So I mentioned this in a different thread yesterday, but I wanted to present it fully in it's own topic and get some feedback on it. My idea would require a rework of how traits work, but would make more dynamic characters, along with more variety.
Instead of having a trait like prostophobe or sanguine, you would have a whole page of different scenarios that could happen in-game, along with a reaction factor for your colonist. That way more complicated scenarios could be separated. It would look something like this:
Overall Happiness: Positive
Sold Prisoner: Neutral
Sold Colonist: Negative
Removed Body Part: Neutral
Removed Body Part From Prisoner: Negative
Received Prosthetic: Positive
Wearing Pants: Positive
Wearing Jacket: Negative
Using Melee: Negative
Using Ranged Weapon: Positive
The list could go on for a long time. This would make you get to know your characters a lot more to make sure they are happy. It would also make for more dynamic choices to find a balance between different colonists. Sam gets sad when we sell prisoners, but gets happy when we remove body parts from prisoners, so lets remove the kidney before we sell him. John dislikes both, so we will need to take off his jacket until he gets over it. Lisa enjoys killing people and is awesome at melee, but hates power armor, so we have to risk sending her out there. Imagining backround stories as to why Lisa or another colonist is like this could really enhance the story driven gameplay.
Since there are so many, the positive and negative hits could be less severe, since they are way more likely to add up. Also, to make it more dynamic and to differentiate between Sanguine and Iron willed, We could have several levels within Positive and Negative. This could be the difference between disliking jackets and hating them.
What are your thoughts? What about the idea would you tweak and what situations should be on the list? Feedback is greatly appreciated.
Character reactivity would make sense. You'd get trauma tized if you were a lone survivor, or you'd become egotistic if you've killed 200 mechanoids, 500 raiders, and a cow single handedly.
Quote from: BetaSpectre on October 17, 2014, 11:54:18 AM
Character reactivity would make sense. You'd get trauma tized if you were a lone survivor, or you'd become egotistic if you've killed 200 mechanoids, 500 raiders, and a cow single handedly.
That might create a good balance between arbitrary "achievement" unlocks and actual personality changes that so many people are requesting. A possible trait could be "Killed 100 people: Positive (or neutral or negative). It doesn't do anything until you the event occurs, but when it does, it gives you a +7 boost or something. Same could go for "See 100 dead bodies". For some people, it could harden them, for others, it could lower the mental threshhold.
Defining everything with a yes or no would make that colonists seem a little robotic. Rather, definine them with different personality aspects, similar to DF.
For example, the caring aspect would define the reaction to things like leaving colonists unburied, watching people die, selling/executing prisoners, etc. High values meaning everything upsets them; medium values mean major things, like seeing friends die or executing prisoners/harvesting their squishy bits until they die upsets them, while minor things like killing enemies, selling slaves or seeing enemy corpses doesn't; low values would mean they are unperturbed by anything but the most extreme of circumstances, like losing a loved one for example.
It still leaves room for more specific likes/dislikes, and specific traits like cannibal or green thumb, which don't require every colonist to have a specified reaction for.
I also find the suggestion robotifying the way colonists thinks. To be honest, I like the current personality-system just the way it is... But that's just my opinion ;)
I don't know if I am understanding what are you people talking about. Do you want a personality system akin to the one in "Rome total war"?