I have been putting some time into putting together an number of racial traits that I would like to see in the game. Here they are for your examination, and feel free to post your own custom traits here.

(-) Xenophobia

The members of your empire is afraid of things that are different from them themselves. This has resulted in tensions between them and outsiders, but it also affects their actions. For starters, any colonies that are far away from other empires are much happier, but ones that are nearby foreign colonies will receive an morale penalty. In exchange for this, their productivity goes up, in an attempt to force encroaching foreigners away by creating warships and other physical products. This extra effort towards physically repelling their neighbors has made scientific endevours difficult, due to a lack of interest in science, and expeditions have a hard time securing foreign assistance in research projects.



(+) Colonies far away from foreign territory are significantly happier.

(+) Colonies close to foreign borders will have increased production.

(-) Colonies that neighbor enemy territory are unhappy, and produce much less research.

(-) Migrants will generally move away from colonies near enemy territory, in favor of isolated worlds. This may make colonizing worlds near to enemy territory more difficult.

(-) Foreign relations are reduced, due to your empire's unfriendly nature.

(+) Psionic

Able to utilize the power of their mind to communicate with each other, members of your race can influence those around them with their feelings, for better or worse.



(+) Happy systems will immerse systems within their sphere of influence with positive feelings. This is good for your worlds, and enemy worlds would also feel content. As an result, relations with foreign empires may improve, as their people think well of your people.

(-) Unhappy systems would make surrounding worlds feel discontent, due to impressing their feelings of anger and angish upon others. Enemy systems would be more inclined to rebel, and foreign empires would become hostile in response.

(+) Spymasters

Possessing impressive observation abilities, your race has detailed knowledge of the activities of any empire that can be readily watched.



(+) Knows the composition and design specifications of the fleets that other empires field, provided they are within sensor range or within your empire's sphere of influence.

(+) Has details about the current status of planets under another empires control, provided they are within sensor range or your sphere of influence. Observation is similar to the player's ability to zoom into solar systems and planets, but without the ability to manipulate production items.

(-) Gravitational Drives

This race possesses an gravity drive that become increasingly fast as external gravitational forces decrease. As such, this drive is ideal for long-distance travel, but is poorly suited within the confines of an solar system. Races that master the Warp technology experience the greatest boost in speed, since their fleets move much more quickly outside of starlanes.



(+) Movement speed increases with distance from solar systems.

(-) Slows in proximity to an star.

(+) Jumpgate Construction

Gifted with the ability to construct Jumpgates, your race is capable of moving ships to any other point in the network. However, there is an capacity limit that is based on how many planets your race controls. Each planet is worth 1 point of capacity, and requires the Jumpgate system improvement to be built. The command points that each ship possesses also matches how much space it would take up in the network.



(+) Any ship can be moved to another point in the network, without consuming movement points.

(=) Command Point values of your ships is equal to how much capacity of the Jumpgate network that they consume.

(-) The capacity of the network is dependent on how many planets your empire owns, provided those planets are in a system with the Jumpgate improvement.

(-) Only systems with Jumpgates can serve as entry and exit points in the network.

(-) Uncontrolled Expansion

Unlike most empires, your control over the people is rather loose. As an result, they often migrate by themselves to distant lands and seek out opportunities of their own. They tend to have their own ideas of what defines the search for happiness, so it costs four times as much for the government to produce colonization modules.



(+) Whenever the population cap for a solar system is reached, your colonies will produce excess citizens and automatically have them colonize new worlds. They also move to worlds that have free colonist slots available. These movements are restricted to Starlanes that connect to fully populated worlds. Once the Warp technology is researched, any uninhabited world within the sphere of influence of your empire would also be eligible for colonization.



(-) Only full-fledged colonies will be able to send colonists to neighboring stars. Outposts are incapable of doing this.

(-) Colonists on unhappy worlds will leave for better worlds.

(-) The cost to produce Colonization modules is 4x more than normal.

(-) Temporal Terraforming

Using an Endless time manipulation device that is keyed specifically to your species, your race is using this poorly understood technology to reach into the past and future to manifest better planets. For example, using the device on Mars, the human race could swap the arid Mars of the present, with the water-covered one in the past. However, not all planets have an habitable past or future, so this technology won't make all planets ideal - it just attempts at doing so.



Unfortunately, this technology has rendered your race unwilling to be using proper terraforming technology, incurring an happiness penalty while researching and building terraforming improvements. However, this technology is also something unique to your race. Should an enemy ever conquer your planets, those same worlds will revert to their present-time forms, which are usually more hostile to life. Lucky races tend to get better results with Temporal Terraforming.



(+) Any world you colonize has a chance at automatically improving to an better planet, as long as members of your race is present on that world.

(-) Your race becomes unhappy when terraforming research is being done, or when terraforming projects are undertaken.



Based on the Stars! "Total Terraforming" tradeoff.

(+) From Dust, to Dust

Your people were born from the Endless's greatest achievement, Dust. Ever growing and multiplying, your people possess the ability to increase their numbers, by giving their thoughts to Dust. When it is time for your people to pass on, they will return to the Dust that they came from.



(+) With this trait, you can purchase a unit of Population, sacrificing Dust in the process. Good for quickly populating planets, but expensive.

(+) Whenever one of your population units is killed, they grant you Dust in return, equal to what they would have produced that turn by themselves.

(+) Modular Philosophy

The ships produced by your race are based on the idea that individual components should be easy to replace, be it for the purpose of repair or for upgrades. Provided that your ships are stationed at an planet or starbase, they will be retrofitted to the latest version for free. Repairs are also quicker. Ships will be repaired anywhere within your empire's sphere of influence.



+Ships that are within your empire's influence will be repaired.

+Retrofitting of ships to their latest version is free and automatic.*

+Increased repair rate.



*The amount of time required to automatically retrofit is based on the difference in production value from the old design when compared to the new one. Production value per turn is derived from your most productive system. These retrofits require the appropriate resources to be available in your empire.

Bleeding Edge Technology (BET Trait)

For you, the latest technology is quite expensive to implement, due to thorough testing procedures and experimentation. However, older examples of technology have significant miniturization bonuses, and are considerably cheaper, provided that you have sufficiently advanced technology. In the long run, your parts are much smaller and cheaper, but you have to wait awhile.



In order to further improve your knowledge of an component, you can now research the same technology again multiple times until you have reached the cap. While the research won't get any cheaper or faster, there are many advantages to refining your edge.



(+) 8% miniturization per tech level. Caps at 80% miniturization.

(+) The cost of components may be reduced down to 20% of the base cost.

(=) Enables the ability to research the same component multiple times, up to 10 times.

(=) An technology is fully mastered after reaching level 10. No further research would be possible.

(-) Components are double the base cost, with the price going down by 20% for every tech level. Prices may be lowered down to as much as 20% of the base level.



MINITURIZATION

LV1 - 8%

LV2 - 16%

LV3 - 24%

LV4 - 32%

LV5 - 40%

LV6 - 48%

LV7 - 56%

LV8 - 64%

LV9 - 72%

LV10 - 80%



COST

LV1 - 200%

LV2 - 180%

LV3 - 160%

LV4 - 140%

LV5 - 120%

LV6 - 100% (base cost)

LV7 - 80%

LV8 - 60%

LV9 - 40%

LV10 - 20%



Based on the Stars! racial trait.

Bleeding Edge Technology

"Gravitational Drives" seeing as in the early game you can only travel between 2 closer stars.....seems kinda pointless.

Spymaster - I like.



Dust to Dust - Kinda an interesting if over-powered option.



Modular Philosophy - Increased repair rate, but retrofits should still cost money.

Concerning the speed considerations of Starlanes and Gravitational Drives, the game is still in Alpha - which means that there is a lot of balancing to be done, so at the very least the concept could be experimented with. It should be noted that the trait is based on the Liir's flickerwarp from SOTS, which is an working example of the trait*.



As for Modular Philosophy, I think that it is okay for the automatic Retrofitting to be free, provided that the trait has an appropriate cost attached to it during race creation. Tradeoff traits have a (-), indicating that they have a downside that offsets most of the cost of picking that trait, while those with an (+) are meant to be very beneficial, thus more expensive to add to your race. One of the limitations of the free retrofitting is that the rate of an free retrofit is dependent on your most productive solar system, which then takes into account the difference between an older design and the current one that your empire is using. This means that building an barebones armada and then updating the design to the most powerful ships possible would only make your fleet take an age to update itself.





*Except in combat for Endless Space, due to the battle system and the lack of flickerwarp. Perhaps empires with this trait would try to intercept enemy fleets while that are between stars, for the best speed in combat?

Here is more traits that have been developed. One of the biggest issues will be assigning how much traits cost relative to their benefits, which was why I attempted to do that with some of these. Unfortunately, until we can actually create DIY races, we can't experiment and make things actually balanced.



Some of the reasoning behind the traits that were made is that people on the forum often complained that races played the same, so some of these traits are meant to change player behavior. The Uncontrolled Expansion trait was in response to to how players deliberately expand as quickly as possible instead of focusing on other considerations - by taking away a portion of the player's control by making colonization modules cost more, they would theoretically approach empire building from another direction.

(-) Molded Shipwrighting

Your race believes that ships are disposable, and as such have designed them and their manufacturing process to support this. The method through which they are produced essentially prevents the possibility of modification and repair, but they are cheaper to produce, more quickly built, and are somewhat more resilient than ships that are produced through traditional means. Incompatible with Modular Philosophy trait.



(+) Production cost of ships is halved.

(+) Increased HP thresholds for your ships.

(-) Retrofitting ships is not possible.

(-) Ships can't be repaired until nanite-based repair technologies are researched, and the repair rate is slower.

(-) Locks out the Modular Philosophy trait, due to being opposing philosophies.



*Based on Sword of the Stars philosophy in regard to ships. They are not modular in that universe, since all ships are constructed via molding process.

Generalized Research

Represents your race's ability to research in multiple fields at once. There is no penalty for doing so. Having any improvements above the default level will give you two or more research ques, so that way when you assemble lists of research topics, they won't interfere with each other. Red queue is for Military, Blue for Science, Green for Colonizing, and Yellow for Economic.



(+++) Brahma's Vision [40]

Perfectly good when it comes to making long-running decisions, your race can research one technology from each tree at the same time.



(++) Kerbero's Vision [20]

Three is an good number. Especially when it comes to how many fields you can research at once.



(+) Doublevision [10]

Two heads are better than one, and your research department has two headquarters. You can research two different fields at once with full research bonuses.



(=) Tunnel Vision [0]

One way, one viewpoint. Your race can only research a single topic at a time.(default)



(=) Fly's Vision[0]

Your race is hardly capable of keeping focus on the long term. As an result, you can't actually plan what research to undertake, it just happens. However, there is an chance for more than one tree to be researched at once, provided you got a good roll. Usually paired with Lucky races.



(-) Blind Research [-10]

What little attention span your race possesses, it doesn't apply to the scientific arts. Technology is randomly selected and queued for research, with no player input.

Expanded Research

The ability to keep on track with an concept and to keep expanding upon it. With points invested, technologies connected to the one you are researching would also be researched at the same time. They do so more slowly, but this can be an considerable time saver.



(++) Comprehensive Research [15]

Adjacent technologies receive 50% of the research bonus



(+) Associated Research [5]

Adjacent technologies receive 20% of the research bonus.



(=) Monolithic Research [0]

Adjacent technologies do not get a research bonus. (Default)



*Based on the Stars! Generalized Research trait.

Research Affinity

Technology is divided into two groups, an "core" group of Basic Research that all species may research, regardless of scientific proficiency. The other group is Advanced Research, which expands upon basic research topics. The odds of being able to do advanced research is dependent on affinity for the subject matter. There may be multiple links from the basic research tree, allowing for multiple chances at researching some forms of advanced technology.



Since the game is in beta, I will use the broad areas of research for my examples of probability and corresponding cost. Later versions of the game may expand this trait's settings to apply to sub-catagories of research, such as specifying Missiles, Beams, Kinetics, and so forth. This would allow species to specialize or be weak in particular parts of each research tree.



Economic

Military

Scientific

Colonization



Creative - 100% odds in all fields. [20]

100% odds for advanced research topics in this field. [5]

80% odds for advanced research topics in this field. [3]

60% odds for advanced research topics in this field. [2]

40% odds for advanced research topics in this field. [1]

20% odds for advanced research topics in this field. [0] This is the default setting.*

0% odds for advanced research topics in this field. [-2]



*This allows everyone to get a chance at advanced research topics, despite being inept.

Luck

There are many things that can happen in the universe, and some people are especially blessed or cursed.



(++) Cabbit's Foot [10]: (best)

Significantly increases the odds of finding something useful on moons, and to discover valuable resources on planets. Random events and combat rolls are also improved. This preserved foot of an cat-rabbit hybrid was created by the Endless before they broke into factions, and the results are telling.



(+) 4-Leaf Clover [5]: (good)

Discovering an Endless artifact that resembles a Human 4-leaf clover, your race has had more fortune than most.



(=) Fortune Cookie [0]: (default)

Whatever your fortune may be, it is your own to determine. As an result, nothing particularly good or bad would occur to members of your race.



(-) Shattered Mirror [-5] (bad)

An fortune teller once read the palm of your race's leader, and discovered that the lines foretold an dark and consistently terrible future. More often than not, your race with be dealt a bad hand. There will be times of good fortune, but they will far and few.



(--) Black Cabbit [-10] (worst)

What could go wrong will go wrong. Do not expect to find anything special on moons, disease would plague your people many times, and no matter how competent your warriors are, they will be apt to fall to misfortune before anything else.



*Cabbits are derived from the Tenchi-Muyo series, which is an cat-rabbit hybrid.

Heroic Academics

Determines how many classes your empire can pick for each hero that is in the academy, and determines skill points. One of the five options may be chosen.



Elite Education [20]

Your race can choose every class your heroes acquire before hiring them. Furthermore, your Heroes receive 3 skill points per level. When combined with the Heroic Heroes trait, the government may select all three classes.



Advanced Education [10]

Heroes may pick one of their classes, and the empire dictates the other class. At each levelup, your heroes receive 2 skill points. When combined with Disappointing Heroes, each hero that appears in your academy either already has a class chosen, or the government may assign an class if one wasn't already given.



Mandatory Schooling [0]

The government may not influence the classes that a hero chooses in the academy, and each hero receives one skill point per level. (Default)



Self-Taught [5]

While the government may not choose the electives of their heroes, they can give an small amount of assistance in those heroes making the most of themselves. Grants heroes 2 skill points per level.



Naturally Talented [10]

Despite having little assistance in their education, the heroes of this empire have an natural talent for mastering their abilities. As an result, they receive 3 skill points per level.

Aptitude for Heroism

Determines how many classes your heroes may have.



(+) Heroic Heroes [10]

All races admire your heroes, because they can accomplish more than most, even among heroes. This trait grants your heroes a third class to specialize in.



(=) Generic Heroes [0]

They just do stuff. They come with two classes. This is the default option.



(-) Disappointing Heroes [-5]

For some reason, the heroes of your race have a difficult time accomplishing as much when compared to that of other races. With this trait, your heroes can have only one class.

Potential

Governs the level cap of your heroes.



(+) Heroic Potency [10]

Your heros can reach truly impressive platues of power, and can achieve LV30 as an result.



(=) Average Potency [0]

Not good nor bad, heroes born of your race can achieve LV20, and no higher. (Default)



(-) Unimpressive Potency [-5]

The heroes of your race have very little potential when compared to their rivals. They are capped at LV10.

An couple more traits. The most complex one is definitely the Massive Migration trait, which is based on the Mycon of Star Control II. They essentially throw giant spore-meteors a planets, which serves to terraform worlds through the impact, and to seed their fungal offspring. The trait is meant to simulate an species that has an all-or-nothing attitude towards colonization, and hopefully would appeal to people who want a different form of colonization.

(-) Monumental Construction

Culturally speaking, the citizens of your empire have a love for grandiose things. As such, they put a great deal of effort and time into realizing them, but disdain the small but important activities that define the wellfare of an civilization. Personal stature is also of great importance, to the point where your heroes demand far higher wages than heroes of other races.





(+) Terraforming, moon surveying, and anomly correction times halved.

(+) The time to produce system improvements is halved.

(+) Ship construction time is halved.

(-) Improvement upkeep doubled.

(-) Ship upkeep doubled.

(-) Hero upkeep doubled.

Assimilation [15]

Your weapons do not explicitly destroy enemy opposition. Instead, they are designed to neutralize them and then enable the takeover of their forces. As such, defeated enemy ships and units are instead added to your forces during battle, and retained after the battle if they are not destroyed by the enemy. Assimilated ships would have an "marker" to set them apart from regular vessels. Ideal for "zombie" races, or empires that excel at turning the enemie's strength against itself.



(Tradeoff) Flawed Assimilation: Assimilated ships are not guranteed to last beyond the current battle. Influenced by luck. Returns +5 points.



(Tradeoff) Failing Health: Over time, assimilated ships would steadily lose their health and and eventually be destroyed. Returns +5 points.



(Tradeoff) Slow Assimilation: Enemy vessels that are assimilated during combat can't assist you during that fight. Returns +5 points.



(Tradeoff) Multiplying Horde: An beneficial tradeoff that costs points, your assimilated ships will automatically reproduce copies over time. These copies are considered to be Assimilated. Costs 5 points.



(Tradeoff) True Assimilation: Normally, assimilated ships lose all of their experience levels and XP, and can't gain levels. However, this form of assimilation has overcome the issue, allowing assimilated units to operate as normal in this respect. Also allows the possibility of assimilating foreign heroes into your academy, if they die in combat against your forces. Costs 5 points.

Persistance [10]

Through the use of an Endless artifact your empire's ships and armies will continue to fight on, even after being destroyed. For all intents and purposes, they will continue to support your forces throughout a battle until the very end. After a battle ends, any destroyed ships will be removed from the fleet's pool as normal. Negates the enemy's Assimilation trait during battle, but destroyed ships would still be added to the enemy's pool afterwards.



(Tradeoff) Ponderous: The durability of your ships makes them extremely slow. Reduces movement points by -5, but can't drop speed below 1. Returns +5 points.



(Tradeoff) Kamikaze Philosophy: Whenever one of your ships are destroyed during the short-range phase, they will attempt to ram the enemy. Luck-based, and causes extra damage for each successful ramming attempt. Costs 5 points.

INTEGRATED COMPONENTS

Integrated components adds one free instance of an component to every ship that is built, at no additional cost or tonnage. The first component of that class the player chooses is the free component. In cases where it is not normally possible to have more than one component in a category, such as a repair, the race can add a second one at full price.





Integrated Missiles [5]

Integrated Beams [5]

Integrated Kinetic [5]



Integrated Armor [5]

Integrated Shields [5]

Integrated Chaff [5]



Reinforced Hull [5]

Integrated Sensors [5]

Integrated Engines [5]

Integrated Invaders [5]

Integrated Repair [5]

INTEGRATED COMPONENTS

Return to Sender

Your race's chaff and flak defenses can take control of enemy missiles and send them back. The amount is dependent on chaff vs the missiles in question, plus luck and dice rolls.

Infinite Support

Unlike most other races, your empire possesses the ability to add more than one of each support module type. Restrictions that prevent the addition of extra sensors, engines, repair modules, and so forth are lifted, though tonnage restrictions still apply.

(-) Massive Migration

NOTE: I feel this trait is a bit flawed, in that it takes awhile to explain all of the rules involving this trait. I wanted to create an colonization method that is completely different, but it might be unbalanced and became complicated when rules for balancing were added.





Unlike most races, your species doesn't use traditional colonization methods. Creating an pod or space vessel of extreme durability, close to the entierity of the original colonie's population is launched at another planet. Upon crashing into the world to be colonized, an brand-new colony is created that contains all of the system improvements that the original colony possesed, and has an population level to match that.



The system improvements that a colony pod contains are inactive when the pod lands on a world, and take time to wake up. This reactivation period is equal to the construction time to each individual improvement, but unlike construction, all improvements are being worked on at once. This means that while it would take awhile for the colony to achieve full functionality, it would do this much more quickly than a regular colony. As such, individual improvements would be awoken sooner than others. However, it should be noted that inactive improvements still require upkeep, so fresh colonies tend to be very expensive if they have a lot of improvements.



If the planet can't accomodate all of the citizens that came from the original colonie, then excess citizens are immediately killed. Colony Pods bring the entierity of their originating planet's military with them. Upon landing on a world that belongs to another empire, these pods would unleash the military forces contained within to attempt an takeover of the planet. Losing in this situation would grant the enemy all of the system improvements that would have been placed, taking twice as long to activate.



Foreign empires would view your race with suspicion, especially when an colony pod is launched. They may intercept your colony pods if those pods pass through their territories. They can gauge the toughness and population size of the pods, getting an idea of the scope of the colonization that would take place.



Preperation for migration time is equal to the number of colonists that would be loaded onto the colony pod, plus 10 turns. Also, an outpost lacks the ability to create colony pods.





(+) Foreign colonies can be taken over through this method.

(+) When a new colony is created, it has all of the improvements that the original colony possessed. However, they are are inactive and will take a period of time equal to what they normally require to build. The key difference is that every single improvement is being reactivated, not being built one at a time.

(+) The population of the new colony matches what the original colony had.



(=) When colonizing another world, the original colony's population is dropped down to one unit. All other colonists are sent to the new world.

(=) When an Colonization Pod is created, it is sent towards the destination world via Starlane, and won't stop nor change direction. It has a very durable shell to prevent it from being easily destroyed. Durability correlates with how many colonists it carries, as does size.

(=) When an Colony Pod is created, it contains all of the military forces that was present on the original colony. It uses these forces to take over enemy planets if it lands on them. The original colony is left with weakened defenses until it can replenish them.

(=) The movement speed of an colony pod is equal to the number of population units it carries.



(-) Worlds can only be colonized when the original world has reached full population capacity.

(-) Building traditional colonization ships is impossible.

(-) Due to this method, worlds colonized will regress by one step away from the colonizing race's ideal habitat.

(-) Inactive improvements still requires upkeep.

(-) Outposts can't produce colony pods.

(-) Creation of an colony pod is equal to the number of citizens to be loaded, plus ten turns.





*Based on Star Control 2's Mycon race, which crashed colonies into planets for the purpose of terraforming and takeover.