Upgradable Automatons

So.. the automatons can be upgraded.. like adding motherboards and stuff.. and you use mechanical parts and kobold powered technology to help the automatons communicate on their own network. Kinda like connecting a BBS. You interact as the automaton on the network, not your avatar. (?) Are the userid's randomly generated?

Maybe you get access to a command line interface (CLI) by connecting a Kobold Terminal to the automaton. This allows the Avatar to help automatons communicate with each other and to connect, and start mining the Kobold Technology Blockchain. (KTB? KB?) This is a currency for automatons which they earn to upgrade themselves wirelessly (@Owsley) on their software level.

As the blockchain is mined, new technology and capability is unlocked for the automatons which may require hardware upgrades and requires in-game resources and recipes etc. After which the automatons are capable of doing new tasks... and stuff... which are TBD

 

Great ideas, setting up a proper blockchain and other aspects of this would be no small task but a lot easier if simulated with bit of an educational spin.

Deeper Programmable AI is a very good idea, loading AI behaviours from a global database like pathing etc or setting the automatons to 'blockchain tasks' like an Eve Online research item or something.

I like this thinking, just need to figure out a design to implement that is as easy and simple as possible. Perhaps no small task but I applaud thinking this big, otherwise we may as well be off playing wow.

Cheers for the post!

 

Could be interesting! Perhaps a system that is a representation of what a blockchain is... maybe a huge XP goal with milestones for the entire server, that only automatons can participate in? Once you login to the Kobold Terminal to access the CLI, perhaps blocks/chunks of crypto could be requested and sometimes your automaton could complete the block itself, and other times you have pass it on to other automatons to complete? Might need reward system that rewards XP for the players in addition to the currency that the automaton generates?

This might be a way to make some of the in-game kobold devices useful too. Could take your automaton pet to K'rul and certain areas would activate different functions of the automaton or charge them up then you bring the automaton back to your house and put him into crypto mode. Just brainstorming...

 

Fictional/lore
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Setting Automatons into 'modes' totally makes sense, and perhaps one day we will see them used for experimentation and pie in the sky stuff like emote routines, replaying player recorded voices or being programmed with player recorded movement paths with [record] and [stop] or similiar.

Interesting question be would be how do the Novians ie all the NPC's etc consider what is powering the world?
The outlanders know it exists on some servers but what do the Kobolds think about what is happening for the world to exist?

Maybe the Automatons could be set into a 'mode' where their eyes roll over and light up with beeps and steam hisses.
Maybe the number of automatons set like this could be tallied and a number of hours or minutes for the next block completion displayed and we could say this keeps the world online unless that is explained by lore already... Weather the numbers mean anything in reality but it would be cool to set autamatons to this mode and see it modify that number. If Automatons required outlander essence to run (your presence in-game) would be kinda cool for setting up some kind of reward minigame like you mentioned.

Why the kobolds would entrust the humans with such important things is another question!

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Block chain usage in game:
hmm what about player quests contracts using the blockchain displayed by something like LUA?

Actually a public 'quests' 'contracts' or 'assignments' market actually makes sense if there was ever a compelling desire... im sure quests and rewards could be handled small scale pretty easy lol
and blockchain makes so much sense to float secure contracts outside of needing the developers to build a standard system in game, they would just need to do a little GUI work... or could LUA handle displaying such a thing? probably like star citizens contract system but im sure there could be a blockchain currently like EOS or ETH I believe.... interesting stuff to think about

Quests and contracts in big MMO games moving to these kinds of networks to handle transactions and moving of value makes seems pretty inevitable...

Man the future is awesome :]

 

A lot of possibilities to think of, that is for sure. Good points about integrating with the lore of the game. The different automaton modes sound pretty interesting. One of the modes I could think of was an automaton that helped monitor agriculture and greenhouses while the avatar was away, some of the more mundane tasks... perhaps the automaton could affect the yield of crops or additional boons. I'm not sure how aware the greenhouses are of the planters that are inside them.. but they do confer a bonus to reducing the time it takes to grow plants inside of the greenhouse. Hmm.. maybe the greenhouses could be registered and managed through the Lot itself, and the automaton could tie into that system in some way - you'd be able to click on the Lot stone and it would show you how many types of greenhouses there are and if they are being managed by an automaton.

 

Cool if they could be used to "be in two places at once". You would use an access panel to allow yourself to use them as a remote camera. Got one out in the greenhouses? active camera or maybe they could display/emote current data say temperature.

Them doing tasks could easily be emulated especially if emotes and path recording is ever a thing.

I might even have one staring at a wall and leaving a note on the ground saying what is going on. Maybe say he's 'helping keep the world online either that or he's in recharge mode getting power from my wind mill

 

Ya that would be pretty cool. Would make good use of basement floors being able to switch from screen to screen if you had multiple automatons down there.