**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.09.12 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> WHAT'S BELLA UP TO? Not a lot, really... at least, not a lot worth reporting! She's spending her time doing work on the internal guts of the game, to try and free up some more memory. **>> SABOTAGE! If you want to show your extreme displeasure of someone in Fed Data Space, what can you do? You can put a reward on their head. You can try to shoot them down. You can attempt assassination. Or you can try to damage them economically - perhaps the most effective method, but the one that requires the greatest skill. Recently Emmi decided to sell all her factories on Sapien because they weren't doing too well, and buy a new set of factories elsewhere. Glurg was none too pleased at his sister's betrayal! Suscribing to the motto "Don't get mad, get even" he spent a while frantically trading... dumping vast quantities of the commodity her factories were producing onto the exchange, thus ensuring that she couldn't get a good price! We think she got the message. **>> COMMUNICATIONS BREAKDOWN Fed's gossips really do need to be careful, because the Galactic Administration's communication system is not completely fool-proof. A "feature" can cause tight-beam messages to go to the wrong person - with embarassing consequences! It works like this. You send a tight-beam message to someone, talking about another player - for example: >Tell Freya Ooooh that Tellurian is such a hunky guy! But before you have finished typing, Freya logs off the game. You send the message, and the game can't find Freya, but sees the name "Tellurian" in the message and thinks, oh well, I'll send it to him instead. The same problem occurs if you mis-spell the recipient's name - the message will go to the person you are talking about. As you can imagine, this can cause red faces, particularly if you are bitching about someone. The moral is, when gossiping about people don't use their real name! **>> SECURITY RISK Another warning: don't let other people play about with your Fed persona, they might do nasty things to it! A player who had reached the rank of JP recently made the big mistake of letting a friend play Fed on his account while he wasn't watching. When the JP next logged on, he found he was a GroundHog! We wonder if they are still friends? **>> YET ANOTHER CANNA Plantking has uploaded yet another version of his offline planet reader. File no. 3184 is CANNA105.ZIP, and it fixes some of the problems in the planet Highlands. **>> LOST ON MARS Icepirate managed to cause mass confusion when he made JP the other day. He got mixed up, and left the Poor Person who had helped him stuck in the maze in the Martian Ruins! When he tried to go and find him, Icey got completely lost too. Nightstalker tried to help them out, but got stuck himself! Finally Freya had to send out a search party and help everyone out. Icepirate has asked us to say a big "Sorry!" to everyone for the inconvenience. Let that be a warning to you all: map thoroughly!! **>> PAIN IN THE NECK It looks like Galimos is getting up people's noses again. We've received messages from two separate people saying how irritating they find him. Trouble is, they don't say what it is he has done! We all know Galimos is irritating, but that ain't a crime - and he ain't the only one in Fed Data Space. Please give us specific information about what the scumbag is doing. If we think he deserves it, we will orchestrate a campaign against him (well it's a slack month for news). **>> SEX, LIES AND SPYBEAMS Emmi and Gemini have been "frolicking" (so says our informant, strange choice of words we think) with Barberousse, stripping him completely naked and stuffing his clothing down Tellurian's pants. We've also been hearing rumours that Zodiac and Amber both seduced Altasren, on consecutive nights, by enticing him to give them massages... which led to other things. Amber apparently doesn't want her affair with Altasren publicised - but she has been making it with him in public! She should know that the only place free from prying eyes is Sam's, and even that isn't totally secure. Speaking of Sam's, what's this about Occy and Tellurian exchanging vibrators in the spy-proof room? **>> PLANETS AND DUCHIES All hail Glurg, Duke of Sapien! Yes, Fed's Mr. Nasty (or one of them, at least) solved the devilish Duke puzzle yesterday and was promoted. His planet went nova when the game was reset today. Tellurian lost no time in joining up with his pal: he'd signed a treaty of alliance before Glurg had returned home from Horsell! Glurg had fun playing with his new commands. His first move was to set an embargo on Hazed! His second move was to take it off again, in the face of dire threats from the demi-Goddess. With Glurg's elevation, someone had to stop being a Duke to make room for him, so Elex was promoted to Senator - since he'd put in the largest bid. His few remaining planets were thrust back to Independentness. Before this change-around, Bochiman had attracted two more planets to his fairly new duchy; Xhit and Oppiz had both signed up with Hell. So the duchies currently look like this: There are four Independent worlds: Arena, Brewski, Oasis and Dahih. Niun's Ocean has Dunnottar, Xixax, Insanity, Fremd and Paradise. Jim's Crime still has no serfs at all. Krell's Gotham just has Oxcart's planet, Jinx. Bochiman's Hell has Xhit, Starship, Valaria, Roissy, Oppiz, Mirai and Chaos. And the new boy, Glurg, has Nemesis and Source. Meanwhile: Menace and Destiny have both advanced their planets (Xhit and Xixax) to Leisure status. **>> SPYNET REVIEW Congratulations to everyone who was promoted during the week. The new Captains were Gordon, Gil (twice), Catinhat, Deepvoice, Capt, Thumper, Sark, Derek, Space, Flick, Doc, Vital and Stubby. Adventurers and Adventureuses were Bandar, Lawson, Justy, Phexipotex, Mrbunny, Sark, Melchior and Xiti. The following were promoted to Trader: Brett, Redwing, Blackadder, Stalker, Bandar, Billy, Lordfoul, Tabby, Corry and Symphony. Sharp, Capo and Ingollde became Merchants. The JP puzzle was a piece of cake to Rand, Sean, Icepirate and Carnya. Pouncer and Jarrepolo solved the fiendish GM puzzle, and then went on to become Explorers. Menace and Destiny were promoted to Baron, Glurg to Duke and Elex to Senator. Sadly, JP Baron died dead-dead. We hope he returns. **>> 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. You can download a copy of FedTerm from the Federation libraries (option 3 on the main Fed page). The Amiga version is in beta-test. 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 - and this time we really mean it!) 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 Oxcart (Mail ID: J.LONG29). There are also private categories for Explorers, run by Krell (Mail ID: K.HILLYER), 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