**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 92.11.08 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> RUNNING THE BORDER Smuggling was put into the game last Monday, allowing players to crash through the borders, import contraband goods, and avoid paying customs duties. As always happens when a major new feature is implemented, a few things needed to be changed to ensure that everything ran smoothly In particular, the choices you get if caught smuggling had to be tweaked a little. Bluffing your way out of trouble was far too easy, and has now been made a little harder. Fighting has also been made more difficult - previously players were succeeding at blowing up the customs ships even if they didn't have any weapons. By contrast, running was far too difficult, and since failure results in the loss of your ship, most people quickly gave this up as a bad loss. It has been made easier, but it's still a gamble. If you are caught smuggling, your smuggling ability will be reduced by one third (previously one half). If you then succeed at running, fighting, bribing or bluffing, your smuggling ability will go back up by one. After a few hours, most people were finding it almost laughably easy to smuggle; two bugs were sending their smuggling abilities sky high! Smuggling abilities were supposed to have an upper limit of 100, but this wasn't working, and people were able to smuggle between planets in the same duchy with a 100% success rate, so some smuggling abilities ended up at nearly a thousand! Bella fixed both of these problems, and zeroed everyone's abilities on Friday. Bella is going to let smuggling run for another few days, while she collects some statistics. Then she will see what further changes have to be made. Meanwhile, there's a discussion in the Explorer's Category of the MPGames BBS about the way smuggling works (Cat 43, Top 11), so planet owners should contribute to that. Poor People can make comments about smuggling in Cat 14, Top 11. **>> WHERE DID SMUGGLING GO? A lot of people wondered why smuggling suddenly disappeared from the game several hours after it had been put in, so we'll explain why. Whenever Bella puts a major new feature into the game, she sets things up so that if the game is reset for any reason, the old version will be fired up - so if anything goes drastically wrong with the new version, a simple reset will temporarily cure the problem. If the game crashes because of problems in the new version, the old version will automatically come back. On Monday night, the GEnie Systems people took the game down for some reason (we don't know why - they may have needed to do maintenance) and when they fired it back up, of course, the old version was put in. Just thought you'd like to know why! **>> MORE INFORMATION ABOUT SMUGGLING How easy or difficult you find it to smuggle is determined by several things. There's an element of luck, and the smaller your ship the easier you will find it, but the largest factor is the efficiency of the customs. This is set up by the Duke. Each planet within a duchy has its own customs force, the size of which is determined by the amount of money the Duke spends on it. The efficiency of the customs decays with time, so a Duke needs to constantly pump more money into the force. Don't assume, therefore, that if one planet has a strong customs force, you won't be able to smuggle into the duchy. There may be a weak point that the Duke has left unprotected. Obviously, Dukes will endeavour to keep this kind of "back door" top secret! If smuggling into a duchy seems impossible, wait a while and try again - you may have more luck once the customs forces have decayed a little. **>> COMING SOON... Diesel hasn't been happy since Mario and his cronies removed her roulette wheel and set it up in the Casino on the moon. The loss of this source of income has dented her profits considerably, even if it has made it easier to hold a conversation in the bar! She's decided to try another form of gambling. She's going to allow players to gamble with each other by playing Blackjack! She's still working out exactly how the game will work, and we'll bring you the details soon. **>> THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO PLANETARY MANAGEMENT New planet owners have been moaning for a long time about the lack of instructions - they have been left more or less in the dark about how to run their planets! Hazed has always made the excuse that since she didn't have a planet any more, she couldn't write the instructions. The truth is that she was just too damn lazy to find out how planets worked. Our Illustrious Leader was just as bad; having written the code that makes planets run as they do, she claimed to have forgotten how it all worked! At last, Hazed has finally got off her butt and put some instructions together. She's uploaded a draft in Cat 43, Top 15 of the BBS, and would like planet owners to read it and make comments. In particular, new planet owners should tell her if there's anything they don't understand in the instructions. As soon as she's received enough comments, Hazed will amend her instructions and upload a final version. **>> SNOWBALL FIGHT! As part of the GEnie Christmas celebrations, Santa's Workshop will be held on Saturday December 5 from 7pm to 9pm eastern. Hazed has rashly volunteered her services to run a snowball fight!! She's uploaded a message in the BBS about what she intends to do, so please read it, contribute your ideas, and volunteer to help out. **>> ALAS POOR... There's obviously something in the air, because yet another player has died dead-dead! This time we've lost Dyars, who was engaged to be married to Seramarias. The circumstances of his death remain mysterious. It's rumoured that Sera was having an affair with Sneezy, and Dyars found out about it. We've heard two versions of the story: either he killed himself in a fit of jealous desparation, or she killed him for his insurance money! The grieving widow didn't take long to get over it - she's now hitched up with a new player, Patch (who does bear an uncanny resemblance to the deceased) and the couple are talking marriage. **>> IT'S A HUMANOID! We've just had to scrap another newsdroid. It was on special assignment in the hospital, awaiting the arrival of Trista's baby, but turned out to be squeamish. If it wasn't a machine, it would have fainted, but being mechanical it just turned itself off and we haven't been able to get it going again! So we missed the chance to bring you a blow-by-blow account of the birth. All we can say is that the father, Mirth was present, and Trista gave birth to a humanoid girl weighing 6lb 5oz. They have named the baby Sospira. Congratulations to the new parents! **>> ADVANCE WARNING... Next week's news will probably be very short and skimpy, because Hazed will be in the process of packing up her belongings to move house. **>> SPYNET REVIEW It's been a bumper week for promotions: 23 were recorded on the SpyNet Review. The number of new Captains reflects the new blood entering Fed. Sylos, Patch, Tyiez, Timmay, Icarus, Scotty, Frankjoe, Arjuna, Bubba, Chuma and Hawkman all paid off their ship loans. Welcome, all of you! There were five new adventurers: Patch, Timmay, Filzarph, Hawkman and Buck. Nigellian made it to Trader. Two new GMs, both of whom quickly advanced to explorer: Dennisthemenace and Sneezy. Marcia also became an explorer. We look forward to visiting their new planets. Congratulations to all of you! As well as Dyars going dead-dead (see story above), we've also lost Bushmill and Conor. There's been a little movement in the make-up of the two duchies. Loki and Ocean have both joined Inversity, further increasing Oddball's power base. But Scratchwood has lost Brewski and Hell, leaving Hazed with just four planets to oppress. Both these worlds have gone indepedent, rather than join their enemy Oddball. Finally, Niun has played 1000 games! **>>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