**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 92.10.04 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> IMPORTANT WARNING If you drop the line while you are in the process of logging into or out of Fed, you run the risk of locking yourself out of the game until the next reset. Bella is trying to fix this problem, but until she does please exit the game properly back to GEnie. If you must drop the carrier before you arrive back with GEnie, do it from the Fed shell menu (the one that gives you the option to Play, Read or Quit) or from in the game itself. **>> GOING DUTCH! Have you looked at your score display in the last few days? If you have, you'll have noticed a new line: Smuggling ability: 0 This is the first evidence of a major new part of the game, upon which Bella is currently working. She hopes to have it finished in a few weeks, but small chunks will be going in every few days. It's all to do with the way Dukes will form their own Duchies for trading purposes. When a player becomes a Duke (or Duchesse) they lose their planet when their sun goes nova. Tragic! But they become the owner and ruler of a Duchy with the same name. Thus Oddball now rules the Duchy of Inversity, and Hazed has the Duchy of Scratchwood. Dukes will recruit planet-owners to join their Duchies. Planets start out independent, and this is shown on the SpyNet Report for the planet: >display mars Report for Mars Development level: Technological Population level: 2000 Turnover tax base rate: 10 Independent planet Factories currently operating: None. Planet owners can form an Alliance with a duchy using the command . You can actually type anything you like for "duchyname", and it will have no effect except for removing the Independent label from your planet display. However, you can never go back to being independent once you a Duchy! Dukes can find out information about their Duchy, including who has formed an Alliance with them, by typing . At least, they could, if Our Illustrious Leader hadn't been convinced that Duchy had a "T" in it! At the moment, Oddball will have to type but that will be fixed tomorrow. (H-by-A announce the creation of a special fund to buy Bella a dictionary. Please give generously.) Another problem that will be fixed tomorrow is that the "duchyname" part of the command is, at the moment, case sensitive. If you don't put an initial capital on Inversity or Scratchwood, it won't register, so anyone who joined one or other of the two available Duchies may have to join again tomorrow to make it stick. **>> SMUGGLERS AHOY! Once all the code is in place, trading within a Duchy will be easier than taking goods to another Duchy. Dukes will set a customs rate which will be payable on any goods carried when you jump into a Duchy. But you can try to get out of having to pay the duty, by smuggling the goods in. When you jump to another Duchy, you can either use the command, as usual, and you will pay the duty on the way in. Alternatively, you can use the command, which jumps you to your destination trying to avoid the customs post. This is where your smuggling ability comes in. The higher your smuggling ability, the more likely you are to succeed at smuggling. Your chances of success also depend on how many groats the Duke has spent on the border controls. Everyone starts with a smuggling ability of zero. If you are successful at smuggling, your ability will go up by 1. (Bella may set an upper limit on smuggling ability, she hasn't decided yet.) If you get caught smuggling, you have another choice: you can have the goods you were trying to smuggle confiscated, or you can run away. If you run, you may get away with it - or you might still get caught - and either way, your ship might take damage. When you are caught, your smuggling ability is halved, as the customs officers put your details in their files, making it that much harder for you to get away with it next time. This will certainly spice up trading! **>> SUGGESTIONS FROM OVERSEAS Fed has now been running in France for a couple of weeks, and Sam, the man you translated the game's data in French and who babysits it, has been making sure Bella knows about any oddities in the translation and problems that crop up. He's also had a few ideas for changes to the game. One that particularly tickled Bella and Hazed was a change to the command. He wanted the "SPACESHIP" to be replaced by the name of the ship you wanted to paint - thus letting you paint other people's ships! Both Bella and Hazed like this idea very much. They had visions of Fedders creeping round at the dead of night with a paintpot, daubing their rivals vessels with lewd graffiti. However, they're not sure whether it would be a good idea to implement it, so we'd like to know what you think. Upload your comments into the "suggestions" topic in the Fed BBS. **>> THERE'S A SPACESHIP IN THE KITCHEN! Freya's planet, Vitro, went mini this week when she promoted to Thane, and some visitors - but not all - found themselves landing their ships in the kitchen of the planet! Very strange. We asked Bella for an explanation, and this is what she said (we've corrected her appalling spelling, of course!): I'm sorry, I should have warned you, but it is a while since this cropped up and I forgot. What has happened is that the original Vitro had its landing pad at location 4, the new one is at 2. So anyone who logged off on the landing pad of the old Vitro will have their ships in the wrong place. The solution is to sell the ship and buy a new one. The last planet to have this problem was, I think, Haven! When the old landing pad is greater than location 6 (the usual case) it isn't a problem, because the game spots that your ship is in an invalid locaton and it moves you over to earth when you log on. So now you know! **>> WHO HAVE YOU BEEN KISSING? It's been a week for minor problems, because something else has gone wrong! When you kiss anyone your mood vanishes completely. Bella promises that this shall be fixed in the next day or two. Meanwhile, anyone who has a mood is probably an unsociable person who never kisses anyone! Another very strange problem happened last night... part of someone's conversation got spliced into the display, and showed up everytime someone used that command. The conversation seemed to involve a rather steamy sex scene, so we'll leave the person involved anonymous - we just wish we'd seen more of it! **>> DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES Saturday October 31 is Halloween, the night when witches fly around on their broomsticks, ghosts stalk the streets, and repulsive children threaten violence if you don't give them candy. Not even Fed Data Space is immune from the effects of this sinister night. Krell is writing a special Halloween planet that will be in the game for that one, dark night only. Be there... or beware... **>> HAZED GIVES BRAWN HEAD FOR GROATS! An unfortunate accident took place in Chez Diesel recently, and Brawn's head fell off and rolled away into the corner. Unable to see, Brawn offered a reward to anyone who would find and reattach the missing body part. Hazed found the head, dusted it off, and set it back on Brawn's shoulders (she got it the wrong way round first time). Overjoyed to be whole again, he gave Hazed several megagroats. This actually happened. Yes, it's boring, but who could pass up the excuse to use a great headline like that? **>> NAGGING POOR PEOPLE The puzzles in Fed are there for a challenge, to add excitement, to make promotions a real achievement. Unfortunately some players do not seem to enjoy the challenge of solving the puzzles on their own. They would rather beg for hints from the higher ranks. Although hardly anyone would give them the complete solutions, many players will give small clues when asked. Unfortunately, there are now enough people who have solved the puzzles that lazy players can probably get a small hint from each of them, and put them together to give a pretty complete answer, thus saving them from doing any work. We've been getting a lot of reports recently from Rich People about how annoyed they are with people begging for hints. We're not going to mention any names, but the worst offenders probably realise we're talking about them. Rich People have told us that they will start shooting persistent whiners. On a similar note, one Rich Person asked us to pass on this message: If Bart begs for money any more, I will tie him down in an Exchange until he realises what it's there for! You have been warned! **>> YET ANOTHER FEUD Otoole and Oddball have been feuding on and off for months, but it's recently blown up again in a big way. They fight every time they are both in Fed Data Space at the same time, and the mini version of Brewski contains insults to Oddball in the description of every location. Now Otoole claims that Oddball and his friends (Otoole doesn't specify which friends) are trying to bankrupt Brewski by dumping surplus stock there. "Tell them to stay off Brewski" he said. Well the simple answer to this is for Otoole to change his stockpile settings so no-one can sell him goods he doesn't need. Otoole is also filling the bar noticeboard with messages urging people not to join the Duchy of Inversity. We doubt this will have much effect! **>> SPYNET REVIEW Here are the notable events that have happened in Fed over the last week. New Captains are Starblazer, Aragorn, Trane, Bull, Bro and Rask. Welcome to the game, all of you. Those promoted to Adventurer are Destoyson, Katlinn, Trane, Splooge and Topper. Katlinn is the only new Trader this week, and Zagmar the only Merchant. Zagmar then went on to buy a company - Daleks, Inc. Bart has made it to JourneyPerson. Condor solved the fiendish GM puzzle and is now a Guild Master. He sent us the following message: Condor, the illustrious, debonaire, suave, sophisticated, and egomaniacal has solved the Nearly Impossible to Ever In Your Whole Life Hope to Defeat Guild Master puzzle, all by his superintelligent, clever, witty, and otherwise extraordinary self!! (Okay... so Oddball helped a little... okay, not just a little... okay, a lot... does it really matter?) Anyway, Condor (me) has begun his climb to new heights out of the stagnation of JourneryPersonHood... Thank you! Khan also made GM. Let's hope at least one of them stays at this rank for a while - normally people go straight on to Explorer, leaving slot 8 blank on the list. Finally, both Freya and Jim have promoted their planets to mining, and become Thanes. When planets join a Duchy, it appears in the Review. We'll be reporting the changing Alliances when things have settled down a bit. This week everyone has been experimenting with the command, making up silly names for Duchies they can join. The only planets who actually joined Inversity are Maya, Gotham and Karalon. Vitro signed up with Scratchwood. On the silly side, Jinx joined up with Pugwash, Zippy joined up with Hazed, and Links joined the. Yes, the Duchy must only be one word! **>>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 GEnie 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 categories 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