**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 91.02.03 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> WHAT A SCOUNDREL! In last week's News Bulletin we asked just why Blackmark is considered to be Public Enemy No. 1. We received a communication from a player which goes some way to answering that question! I was a lowly Commander, I had been playing for a week or so, and I had a nice GEnie bill of maybe $80. I was really starting to get into the game. Anyway, I REALLY wanted to rise in rank, to Captain. But, no one would lend me any money, or give me any hints. I was getting desperate for help! I was asking around (begging) one day, when I met Blackmark. I told him my problems, and he told me of a glitch in the game of FEDII. He mentioned that if you started over, and bought a ship with a Class G hull, it would give you $200,000, and promote you to Captain, right off the bat. Now, since I had never met him before, I just naturally assumed that he knew what he was talking about. Besides, glitches like this are not that uncommon. I thought I had a pretty decent character, with about $500,000, and a fair ship. But I trusted Blackmark, and I typed SUICIDE twice, and then made a new character. I went and tried to buy a Class G hull. SURPRISE! I didn't work. I talked to Blackmark, but all he typed back was "SUCKER!!!" A joke is a joke, but when I had put a great deal of work and effort (not to mention money...) into this game - Well, I wanted to kill Blackmark. I mean, I DESPERATELY wanted to kill him. So, I built my way back up again, and now I have a pretty good character with two and a half megs at Captain. As soon as I make Trader, I'm spending all of my money the best ship possible, and I am going to hunt down and kill Blackmark. I'm leading a team of about five or six others, and we all want his head on platter. Well, we're not sure Our Illustrious Leader would take kindly to the suggestion that major bugs of this nature are not uncommon! However, that really was a dirty trick to play on a new player, and we look forward to Blackmark being taught a very good lesson. The SpyNet Review the other day did show that a lot of people had been putting rewards on Blackmark. At last count, he had over 30K on his head - and don't forget that whoever manages to kill him will gain that reward! **>> COMING SOON TO A PLANET NEAR YOU For your delight and delectation, Our Illustrious Leader is busy making a few changes to Fed Data Space. Firstly, she has persuaded the Galactic Administration to ease its restrictions on the amount of goods that you can buy from Trading Exchanges. Traders and Merchants will be able to purchase lumps up to 15 tons (formerly 10 tons) and JPs and over 25 tons (previously 20). Some of the displays will be reformatted into two columns to fit onto a single screen, so you won't have to keep scrolling back to see them all. Among those changed will be the and display and the listing of goods in your cargo hold and warehouse. Empty bays in both the warehouse and your ship will also be displayed, with a dash to show they are empty. When you log into Fed Data Space, you will automatically be shown who's already there, just as if you had typed . Expect some, if not all, of these changes sometime in the next week. **>> SOMEONE HAS STOLEN THE NUMBERS! Eager Fedders who logged on during prime-time last Tuesday to check out the new version of the game were startled to find that all numbers seemed to have gone missing! If you did anything that should have shown you a number - score, displaying factories, checking your cargo etc - the displays were all completely without digits! When Explorer Hazed appeared, she was surrounded by distressed people who thought their fortunes had been completely wiped out. After dispensing comfort and reassurance (and tranquilizers!) she contacted Our Illustrious Leader (getting her out of the bath) and the two of them embarked on a trek to locate the missing numbers. After searching various parts of Fed Data Space, thinking that perhaps the numbers had gone on strike and were hiding somewhere in the caves on Mercury, they realised the problem. There was a hole in the back of the DNI computer, and all the numbers had dribbled out and were lying in a heap on the floor! While Hazed swept up the numbers and put them in a bucket, Bella found a funnel and some sticky tape. The funnel was put in the hole, the numbers poured into the funnel from where they flowed back into the computer, and the hole was sealed with the sticky tape. Problem solved! **>> ALAS POOR (fill in the blank) Adol is the latest person to forget to reinsure himself and die dead-dead. He can't quite remember what he was doing to cause his death, but investigation shows that his first death coincided with an explosion in the Martian Ruins, which suggests he was killed helping someone with the JP puzzle, and then forgot to go and reinsure himself. May we please take this opportunity to remind prospective JPs that if they ask another player to help them out, they really ought to take responsibility for A) making sure the player is insured before they attempt the puzzle, and B) reminding them to get reinsured should they die in the attempt. You really ought to pay for their insurance and give them a little extra for their trouble, too. Adol has returned to us and has already reached Adventurer, on the same day that he reappeared! We don't keep exact count of records for promotion, but if that isn't a record - it should be! **>> WELCOME BACK, STUPID! If you've been playing Fed for a while, you may remember a player called Stupid. He disappeared a few months ago and no-one seemed to know what had happened to him. Well, he's back! It seems he had sunk into a deep depression because he couldn't make money fast enough to feed his addiction to pizza, so he hid himself under a rock in the Martian Ruins and sulked for several months. Finally, the smell of cooking food from nearby Chez Diesel, wafting into the Ruins when the wind blew in the right direction, lured him out of his hibernaton and back amongst the living. **>> PROMOTIONS NEWS Haley has made Trader - no thanks, he says, to the roulette wheel in Chez Diesel! Eason and Reno have also been promoted to Trader, as has Muddog - who used to be Fsv before his unfortunate demise a few weeks ago. Polar and Mick became Merchants within minutes of each other. We received the following press release from Mick's agent: It is reported that Mick has promised to haul cargo for certain JP's as a favor. With the ability to ADD warehouse bays together the service should improve drastically. Mick is planning on optimizing all of his trading Macros to improve his groat per hour rate. Being able to spot the hot markets with the price checking service should go a long way toward improving the groat flow... When asked how he finally got to Merchant Mick responded... "I got tired of fiddling around at 1 meg an hour. Piemur advised me that at Merchant level I could improve my groat flow to 3 meg an hour. I took out a loan with certain well off individuals at a 10% rate. I consider the loans a good business move..." Mick also commented that buying a factory and hunting Monty... (unsuccessfully he added) slowed him down by 11 meg. Mick promises to add groats to those worse off them him. A 20,000 groat reward is hereby offered for the COIN and the LV. Further profits may be made by helping Mick solve the infamous JP puzzle. Those willing to risk life and limb my on Mars should contact Mick!!!!!! Mick also noted that he is not starting a bidding war for the COIN and LV. Its just that he plans on reaching a 3 meg an hour rate and doesn't want to be slowed down by fetching objects. Mick also remembers being a Commander, Captain, and Adventurer and feels that helping out others is a good idea!!!! What an altruist! Still no news on Occy and the GM puzzle. Has she made it yet? We assume we would have heard if she had... **>> FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS There are a number questions that crop up frequently in Fed Data Space, so here we will attempt to answer them: At the end of the company's very first cycle, it will take into account money put into it by the CEO along with the profit for the cycle. This increases the person's networth. This isn't a bug, it's a feature, and can be used for creative accounting (or cooking the books, to use the technical term). There are many ways to manipulate the profits of your company and so increase (or decrease) your networth... but we will leave you to discover the rest of them for yourself! My hull strength is down and I don't think I was shot at. There are several ways to lose hull strength. The obvious one is, indeed, to get shot at! Also, if you run out of fuel, you can LAND on an empty tank but it will damage the hull. But what very often gets overlooked is that ships do wear out! They require maintenance. Once you become an Adventurer, you will be told every so often that your ship is due for an overhaul. If you check your ship's status you will see that the hull strength will be down, as will the engine and some of the other parts. You don't have to do anything about this; your ship will still function, but each time you receive the message that you need to service your ship, more hull strength will be lost - and if it ever reaches zero, you will die! To fix the damage, simply get it repaired in one of the repair shops. I've just logged on and my factory has 75 cycles still to go, but the workers have all left. Why? Every time you are logged on, your factory will accumulate FTUs, which means that it will keep running after you log off. However, the game is reset once each day, and if the reset occurs while you still have FTUs remaining, the factory will be shut down and won't reappear until you log on again. When you do come onto Fed, you won't have lost the FTUs that weren't used, but you will have to start the factory running again. I combined two bays of monopoles that came from production, and they ended up labelled as being from Venus. Whenever you add two bays together, the planet of origin will become the current planet. This is because you could be combining bays that originated from different places. Since you can't sell goods back to their planet of origin, make sure that you don't add things together on the planet where you want to dispose of them. If I have 10 shields and want to get 5 more, typing INSTALL 15 charges me for the entire 15, not just the 5 extra. The same thing happens with engines, it wants to charge me for the whole thing. When you install extra shields or engines, or buy a bigger computer for your ship, the old equipment has to be ripped out and disposed off before the new can be installed, so you have to pay the full price. The engineers can't just glue the extra on top of the old! If a group of us combine to fight a mobile or another player, is the reward split between us? No - the reward will go the person who fires the killing shot. If you want to share the reward after a gang-fight, you have to hand out equal shares manually. If we come across any more Frequently Asked Questions, we will supply the answers in future News Bulletins. **>> GOSSIP AND LIES Mondo and Kevin spent a happy day involved in a bar brawl last week. It seems that Kevin was going around with a mood stating that he was "The Commander Killer" or something like that, and Mondo took exception to this. Diesel wasn't terribly amused when the two belligerants started throwing the furniture at each other! Kevin assures us that this mood had been misinterpreted. It didn't mean that he went around killing all Commanders, just that when people ran out of fuel in space with no money, as an alternative to them suiciding, he would shoot them! Yeah, sure, we believe that... Fed has a new femme fatale - Spacedrakon. She appeared last week and has been attracting a veritable horde of admirers. We've been hearing rumours that Ariel has taken to wearing a chastity belt. Whether she has donned it herself to protect her from over-eager suitors, or whether someone else has forced her into it, we don't know. But we do know the key is in great demand! Don't forget to pass on any news or gossip you have. We pay groats for every item we use. **>> STOP PRESS!! We're not sure what the electronic equivalent to "Hold the front page" is, but if we were we would be using it now! Just as we were about to upload this issue of the News, we received a suggestion for a new topic in the Fed BBS which we think is a great idea. It will be a directory of Fed players, where you tell people what your persona is - so if they want to send you mail, they know how to contact you. Go and upload your persona name! **>> CONTACTS The following information will appear at the end of every News Bulletin, so you don't have to read it if you already know it. In the event of a problem or question, you can: * talk to Hazed, Cryptosporidium, Bella or Clem in the game * leave a message in the game log * send mail with the Federation Feedback option from the main menu You can order a copy of the unexpurgated printed Idiot's Guide to Federation II by typing ORDER at any GEnie menu. Cost - a mere $12.95. Fed has a category in Scorpia's games round table. To get there, type M805,1 from any GEnie main menu, then type SET 29 to get into the Fed category. The Scorpia area also has a library (22) devoted to Federaton II, which contains many useful items including maps.