Getting Started with the CAD

The CAD (Computer-Aided Dispatch) is a dispatch board, roster, and radio built into Varko — a real one, not a toy version. If your community roleplays police, fire, or EMS, this is where that actually happens: calls get created, units go on duty, and everyone sees the same board at the same time.

Turning it on

From the dashboard, open the ER:LC tab — the CAD lives there rather than in the general module list, since it only matters to communities running one specific kind of server. Turn it on, and you've got a working CAD with no departments yet.

The community's own join code

Every community gets its own code the moment the CAD's on. That's the front door — anyone who redeems it becomes a member, with no department yet, waiting to be sorted. You'll find it (and a button to roll a new one) on the community's own overview page once you're in.

A code is the entire security model here, worth saying plainly: anyone who has it can use it. Don't post it somewhere public unless you mean for anyone to be able to join.

Owners get in free

If you own the Discord server, you're automatically treated as the CAD's owner too — no code needed, full access, and nothing a misconfigured role list can do will ever lock you out of your own community.

What a fresh member can do

Not much, on purpose. A plain member — joined, no department, no rank — can see the roster and read public documents, but that's about it. Everything else (the dispatch board, the radio, settings) opens up once they're in a department, or once a rank gives them specific permissions. See the "Ranks and Permissions" guide for how that actually works.

Departments are where it starts for real

A member without a department can't do much. Setting up at least one real department — with a type (LEO, Fire, EMS, whatever fits), a join code of its own, and someone able to join it — is the next real step. That's covered start to finish in "Setting Up Departments: Whitelists, Roles, and Everything Else."

Where to go next

• Setting up departments — the single most important screen in the whole CAD.
• Ranks and Permissions — who can do what, and how to build a custom rank.
• Connecting your ER:LC server — ties the CAD to your actual private server, for live player counts and in-game commands.