RPG Traits For Stellaris

RPG Traits For Stellaris

For Stellaris 1.6.1
Version 0.2.0

The official Role Playing Traits overhaul for Stellaris. Tired of bland, boring species? Tired of having a dozen races that all feel and play exactly the same? Use RPG Traits! It will give you *alien* aliens. Aliens that are big, small, that eat dirt, that are made out of electricity, that breed like insects, that are vastly superior or inferior to humans in some way. All of it implemented in a way that your gameplay feels different.

Want to play as a race of Mentally Deficient, Immortal, Titanic, Steel-Skinned Snails? Now you can! Or a race of Genius, Lithovore, tunnel-digging insects? Go ahead! How about playing as one giant Living Planet? Sure thing! It’s all possible with RPG traits.

RPG Traits overhauls the random trait assignment of AI races, so randomly spawned races get the occasional fancy trait in addition to a combination of strengths and weaknesses that should be very noticeable. You may encounter a race that happens to be very good at mining minerals and want to enslave them. Fallen Empires spawn with very powerful traits that they refined after centuries of research. Custom Races are now supported so you can make up your own species and play against them as well.

I cannot stress enough that this is an OVERHAUL mod with a different philosophy on game design than that of the Stellaris developers. Vanilla Stellaris dares not create real diversity in its aliens, so you end up with antropomorphized aliens that are all just slightly weaker, or slightly smarter, but otherwise they’re pretty much human clones. Barely noticeable. This mod throws that out of the window and asks the question “What if there’s an alien race that feeds on dirt?” and the answer is you don’t need farms, so food requirements are zero for species that feed on dirt; not just -10% or whatever. Alien species are deliberately not equal. Humans are set as the neutral axis (no traits) and when you encounter an alien species, they will often be a lot stronger or a lot smarter than humans; not just a 10% bonus.

Obligatory FAQ/:

I made a custom race and then the mod added more traits to it?
– You forgot to give your custom race the ‘Custom Race’ trait. Do it.

I min-maxed the crap out of things and now my race is completely overpowered.
– Yea well what did you expect? This mod does not put balance first. If you min-max your trait points then you end up with a very powerful race and that’s fine imo. Constrain yourself or add the Penalty trait to your species if you can’t.

The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trait is waaay too harsh!
– What exactly did you expect when making your species ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? It’s going to be hard. It’s probably not even hard enough yet. This mod aims at a realistic approach to something that’s hypothetical. That means that if you play as a bunch of morons with IQ’s of 60, you’re going to be hopelessly outmatched as would be the case in reality, and that’s part of the fun.

Can I suggest a new trait?
– Yep. Just do it over in /r/stellarisrpg

Can I help with this mod?
– Checkout the subreddit. Dedicated contributors and playtesters are very welcome, but you have to have some initiative of your own, because delegating tasks is turning out to cost almost more time than just coding/fixing stuff myself.

I have too much money and want to donate
– Go support a charity or something

Pizza?
– Pizza

This mod is currently in Beta, and is being worked on, but only playable versions will be uploaded here. So expect and report the occasional glitch/bug/exploit, but otherwise this mod should greatly enhance your game (if the philosophy of the mod suits you of course), not break it.

Credit thus far is due to:
Lux Ardens for creating the vast majority of the mod.
2byzantine4med for masterfully crafting all of the icons.
Sriseru for the excellect Brood Parasite Trait.
Mithril Leaf for Subterranean and prototyping several ideas.
And you the user!