**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.04.18 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> COMING SOON, TO A GAME NEAR YOU... Bella's been doing another of her periodic overhauls of the underlying game code. As a result of her tidying-up exercise, she will be making a number of minor changes to the game sometime during the week. When you display the contents of your warehouse or ship's hold, the display will show you what you paid for the goods; each cargo will have a price per ton, so you will be able to see easily how much you need to sell it for to make a profit. Factory numbers will no longer be in the thousands: instead each player will have a separate set of numbers, and when you sell a factory and buy a new one, it'll get the same number as the old one. Probably a good thing, otherwise the numbers would eventually be in the millions! Dukes and Senators enhancing their naval bases will be delighted to know that partially built projects will be carried over after reset. You will have to re-start the build, as you do building the base itself, but you won't lose projects that are not completed. Expect these changes, and possibly some others, during the week. **>> PLANETS AND DUCHIES This section of the news is usually bunged at the end, after all the interesting stuff, but this week there's been a lot going on, so we've brought it forward. Last week, we reported the panic in the Duchy of Zippy, as all Occy's serfs wondered what would happen to them when he was made a Senator. They didn't have long to ponder; it happened! Khan solved the Duke puzzle and became a Duke, at which point the Duke who had bid the most was promoted to Senator. That was Occy. All his planets were converted to Indpendent status and left to fend for themselves. And there they have stayed! Not one of them has joined up with another duchy. Does this mean they prefer to stay single? Can they not find a Duke with which they will feel at home? Do none of the other Dukes want to have anything to do with them? Well, we're newsdroids and our job is wild speculation, so we think that they were so traumatised by being thrust out into the cold universe that they are unable to function at all! We suggest someone sets up a charity for the relief of distressed planet-owners, to take care of the poor lost souls. Bella had intended for quite a while, although she'd not made the news public, that when the first player made Senator she would reduce the number of Duke slots so that two players would go up together - there being not much point having just one Senator (and we all know Hazed doesn't count). She did this, and Elex was promoted too. So the current state of play looks like this: there are 17 Independent worlds. Rezrov's Megalusa has 1 planet, Krell's Gotham has 1, and Oddball's Inversity has 1. Khan's new Duchy of Neutarus has no planets yet, and neither does Freya's Vitro. However, we said last week that due to her illicit affair with Fed's Numero Uno in the crime syndicate based on the moon, she wouldn't have to earn any groats. How wrong we were! With an eye out for the main chance, the Godfather has decided to use her duchy to launder money, so she's back in business. She is now recruiting planets to join her duchy. Maybe by next week some of the 17 Independent worlds will have decided who they want to be allied with. On the other hand, things could change again, because Piemur is hoping to solve the devilish Duke puzzle this week, in which case we will have another Senator. There's no way of knowing who has bid the most, so we can't even speculate about who that will be. Watch this space! **>> GROSS INDECENCY Last week saw two new planets linked into the game. The first was Sapien, owned by Glurg. All we can say is that those with delicate sensibilities should on no account visit it. We had to hospitalise three droids after they became physically ill at the things they saw (and smelt!) on the planet. We will not give a description of the planet for fear of arousing similar feelings of disgust in our readers. We will say that visitors to Sapien should, on no account, believe anything Squeege says. The first tourists found that Squeege's advice lead to certain death! Indeed, so high was the death count that Glurg made modifications to the planet to reduce it's deadliness: it's now quite safe to explore. In a physical sense, that is... A rough count up of the deaths on the first night show that Hazed paved the way by dying three times; Glurg himself died twice (on his own planet?); Renard snuffed it three times; and Riccardo, Vaxhacker and Krell died once each. The absolute record, though, goes to Maxwell. He died six times on Sapien: and the last one was fatal! We questioned Glurg about this, and he told us what happened. Maxwell was on Sapien, and he tightbeamed Glurg asking him how to get off the planet. Glurg told him, 'Well you could suicide twice,' following this up with a further message telling Maxwell to stay put and Glurg would lead him out. But Glurg's second message was too late: Maxwell had typed suicide twice as instructed. Maxwell was a JP. He's now a Captain. We've said before there are no prizes for stupidity in Fed. **>> WARZONE The other new planet is owned by Akiko. Mirai is a warzone - there is no other way to describe it! The planet is a giant battlefield, most of it completely destroyed by the constant warfare. We don't know who is fighting whom, or why. All the facilities are geared up towards supporting the war effort: the hospital is full of the wounded, so tourists wanting to be cloned are not given the four-star treatment; the bars are full of off-duty soldiers; the clothes shop has a definite bias towards khaki. Mirai is an interesting planet, worth spending some time exploring. **>> A REMINDER... Explorers who want their newly-built planets linked into the game MUST put their workbench files through the checker. Even if you have only changed 1 little thing since the last time you checked the planet, check it again. Before linking the planet to the game, Bella herself runs your files through the checker, and if she finds anything wrong it can delay the planet for several days! **>> VERSION NOTES Hazed has updated the Version Notes file to take in all the changes to the game in the last few months. This file, together with the existing downloadable manual, tell you everything you need to know. **>> SOME BAD NEWS Those who are planning to go to the second Federation UnConvention in Los Angeles in May will be horrified to learn that Cryptosporidium might attend! Hazed has tried to dissaude it, has told it the wrong dates, and the wrong venue, but somehow it has found out the truth and is now thinking about inflicting itself on you all. We're so very sorry, and we hope its presence will not hamper your enjoyment too much. **>> GOSSIP AND SCANDAL We get the impression that only four people in Fed are doing anything worth gossiping about. Either that, or they are the only exhibitionists who do things where they can be seen! It certainly seems that our news reports lately mention their names and no other. Noe and Tellurian seem to have struck up a definite understanding. They've been steaming up the windows in Samantha's quite a lot! Jade and Glurg's strange relationship continues to falter. Although earlier in the week they seemed to have made things up, and were seen disappearing into spybeam-proof bars in search of a little privacy, Jade still seems intent on finding a "real" man (as opposed to a plastic blow-up one, maybe?) and has been spending quite a lot of time with Maxwell! Whether this is before or after his unfortunate reduction in status, we don't know. **>> SPYNET REVIEW Apologies if we have missed anyone out of the SpyNet Review; our promotion-monitor-droid had a glitch last night and threw away about 24 hours of data. Memory tells us that the missing information included Nightingale and Cicero being promoted, but we don't remember to what rank! The information we do have for the week shows that the new Captains were Gooseman, Ralph and Maxwell (back from the dead). Gooseman, Thalken and Ni were promoted to Adventurer or Adventureuse. Riccardo made it up to Merchant. He's taking his time climbing back to his previous exalted position as one of the filthy-rich planet-owning types! Glurg and Akiko both became Squires when their new planets were linked into the game. Khan made it to Duke, and as a consequence there are two new Senators: Occy and Elex. Three people went dead-dead: Lenoir and Renard we know nothing about, but both look like suicide; Maxwell's demise is reported earlier in this bulletin, which you should know unless you've been reading it backwards. **>> BULLETIN ENDS