**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 92.05.24 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> IT'S HOLIDAY TIME! In case any of you didn't know, tomorrow (Monday May 25th) is a GEnie holiday. This means you can play Fed all day at the usual non-prime-time charge. **>> PROPERTY SLUMP In a shock move, responding to the recent slump in demand for property, the Galactic Administration has announced that from tomorrow (Monday May 25th) the price of factories will fall drastically. Currently priced at 5 meg multiplied by the planet level, the new price for both buying and selling will be a mere 2 meg times the planet level. This follows discussion in the BBS about the difficulty of attracting factories to higher level planets, particularly leisure worlds. **>> WHO WILL BE THE FIRST DUKE? The race is on to see who will be the first Duke. The jump from Baron to Duke will move players into a new sphere of operations - the senatorial levels - so it is only right that they should have to work very, very hard for this promotion. There is a mammoth puzzle to be solved, with a great deal of preparation. Obviously, we cannot give any details of the puzzle because it would spoil the fun, but Our Illustrious Leader has assured us that it is far, far more devious than the piffling JP puzzle or the meagre GM puzzle! There are three Barons ready to start the preparations - Oddball, Russ and Piemur. We will keep you posted about their progress, as much as we can without giving away too many clues. **>> LEARN HOW TO DRINK If you are reading this hot off the presses (or keyboard or whatever) you'll still be in time to attend today's RTC - which apparently aims to teach you how to drink, eat pizza and grope each other! Why this needs to be taught we don't know... The RTC is at 3.00 eastern time today (Sunday). The next RTC will be the long-awaited Fighting School! Details in next week's news. **>> SPEAKING OF DRINKING... Darknight says it is possible to have a drink on every planet in under 3 minutes. Can anyone beat that record? **>> NEW FILES IN THE BBS Bella has uploaded a new file listing all the current Fed personas, with their shipnames, ranks, company names and planet names. It is file 1652. In the Explorer's library, Krell has uploaded a capture of the full version of her smelly planet, Gotham, with annotations which will be of particular interest to current planet builders. That's file 1657. File 1658 is a listing from Occy of the full version of Zippy. He says in the description of the file "You might learn something interesting". We make no comment whatsoever! **>> HE'S INNOCENT! Dyars is still denying whatever it was we claimed he had done in our news two week's ago. He says he was framed! Sure, that's what they all say. **>> MIAOW! Remember a newbod called Kittycat, who thought someone was trying to tweak her nipple when she logged on in the midst of a steamy passionate love scene? The poor dear had another shock recently - someone told her to give the LV to Diesel, and she thought she was being raped! When she discovered she'd been charged a megagroat for the privilege, she was very surprised. **>> SEX, LIES AND SPYBEAMS There's been so much hanky-panky going on in Fed Data Space recently that our newsdroids have been quite unable to keep up with who does what to who, and how much they charge for it. Players have certainly discovered the value of spybeams - it's never a dull moment as sex rears its ugly head all over the place. In fact, Darknight has been having such fun tuning into the antics of the lower orders that he wishes he could have -two- spybeams, to ensure he doesn't miss a single grope! Strangely enough, the man whose name has been featured most often in the snippets our newsdroids have managed to glean is the newly-wedded Mirth! Obviously not one to let his marriage vows cramp his style, Mirth has apparently been showering young nubile lovelies with groats in exchange for sex. Who are the young nubile lovelies? Well it would be too cruel to name them, so we will just point out that Trista has been walking around with a mood reading "Happy to be with Mirth" and leave it at that. Bochiman asked us not to mention the fact that he is jealous of Mirth's luck with women. So we won't. There was a lot of confusion when Zargleswart and Delta started chatting each other up. Things were getting very steamy, clothes had been shed... and they suddenly realised they were both the same sex! How had they not noticed before, we ask? Maybe sex really does make you go blind! We don't know if they carried on regardless... Rezrov has apparently admitted he goes to bed with his computer. Well it makes a good hot-water-bottle, we suppose! **>> THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON Just who are these Dark Side people? Following our brief mention of them in last week's news bulletin, we have been receiving some very strange letters. One was a press release, stating that the Dark Side are "a like-minded people out to make the universe a better place to live" - just who it will be better for they don't say. But we've also been send a sackfull of death threats, threatening death if we print anything else about the Dark Side! Always ready to rise to a challenge, we have despatched a newsdroid to find out about this mysterious organisation - we expect a report for next week's news. **>> PROMOTIONS NEWS Don't forget to send details of your promotion to Hazed, and you will be mentioned in the weekly Fed News. This week's rising stars are: Delta, Trista and Kittycat who all became Traders. Well done! Trista then went on to make Merchant - with lots of help from Mirth! Rezrov plans to be a Baron tomorrow, and his planet will promote to a leisure world. **>>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 or Bella in the game * leave a message in the game log * a message to Hazed or Bella * 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. (New edition will be available shortly!) 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 Krell (Mail ID: K.HILLYER). There are also private categories for Explorers, run by Krell, and for the Conclave run by Oddball (Mail ID: D.STALZLE). The MPGames RT also has a Federation library in the files area, Library 5. Library 18 holds the Federation News Archives. **>> BULLETIN ENDS