**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 91.03.10 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> IS NO-ONE SAFE? There has certainly been a change of attitude amongst Fedders over the last few months. We can remember the day when nobody bought weapons, no-one wanted to fight, and the only way we could run our Fighting Schools was to freeze the persona file so that if anyone did break a fingernail, it wasn't permanent. But recently... it seems that as soon as the joys of Trading start to pall, the twin lasers start blazing! We reported recently that poor Monty was being bumped off with amazing regularity. Well the latest victim is, would you believe... PEGASUS! Yes, the Wonder Horse, reputed to be the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the entire galaxy, has fallen. Samantha and Polar between them cooked up a brilliant strategy to dispose of the winged beast, and when Sam tried it... it worked! Polar tried later and was also successful. Is nothing sacred? The High Priestess of the Order of St. Pegasus, Defender of the Meek, is said to be not amused. **>> THOSE DAMN TAX-MEN! Two people recently found their entire life-savings wiped out by the greedy, grasping men from the IRS. Both Piemur and Occy had amassed such an obscene amount of money that the Revenooers paid them a midnight visit. Normally, those dastardly Government Agents don't interfere with anyone unless they have so much money that they MUST have come by it illegally. But recently, a lot of people have found a new way to make lots of money, and make it fast, so bank balances have been mounting up. How have they been doing it? Well, it's a long story... Part of the fiendish GM puzzle involves disposing of two satellites that float in Hilbert Space. Originally, the sats were pretty tough, and it took two people working together to kill them. But then Our Illustrious Leader changed the way that mobiles respond to attack. Previously, they would continue fighting until you ran - at which point they would instantly regenerate. The change meant that THEY would start running, and regenerate a little as they ran. Trouble was, the sats don't move. So they don't regenerate. Which means that you can duck out if the going gets rough, go and get repaired, and return to the fight, while they can't do anything to fix the holes in their infrastructure. And since they both had a pretty hefty reward on their heads, those who could get to them were doing so at every opportunity - hence the rapidly increasing bank balances. To counter this, Our Illustrious Leader will be reducing their rewards to something a little less spectacular. So there! She has persuaded the IRS to return most of the money to the two victims - not all, because they would only be penalised again! **>> NEW NEW NEW! Tomorrow will see a new version of the game, with the following spiffy new features: A new object will act as an alternative to the coin, which is in great demand with the number of people trying to increase their stats. We're so generous, we're even going to tell you what the object is called... it's the Token. However, we aren't generous enough to tell you where to find it... Acting on a suggestion by Polar (well done that Bear!), Bella is going to change the command. The new syntax will be with no planet name, which will give you prices on all the planets. It will still be available to Merchants and above, and will now cost 500 groats. Possibly appearing tomorrow, but if not then sometime during the week, will be the command. This is designed for all those players who enter Fed Data Space illicitly when they should be doing something else... if the Boss, or the Significant Other, or whoever, walks into the room, type and the game will send 50 carriage returns, instantly blanking the screen, and turn your comm unit off. That bloody Object Editor, which was due to go sometime last week, should go in tomorrow. Honest! Actually, you can blame Explorer Hazed for its late appearance - she was charged with the job of testing it, and she kept finding things wrong with it! Instructions will appear sometime over the next few days, although it is fairly intuitive and you should be able to work out what to do by yourself. **>> EXPLORER'S NEWS While on the subject of Planets, a bit of advice to Explorers is - don't create rooms that can be permanently locked! For example, if you set up a puzzle so that a certain room can only be entered if you are carrying a certain object, don't allow people to drop the object in the room. This would mean the room would be locked until the next reset. To facilitate this, Bella is probably going to provide a new flag which will bring on a Cleaning Robot (similar to that in your ship). There are quite a few Explorers now - Piemur, Aeron, Occy, Russ, Merkin... erm... we've probably forgotten somebody! And they are all hard at work designing their planets. Many of them have questions about the more difficult parts of planetary design - what is allowed, how exactly they can do something - so we will be running a special Explorer's Masterclass next Saturday, at 3.30 pm Eastern Time. Bella and Hazed will be on hand to answer your questions about planets, and you can bounce ideas off each other's heads as well. **>> EXCERPTS FROM THE TYPO FILE Quite often, players use the command to leave a question about something that has happened, which they don't quite understand. Here's a selection of recent ones, with the answers. "I did not receive a warning buzzer at half empty fuel capacity". No, you probably didn't. The warning buzzer only comes when the tank is getting very low. If your fuel reaches as low as 10 tons, you'll hear the buzzer, and it will continue to sound until you either top the tank up, or run out completely. "My insurance just went from 28K to 510K in one death". The Insurance is calculated on a sliding scale. To quote from the Idiot's Guide to Federation II (obtainable from GEnie for $12.95, a bargain at twice the price!): "The initial insurance costs 1,000 groats. Each time you are insured the premium is increased by 3,000 groats. However, due to some biological quirk which means that all Fed players are descended from cats, this only holds true for the first nine deaths. If you are foolish enough to snuff it ten times, the premium will leap to 510,000 groats, and then increase by 50,000 each further re-insurance." It's all to do with how bad a risk you are... However, if this news has brought any of you out into a cold sweat, your insurance will be zeroed when you are promoted to JP, and again at GM. "Where did my spybeam go? I had it before a battle with Monty and now it's gone." If you look under the control desk in your command centre, you will probably see a molten pool of metal. That used to be your spy beam. Although the cleaning robots will probably have hoovered it up by the time the fight is over. Whenever you get hit in a fight, there is a chance that as well as your hull taking damage, additional bits of your ship could suffer. This is called collateral damage. Items which could be affected are Engines, Computer, Shields, Weapons, Cargo and Spybeam. If you are paying attention during a fight, you will notice when you suffer from collateral damage. "I gave the LV to Diesel, but couldn't afford it. Diesel bought me a drink that raised my stam from 29 to 34. The thing is, my stamina's max is 30!" Isn't it nice of Diesel to look after her future clients in this manner? Yes, this is the only time you can increase any of your current stats above the maximum value. However, should you then buy another drink yourself, or be bought one by someone else, your stamina will return to the maximum value. "Monty fired on me while in orbit over Earth... is that normal or not..." No, it is most definitely not normal! This was a BUG! And it seems to have been around for a long time before someone got caught by it. The unlucky person was Polar, who was surprised and dismayed to find that he was being attacked in orbit... but couldn't fire back! The problem has now been fixed. **>> SECRET SOCIETY Well, it's not all that secret - at least it won't be after you've all read the news! Logan, Tempo, Spacey and Matts have formed a club called the D.I.E. club - it stands for DEATH IS EXCITING. If anyone wishes to join, they will have to go through an initiation ceremony, which involves the existing members blowing seven shades of the proverbial out of your ship! Further questioning produced the news that the existing members will only fire at you once each... that's a relief! What the aims of this club are - indeed, if it has any at all - we haven't yet been able to ascertain. But we imagine that the members would positively welcome anyone shooting at them. Form an orderly queue, please! **>> LOVE-BIRDS IN LOVE-NEST It's so touching. Young love, doesn't it just make you come over all gooey? Pass the sick-bag please... Samantha and Kevin are now engaged, and have moved into the Penthouse on Earth. They do wish that people wouldn't keep leaving their coats lying around in their cloakroom, though! **>> NEW MP-GAMES AREA As reported last week, the new area on GEnie devoted to multi-player games (of which Fed are one) is now officially open. The page number is 1045, the keyword is MPGRT, the Fed category is 14, and the Fed library is 5. Feel free to participate. **>> NAME THAT BAND! We've had a few more suggestions as to what O'Toole's band should be. We'll keep this contest open for one more week, so send in your ideas. The winner will receive a modest amount of groats. **>> PROMOTIONS NEWS Rickenbacker, Cody and Akasha all made Trader last week. Congratulations. Gunslinger was promoted to Adventurer today. With a name like that, he sounds like he's trapped in the wrong era! Oddball became a Merchant, and George, Rickster and Hawkman are the latest crop of JPs. Finally, just getting the news to us in time for inclusion in this bulletin, Samantha is now a GM. Well done! **>>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. Federation II has a category in the new MPGames RT. To get there, type M1045,1 from any menu prompt and SET category 14. The MPGames RT also has a Federation II library in the files area, Library 5. **>> BULLETIN ENDS