Possibility of losing/gaining traits through activity/inactivity

[Summoned]

I think it would be pretty cool for characters to have a chance to gain traits like Bloodlust after, say, killing a dozen people within a certain period of time. Similarly, if a character keeps doing absolutely nothing except eating/sleeping for a few weeks/months they may become lazy. Repeatedly eating human meat could turn a non-cannibal into a cannibal, etc.

On the other hand, a character could lose Bloodlust if he or she does not get into combat for a long period of time. They could lose neurotic/volatile if they are kept at a high morale state for a long time.

It would make the trait system a lot more dynamic. Players would also be more inclined to recruit people even if they start with bad traits.

[keylocke]

i like it. all of it. +1

[Geokinesis]

On the other hand, a character could lose Bloodlust if he or she does not get into combat for a long period of time. They could lose neurotic/volatile if they are kept at a high morale state for a long time.

I don't think it should affect all traits, as really you'll end up with 0 colonist with negative mood traits like this.

[Mystic]

Sorry, but I have to vote against this one.  I think it would tend to make the distinctions between colonists much less noticeable if you could reshape them to this degree, especially over a relatively short period of time as is portrayed in the game.  I don't want the game to lose the concept of individual colonists having individual positive and negative traits by giving the player the ability to erase them.

[Summoned]

I don't think it should affect all traits, as really you'll end up with 0 colonist with negative mood traits like this.

As it currently stands, a lot of players will just dissect/sell colonists that have negative mood traits. Besides, it doesn't have to be "good" things that give colonists good traits.

Sorry, but I have to vote against this one.  I think it would tend to make the distinctions between colonists much less noticeable if you could reshape them to this degree, especially over a relatively short period of time as is portrayed in the game.  I don't want the game to lose the concept of individual colonists having individual positive and negative traits by giving the player the ability to erase them.

Individuals are not rocks; they change over time. Character development is a major part of story-telling. And the thing is that bad things happen, too.

The way I figured it would work is pretty much based on the way the mood system is working right now. You would go:

Witnessed ally's death x 1 (-8 mood)
Witnessed ally's death x 2 (-9 mood)
Witnessed ally's death x 3 (-10 mood)
Witnessed ally's death x 4 (-11 mood)
Witnessed ally's death x 5 (-12 mood)
Trait gained: Mental break threshold +10. Keeps debuffs. (80% chance)
Trait gained: Gained Psychopath. Wipes debuffs. (20% chance)

[ciditi]

This type of thing could work, but I would expect the criteria for gaining/losing traits would have to be fairly significant.  If the factors aren't significant enough it might be fairly easy to engineer methods of gaining/losing traits for your colonists.  For instance, if you want to get blood lust for a particular colonist and the criteria for that was just killing X amount of people you could possibly weaken raiders to the point where it's a 1 shot and then the selected colonist gets the kill.  Maybe damage done to non colonist humanoids/mechanoids would be a better factor? Or maybe additional criteria such as getting X kills without taking any damage to the colonist him/herself.  Any damage taken would knock their lust for blood back a few notches, or maybe reset the counter for X number of kills without damage? Not sure if this would be the right way to do it either, but it just seems like there needs to be some fairly uncontrollable counterpoint to level out the chances of gaining or losing any traits.

This would maybe work best as an option that could be toggled on/off (in the same was as the project zomboid game interface, perhaps).  I'm sure some people probably make it a point to draft an initial colonist team of all psychopaths, or all cannibals, and don't want their man eating team to lose that affinity just because there weren't enough raids to keep the preferred food supply stocked and they had to switch to boomrats.

Sounds like an interesting optional config setting that might deserve a good look at development continues, or maybe someone could mod it in.