**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.02.28 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> NEW THIS WEEK Bella has put a few new bits into the game this week. The fine for voiding jobs increases with your rank, with a sharp jump for the ranks over Trader. This is to prevent planet owners from taking the lazy way out when moving goods to and from their planets - accepting a job, then immediately voiding it and letting Transportation Central deliver the goods. That's a no-no! The planet display now shows if a naval base is present on the planet. Barons who are building and using facilities as part of the devilish Duke puzzle can now build up to three different facilities at one time. shows you the progress of the different contracts. The building will not start after a reset until you log onto the game - in the same way that factories don't wake up till you enter Fed. Also, Barons now use the command to repair broken facilities, instead of the repair command. **>> COMING SOON... Some time over the next week, Dukes should be able to start building naval bases. Information about the construction requirements can be gained with a new command: . This command can also be used by Barons to remind themselves of the requirements, although it won't give as much detail as that gained from the DNI computer. Also coming soon: Bella is testing a new version of FedTerm that includes, among other new features, Z-MODEM downloads! And the Amiga terminal program is also expected in the next two weeks. **>> THIS WEEK'S EPISODE OF THE SOAP-OPERA We're considering renaming the "gossip and scandal" section of the news "The Moon Also Sets" or some other soapy name. Following their pretend marriage, that turned into a real marriage, Jade and Destiny are now divorced. Just like that! Unless it's only a pretend divorce, and the divorce will be annulled after a month... whatever, it's made our heads spin! Speculation is still rife about the father(s) of Marcia's imminent twins. She conceived during the last free weekend, and although she is sure the father of one of the twins is her hubby Altasren, the pointy-eared sex-machine, she doesn't know who the other twin springs from. She says it could be anyone who she was intimate with during the festivities of the free weekend. We can't actually see how that narrows it down at all, but she claims it means the father of Twin Two could be one of three: Topper, Plantking or Sharp. She's waiting for her doctor to do whatever it is doctors do and confirm the parentage of the foetus. We just wonder why it matters so much - she obviously didn't care at the time who impregnated her or she would have used contraception! **>> PLANETS AND DUCHIES Elex is now Fed's fifth Duke (not counting Hazed, who isn't a real Duchesse). Zodiac has left Inversity to join the new Duke in town. Other changes to the status of the duchies are: Baysidian has returned to the game after a long absence so his planet has popped in again as an Independent world. Ocean has also become Independent, obviously dissatisfied with the way Rezrov has been running Megalusa (or not running it!). Muse has finally disappeared, following Mirth's death a few weeks back. Arbua is still in, despite Total's recent death, but it may not last long. So the scores this week are as follows: Occy (Zippy) 12 planets Krell (Gotham) 4 planets Oddball (Inversity) 2 planets Rezrov (Megalusa) 1 planet Elex (Scadia) 1 planet Hazed (Scratchwood) 1 planet Independent 2 planets **>> SPYNET REVIEW A hugely enormous apology to Elex, who was promoted to Duke last week but didn't get mentioned in the news. The newsdroids aren't saying which one of them was responsible for this oversight, and tempting though it is to take them all out the back and scramble their circuits with a large magnet, we do need to have some left to actually write this week's news! Congratulations to everyone who was promoted this week. The new Captains are Dok, Zuflex, Kray, Davion and Ariadne. Finiusfurbag became an Adventurer. Zhasaar, Sheba and Sparky were all promoted to Trader. There were two new Merchants, Wolfman and Hitme. They both bought themselves companies: Pizza, and Bull's Eye Special, respectively. Sad news. Total went dead-dead during the week. We don't know if it was deliberate suicide, or an accident. **>>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 FedTerm, the multimedia front-end program for the game, can be downloaded from the Federation library (option 6 on 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