User story — Free Traits Mod

Source mod: test-data/mods/FreeTraits_and_StarterShipPlus/FreeTraitsMod/ Original mod by: jwebmeister — https://github.com/jwebmeister Mod version: 0.2 (game version 0.14.0.0)

The goal

A modder has spent 50+ hours in Ostranauts. They know that picking skills and traits during character creation makes their character older — and that a starting age above the default means fewer in-game years before conditions start compounding. They want to make a mod where every skill and trait costs zero age years, so players can build any character concept without paying an age penalty.

They know what the outcome should look like in the game. They do not know which JSON files drive the age-cost calculation, or what field to change.

The journey

Step 1 — Find the folder that controls trait costs

The modder opens the data explorer and searches for a trait they know from character creation — say IsFit. The detail page for conditions:IsFit shows incoming refs. Among them is a ref from traitscores/traitscores.json via the aValues field.

The explorer shows this ref's edge metadata: value: 0, and a second field — the age cost — which shows 1.

Explorer outcome: The modder learns that traitscores/ is the folder controlling character-creation costs, and that each entry in aValues is a cond-string of the form "CondName,nYears,nCost".

Step 2 — Understand the aValues format

On the traitscores:Trait Scores,1 detail page, the Fields block shows aValues as an array of strings. The inline field description explains the cond-string format and what each position means:

Position 1: condition name
Position 2: years added to character age on selection
Position 3: point cost (separate budget, used for some traits)

The "Edit this" callout tells them: to make a trait cost zero age years, set position 2 to 0. It shows the file path and a representative line.

Explorer outcome: The modder can now open the file and understand what to change without guessing at the format.

Step 3 — Find the scope of the change

The modder notices traitscores:Trait Scores,1 is a single entry with ~150 conditions in its aValues. The mod must set position 2 to 0 for every row.

They see that citizenship/strata traits (IsStrataAtlantisCitizen,1,0) have 1 in position 2 — those are the ones that need zeroing. Personal traits and skills already show 0,1 or 0,0 in the base data (the first position is already 0).

Explorer outcome: The modder understands they only need to change a small subset of rows — the ones where position 2 is currently non-zero — and can produce a targeted override rather than rewriting the entire entry.

Files in the mod's implementation

File	What it does
`data/traitscores/traitscores.json`	Overrides `Trait Scores,1` with all `aValues` entries having position 2 set to `0`. Removes the age cost from every trait and skill.
`data/careers/careers_freetraitsmod.json`	Overrides the `Shipbreaker` career entry, adding every skill to `aSkillsHobby`. This expands the hobby-pick pool so players can take any skill as a hobby during that career step without the mod needing to touch other careers.
`mod_info.json`	Identifies the mod to the game's loader. `strGameVersion` must match the game version for the loader to accept it.

What the explorer needs to show for this story to succeed

traitscores/traitscores.json is discoverable from searching a known trait name (IsFit, IsStrong, etc.) and following its incoming refs.
The aValues cond-string format is explained inline on the detail page — not hover-only, because the modder doesn't know to hover on an opaque string array.
The "Edit this" callout names the field (aValues), the file path, and the direction of effect ("set position 2 to 0 removes the age cost").
The careers override is findable from the Shipbreaker career detail page, which should show that the mod overrides it and link to the overriding entry.