This week, I look at the final thing that makes every peon unique – traits. I’ve discussed how the peon stats work and also gone into details about how memories work. Traits are unique characteristics of a peon, that can change their stats as well as tweaking the AI brain the peon has.

Traits come in two forms – those that are associated with a specific memory, and those that aren’t. When memories have been generated for a peon during peon creation, then the traits are picked for them. For the start of this process, the game rolls against each of the three memories the peon has (child/teenage/adulthood). Some memories don’t have traits associated with them, so they are ignored. Once this is done, the game will pick a random number between 0 and 3 and assign the number of traits to the peon from the entire pool of available traits.

Finally, any traits which conflict (for instance, having both “strong arms” and “weak arms”) are resolved, meaning one of them will be removed at random.

If a peon has more than four traits, any extras are removed.

For instance, a peon may have the following memories:

Sports memories (in whatever form) tend to have physically related traits. These mostly change the stats of the peon – things like having “strong legs” or “high stamina”. There are negative traits as well; “weak legs” or “weak arms” (possibly from a sports injury in the past, the game isn’t specific about how these traits occurred to allow for some role playing).

The more emotional memories (memories about traumatic events, or remembering happily family times) tend to be a mixture of stat related traits (having lots of friends increasing a peons friendliness stat) as well as AI changing traits (being “scared of heights” or “cryophilia¹“).

There are currently thirty traits in the game, some positive – some negative. Some a mixture of both. For instance – a peon with the “party animal” trait means that they are an absolute joy for other peons to be around when alcohol is plentiful. However, it’s very possible for a peon to do damage to themselves though excessive drinking. You’ll need to be aware of the different peon traits as the game progresses.  You can read more about alcohol in Fringe Planet here.

Every trait can also have a modifier – “slightly”, “very” and “extremely”. These only effect stat related traits and will change the bonus (or penalty) to the stat adjustment.

Though this is how the traits system works in normal peon creation – it is possible to completely override traits using the peon builder. Maybe you want a super strong peon with “strong arms”, “strong legs” and “high stamina”. Or maybe you want the complete opposite – the peon builder will let you customise this completely.

Finally – it is possible for a peon to have no traits. Some people are just bland!

There is a lot more to read about Fringe Planet… why not try:

• Memories and traits – Dev Blog 33
• The joys (and woes) of alcohol – Dev Blog 36
• Stats, memories and traits – Dev Blog 11

1. A preference for being in low temperatures, meaning this peon won’t mind going out that much-