Over the next few weeks we will begin transitioning away from our forums (they have served us well over the past 15+ years!) and moving towards a new evolution of community management that is being developed by us as part of the next generation of forward looking gaming guilds. Through a series of bots, database tie ins and leveraging our WordPress install we will begin rolling out a whole new look at the way communities communicate and automate basic functions to ensure that you get to do what you came here to do … PLAY GAMES!
The Silver Sun Republic has a ton of depth to it and that generally means a lot of admin overhead to make the group run, which tends to take away from leadership presence inside the game and that’s a whole lot of bad juju. To fix this we are working on a series of Discord bots that will work hand in hand with our website and even our Life is Feudal: Your Own server! Whaaaaaat? That sounds like SkyNet or some such nonsense, right? It kind of does and our goal is to completely automate the mundane tasks of make sure members are taken care of from an administrative perspective.
Da Bots, Boss, Da Bots!
Work has already begun on a series of bots that will take the form of the core Officer positions of the Republic to help familiarize new members with the in-game presence of our human officers and what sort of jobs they handle. The automation of these bots will free up the “paperwork” and overhead of running a guild outside the game so that our Officers can focus on being inside the game world where their leadership is most crucial.
Without further adieu, introducing your future cast of Bots:
Prefect Bot
Prefects are Officers of the Ministry of State and are seen as the mentors, mediators and moderators of the Republic dealing with new members, registration and getting new immigrants settled into the nation. With the advent of the Prefect-Bot, registration will now be handled entirely on Discord and our WordPress site by allowing new members to type @Prefect-Bot immigrate [emailAddress]. Prefect-Bot will take their nickname from Discord along with their E-Mail Address and register an account for them. After that it will whisper them a token for redemption on our website and add them to Immigrant Role. Those who only want to register as guests can use the guest-register command. Once a member has registered, they can log into the site, set their password and access the Immigration panel which will serve as a tutorial to the Republic. It will also enable features in our Life is Feudal: Your Own server allowing immigrants to undertake a “Quest” using modded NPCs to learn more about the Republic or take a series of tests on our website to advance to full membership as Commoners.
Prefect-Bot will also allow users to report crimes, ask simple questions as part of a FAQ and access basic laws of the Republic while in Discord.
Commerciante bot
One of the greater accomplishments of the Republic has been to design an internal economy that works to enhance the mechanics of whatever MMO we’re playing; unfortunately, it’s a huge pain in the neck to execute unless the game specifically supports it with certain features. FEAR NOT, oh future entrepreneurs and economic geniuses, we have a solution and it is in the form of a bot for the Ministry of Commerce.
We have our own currency, the Scudii, and in the past it was a whole lot of manual labor to record values of items donated to the coffers of the Republic, but now we can automate that entire process with the use of a Bot. When anyone donates materials to the Republic, they will report that to the Commerciante-Bot and a human Commerciante will be able to verify the fact that it made it into Republic storage via a web interface. They will then deposit Scudii of sufficient value into that citizen’s internal Republic bank account through a simple green checkmark button on the panel. If it is not correct, they can hit a red ‘X’ and cancel the deposit. This splits the cost of labor and effort without having a poor officer spend half their game time recording values of random crap.
In addition, we will be able to bring back our contracting system that allows citizens to bid on contracts for private exchanges or to support the needs of the Republic. This allows us to pay in in-game currency or using Scudii thus extending the economy of the Republic.
We can also automate business licensing and allow merchants/crafters to create companies that pay registration fees generating revenue for the Republic. Access to bid on certain contracts can be limited to those in the licensed contracting Role who have paid for their licenses as a contractor.
Following all that up, we will also be able to maintain public price lists that can fluctuate based on supply and demand as well as Republic stock levels automatically through the back end database allowing a sort of Stock Market to emerge for those who desire an even further extension of the economic game.
Herald bot
On top of all the other features we already have a calendar bot, but we want to extend that set of commands as well by implementing a Herald-Bot who is the Officer of the Executive Ministry. The Herald-Bot will be your source for events, news and announcements regarding in-game events and community happenings. Promotions, achievements and all around recognition can be handled via the Herald Bot who will automate further role assignments and ranks, titles and awards processing for members. Someone did something especially awesome in the field? Report it to Herald-Bot and we’ll make sure they get recognized for their accomplishments.
Lieutenant Bot
Possibly my favorite of all of our new bots, the Lieutenant-Bot will automate a lot of the depth and structure we seek to implement in our military. Not only will it take in Scout/Spot Reports of enemy activity, it will plot it on a Google Earth map for us to have a Common Operating Picture to coordinate patrols and defense. It will also answer questions about basic drill, commands and the status of our forces. It can additionally be used to announce attacks against the Republic and notify our allies on their Discord servers reporting the enemy location, size and activity.
Bringing It All Together
This all sounds really cool, right? Well, we’ve already got most of the mechanics figured out and we’ll be rolling out the bots one by one starting with the Prefect-Bot since it runs our registration process. Over time we’ll add functionality to help simplify everything and enhance what we already do to organize as a Republic making sure that the structure we’ve developed is beneficial and drives what we do inside the games we play all while saving time on administrative overhead.
