**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 92.06.28 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> KERASH!!! If any of you have been spending the last few days with your head (or equivalent) in a bucket, you may have missed the fact that there were big problems with the game. On Thursday, Fed was unavailable all night, leading to massive reports of withdrawal symptoms among addicted players. In the course of trying to rescue the game, a lot of the data files got severely mangled. When the game came back on Friday, we were told that all the files had been reverted to Saturday's version - a loss of four days play. As it turned out, things were not quite as grim as they first appeared. The main persona file survived intact, so nobody should have lost any groats, trader points, or promotions. Planets were badly affected. Planetary treasuries, time accumulations and exchange data were all reverted. Even worse, if new versions of planets went into the game during the missing four days, they reverted too! However, workbench files were not affected, so nothing has been lost permanently. If you used the command at any time during the missing four days, you'll have to do it again because your planet will have reappeared - and, conversely, if your planet was offline before Saturday, and came back during the lost days, it will have gone off again! You'll need to bring it back by typing , it will then be loaded in at the next daily housekeeping run. Companies seem to have survived unscathed, but factories haven't. Existing factories have reverted back to Saturday's version. But a very peculiar side effect has manifested itself for people who bought new factories during the lost days... **>> STAND BY FOR A TECHNICAL EXPLANATION! When you buy a factory, the details are added to the factory file, which is updated every time the factory does anything. A pointer is added to your record in the persona file, pointing to the relevant entry in the factory file, which is identified by the factory number. The persona file came through unscathed, so the pointers are all still there, happily pointing to entries in the factory file. But because the factory file has reverted, the entries the pointers refer to have gone, so you wouldn't have been able to access your factories. That is, until other players started buying factories... which were added to the end of the factory file, using the next factory number. At which point, your pointers have something to point to again, but not to your factory! This unfortunate state of affairs has resulted in a string of factories with two owners, bickering about who should be running it and, more importantly, who gets the money! **>> SOLUTIONS AND CLAIMS Players who bought factories during the lost days (ie between Saturday morning and Thursday morning) must do the following. First, make a note of your company's balance. Sell all the factories, and liquidate the company. Then buy a new company and replace all the factories, and put in a claim for the money lost. It's not clear at the moment who will get the money if you sell a factory - the original owner, or the new owner, so claim for the sale money if it doesn't end up in your account. Planet owners who have had old versions of their planets reappear should ask Bella to move the current workbench files across, as usual. Don't forget to include your logon ID (not your password!) All claims for lost groats should be sent to Hazed, using the "Feedback to Federation" option on the main Fed page. The claims will be adjudicated by the Conclave, and once passed the money will be added back by Bella, probably some time next week. Please get your claims in fast so we can get back to (ab)normal in Fed. Don't forget to include your persona name. **>> TRYING IT ON, PART I A word of warning: don't file erroneous claims! The Conclave have a pretty good idea of who has what and how much in the game, so they will be able to spot attempted fraud - that's why Bella always asked them to oversee claims due to crashes. Already one player (who shall remain nameless to spare his blushes) has been spotted plotting to defraud the Galactic Administration. Oddball spied on the Squire and saw him talking about putting in a huge claim when, in fact, he had ended up with more money than he started with! We've now been warned, and will be treating claims received by the player with a large pinch of sodium chloride! **>> TRYING IT ON, PART II We've received one very entertaining claim from Bochiman. When his planet, Hell, first went into the game he nearly went bankrupt overnight because he had set the rewards for his puzzles and mobiles at ridiculously high levels. Several high level players found they could make around 7 meg in 5 minutes, which has got to be easier than boring old trading. Bochiman instantly saw this as a conspiracy on the part of other players to deliberately drive his planetary economy into the red, and he took steps to fix the problem. A new version of his planet, with much reduced rewards, went in during the lost days. So of course, it reverted to the old version when the game came back on Friday, and players with an eye to making a fast buck piled back in to take advantage of the Hell money machine. Bochiman now expects the Galactic Administration to make up the enormous losses his treasury is making, on the grounds that without the crash they would not be happening. We will make no attempt to second-guess Bella or the Conclave. We will just point out that it is made very clear in the instructions that rewards come out of planet treasuries, so it was a little silly of Bochiman to fix the rewards so high in the first place - and he should have taken the planet offline as soon as he realised the old version had come back on Friday! On a general note, Bella was unable to put the most up-to-date version of his planet back into the game because there is a GEnie policy which states that no changes should be made over the weekend. Fed abides by this rule, not only because "GEnie Said So" but because it is a very good idea. Since the problems didn't become apparent until after the close of business hours on Friday, there was no opportunity for fixes. **>> OTHER NEWS... Actually, from a journalistic point of view it's just as well the crash happened, because otherwise we'd have sod all to write about. Fed has been quiet lately, and the newsdroids have found it increasingly difficult to garner gossip and scandal for printing. Our anonymous correspondents have all dropped off the face of the earth (or the planet of their choice) and haven't submitted anything usable in weeks. We'd like to take the opportunity to remind you that we do pay good groats for information that we can use in the news. Full-blown stories, that don't have to be rewritten by our talentless team of editors, can net you even higher rewards (let's face it, our newdroids are bone idle!) Snippets can be sent to Hazed using the command - but if your information is more than a line or two long, please use GEnie mail instead. The "Feedback to Federation" option on the main Fed menu will go straight into Hazed's in-tray. **>> DEATH IS IN THE AIR It may be the aftermath of last Sunday's fighting school, but four players went dead-dead last week. CQ snuffed it accidentally for the second time (must buy that boy some caffeine tablets) but is already powering back up the ranks. Myriddion had an extended bout fighting against Pegasus and Monty, and died. He was then set upon by both of them on the way to the Insurance Office and dead- deaded. He's on his way back up, too. Treato and Talas also died dead-dead, according to the SpyNet Review, but we don't know the cause of their tragic demises, or if they will return. Any information will be gratefully received. Bit of a shame the persona file -didn't- revert, really... **>> FOMALHAUT IS A NASTY PERSON! We said we'd make up something very unpleasant about Fomalhaut, in revenge for his behaviour towards the demi-goddess Hazed, but we just can't be bothered. **>> NAME THAT PLANET Week 3 of the contest to name Cryptosporidium's non-existent planet has thrown up some rather interesting ideas. First up is Fomalhaut, who has suggested Trychonosium. This doesn't appear in our dictionary, so we have no idea whether it would be appropriate or not. Perhaps he meant Trypanosome, which the dictionary tells us is a flagellate protozoon parasitic in the blood of vertebrates. Since Cryptosporidium is Fed's biggest parasite, that -would- be appropriate! Next up is Fomalhaut again, who thinks it should be called Eiter, which he tells us means pus. Not in our dictionary, it doesn't! Finally, Fomalhaut, yet again, says how about Clymidia. How about it, indeed, we answer, since again it doesn't exist according to the dictionary. Obviously he uses a different dictionary from the rest of the world, or he has problems spelling! **>> I NEED A MAN Illyra was heard broadcasting over the comm unit that she wants the best hunk in Federation. When questioned by our newsdroid, she said she wanted it for purely scientific reasons. We believe her, don't we boys and girls? **>> FOMALHAUT AGAIN He's appearing in this news rather a lot, isn't he? We received a rather plaintive little cry from him, asking if we could help with fighting macros. Seems he had tried to go up against Oddball and come off rather badly. We would venture to suggest that not even the best macros in the world would help a Poor Person win against Oddball! **>>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