**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 91.11.10 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> PIPELINE! It has been Our Illustrious Leader's intention for a long time that CEOs should be able to automate the transfer of goods between factories. This is now a reality. This has meant that the way factories output their goods has changed slightly. Previously, the factory would output 25 tons of produce at a time. Now, it still makes the goods in 25 ton lumps, but stores it until there is 75 tons before actually delivering the goods to their destination - warehouse, exchange or another factory. A new entry on the Factory display shows the "Stock On Hand" - which is the amount of output the factory has produced but not delivered. If you need to get at the stock immediately, you can hurry the process by using the command , which flushes the stock on hand and delivers the goods to the previous specified destination. You specify the destination of the factory's produce using the command. sells the goods directly to the exchange, as before. Note that now the goods are sold less often, in 75 ton lumps. causes the goods to be delivered into the warehouse, again in 75 ton lumps - which will save all that tedious mucking about with the command. As before, if there is no room in the warehouse, the goods will be sold on the exchange. The new variant of the command lets you pipeline the goods directly to another factory - either one belonging to you, or to another player. The syntax is . Factory# is the factory you want the goods to be sent to. Quantity is the total amount you want to be sent. Price is the amount per ton you are willing to pay for the haulage, and only applies if the goods are being delivered off-planet - if the destination factory is on the same planet as your factory, just omit the price. On receipt, the destination factory will pay for the goods at base price, and will pay the haulage fee direct to the carrier, if applicable. You can only pipeline goods to a factory which needs them as an input, but the owner of the receiving factory does not have to agree to the exchange. You can also set up a pipeline back to the producing factory itself! If a factory requires a small quantity of its own output as an input - such as soya, or fruit - you can deliver the goods straight from the Stock on Hand to the Inputs. When you use this command to set up a pipeline, the deal will continue until the required quantity has been delivered. Thereafter, the factory will default to delivering to the warehouse, until you specify otherwise. Say you want to send 10 tons of the output to another factory. When the next 25 ton lump is produced, it will go into the Stock on Hand. 10 tons will immediately be delivered, leaving 15 tons in Stock on Hand. The deal will then cease, and the next two 25 ton lumps will be added to the Stock in Hand, making a total of 65 tons. As soon as the third lump is added, taking the Stock on Hand to over 75 tons, the goods will be put into the warehouse in a ginormous 90 ton lump! If you specify 300 tons to be delivered, then every 75 FTUs a 75 ton lump will be pipelined across, until the total amount has been transferred. Since the goods are always charged at base price, it is up to you to come to some arrangement with the owner of the receiving factory if you want to charge them a fortune for your rare and valuable commodity! **>> NEXT... At the moment, you can only set up pipelines on the same planet, although you can send to another person's factory. Some time during the coming week, Bella will add the capability to send goods off-planet by generating jobs. Planet owners will also be able to deliver commodities via jobs. This is going to affect just about everyone in the game, because it will change the way jobs work (yet again!). Our Illustrious Leader was being her usual close-mouthed, vague self about how this would work, but she said she would post full details in the Fed BBS when the new code goes in. We advise you all to check the BBS for new messages every day. (You should be doing that anyway, of course!) Planet owners were due to lose their companies and factories sometime in the next few days, but Bella has very magnanimously decided to let them continue being CEOs for a few weeks more, so they can have fun playing with their pipelines. **>> AND AFTER THAT... Once she has finished working on the new jobs, and once she is happy that everything is working as it should, Bella will return to work on the planetary economies. Speaking of planets, the more observant among you will have noticed that the number of player planets in the game at one time has increased to ten. By dint of much shoe-horning and corsetting, Bella has managed to squash the extra planet in, somehow! **>> NOT SO INVINCIBLE Sheffield has become the third person to kill Oddball's mobile, the Elliptica. Previously, only The Vile Cryptosporidium and Oddball himself had managed to vanguish the tough space cruiser. Sheffield says it took him thirty minutes and four repairs before he blew Elly out of the sky... and he made a slight profit! **>> FROM THE PEN OF DEEP THROAT The ghost of Tal has been busy. Just when I was starting to believe that Tal was indeed dead, a new planet has appeared. I hope to visit this place any day now for myself but the initial reports are that it worth visiting. * * * "Federation Dataspace" has become "The Billboard Littered Highway to H*ll". What has come over these planet owners? I, for one (being a planet owner myself, Earth) am ashamed! Repulsed! Disgusted! and somewhat upset about the whole affair. Worry not, for help may soon be on the way... rumor has it that Bella is writing in a new command, . This command works a bit differently from what you may expect, however - instead of analyzing and surpressing such messages it will kill the guilty planet owner and turn their planet into a Bi-sexual Brothel. Who will go first? We'll keep you posted. * * * Children must play! They have been called "The Marx Brothers". They have been called "Sh*thead and Chicken sh*t". But one thing they haven't been called is "Safe". Until these two "Madmen of Dataspace" stop flying around destroying one another it just won't be safe! You know who they are! * * * So, the princess, the daughter of The King of Scadia is missing. Here's the rest of the story... One night, The King of Scadia was waiting up for his daughter to come home from a date with a to be unnamed Fed player. First it was midnight, then it was one, then two, then four and she wasn't around. His spybeam not working, the King set out to find his missing daughter. He searched Sol and Inversity, he raided Route66 and Haven, but all that he discovered was a broken chastity belt. A few days later a ransom note was found, and my expert reporter skills (I paid someone off) allowed me to discover the demands. Gasp! Shock! 200,000,000 imperial groats! For the safe return of the princess. The King could afford this easily, but he refused to pay. After a few days it was discovered the pricess was becoming quite a pain, first she demanded M-TV, then avon makeups, then a poster of Bruce Willis! The kidnappers were going nuts trying to keep her content. Finally they lowered the ransom demands to 5,000,000 imperial groats. The King flatly refused. His words, after great pain, tremendous research, and high price payoffs, was... "No!" Finally, weeks had passed without any movement from either party, until the princess, realizing that she wasn't actually sitting in the waiting room for her hair dresser and was indeed kidnapped, clobbered one of the vile thugs over the head. The going ransom demand is the return of the princess AND the kidnappers will pay the King of Scadia 20,000,000 ig. **>> PROMOTIONS NEWS Tiger was promoted to Adventurer, and extends his thanks to Elex (for help with jobs), Aackverdi (for money), Galauriel (for hot gropes), and everyone else who helped, even the Vile Cryptosporidium! Yes, that's honestly what he said. Blindman also became an Adventurer, but hasn't asked us to print his thankyou speech. Those are the only promotions we have been informed about this week. Don't forget to tell us when you advance, then you too can see your name in lights. **>>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, 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 by typing ORDER at any GEnie menu. Cost - a mere $12.95. Federation has several category in the new MPGames RT. To get there, type M1045,1 from any menu prompt and SET category 13 (for information, instructions, questions and answers) or 14 (for general chat and discussions). The Federation Leader in the bulletin board is Occy (Mail ID: OCPAC). The MPGames RT also has a Federation library in the files area, Library 5. Library 18 holds the Federation News Archives. **>> BULLETIN ENDS