Quick, possibly stupid question regarding this. Are you going to be doing the 'Praetorian River Swimming' (a.k.a. River Rat) badge?
I know Arcana mentioned my previous comments. Now that I'm back from my trip, I wanted to say that River Rat is, in fact, already working. It is implemented, however, as 19 individual badges with specific locations (currently named something boring like River Rat 11), each with identical descriptions. I know this is not how the badge used to work, but duplicating CoH in every detail isn't really my goal; I just want to give people something to do.
These 19 badges are located roughly where Paragon Wiki shows them, as that's the only info I had to go on. It's still not easy to find some of them, even with a radius many times that of a normal badge, for reasons I mentioned upthread. Six or so of the badges also straddle the borders between the Praetorian zones, so I use the echoes to handle those cases.
The way echo badges/plaques work is that every badge or plaque can potentially list one echo. For example, the badge with the key expl-rrat-05a (which is in Neutropolis) has an echo field that contains expl-rrat-05b (the key for a badge in Imperial City that shares the same name, same description, and even the same coordinates because the Praetorian zone maps fortunately all use one coordinate system). The reverse is also true; 05b specifies 05a as
its echo.
Whichever one you earn first -- 05a or 05b -- will automatically credit you with the other. I think I will probably make Faultline/Echo: Faultline an exception to that, though. If you really want stuff from Echo: Faultline, you'll have to
earn it. At least you'll have Fly now, so you won't have to suffer what I did to get those coordinates.
As is, I can see some similarities to what you're doing for the other badges, especially the History badges (i.e. having to visit specific spots, and hit them all to get the badge). But on the other hand, it is different in that there's a larger area you could be in to get credit (i.e. almost every spot in those rivers) which could be an issue depending on how resource intensive your Bot is, due to how wide an area has to be covered.
While I'll probably eventually add in the ability to see how many of a given set you have, to be honest history
badges (as distinct from history
plaques) are a low priority. That's partly because sorting out the completion aspect is a little more complex than "does user have 7 out of 7", but mostly its because the COH client never even knows about or retains anything that you earn with this bot, and the "private message" style UI is a clunky substitute that I use mostly out of necessity. These sorts of rewards stretch the limits of this a bit more than seems worthwhile.
Instead, something that acts like a meta-reward like this is probably better suited to a web app that accesses the "who has earned what" database and presents a view of your badges that is more like what you used to see in-game. A proper implementation of River Rat (where you only get the badge after getting all 19 locations) would likewise be more appropriate there, as would achievement badges like Tourist, Collector, Explorer, Pathfinder, and Trailblazer (i.e. "You've earned X badges").
In any case, right now the bot has no concept whatsoever of a "history badge". Plaques work almost precisely the same way that badges do, except that they don't have individual names. (Every badge has a hero name, villain name, or both, and I will soon add some logic for deciding what to send based on the faction and gender you've set. Each plaque just has a field called "monument", and the only manner in which that field is used is when the bot sends it as part of the description. Of course, badges and plaques all have unique keys, but those aren't really meant to be read by users; they all look much like the two I listed for River Rat above.)
And sorry if I'm being a pain. But as a badger, I have to admit I'm psyched to see what you're doing, and insanely curious as to what will, and won't make it into what you're doing.
Not a pain at all. I'm just glad people are interested. Feel free to ask questions. Sharing info is why we bot writers make these threads, after all.