**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 91.11.17 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> NEW... NEW... NEW... As you will know if you read Bella's special news, posted a few days ago, the latest version of the game introduced new features which affect all players. Here is a detailed explanation (not a million miles removed from the text that Bella posted). **>> NEW JOBS Commanders, Captains and Adventurers will find that the way they receive jobs has been extensively revised. As before, there are three ways of getting jobs: Milkrun jobs, Transportation Central, and Player Generated jobs. Milkrun jobs are the same as they ever was: type to get one from whatever planet you are on, they are worth 1 trader points, pay a small amount, and are limited to the Solar System. Player generated jobs are also unchanged. They are given directly by higher level players who need a hauler, and are worth 8 trader points and whatever groats the Rich Person deigns to offer. The difference is with Transportation Central jobs. Previously, these were known as SlyNet jobs and were only available in bars. They are now available in all locations. Typing now shows a list of up to 10 jobs. Use to take one of the jobs. As new jobs become available, Transportation Central will advertise them to all players who have turned . These jobs come from three different sources. Transportation jobs are the equivalent of the old SlyNet jobs, and are generated by the game at regular intervals. They are reasonably high paying, worth 2 trader points, and only apply to the Solar System. Factory jobs are generated automatically by factories which have goods to be transported to a factory on another planet. The jobs are worth four trader points, and the value is determined by the factory's owners. Planet jobs are generated automatically by planets wishing to export goods for which they have large overstocks. The jobs are worth four trader points, and the value of the jobs are determined by the planet's owner. These jobs are normally offered as 200 ton cargos, but if accepted by a player with a smaller cargo hold, they will be given as smaller jobs. This ONLY applies to planet jobs - when you type they are marked by an asterisk. The transportation display gives you all the information you need to decide whether you want to accept a job or not, including the pickup and destination planets, the size of the job, the time to deliver and value of the contract, both in groats and in trader points. Note that the value is shown in groats per ton. If a job is not accepted by Transportation it will 'age'. Transportation jobs age the fastest, and factory jobs the slowest. Once a job gets too old, it disappears from the display. Oh well, you'd better all re-write your macros! **>> FACTORY PIPELINES As explained in a previous news, factory owners can pipeline goods from one factory to another. The output from many factories can be piped into the input of a single factory (provided the receiving factory has a use for the goods) but factories can only have one pipeline leading out. The command to set up a pipeline is where factory# is the number of the receiving factory, quantity is the amount of goods you wish to supply, and price is the amount per ton you are prepared to pay for haulage. and still work as they always did. Factories now have internal storage, and will wait till they have accumulated 75 tons of their output before shipping it (unless the pipeline quantity is for less than 75 tons), but the command will flush the store and cause the accumulated goods to be despatched immediately. What happens when a pipeline is set up depends on the relative location of the factories. If they are both on the same planet, then the goods will simply be transferred between the factories (in this case the 'price' part of the command can be skipped since there are no haulage costs), and the goods will appear in the inputs display of the receipient factory. Note: if you have a factory (for example petrochemicals) which uses some of its output as input, you can pipeline the output back to the input of the same factory. If the factories are on different planets, the producing factory will notify Transportation Central that a job exists to move the goods, and the job will appear on Transportation's job display. Once the goods have been moved by a Poor Person they appear as inputs in the receiving factory's display, and are available to use. The receiving factory pays for the goods at base price (the money going into the producing factory's balance) and pays the haulage costs to the Poor Person. Note that there is an upper limit of 30 groats per ton on the haulage cost - otherwise you could bankrupt the receiving factory by giving jobs for astronomical amounts! If no player accepts the job offered then Transportation will attempt to deliver the goods anyway. If the haulage price is less than 10 groats a ton, Transportation won't touch it; and the higher your price, the more likely it is that Transportation will move the goods for you. If it can't (or won't) find a carrier, the goods are returned to your factory's stock on hand, and a 2% handling fee will be made. If Transportation is unable to find the destination factory it will return the goods to the owning factory. If the originating factory finds that the destination factory is no longer on-stream, or that it has delivered its quota, it will revert to delivering to any relevant warehouse, or to the exchange if the warehouse is full. The time to deliver the goods is between 6 and 12 GTUs, at Transportation's discretion. Details of the pipeline appear on the factory display. **>> PLANET OWNER'S JOBS Planet owners now have a limited capacity to set up automatic jobs for lower level players. These are created by means of templates specifying which commodity you want to be delivered where. There are four slots for the templates, and they will run as long as the planet has a surplus of the named commodity. The command to set these jobs up is . Slot# indicates which of the four available slots you wish to use (overwriting an existing job if necessary), commodity is the commodity you wish to export, destination is the name of the planet you wish to export to, and price is the price per ton you are prepared to pay for haulage. A slot can be cleared with the command . [Is the News-writing team the only people to spot the error in nomenclature here? The command should not be , since the jobs being created are not milkrun jobs at all! Maybe it was Bella's deliberate mistake and we will get a prize for noticing it.] At regular intervals your planet will notify Transportation Central of jobs to haul the specified goods, provided you have at least 50 tons of the commodity at the exchange. Jobs will be made up in 200 ton cargos, unless there are less than 200 tons available, in which case the job will be made up for the amount available. However, Transportation will give the jobs to people with smaller holds by splitting the goods. When the cargo reaches its destination it is sold on the exchange and the proceeds (less the cost of the haulage) are credited to the originating planet. If no player takes the job, Transportation will attempt the delivery itself, or will return the goods - as with factory jobs. The delivery time for planet generated jobs is between 11 and 15 GTUs. Details of the milkrun jobs for a planet appear on the planet display - whether you own the planet or not. If the factories are on different planets, the factory will generate a job which a Poor Person can haul. **>> ROTATING IS REVOLTING Reading the messages in the Fed BBS - both the general Fed category and the Explorer's top secret category - as well as overhearing conversations in Chez Diesel, leads us to believe that players are less than happy with the way the planets rotate. Planet owners hate it because they never know when their planet is going to be in the game, and they can't fiddle endlessly with their stockpiles and balances. Factory owners hate it because they risk not being able to access their factories for days at a time. The problem is that there isn't enough memory for more than 10 factories to be in the game at one time, as things stand. However, Bella thinks she has come up with a solution that doesn't involve her spending months rewriting the game from scratch! She was not willing to divulge any details to our news droid today, who returned saying that Bella had shouted "Go away, I'm in the bath!". But she will be uploading her initial plans in the next few days, and inviting comments before she finalises them. Read full details in next week's news. **>> HOW LONG IS A PIECE OF STRING? We've no idea why she did it, but last week Bella decided to feed the Fed code into her Counting Droid, and the answer that came out was: there are 25,000 lines of code in Fed! And if all those lines were laid end to end, they'd reach an awfully long way. **>> INSANITY CLAUSE Poor Maxis is getting no better. He still yearns for the Vile Cryposporidium. Our special on-the-spot investigative reporting droid sent this: Apparently the directors of the Galactic Administration's Bureau for Capturing Insane Members of Society has been reading our newcasts! Yesterday, while Maxis was sitting in Chez Diesel quietly drinking with his fellow Fedders, he saw three men in white coats come in and ask Diesel where he was. Diesel, of course, being ever loyal to her customers, would not tell them where Maxis was as he ducked into the Martian ruins. However, Journeyman Zippo, always looking to make a few groats in whatever way possible, told them where Maxis had gone. They gave Maxis quite a chase through the ruins.. but in the end Maxis outsmarted them in the ultimate way. He led them through the ruins until they were in the Martian temple, and then pretended to hide under the altar. The men in white coats, not knowing anything about Martian religion, went under the altar. Once there they were swiftly sacraficed to the Martian gods. And so Maxis remains free.... For those of you wondering why Maxis was being chased, we shall go back in time a bit. Recently, Maxis has fallen in love with the Vile, Incredibly Evil Cryptosporidium! He even went so far as to pour acid on himself in hopes of becoming an Amorphous Ameoboa! Anyone who thinks he loves Cryptosporidium is completely insane. As we have been reporting on Maxis' attempts to win Crypto over, and the Galactic Administration's Bureau for Capturing Insane Members of Society reads this newscast, they knew of his condition. **>> FROM THE PEN OF DEEP THROAT... Just to trash this rumor before it even starts, there is no truth to the belief that Hazed and Freya are lovers. (hehehe) * * * Slew's gigolo business has filed chapter 11 due to lack of business. * * * Has anyone seen a Captain lately? How about an Adventurer? This is a serious problem, Fed is very low on players with these ranks! You can help! Invite those "outside" of Federation dataspace to join us! Everyone will be pleased. **>> HYSTERIA FROTHS ON We seem to be inundated with anonymous sources at the moment. It suits us, of course, because if we don't know who these people are we don't have to pay them for the dirt they send us. We received an earlier report from an anonymous female, and quoted parts of it in a previous news. This time, despite her her threats to ourselves and outrageous demands for money, we print the entire missive from the outraged and hysterical bigot. Sub: Decadence in Dataspace Although we are well aware that you defaulted on our payment of one million groats in used bills, we are compelled to mention some disgusting and decadent goings on in fed dataspace. We noticed a sordid display going on upstairs in Chez Diesel between Krell and a certain Industrialist whose name we are not at liberty to mention. During this sordid and rather brutal affair, the couple were interrupted several times by those taking advantage of Diesel's executive services. We have reported these "executive services" to the Commission for Federation Morality (CFM) and we are certain this aspect of her disgusting business will be shut down shortly. We are under the impression that Diesel also runs a high class brothel, and large sums of groats changed hands between Slew and a hussy of a Gal, who's name we will not mention, purely from the kindness of our hearts. These two were later joined by a nasty and very rude young fellow who's name we believe is reminiscent of the words spoken by the immortal Bill the Cat. This rampant threesome continued well into the late hours of the morning, and ended with the two gentlemen (if they can be called that) walking off into the sunrise together, so to speak. Although they both agreed to continue their former rivalry, it has now become more a "friendly" rivalry. We have learned that Tal managed, using her influence in the form of several mega groats, to come back from the dead, so to speak. This was a great shock to many, especially those who plotted her death again in a more permanent manner. Guido was again assigned to do the dirty deed, but instead of drowning her in the radioactive pool as before, he strangled her, sliced up the corpse, and ground up the pieces in the latest supercharged hydro food processor. This he then dumped in the radioactive pool. All clones and cells belonging to Tal were subsequently destroyed by a nameless fellow who used his considerable influence and wealth to accomplish this. We doubt Tal will ever be seen in Fed dataspace again. We feel this is a henious and disgusting crime which should be brought to the attention of the authorities. Although the hussy probably deserved what she got, there is no excuse for polluting already polluted waters further. We demand this be looked into at once or the consequences may be ghastly. We also have noticed that the murder of Trippin has also gone uninvestigated and wish to gently remind those in charge that someone's bottom may be in a sling rather soon if something does not get accomplished along these lines. Finally, we have further word on the trollop Freya. It seems her business has fallen off lately, due to some poorly thought out factory purchases, and she has been forced to entertain those in desperate need. We understand that her as yet unfinished planet will contain a rather sordid little place called Spreaders Forever. What that name could mean we have no idea, and would prefer, for the time being, not to know. As always, do not announce our name, under penalty of bringing down our wrath on your tainted and warped heads, and do forward to us the sum of five mega groats as payment for our research and time. **>> PROMOTIONS NEWS Aackverdi was promoted to Explorer about 5 minutes to late to be mentioned in last week's news. Bad timing, old boy! Baysidian also made Explorer this week. The only other promotion we know about is Marlowe, who became a Captain. Congratulations. **>>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