With the release of Paradox's new 4X grand stragety game, Stellaris, I created a mod called Extended Traits. Extended Traits is available on the Steam Workshop (see the link above), and adds over twenty new species traits to select from, as well as six new ruler and governor traits. The mod has received a lot of attention since I released it on the Steam Workshop, and as of writing this post it has gained over 13000 active subscribers. Creating the Extended Traits mod has been a fun and overall great experience, and I never expected it would be as popular as it is today.
Update: As of April 15, 2018, the Extended Traits mod has over 50,000 users.
Update: As of April 30, 2019, the Extended Traits mod has over 150,000 users.
About the game
In Stellaris, players can create their own species before they start a game. There are many different customization options for your own species, such as naming your empire, changing your species to be human, anthropod, mammalian or several others. You can even select the type of government your empire will use. One of the many customization options is the ability to select "Species Traits". A species trait is meant to be an inherited trait which your species has possessed for many generations and provides some small effect on your species. The effect can either be advantageous (such as more income, or stronger military) or disadvantageous (slower research speeds, or increased cost of buildings). Unfortunately, the default game has a disappointing number of species traits to select from, leaving players with few options. This was my main inspiration for creating Extended Traits.
Support and moving forward
Since the release of the mod, I have spent several hours each day adding additional content, resolving issues with compatibility and fixing bugs. The community and subscribers were extremely helpful in identifying issues with the mod. They helped to discover bugs, provided better trait names and descriptions and helped balance specific traits that were considered too strong or too weak. One generous player even created a complete German translation of the mod.
Recently, in order to increase the amount of users for the mod, I decided to expand it by adding "Leader Traits". Leader traits differ from spcies traits as they are only available to specific characters (which you can hire for a cost) in the game and have life spans. These characters include the Empire rulers, governors, scientists, admirals and generals. I've already added three new traits for the empire rulers as well as three traits for governors, and will soon add even more traits for the remaining leader classes.
