Ladder chat and the Discord bot

The ladder chat#

The CHAT tab in the ranked screen's room is an IRC-style chat for everyone on the ladder: a scrolling log, a composer, and a roster of who is here.

Who can read and post#

• Anyone can read, signed in or not.
• Posting needs a Vespene account.
• Lines are up to 300 characters. Slow down if you see "Slow down, a few seconds between lines": the limit is five lines in fifteen seconds and a moment between each.
• You can delete your own lines.
• The roster lists who has had the ranked screen open in the last minute or so, moderators first. A background tab stops counting after a little over a minute.

Names#

Chat never shows a real name or an e-mail address. Your name is, in order:

1. your chosen ladder display name or your BattleTag name (without the #number), if Battle.net is linked;
2. otherwise a username you picked yourself;
3. otherwise "Player" and a number, with a hint to link Battle.net or pick a handle.

A Google sign-in's profile name is never used, because it is usually a real name.

The crest next to a name#

Each name wears the league crest for the race that player is in play with right now: their live match, else what they are queueing, else the race picked on their screen, else their most-played race. A line you posted keeps the crest of the race you were on when you wrote it. An unranked context shows the unranked crest. Hover a name for a card with rating, season record, rank, league, Clash level and dodges; click to pin it. See Ratings, placement and leagues.

Ladder event lines#

Lines tagged LADDER are posted by the site itself, the same events the Discord bot posts:

Event	What it shows	What it hides
Queue	"N in queue" and a league crest for each queued player	No names, no ratings, no sub-ranks (Grandmaster shows as Master)
Match found	Both players and their races	The server and queue count stay off the chat line
Result	Winner and loser, each with crest, race, rating and rating change	Unranked players show "unranked" with no numbers
Draw	Both players with the same details
Win streak, new peak, upset	The moment, with the player's name	Never for unranked winners

Result lines carry a Summary button that opens the match in the leaderboard feed with both build orders, and a Watch the replay button while the replay is public. A player can only post one queue line a minute, so joining and leaving repeatedly cannot flood the room. The thresholds for streaks, peaks and upsets are in Clash XP and the season prize pool.

Settings and emotes#

• The settings cog has one switch: Show ladder events (queue, matches, results). Turn it off for a chat-only room; hidden lines do not count as unread.
• Collapse the room by clicking its header. A folded room keeps up with new lines and shows how many arrived.
• Emotes: whole words matching the standard Twitch global emotes and the BetterTTV and FrankerFaceZ global sets render as emotes in human lines, up to twelve per line.
• The (i) in the room header explains the Companion's in-game Ranked Ladder overlay.

Moderation#

Moderators wear a MOD tag. From a pinned name card they can:

Action	Effect
Silence (10 minutes)	Can still read and stays on the roster, but cannot post
Timeout (1 hour)	Cannot post and drops off the roster
Ban (needs a second press)	A timeout with no end

Moderators can also remove any line, including ladder event lines. A sanction applies to that ladder's room. Rules on who can act on whom:

• Only moderators sanction, and nobody can sanction themselves.
• A moderator can only be sanctioned by a site admin, and admins cannot be sanctioned.
• Sanctions and lifts are never deleted; each one is recorded with who issued it, for accountability.

The LADDER MOD role#

Site admins can grant a player the LADDER MOD role for a specific ladder. It carries the chat tools above plus the REVIEW tab for held games and the moderator view of HISTORY, on that ladder only. A ladder mod can never rule on a match they played. Site moderators and admins moderate every ladder. See Fair play: voids, strikes, AFK and disputes.

The Discord bot#

Run a community Discord? The Vespene ladder bot narrates the ladder into a channel of your choice: who is queueing, who got paired, results with replay links, and the hype moments. Look for the DISCORD BOT link on the ranked screen, or the "Run a community Discord?" row, to invite it.

It asks for only three permissions: view the channel, send messages and embed links. It is separate from the Vespene community Discord server itself, which is linked from the F10 console.

Setting it up#

All commands are under /vespene, work inside a server, and reply privately to whoever ran them:

Command	What it does	Who can run it
/vespene setup	Picks the channel (the current one by default) and the posting style	Manage Server
/vespene config	Turns one event type, or everything, on or off	Manage Server
/vespene status	Shows the channel, the event toggles, the live queue and game counts, and any delivery problem	Anyone
/vespene unlink	Stops posting	Manage Server

Two styles:

• feed: a message per event.
• board: one message the bot keeps editing, showing the queue size with a rough rating range, live games and the last five results. No pings, no channel spam.

Toggles, all on by default: queue, matches, results, streaks, peaks, upsets.

What it posts#

• Queue joins: "N in queue, a ~X to Y Elo player just joined". Never a name. The range is deliberately rough (rounded, then widened), so nobody can identify who just queued. Unranked joins show no range.
• Match found: both players and races, the server, and how many are still searching (or "Queue is empty now, first to join gets the next game").
• Results: winner and loser, the map and matchup, each player's rating and change, and a Watch the replay button once the replay is public. Unranked players show "unranked".
• Draws, win streaks, new peaks and upsets, bundled with the result they came from.

Good to know#

• Posts leave only after the result is committed, so a rolled-back or repeated completion never double-posts.
• Moderator corrections to results are not re-announced.
• If Discord keeps refusing the bot (the channel was deleted or permissions removed), it turns itself off for your server after five permanent failures. /vespene status shows why, and running /vespene setup again turns it back on. Temporary Discord outages never count.
• The message wording is maintained by the Vespene team. It shares templates and the streak, peak and upset rules with the chat's event lines, but the Discord posts carry more detail (the rating range on queue joins, the server and queue count on pairings, the mod name on results).