Quote from: markm on July 23, 2025, 03:29:33 PM

Humans are basically just naturally occurring bots that happen to be organically implemented, so banning bots seems a technically doomed endeavor thus it makes more sense to me to just go with it and recognise that human beings are not the only life-forms in the multiverse, maybe even go so far as to try to prevent the kind of racism/hate that one might term humanism, the corrosive bias of certain organically implemented naturally-occurring bots versus other implementations of bots aka lifeforms...

A child can learn to spell and to play text-based "MUD" (Multi-User Dungeon) games even before their manual dexterity has been practiced enough to write with pens or pencils, since keyboards form the letters and align them into straight legible lines for them, so humans can grow up learning to more and more automate characters from a very early age; by the time they can comfortably write with pens and pencils at a decent speed they can already have one or more player-accounts populated not only with an adventuring team for when they are "at the keyboard" but also a set of labourers/artisans to leave running when they are not "at the keyboard".

Thus in the Galactic Milieu's scriptable text mode interface, implemented using CoffeeMUD, player-accounts can have up to ten characters up to five of which can be online concurrently.

That allows a team of five artisans who gain "experience" doing tasks like foraging, mining, smithing, construction, shipbuilding and so on and so on and so on plus a team of five "adventurers" who gain experience basically killing monsters or other opponents.

CoffeeMUD has breeding too, so those who wish to get into that aspect can leave some characters-capacity free to accomodate children as they grow up into playable characters.

Obviously these player-accounts are ridiculously lucrative/productive thus the economy would be doomed were there not a mechanism to help limit them, thus the game provides them only to "Civilisations", leaving it to the "Civilisations" to administer their use by others such as their own citizens, members, customers or whatever, and charges them a yearly fee per player-account, shown at https://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/mudgaard.html

Since "Civilisations" necessarily own "shares" of GHC (General Hosting Corp aka Galactic Holding Corp) they have collateral thus their billing can be handled using the same hourly-compounded interest routines used to handle the startup loans of the intergalactic mining Corps, which also provides one of the ways a "treasury" can be depleted since a Civilisation's holdings of GHC "shares" is part of its "treasury". If the debt to GHC exceeds the value of GHC "shares" held one or more of those "shares" can be liquidated to bring the debts down under the remaining total debt or bankrupt the "Civilisation".

Hopefully this system should keep the "Civilisations" from "wasting" valuable player-accounts on players who fail to run the accounts productively enough to help the "Civilisation" continue to renew the accounts.

-MarkM-

Fascinating worldbuilding, MarkM — thanks for sharing more about the Galactic Milieu and how you’re handling scale, automation, and economic governance through Civilisations and CoffeeMUD mechanics. It’s clear you’ve put a lot of thought into systemic checks and balances — especially how player-account access ties into larger economic flows and productivity.

The parallel you draw between organic and non-organic “bots” is a fun angle too — especially in the context of automation, delegation, and early learning through MUDs. It highlights how player behavior (even from childhood) is naturally inclined toward optimizing systems and multitasking across roles.

In the projects we’ve been supporting, the design challenges are often more constrained — mobile/Web3 hybrids, retention-first mechanics, legal limitations on delegation or automation. But the underlying principles still resonate: how do we create systems that scale without imploding, that reward effort but protect the economy, and that can be governed in a sustainable way?

Appreciate the depth and creativity — love seeing how different models approach these same core tensions. And who knows — maybe someday we’ll help a project navigate the transition from traditional game loops to a full-blown “civilisation” layer like yours 😄

— Dmitriy | dimtiks.com