LINE NOISE 03 07 89 OH NO NOT AGAIN! It's happened again! Fed Data Space has suffered another time-slip. Once again The Conclave are going to have to get up off their lazy arses and adjudicate the claims for lost earnings. And this time, the culprits can be named! It happened like this. Cryptosporidium was playing around with the new commands for companies (which are explained in great detail on pages 6 to 20 inclusive) and discovered a massive bug, which resulted in her having a bank balance of several billion groats. She was so amazed at this quite ludicrous amount of money, that she failed to see any way the bug could be exploited. What Crypto had done was issue herself a very large number of shares in her company, and when the game multiplied it by the 1 meg price, it overflowed and converted to a large negative number. She dutifully contacted Our Illustrious Leader, who said 'oh dear oh dear' a few times and then decided that Crypto had better give her the excess groats. Unfortunately, giving away several billion groats ALSO overflowed and Crypto ended up with a negative balance of several billion (eat ya heart out, Omi!) Bella then tried to give some of it back to Crypto, and SHE ended up with a huge deficit! Meanwhile, Sevrina realised something strange was going on and managed to work out what the bug was - and what's more, discovered a way to exploit it. She made a profit of about 10 meg and bought herself a couple of factories. Unfortunately, word got round and several others decided to make an illicit profit. And a few greedy idiots showed absolutely no restraint and ended up with 100meg bank balances, which they then tried to hide by giving money to poor people to 'hold' for them. Those known to have exploited the bug are Sevrina, Bullfrog, Ensor and Roxanne - and there may be a few more. By this time, Bella decided that things had got out of hand. The illicit earnings had been spread around so many players that the only way to settle things was to restore the persona file from yesterday morning - before the bug had been discovered. She announced that she would be doing this, and many people took advantage of having an evening that wouldn't count by having a huge gang-fight. So, Our Illustrious Leader contacted Compunet and told them she would be into the office to restore the old persona file. And was told that the latest backup they had was ten days ago!! Obviously they HADN'T learnt from the previous fiasco! After tearing out her hair, Bella fortunately remembered that SHE had taken a backup on Friday - so only three days play has been lost! So... as before, claims for lost earnings should be submitted to The Conclave. But if you are one of the guilty ones don't bother to claim!! And all you clever dicks who thought you could get away with making an illicit profit, your lack of subtlety has caused a great deal of hassle to all players who have lost their earnings and promotions, to The Conclave who have to adjudicate the claims, and most particularly to Our Illustrious Leader who will have to sort the mess out. I hope you are satisfied! Meanwhile, the companies have been implemented after months of hard slog by Our Illustrious Leader. First I'll explain the basic commands and the displays. will make you Managing Director of your very own company. 'Name' can be up to 32 characters long, and it can include spaces or punctuation. Two shares will be issued to you, at a cost of 1 megagroat each. will buy a factory on the named planet, to produce the named commodity. Each factory costs 5 megagroats, multiplied by the level of the planet. Since you will need to pump some money into the company before it has enough money to buy a factory, you have to buy some more shares, at a further cost of 1 megagroat each. The money comes out of your personal account, and goes into the company account. is the command. will show you the details of the your company. It'll look something like this: Company: Newbod Enterprises Shares: 12/12 Cycle day #10 Income:..0 Expenditure:..0 Profit last Cycle:.0 Company Balance:..0 Last dividend:..0 Profit to date:..0 The shares refers to the total number of shares issued, and the number you own. In future you will be able to sell shares to other players; at the moment you can only issue them to yourself. The cycle day shows you how far through an accounting cycle you are - a cycle lasts ten days, and profit is calculated at the end of each cycle. Income and expenditure refer to any money you have transferred to or from a factory and the rest is fairly self- explanatory. When you buy a factory, the company display will include a line to show this: Factory # 4 - Mars - Droids The factory number is unique, given in sequence to each factory sold - so if you own three factories, they won't necessarily have consecutive numbers. You can find out the details of your individual factories in a similar way. gives the following: **>> Stardate: 207708:1262 <<** Factory # 4 - Mars - Droids Labour: 50/40..Wages: 90/60 Inputs: Bio-chips..: 50/45 Anti-matter..: 20/13. Working capital: 705689 Current cycle: (11) Income:..600 Expenditure: 2586 Last cycle: Income:.6370 Expenditure: 4695 Deliver output to exchange Dataspace time remaining: 3 The Labour refers to the number of workthings needed to produce the commodity, and the number you are actually employing; wages refers to the rate you are paying per thing-hour, and the layoff pay. (More about that in a moment.) Current cycle refers to a factory cycle, which lasts 100 minutes (in real-time) - the (11) means you are 11 minutes into the current cycle. 100 tons will be produced in each factory cycle. Inputs shows the raw materials needed by the factory, and how much it has in stock. A complete list of the labour and inputs required for each commodity is printed in DATA SPACE Issue #002, which will be sent out this week. Working capital is obvious, as are income and expenditure for the current and last cycles. You can choose whether the output from your factory is delivered to the exchange (and therefore sold straight away) or into your warehouse, in which case you will have sell the goods yourself on whichever planet you choose. The command is or . If you have goods going to your warehouse, the money for selling them goes into your personal account, so it is another way to extract money from your company. Similarly, the inputs needed can come from either the warehouse or the trading exchange. At the beginning of each factory cycle the company will first try to get the inputs it needs from the warehouse; if that isn't enough, it will turn to the trading exchange on the planet. If it can't get enough inputs, it will layoff workers accordingly. Finally, Dataspace time remaining shows how long your factory will remain in the game after you log off - this is three times the length of time you spend logged on; so if you stay on for 1 hour, the factory will remain for 3 hours after you leave. This time is cumulative, so if you log back on before the 3 hours is up, the extra time is added on - and it is even carried over a reset. A few more commands... will let you fix the price you wish to pay for workthings. Remember that if anyone else has a factory on the same planet as you, they will also be competing for workthings! determines how much you will pay the workthings for the times when your factory is not producing. If you don't pay them layoff pay, they will just go back to the employment exchange and be available to any other factory that needs them. Even if you pay layoff, there is a chance that other players could poach your workthings. If you set your layoff pay at half the amount you pay for wages, someone could offer a little more money for wages than the layoff you are paying - and half of your workthings will desert you! So you need to take care when setting both your wage and layoff values, and take into account what other factories are operating on the same planet. You can find this out by typing . This results in a display something like this: SPYNET Report: Earth Development level: Agricultural Population level: 1000 Turnover tax base rate: 10% Factories in commission: # 6 Producing Meat # 9 Producing Soya As a rough guide, each planet will have a population of 1000 multiplied by the level, and of that population 90% will be workthings with the skills for the level of the planet; 5% for the level below; and 5% for the level above. So for example, Mars (which is a Level 4 planet) will have 3600 Technological workthings, 200 Industrial, and 200 Leisure. The Turnover tax is set at a standard 10% for all Solar System planets, and will be payable on any money given on that planet - whether buying goods in a trading exchange or giving money to other players! This hasn't been implemented yet. The factories in commission only shows those that are loaded into the game at that time, so in order to build up a picture of the economy of the Solar System you are going to have to check these fairly often. And one final command - if you really make a mess of things, you can your company. If do get things right, you can expect a factory to make you a profit of around 40K per hour. Not very much, is it? However, there are many reasons for buying a company and building factories. Obviously, it will make you money, albeit slowly. But you will need to have factories on your own planet, in order for it to increase in level - and thus for you to gain promotion. You will also be able to set up a 'network' of factories, where one factory produces the inputs needed for another. And at later stages of the game, players will be able to blockade each others planets and you will need factories on your planets in order to survive such a siege. Add to that the strategic possibilities of gaining people's allegiance by selling them shares in your company, and you begin to get a glimpse of just why it might be a worthwhile investment if you take the long view. All these new commands, of course, mean that the potential for bugs is enormous. Apart from the mega-bug mentioned earlier, there have been a few minor bugs. Spying on someone when they typed HELP resulted in someone's ID being included! And before anyone actually bought any factories, they were still given a display of a very profitable little concern on Mars, which actually belonged to Our Illustrious Leader. Following the tremendous fun that everyone had last night fighting when they knew they wouldn't have to suffer the consequences, Our Illustrious Leader has promised to provide a BLOODBATH some time around Christmas. This is an idea that has been kicking around ever since fighting was first introduced. A special version of the game will be provided. Everyone will log on as a GroundHog, with a bank balance of several million in order to buy a large ship. The intelligence- requirement for computers will be removed - so you will be able to get the largest you can afford - so long as you leave some money for armour! You'll be able to orbit, once you have bought your ship, but not land again - and nowhere in the Solar System will be safe. Whoever survives the longest will get a large prize. So that's something to look forward to! Apart from the major work in implementing companies, there are a few other minor new features. Buying fuel in space now results in a new message which gives some hint that you might be paying over the odds. When you first buy a company this will be indicated in SpyNet Review, and subsequently the name of your company will be shown in SpyNet Report. now gives a 'crash course' in the basics of Fed; how to communicate, etc. To see the list of verbs, type for verbs beginning with 'A' etc etc. The response to buying a drink has been shortened - although since most people buy each other rounds, I can't see why! And following the fiasco where Bella and Pugwash totally failed to destroy the satellites, their defences have been reduced just a smidgeon. Issue #002 of Data Space, the Fed newsletter, has just been 'put to bed' and those on the mailing list should be receiving it this week (if the maildroid functions as it should!) If anyone isn't on the mailing list and would like to receive a copy, just mbx me your name, address, ID and Fed persona. If anyone fancies having a bash at writing an article for DATA SPACE, let me or my good friend Pugwash know. Every issue contains a 'main feature' which can be about anything to do with Fed, and your contributions are very welcome. Line Noise would like to thank the Galactic Administration for providing the information on companies contained herein.