LINE NOISE News for Chez Diesel 24 August, 1988 I think I may have mentioned before that it's a tough life being a Trader. You fill your ship up with goods and fly off to another planet, only to be told 'The exchange isn't buying that!' This is the Trader equivalent of sitting on Titan waiting for a job; players can be reduced to a gibbering wreck by this phrase and often have to drink several pints of Diesel's Old Peculiar to recover from the frustration. So there should have been cries of jubilation as Traders discovered this irritating response had been abolished and exchanges would now always buy. But, like most things, there's a catch. And like most catches, it revolves around money. Yes, the exchange will always buy - but you won't always like the price it will pay! Once the market has been flooded with a particular commodity it will continue to buy that commodity at 10 groats a ton. Yes, I did say 10 groats! This will certainly put a stop to blind selling - and may mean a return to the practice of paying a poor person to stand in an exchange and feed prices to a Trader. Omi was the first to discover this (why do these things always happen to him?). He was quite horrified to buy Crystals for 4670 and sell them for 100. (For some reason his initial reaction was to accuse Pegasus of having something to do with it!) What actually happened was that Our Illustrious Leader had finally found out about the little loophole many Traders had been exploiting to make vast amounts of cash - 1 mega-groat an hour! - by alternately buying and selling the same commodity to the same exchange. Bella hadn't known about this until someone blabbed, at which point she decided to put a stop to it. It is not known who was stupid enough to blow the gaffe - accusations have been levelled at various people, including Linebacker (since he is the only Trader who is too honest to take advantage of such loopholes) but whoever it was has certainly ruined a nice little earner. This will be particularly annoying for those Traders who were using this method to buy themselves extra points to make Merchant as fast as they could - Omi, Pegasus and Zugger in particular. It will certainly slow down their advance if they have to go back to 'legit' trading methods. Traders desperate to make Merchant are starting to get rather angry by the unsociable habit some Commanders have of grabbing the coin as soon as it appears and then selling it for large sums. Druid, a fairly new player, had the nerve to ask 50K for it! This impertinence led to him being assassinated by Pegasus (once again living up to his reputation) so Commanders should remember that with fighting coming in soon, it doesn't pay to make enemies in the higher ranks - it's not just the pirate that might be gunning for you! There are now four Merchants - Linebacker made it first, closely followed by Toranaga; Pugwash a week later, and Samantha not long after that. Bella promises they will be able to give jobs to other players in 3-4 weeks. Fed is starting to look slightly top-heavy. There are always more Merchants and Traders logged on than there are poor people. Spacehound and Lynx have joined the ranks of Traders, leaving poor Metaxa as the only Adventurer yet again. And there doesn't seem to be a huge influx of new Commanders to balance the game. The few who have started to play recently seem to be concentrating on making their fortune with jobs rather than objects, and hardly set foot outside their ships. A lot of them haven't bothered to map the planets, but are then afraid to explore in case they get killed - of course they aren't insured because they haven't found the Broker's Office and no-one will tell them where it is. Poor things, they really should have found their way around before they started earning money! Over the last few days rumours have been flying round that fighting had been introduced. This led to a lot of nervous Captains not daring to orbit in case Monty Pirate attacked them. Nobody seemed to know for sure whether the spaceways were safe or not. The origin of these rumours seems to be, surprise surprise, Pegasus (who else!). Just to reassure you all, fighting is NOT yet in! It will be implemented soon - I'm told in two weeks (haven't I heard that somewhere before?) and it is to be hoped that Bella will give us some warning! Watch this space for details. Following the introduction of new licencing laws in Fed Data Space, Chez Diesel will now be open 30 hours a day (thanks to the conveniently-located timewarp in the cellar.) I know I said I wouldn't mention changes to the Conclave unless something extraordinary happened - but something extraordinary happened! Having made Merchant, Linebacker easily climbed back into the Top Spot and seemed quite untouchable. But he has been toppled! Pugwash is now the Head of the Conclave. It is to be hoped she won't let the power go to her head, although she has started to display certain symptoms of megalomania, like expecting people to grovel. How long Linebacker will put up with someone else being The Boss remains to be seen! Trader Cloudbase has started a directory containing the history of the planets, and information about his own background, plus several competitions for Fed pictures. There are some fairly substantial prizes of offer, and one of the categories is for the best picture of Chez Diesel. I can't wait to see your impressions of this place! Cloudy's Base is at 387984. Also included in Cloudbase's directory is a debate about rewards. There seems to have been a spate recently of Obnoxious GroundHogs logging on and off and on and off purely to put rewards on anyone and everyone. Most people agree that GroundHogs shouldn't be able to post rewards and Bella has been lobbied to Do Something About It! And yet more debates... this time about choosing your persona name. Apparently there's a chap on the net with an ID of PEGASUS who objects to our Pegasus using the name - he seems to think he owns the copyright. This debate is at 388421 so do upload your contribution - who do you think is the 'real' Pegasus? And finally... The next Fed Meet will be held on Saturday 17 September after the PC Show. It won't be 'organised' like the last one, it will just be a case of 'meet in the bar and see what happens!' I do hope you'll all be there, particularly those who weren't able to come to the last Meet (which as I am sure you have heard was a great success). See you there!