LINE NOISE News from Chez Diesel 1 August, 1989 LUMPS AND DIVIES! It's amazing - Chez Diesel has never been busier! The introduction of factories has certainly revitalised the game. Inter-player trading went in today, which solves the input shortage. Factory owners can now buy their raw materials direct from other players, without haveing to rely on the exchanges. The command is and is similar to offering jobs; it will sell the lump of goods in the specified bay in the warehouse on the named planet, for the price agreed. Goods will be delivered to the player's warehouse on the same planet (provided there is room!). The recipient can or the contract: or can check the details again using . As with jobs, the terms should be agreed in advance because if the offer is rejected, the goods are lost. Payment will be made, and the goods delivered, on acceptance of the contract and tax at 5% will be deducted from the price the vendor receives. The possibilities are rife for MDs to form alliances, and we are likely to see a resurgance of organisations such as The Brotherhood and the mythical Cartel, trying to corner the market in valuable commodities - and anyone who makes themselves unpopular may find themselves unable to purchase the raw materials they need! Today's new version also gives you a way to extract money from your company by paying a divvy on your shares. The command is and the amount of the divvy is written into SpyNet Review, so everyone can see how well your company has been doing. Rising inflation has forced up building costs on all the planets, with the result that factories purchased are now only given a working capital of 100K, instead of the previous 1 meg. Networth has been taken out of your score, because the disk access necessary to calculate it had become very slow. But there's a new command to find out your networth - ! Talking of networths, Pugwash received a nasty shock yesterday. She logged on and discovered she had plummeted from being Head of the Conclave to just fifth! Her networth had fallen by over 100 meg. Suspecting foul play, she employed a firm of private investigators to probe the methods used by the Galactic Administration to arrive at their calculations. The problem soon became apparent. She had recently increased the number of shares in her company, PugSex. The formula the GA use to value shares is complex: (profit last cycle) x 10 x (total number of shares) / (number of shares owned). When the GA's computer did the multiplication, it produced an impossibly large number. The computer couldn't cope; it freaked, and came up with a negative number! The problem has now been rectified, but Pugwash intends to sue the Galactic Administration for the mental anguish and damage to her reputation caused by the cock-up. Talking of factories (which I was before I started talking of networths) Our Illustrious Leader has started a debate in FOCUS about the length of FTUs (Factory Thingie Units). They are currently a fixed 40 seconds long, but Bella wants to make them vary depending on the number of players logged on, and stop them entirely when Fed Data Space is empty. This would bring them into line with ETUs. The advantage of this is that the more people logged on, the faster the factories will produce - and the more money they'll make. It will also make factories easier to manage, since accumulated FTUs will be used up faster and factories won't remain in the game for as long after you log off - and it is much easier to run a factory if you can keep an eye on the inputs and exchange prices. Cryptosporidium is a failure! She has not been promoted to JP. Not that she got the puzzle wrong... she successfully started up the power system in the Martian ruins, without killing herself or anyone else, or blowing up large chunks of the planet. But she wasn't promoted. The reason: she tried to short-cut the process. The requirements are 75 dex and 40 strength, and she had the strength but not the dex, so hadn't completed the earlier stages of the puzzle. She now hopes to be the first player to do the JP puzzle backwards - she just needs to raise 34 meg! And now, some very sad news. Fed Data Space was shocked by the tragic death on Sunday of Naias. Her marriage to Magius was been on the rocks (as I predicted) and her despair led her to take her own life. She will be greatly missed by all her friends. Whether the now widowed Magius will miss her is a different matter. He is managing to hide his grief, consoling himself in the arms of several lovers. His relationship with Pugwash grows more complex; no-one, least of all Pugwash, knows quite what is happening. He has also taken up with Roxanne, who may be young and nubile but is currently behaving like a spoilt brat! She is extremely jealous of Pugwash's liaison with Mags, and envies her reputation as The Sexiest Fedder. One person Magius isn't having an affir with is Penelope. Last night she and Siko were married - with only about an hour between their decision and the event! The hurried preparations made for a somewhat chaotic ceremony, officiated by Spacehound. Penelope has not been in Fed Data Space long, but already she has broken the hearts of Star (to whom she was engaged) and Bandit. It surely cannot be long before she tires of poor Siko as well! Pegasus Software Services today issued a statement announcing its change of name to Dead Horse Software Services. Appalling jokes about flogging on with their coding are expected shortly. This change comes as part of a re-organisation of the Hazed-by-Alcohol empire. They are pulling together all their various enterprises into one directory, housing The Idiot's Guide, The Explorer's Guide, the forthcoming Advanced Idiot's Guide (which will contain information on companies previously published in DATA SPACE and Line Noise), software, and information of forthcoming Fed Meets. A press release will be released to the press once the changes are completed. That's all from this issue of Line Noise, and probably all for a couple of weeks. Bella is off on holiday to the fleshpots of the twin pleasure planets of Balthazar and Bathsheba, so there will be no new developments in Fed Data Space for me to report. And I'm rushed off my feet at the moment! Business is booming, the waitdroids keeps breaking down and delivering the wrong pizzas, and I'm trying to finish off DATA SPACE Issue #003, which has been put back a week due to equipment failure. So I could do with a break!