**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.07.25 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Altasren plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> SMUGGLERS' AHOY! Early next week, Bella will put in the new version of the game that enhances smuggling enormously. The new smuggling will work like this: If you are caught smuggling, there are only a few commands the game will recognise: if you type anything else, it'll complain and wait for a command it will accept. Some of the commands are normal Fed commands, such as , , , , AND . The other commands are smuggling commands. The new command is , which dumps you in Arena Space with the might of the customs force against you. If you try to move, jump, or fire a weapon, the game assumes you are trying to escape. You can , in which case you pay twice the duty on the goods in your hold, and contraband is confiscated. You can try to your way out of trouble. Success depends on the size of your reward, your intelligence, the amount the Duke has spent on personnel and (more importantly) intelligence. If you successfully bribe an officer, you continue into the duchy to sell your illicit goods; if you fail, you are thrown into the jail on Earth and all your goods are confiscated. You can attempt to bribe the customs officers, with . Success depends on a number of factors: how much you offer the officers, how much duty is payable, whether you are carrying contraband, how much the Duke has spent on intelligence and (more importantly) personnel. If you succeed at bribing, you proceed into the duchy with your goods intact; if you fail, you go directly to jail (do not pass go, do not collect 200 groats) and you lose all your goods. If you at this point, the game assumes you have surrendered. The new option, which replaces the old running and fighting, lets you try to . This places you in Arena Space with a customs cutter on your tail (or equivalent). You will be dumped at a random location, so better make sure you start mapping now. Once in Arena Space, you are again limited in the actions you can take. As before, you can use , , , and so on. You can also move around Arena Space as normal. You can try to your way out of the fight at any time, but it is more difficult and will cost you a lot more. Success returns you to the system you were trying to smuggle to; failure dumps you in jail minus your cargo. Bluffing at this stage will probably result in you being laughed at, unless you are up against a very, very stupid customs officer. You can at any time, with the expected result. You can at the ships after you - it will shoot at the first customs ship it finds, using your most powerful weapon. You start with one customs cutter chasing you. At intervals, extra vessels are sent after you, and more will continue to appear unless you have wiped out all existing ones. Cutters are fast moving but not very powerful, and will be generated fast. Destroyers are slower but stronger. Cruisers are the slowest but most powerful - and they have turbo-charged lasers! If you shoot down a customs ship, your reward is increased: 5K for a cutter, 10K for a destroyer, and 35K for a cruiser. Customs vessels have cloaking devices: or will not show they are in your sector, you have to keep track of them by watching them enter the sector. Or fire on you, of course! The ships will hunt you down tenaciously. If a customs vessel is in a sector adjacent to yours, it will automatically find you. If it's not in an adjacent sector, it has a chance of homing straight in on you; otherwise it moves through the sectors normally. There's several ways to get away from the ships. If you , when you log back on you will be in Arena Space and the ships will have given up chasing you; but when you leave Arena Space you can only jump to Sol, so you'll be back where you started. If you can get to the link, just type and you'll get away, into the system you were smuggling to. If you manage to destroy all the ships, before new ones are generated, you can proceed to the link in your own time and to the system. If the customs ships kill you, you wind up in the hospital on StarBase1. They will chalk another victory up and return to their duchy to celebrate. Note that the cloaking device on the customs ships prevents any other players from seeing them or shooting at them, and there is no risk of them being caught in the crossfire. However, there is nothing to stop your enemies from coming along to help the customs ships take you out! From a Duke's point of view, it will be important to keep manufacturing new ships. Ships that are destroyed in Arena Space are lost, permanently; in addition, the ships decay over time as wear and tear takes its toll. You can also choose whether to keep your ships on permanent standby or not: the higher the alert status, the faster they will be sent after smugglers, but also the faster they will decay. **>> NEWS ARCHIVES Many thanks to Cicero, who was able to send us all the missing issues of the news bulletin - all, that is, except one! We are still missing the news dated 93.05.16; that's the last one Hazed did before handing over to Jade for her two-week guest stint. If anyone has a copy of this bulletin, please send it to us. Meanwhile, we are unable to get the old issues uploaded to the news archives in the MPGames library, because Hazed is still having problems uploading files. Speaking of news - some of you may have had a new journal pushed through box letter boxes. The Hungry Fedder has been put together by Sleazy; an apt name for a tabloid rag which follows in the despicable footsteps of the late but not-at-all-lamented TWF. If you didn't receive a copy and you would like to see it, send a message to Sleazy asking to be added to the mailing list; if you'd rather be taken off the mailing list, ask Sleazy! Meanwhile, Sleazy, Hazed has instructed us newsdroids to have nothing to do with you at all. It's no good you offering us higher wages, we adore our Beloved Editrix far too much to be seduced away to a rival publication. Besides, she's threatened to scramble our circuits with a large magnet if we so much as enter the same room as you!! **>> NEW WALK-THROUGH TOUR Plantking's program that lets you walk-through his planet offline has been added to. He's now included Krell's planet Gotham to the files, as well as his own Canna. The program runs on an IBM PC or compatible, and you can download it from the MPGames library 5. It's file 3051 and is called CANNA103.ZIP. **>> PLANETS AND DUCHIES Noe's planet is all ready to be linked to the game: expect to see it some time during the week. Meanwhile, Galimos and Barberousse have started work on their planets. We assume Galimos' world will be too dangerous to visit. Jade's Dunnottar has advanced to Industrial, and Topper's Oasis is now a Technocratic world. Otoole has started building for Duke, so Brewski is no doubt in need of lots of commodities. Meanwhile, Glurg's building means he is on the verge of completing his teleporter - a frightening thought! Following Freya's Senatorhood and Niun's Dukeness, the duchies look like this: There are seven Independent worlds: Arena, Brewski, Oasis, Bayside (yes Baysidian has come back), Roissy, Oppiz and Dahih. Niun's Ocean picked up Freya's leftovers and has six worlds: Dunnottar, Sapien, Oberon, Xixax, Insanity and Nemesis. Elex's Scadia has a small but perfectly formed two, with Xhit and Jinx, while Piemur's Phoenix has Valaria, Hell and Mirai. Krell's Gotham is down to just one planet, Regulus, since Crime has gone offline for a while. And finally, Khan's Neutarus has no systems at all! **>> SPYNET REVIEW The joint is still jumping, as lots of new players flock into Fed Data Space and almost instantly become Captains: Raptor, Bork, Lawson, Fate, Pompeii, Sir, Hires, Del, Indigo, Fear, Pulsar, Etius, Carnya, Nightstalker (for the second time), Tyro, Centurion, Iskra, Masterace, Rand, Buko, Sean and Quarl. Phew! Well done, all of you, and welcome to the best game in the universe. The week's new Adventurers were Dyars, Hires, Nightstalker (twice), Corngod, Etius, Gallowglass and iskra. The Traders' Guild admitted Maniac, Baron, Dyars, Razor, Mattsky and Nightstalker - who then went dead-dead! Lazarus and Dyars were both promoted to Merchant. Sleazy cracked the awesome JP puzzle with no problems. He went on to tackle the fiendish GM puzzle with just as much ease. Barberousse also became a GM. Galimos and Barberousse were promoted to Explorer. Jade became an Industrialist, and Topper a Technocrat. Notable deaths of the week were Maia (she may have only been a Captain but she was a famous Captain!); Nightstalker, who died at Trader and has already been promoted back to Adventurer; Tavo, who was seen fightly vehemently with Mattsky over the rights to molest Noe, and on losing suicided; and Sheba, whose death prompted Dyars to mourn that every time he got involved with a woman they left the game! **>> GUEST NEWSDROID Now that we've got the official bits of news out of the way, we can turn control of the newsdroids over to Altasren. Be gentle with him! **>> BLOOD AND SOULS FOR OUR LORD PEGASUS The setting for our lead piece is the hospital on Earth, where our correspondants discovered the following scene: Shaken, not stirred, Tellurian is here excited and hopeful Otto is here Dreaming wistfully of Sheba, Ramius is here The Holy Glurg is here Wearing a carved crystal ring Emmi is here Without question, Lurana is here Full of energy, Baron is here Feeling a little drunk Telidon is here Menace is here With a bounce to her step, Zodiac is here The Dread Pirate Rober.. um.. Galimos is here Sunday night, a mass "baptism" in the name of St. Pegasus was held in the Martian ruins. After an announcement was made that a Treasure Hunt was being held in the ruins, folks showed up in droves at Diesel's. After being thoroughly checked for insurance, the "hunt" began. Alas, it seems that the TRUE design of the plotters was a mass offering to Pegasus, to appease that terrifying being's taste for blood. So off the unwitting hunters went, in search of groats... Only to wake up - a trifle banged up and with one of their nine lives expended like used missiles - on Earth. Sources have confided that this sacrifice may very well be the largest mass death ever in Fed. =Eleven= people died at the same time. Our newsdroids were badly shaken by the event; several of their number were left molten slag in the aftermath of the atomic explosion that rocked the ruins. Fortunately, precautions had been taken ahead of time by the PSA, Sol Local, so no one lost more than their sanity, and reparations have been paid out (if not, you know who to see). While they may play dangerous games, Peggy's Death Commandoes claim to not wish anyone to go d-d. Assassins with a conscience? Only in Fed, if true... Mugs have been raised in dens of scum and villainy all over Fedspace in a toast to the team that made this happen! If you're going to make a splash, they reason, this is the way to do it! Of course, payback's a mother, as they say. Galimos, Tellurian, and Glurg were the chief perpetrators, aided by Emmi (didn't Hazed warn you guys about her LAST week?) and Gemini, who played bait. Several notables were less than enthused about the stunt, and plan condign vengeance... **>> MR. BAD EXAMPLE Meanwhile, the plots thicken. Wasn't it not so long ago that the Tellurian- Glurg partnership was at Menace's throat? No more, it seems - Tell is due to officiate at Menace's wedding to Zodiac. Not too common that we see the ex- husband *officiate* at his ex's remarriage... Besides which, the sabres are being repositioned to point at Bochiman, who's making foes right and left, and intends to do something about them. No, we don't think that those late night rendezvouses in Sam's with Noe is anything more than a coincidence. You don't either, do you? But who's fighting whom? Menace and Galimos had a heated exchange on the open comms last night, leading some to wonder if it wasn't a setup of sorts. This is sounding more confusing than a ten man Texas Death Battle Royale match in the cage, folks... Talk about lucky... Barberousse did get himself killed on the fiendish GM run... ONE SECOND after he succeeded! The fortunate Frenchman immediately catapulted to Explorer, as did Galimos during the week. Congratulations! **>> AN ANONYMOUS MESSAGE A newsdroid was handed a scrap of paper yesterday that contained the following message: "Warning: breaking mirrors causes 7 years bad luck." No, we don't understand it either! **>> GENEROUS DOWRY Glurg has very generously offered to pay a whopping great 100 meg to the eligible bachelor of his choice who marries his sister Emmi. This actually translates as: anyone but Maxwell! This could be Oxcart's chance to settle down with a good woman and a large fortune. **>> LOVE HURTS... One wonders, by the bye, if Zodiac noticed Menace and Titania lounging around on Crime in the wee hours one night, clothes strewn hither and thither. Gemini and Tellurian's marathon bar hop continues; they are currently covering Earth. Or is that covering each other on Earth? Meanwhile, poor love-stricken Maia went d-d because she couldn't have Tellurian, whose heart belonged to Gemini... and he was far above her station... **>> GOIN' TO THE CHAPEL OF LOVE! Last night, it seems as though the marrying bug was running rampant with twin lasers armed and firing. It started early in the day when Glurg was offering 100 meg to any male who was found to be acceptable to Emmi as a husband. Various suitors were interviewed over the course of the day... but alas, none seemed capable of measuring up in Glurg's eyes. Enter Galimos. He seemed perfect to Emmi's big brother. So, off everyone sped (unbeknownst to Emmi, of course) to Nemesis and the impending wedding. After a couple moments, the following occurred: Tellurian clears his throat, 'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join Galimos and Emmi in Holy Matrimony before Pegasus. Are there any objections? No? I didn't think there would be. Gal? Give her the ring. Good! Very pretty! I now pronounce you man and wife!' Galimos takes off Emmi's clothes.. then his clothes. He consummates the marriage in a timely fashion. What followed was much kicking and screaming, as Emmi refused to admit she was married, despite the fact that she had stated publicly to all that she agreed to the marriage. Then the evening took a turn into the Twilight Zone... Ramius decided that he was going to save Emmi's honor, and challenged Galimos to a duel -- the stakes being that Gal would agree to divorce her. Alas, Ramius ended up in Nemesis space, where he felt the twin lasers of Newbods and Peggy rip his ship (and one of our newsdroids!) into floating debris. A cleaning bill for the cost of uplifting a Hoover vacuum into Nemesis orbit has been forwarded to him. Justy jumped into the act as well, attempting to defend Emmi's honor. Meanwhile, with all of this going on, Looney proposes to Tellurian! Gemini gave Looney a piece of her mind about that, we can tell you! Fed's happiest couple remains faithful to one another, and by all appearances will continue to remain so. So instead of Looney marrying Tellurian, Occy and Noe get hitched on the spur of the moment! People were still sniffling from the beauty of the ceremony, and of the consummation of THAT marriage when Occy leaves and *Looney* also marries Noe! That's *3* weddings within 20 minutes! But wait! It gets even BETTER! Not satisfied with having 2 husbands, Noe ends up accepting the proposal of Mattsky (who seems to have founded a Bounty Hunters group, btw)! Claiming that it would only be a platonic marriage, the ceremony was performed over the open comms for all of Fed to listen in on. Not a dry eye in the house! The subsequent consummation of THAT marriage drew a 1.5 rating from the Russian judge, however, and the bride was left wondering what she had gotten herself into. So that's 4 marriages. Gemini, thinking that since romance seemed to be running in the water or something, decided on the spur of the moment that Barberousse needed a spouse as well, and the search for any woman whatsoever in Fed Space began. To no avail. Until Bella came into the Fed Space. Faster than you can say 'marsrats', the reception moved from Nemesis to Diesels, where a touching ceremony was held. Bella was so overcome with emotion that she fainted, leaving the groom to ponder the situation he found himself in. After all, we've all heard about how wild those green Rigellian women can be! Lastly, we have Akiko and Menace. Being the shy type, they remained in Sam's while Tellurian performed the service over the open comms. So there you have it. 6 weddings in one night. Another Fed record? We think it might be! There are scattered reports of Maxwell being less than pleased with the outcome of Emmi's wedding, so stay tuned for next week's edition of this long sordid tale of Lust in Space! **>> QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS Look, this *isn't* nepotism, folks... Marcia really DOES deserve an entire section to herself this week. You can't tell the amours without a scorecard: - Marcia and Telidon plan to wed, although current husband Altasren's views on the subject have not yet been made public. Telidon has been hitting on Emmi on the side, possibly figuring on making a run through ALL of the elf's former amours. - Marcia and Justy have burned the early morning oil for at least five straight days, during which HE made propositions, and she was heard to say, "I'd *love* three husbands!" - Marcia and Dyars have also been romantically linked, which may or may not have sabotaged the budding romance between the adventurer and Sheba. A disconsolate Sheba has been seen fingering her Arix army knife in earnest of late... - And finally, Mattsky claims to have bedded Marcia (who doesn't recall it at all, which may tell you something about Mattsky's honesty or skill, whichever you prefer)... of course, this is the same Mattsky who publically asked Emmi how many times she and Maxwell - umm... urr... Hazed dear, exactly how euphemistic am I allowed to be, here? :> - in a day. {For the record, Altasren will neither confirm nor deny that on his own behalf, he's not slept with anyone - his wife included - for the better part of a month; nor will he confirm or deny the rumors that he's leaving Fedspace for a monastery. An unusually pale and drawn elf *has* been seen loading a cat carrier and twin baby seats from his Crystal Tower on Roissy into his starship, but that's probably nothing to be concerned about... H.} **>> 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 * a message to Hazed or Bella * send GEnie mail with the Mail-about-Federation option from the main menu A front-end terminal program is available for Federation, for the PC and the Amiga. You can download a copy of FedTerm from the Federation libraries (option 3 on the main Fed page). 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 Senate, 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