[MUD-Dev] Containing automation?

[Laurel Fan]

Excerpts from muddev: 19-Jul-99 [MUD-Dev] Containing automa.. by Timothy
O. Dang at nmia.com 
> I'm largely concerned with automation of trade skills, however, and while
> I'm sure it's possible to design them to act just as complex and exciting
> as combat, I haven't seen it done yet. Trade skills, probably naturally,
> tend to be pretty straightforward in execution. My concern is preventing a
> bot from buying material, making good, buying material, making good, put
> good in bank, buying material, making good...

Randomness and unpredictability can also be introduced in to trade
goods.. in the example you give, perhaps the prices of raw materials and
finished goods can fluctuate, causing a bot to occasionally lose money. 
This can still be scripted, but t takes a bit more work.  Another way to
deter bots is to have muggers who prey on merchants who appear to be
oblivious to their surroundings, or to make the raw materials suppliers
wander around within a city or market.

Since it is inherently difficult to deter automation automatically, you
may also want to encourage or require human interaction.

Another idea, for anti-bot-ness in general, is to have essential
messages from the game and npcs vary enough so that it is impractical to
take care of each permutation with a script, but still simple enough for
players to understand (though some players will get confused/annoyed by
the inconsistency). 



_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev maillist  -  MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev