I think a lot of the complains comes from a lack of understanding of the inner working of the mod. Which is a problem given how difficult it is to explain it quickly.
Oh, for sure. I updated the original post a few days ago, so hopefully that will help.
Maybe if the reputation traits where given after a delay instead of after the battle it would disociate them from the direct battle performance.
True. It's ironic that this mod started out using delayed notifications and traits based only on the most recent battle, and now does the opposite. The biggest problem with the notifications was that it could end up creating some pretty serious spam. Battle reports were the solution to that. I'm having a hard time thinking of any sort of hybrid that would work well.
The intel text could also be written with a bit more flavor to point out that the reputation traits aren't necessarily grounded in cold hard facts, especially negative ones.
I've tried to do just that, but I'll try to figure out a way to do it better.
Or maybe a new ship added to the fleet could get a starting rating dependent on its D mods: a pristine one could start at 100% rating since it's brand new and would only get negative traits after loosing that rating, but any dmod present would reduce the starting rating by 15% and early negative traits could be explained by the defective nature of the ship.
I would personally prefer that all ships start on a level playing field, but perhaps I'm not seeing some benefit to gameplay that you are.
Crew loyalty could also be used to completely nullify the effect of negative traits making them more palatable (but wouldn't remove them) instead of improving good traits, while keeping the ppt boost.
I feel like high loyalty is already too powerful due to it's effect on traits, and I'm not too concerned about negative traits bothering some people, because they have the option to turn them off. A little power creep is a bit of an inevitability with a mod like this, but I want to keep it under control as much as possible, at least with default settings.