But with them separated like that you can alternatively take +10% productivity if there are slaves with Slow Learners: -25% experience gain and RP as Operation Paperclip: The Empire, a race who knows that other species have quicker wits than them so takes the sensible expedient of enslaving them all to toil in intellectual serfdom. Or, indeed, RP with any other combination of "No slave malus" with "Positive trait".

RPing requires player imagination whatever you make of it. You're not going to convince the kind of minimaxing powergamer who strives for CK2 Magyar world conquest runs to think like a slaver regardless of how much you force-bundle traits together. But I would hope that a sane player is capable of imagining "I am a slaver race" without the game having to spoonfeed you "LOOK AT THIS ONE TRAIT IT MAKES YOU A SLAVER".

TL;DR: No more traits like decadent please. My species is already a bundle of inseparable traits by the time it comes out of the species designer, you don't need to graft the traits themselves together too.

 

[jaredstanko]

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

You make the mistake of thinking of traits one-by-one. Traits do not exist on their own. Traits exist in a bundle which sums to +2 and all together characterize a species.

This is what makes decadent the worst trait from an RP perspective, not the best one. It should be 2 traits, one of them a flat -10% resource output for maybe +2 and one of them +10% resource output if there are slaves for maybe -1. Then you can bundle it together if you choose, and RP your empire as decadent slaveholders. But with them separated like that you can alternatively take +10% productivity if there are slaves with Slow Learners: -25% experience gain and RP as Operation Paperclip: The Empire, a race who knows that other species have quicker wits than them so takes the sensible expedient of enslaving them all to toil in intellectual serfdom. Or, indeed, RP with any other combination of "No slave malus" with "Positive trait".

RPing requires player imagination whatever you make of it. You're not going to convince the kind of minimaxing powergamer who strives for CK2 Magyar world conquest runs to think like a slaver regardless of how much you force-bundle traits together. But I would hope that a sane player is capable of imagining "I am a slaver race" without the game having to spoonfeed you "LOOK AT THIS ONE TRAIT IT MAKES YOU A SLAVER".

TL;DR: No more traits like decadent please. My species is already a bundle of inseparable traits by the time it comes out of the species designer, you don't need to graft the traits themselves together too.

but parhaps decadent without its paired half is over or underpowered, and they need to be paired together to function well? we could easily add a "lazy - 10% mineral production" trait.

 

[urkuru]

Hmm mayhaps, "nocturnal"- bonus production on " dark" planets with some minor happiness penalty on other planets.

That would require actually defining which planets have longer night cycle or is further away from parent star, with daytime being more like dawn.

 

[Oscot]

but parhaps decadent without its paired half is over or underpowered, and they need to be paired together to function well?

A) Perhaps that '-10% resource output' is spectacularly easy to rebalance to -8% or -12%.
B) You think they don't function well alone, you pair them together in species designer. Just don't force me to do so too.

 

[Smiles_]

A) Perhaps that '-10% resource output' is spectacularly easy to rebalance to -8% or -12%.
B) You think they don't function well alone, you pair them together in species designer. Just don't force me to do so too.

We want to force you to do everything and anything and nothing! Muahaha.


Smiles

 

[Vasious]

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

You make the mistake of thinking of traits one-by-one. Traits do not exist on their own. Traits exist in a bundle which sums to +2 and all together characterize a species.

This is what makes decadent the worst trait from an RP perspective, not the best one. It should be 2 traits, one of them a flat -10% resource output for maybe +2 and one of them +10% resource output if there are slaves for maybe -1. Then you can bundle it together if you choose, and RP your empire as decadent slaveholders. But with them separated like that you can alternatively take +10% productivity if there are slaves with Slow Learners: -25% experience gain and RP as Operation Paperclip: The Empire, a race who knows that other species have quicker wits than them so takes the sensible expedient of enslaving them all to toil in intellectual serfdom. Or, indeed, RP with any other combination of "No slave malus" with "Positive trait".

RPing requires player imagination whatever you make of it. You're not going to convince the kind of minimaxing powergamer who strives for CK2 Magyar world conquest runs to think like a slaver regardless of how much you force-bundle traits together. But I would hope that a sane player is capable of imagining "I am a slaver race" without the game having to spoonfeed you "LOOK AT THIS ONE TRAIT IT MAKES YOU A SLAVER".

TL;DR: No more traits like decadent please. My species is already a bundle of inseparable traits by the time it comes out of the species designer, you don't need to graft the traits themselves together too.

With the limit of four traits total?

I juts like the idea of traits having upsides and downsides, just as in CK2 a lots of the traits have good and bad things to them.
Brave people get themselves killed more than cowards, and patient warlords can get confused for cowards etc etc.

 

[Alexander Seil]

All those traits can still be inputs to events. That's where most of the "character" of CK2 stats came out, otherwise they were flat stat bonuses with some of them impacting relations. By themselves, the Ethics are not much to look at either, but they affect other systems, without it being explicitly said "on the tin."

I generally agree with Oscot here, the character of your race can be sufficiently customized with existing traits, though some balancing could be done around the number you can pick and the costs. And don't forget that not all traits are available at start. Now, more can be added even at start, but they shouldn't introduce radically different mechanics, unless there are gameplay and setup elements to make it natural (i.e., picking the Mechanical trait at start ought to lead to its own game mode, more appropriate for a DLC).

 

[Oscot]

With the limit of four traits total?
I juts like the idea of traits having upsides and downsides, just as in CK2 a lots of the traits have good and bad things to them.
Brave people get themselves killed more than cowards, and patient warlords can get confused for cowards etc etc.

Again, I feel you are making a conceptual error here.
A trait is not a thing. A bundle of traits is a thing.

It'd be like saying, I dunno, "Flour tastes boring. We should have more interesting foods, with sparkles and stuff"
Well flour does taste boring, but you're not supposed to eat flour. You're supposed to mixed it with a bunch of other things and cook it into a foodstuff and THEN eat it.
Likewise, you are not supposed to pass judgment on A TRAIT. You are supposed to pass judgment on a species, that represents a processed mixture of various traits that sum to +2.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

I don't care if traits just add basic pluses, minuses, divisions, or multipliers that are applied to already implemented game mechanics, it just means the Devs can add many of them relatively easily like in CK2. What there should be is the occasional event that depends on having a particular trait (again, like in CK2).

 

[TacticalRetreat]

I agree. I'm picking Decadent for my first Human game and I would love to see more traits like it in the future.

 

[Sapidianus]

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

You make the mistake of thinking of traits one-by-one. Traits do not exist on their own. Traits exist in a bundle which sums to +2 and all together characterize a species.

This is what makes decadent the worst trait from an RP perspective, not the best one. It should be 2 traits, one of them a flat -10% resource output for maybe +2 and one of them +10% resource output if there are slaves for maybe -1. Then you can bundle it together if you choose, and RP your empire as decadent slaveholders. But with them separated like that you can alternatively take +10% productivity if there are slaves with Slow Learners: -25% experience gain and RP as Operation Paperclip: The Empire, a race who knows that other species have quicker wits than them so takes the sensible expedient of enslaving them all to toil in intellectual serfdom. Or, indeed, RP with any other combination of "No slave malus" with "Positive trait".

RPing requires player imagination whatever you make of it. You're not going to convince the kind of minimaxing powergamer who strives for CK2 Magyar world conquest runs to think like a slaver regardless of how much you force-bundle traits together. But I would hope that a sane player is capable of imagining "I am a slaver race" without the game having to spoonfeed you "LOOK AT THIS ONE TRAIT IT MAKES YOU A SLAVER".

TL;DR: No more traits like decadent please. My species is already a bundle of inseparable traits by the time it comes out of the species designer, you don't need to graft the traits themselves together too.

What you suggest is a bad design actually, considering the trait limit and also the fact, that your suggestion will create a large quantity of dead traits, that will only be used by hardcore roleplayers.

You make a mistake by considering a group of traits as one, even in one specie traits can differ like ethos. By making a single trait a number of modifiers and conditions under which these modifiers will apply, you get a trait, that is special, alive, not just another 10% to your science output, that you want to stack with that fanatic materialist ethos bonus.

Lets say you have a race, that is religious and communal. Right now this will give you a flat happiness bonus and you will soon treat your people just as "guys who dont usually revolt". But if communal required a pop to have a neighbouring friend to have the bonus to work and probably malus if they have no friends nearby, you would feel and act differently, you would treat you pops with communal trait as communal beings, you would consider the trait when placing them on the tiles, colonizing and etc.

What you suggest will harm the game: mp games will be burdened by everchanging house rules to prevent excessive minmaxing, ironman will be topped by species with strong afvatages but without real drawbacks, devs will have to rebalance traits constantly.

 

[Oscot]

WORDS.

Well, enjoy chewing on your flour I guess.

I can't wait for your thread about how you think components are boring because you refuse to consider them as part of a ship, or how planets are boring because you refuse to think of them as part of an empire.

 

[Murmeldjuret]

Forcing roleplay isn't good game design, but making you make the most of your traits is good game design.
A system with +10% x or +10% y isnt giving you a hard choice, it is making you evaluate which of x or y is more important. It is not making you wonder how you can make one work, or what results it will have, it is making you calculate roughly which will give a better yield and when. A plethora of +x, +y, +z is not giving you hard choices, it is encouraging you to use spreadsheets. A +x when a, +y unless b, and +z when c, is adding non-linear variables to the system. If there are enough of them, you will be encouraged to play differently more so than if you choose between +x and +y. This adds replayability and more interest to the game. This said, it is worth noting that you need a certain critical amount of traits to distinguish nations and this gets harder with more complex traits as you don't want to repeat them. It is also unlikely it can be polished enough to be in the release, but it is something to think about for future patches or dlc.