Welcome to Dev Log #3! Today’s discussion is all about candidate attributes. Last week, we covered the voting system and how votes are divided between candidates based on a number of factors, ranging from the difference between a county’s issue position and the candidate’s, to favorability and momentum.
This week, we’re going to narrow the focus and spend more time talking about what candidates are made up of, how they are unique from one another, and how those differences can lead to different outcomes.
The Framework
The candidate system has been built to make characters feel and play distinct from one another. A campaign as Kamala Harris should feel and play differently than JD Vance. To do this, we include multiple layers of data that apply to each candidate, the first being attributes.
Attributes
Every candidate has a set of attributes scored on a scale of 1-10. The attributes are:
Charisma (Impacts the effectiveness of rallies and speeches)
Cunning (Impacts the effectiveness of advertising)
Experience (Impacts your ability to win endorsements)
Stamina (Impacts the number of actions you can take per turn)
Fundraising (Impacts how much money is raised through fundraisers)
Debating (Impacts the responses available to you during debates)
There is a possibility that more attributes will be added as development continues. For example, Debating was formerly nested inside another data layer, but has since been elevated to become an attribute of its own.
Attributes are the backbone of candidates. Each real-life candidate is scaled to reflect what their actual values should be, which does create “strong” and “weak” candidates. You’ll find that Barack Obama is a particularly strong candidate while Jeb Bush is, well…not.
The good news is that you can edit attributes to your liking, and even create your own candidates entirely!
Some attributes can be improved throughout the campaign, too. For example, you can improve your candidate’s Debating skill through a skill tree, or random events can give you a temporary boost to your Stamina.
Another factor that can change your attributes are traits.
Traits
Traits are used to differentiate between candidates. There are currently 32 planned traits for the game, with more to come as development continues. Traits can create incredibly powerful combinations that elevate your candidate in a big way, but traits can also negatively impact you.
Traits can be broad, such as +2 boosts to an attribute, or very specific like a +15% increase to attack ad effectiveness during the final four turns of the campaign. Donald Trump is known for his rallies, so he receives the Big Crowds trait, which grants him a +3% boost to all rally sizes. This can make a meaningful difference in a long campaign, but also force you to approach your campaign strategy with those traits in mind. When your candidate has specific strengths, it's in your best interest to use them, as your opponent will be using their traits to their advantage.
Candidate details screen of Donald Trump from an older build of the game.
But, like I said, traits can be bad too. Some candidates who are prone to gaffes might have the Gaffe Machine trait, which increases the chance that a random event will fire after a speech or rally that hurts your campaign.
Media Spin
As mentioned in the previous dev log, Media Spin changes weekly based on the actions and events that occurred during the previous turn. Unlike attributes, it’s scored from 0-10 with decimal values, and is meant to represent the way the media is depicting you in any given week.
Media Spin can amplify your campaign actions in either direction. Media Spin scores revolve around number five, which is neutral and gives no impact on campaign activities. Anything less is subtracted from five and results in a negative impact and anything more is added to five and generates a positive impact.
For example, if your Media Spin is 3.85, you would receive a -1.15% modifier to all campaign activities that turn. Conversely, if you had an 8.43, you would receive a +3.43% boost to all campaign activities that week.
Some candidates have tendencies to do better with the media than others, and that’s reflected in their traits. One of the strongest traits for improving Media Spin is Media Darling, which increases the spin scale from 0-10 to 4-10, reducing the margin for bad coverage.
Candidates will have an opportunity to improve their Media Spin through special events like press interviews, town halls, decisions from random events, debates, speeches, and more. Media Spin is not impacted from rallies, ads, or fundraisers, unless a random event is triggered that results in negative coverage. This can be in the form of a gaffe at a rally, or something similar to Mitt Romney’s “47%” remark during a fundraiser.
What’s Next
This was a shorter dev log compared to last week’s behemoth, but I hope there was still enough information here to make you excited about what’s to come.
Next week, there will not be a Tuesday dev log as I will be traveling, but we’ll pick up where we left off on September 23 with an overview of the issues system.
Feel free to join our growing Discord server, and if you’re excited about the game, wishlist it on Steam and follow for more updates like this!