Contact Traits

Traits are special aspects or quirks that a contact possesses. A spawned contact starts with up to 4 Traits, and may gain, lose or change Traits through Conflicts, Rumors or battles with other Contacts, through a process called Contact Trait Mutation. Contacts may change or augment any of the services that a Contact offers. Traits may offer new services as well.

Hidden Traits
Most Contacts will start with one or more hidden traits. Discovering these Traits will open up many services you did not know they could offer. They might offer a Spy recruit or bonus mission cash. You may find out they hate your home faction. The number of possible combinations are impossible to predict.

Below is an example of what you can find in the the Contact's details screen. In this case, your captain knows 2 Traits the Emissary has, but there are 2 more to discover. Without further knowledge you could miss out on something really special.

Discovering your Contacts traits is essential to success and fully utilizing your Contact's abilities. There are more to discover all the time, because new Traits are frequently added to the game.

There are 4 Talents (as of the time of this writing) that can reveal a Contact's hidden Traits.

High Reputation
If you have 100+ personal reputation with a contact you have a 20% chance of learning their traits. (TODO: What triggers this?)

Close Observation and Expose Quality
These Talents do not trigger when accepting, completing a mission, or trading at the exchange. A personal exchange of money must occur, when you are paying for something or selling something directly to the Contact.
 * Selling: Intel Records, Weapons, Armor or Gear.
 * Buying: Introductions, Military Rank, Edicts, Trade Permits, Pardons, Weapons, Gear, Rare Trade Goods, Salvage Rumors.

Keep in mind you can't buy anything from contacts without high enough personal reputation. These are privileges reserved for useful friends. Fortunately there are many Talents that help boost your rating quickly. If your Contact has the Data Hound Trait (and it is not hidden) they will always always purchase Intel records generated from spying activities.

Many talents use a (10% + Attribute test). But Close Observation, and Expose Quality only test for Wisdom with no flat bonus. You get one chance every 18 weeks. If you are willing to bring your Captain's wisdom attribute up to 30, the maximum chance of success is 30%.

Shrewd Dealings
Shrewd Dealings is one of the best Talents the Commander has. Frequency; You will be accepting a lot more missions than purchasing services from, or selling to your Contacts.

After cooldown this talent will be tested the very next time you accept a mission. Note: You can't just sit on a Contact and repeatedly click on "accept mission" until you succeed. The test will occur on the first contract you accept.

If you really want to focus on contact traits, a Captain or Officer with Shrewd Dealings stands head and shoulders above the rest.

Final Notes:  The Doctor, Merchant & Commander all have the Command skill. A Captain or officer with a

combination of these jobs will raise the Command skill more rapidly increasing the chance of trait discovery using Shrewd Dealings talent.

High Charisma in addition to helping discover hidden traits, serves  another important natural ability:

Your Charisma attribute is frequently tested when traveling in the quadrants to automatically discover a crew member, or officer's hidden traits