 I DON'T BELIEVE IT!
Who'd have believed this could
happen...
There were problems at the facility
in Parsippany, NJ where our computers live. An
uninterruptible power supply blew up - which certainly
interrupted the power, for something like eleven hours.
Putting icing on the cake, last
night the building was struck by lightning! Although
there was no permanent damage, once again it meant that
everything went down for a short while. This time, at
least, Fed came back fairly quickly.
What is going to happen next, we
wonder - are terrorists going to blow the place up? Is an
asteroid going to land on the building? Or are aliens
going to land in New Jersey and take over?
THE FEDIQUETTE OF GROUNDHOGS
There's little point in me writing
anything in the Chronicle about how new players should
behave in Fed - after all, we have enough trouble getting
newbods to read the manual, let alone making them read
primers on etiquette!
But that doesn't mean there's no
point to this article at all. Not only are there things
to say about how you treat new players, there's also the
way you behave when you set up new alts.
Helping Groundhogs
Don't jump all over every new
player you see. If there's a navigator on duty, leave it
to her to help the newbod get started - navs know what
they are doing! One TB to say "welcome to Fed"
is fine, but don't start offering contracts or a place in
your duchy before the newbod even has a ship. Give her
time.
If there's no navigator around then
you can offer to help the newbod, but don't be pushy - if
she says she doesn't want help, then leave her alone.
Don't immediately offer the newbod
the use of your favorite job-running macro. Let her see
how the game works for real before you encourage her to
automate her play. Similarly, don't immediately give her
your thorough and detailed maps. She might want to
explore on her own.
Once the newbod isn't a groundhog
any more, and you can give her groats... don't! Lots of
high ranking players say it's a such shame that you can
give money to poor people in order to rush them through
the ranks, and yet they still do it. Help the player with
advice, make friends with her, encourage her, but don't
enable her to get a planet in 3 days - she won't have a
clue how to run it!
Don't give newbods the answer to
puzzles. For a start, some people really do like to work
things out for themselves - they enjoy the challenge. If
you just hand a new player the solution on a plate, she
won't have so much fun. Even if she does ask you for
help, give her hints that will guide her to the solution,
rather than just telling her exactly what to do.
Identifying and Claiming Groundhogs
Don't automatically assume that all
groundhogs must be alts. We do get genuine new players
from time to time. Some of them are returnees who haven't
been in Fed for a while; some of them are real brand new
players who have never played Fed before. If you
immediately start TBing them to ask them whose alt they
are, they are not going to get a good impression of the
game. Until you know otherwise, just treat new players as
the genuine article.
When we do get genuine newbods, we
often see battles for their hearts and minds between
different duchy groups. These can be as ugly as custody
battles when couples divorce, and they hardly encourage
newbods to stay in Fed! You do not own new players. Even
if you have bankrolled a newbod, encouraged her, nurtured
her, it's her choice where she makes her Fed home. If she
decides to build her factories on someone else's planet,
or join someone else's duchy, that's just too bad.
Being a Groundhog
If you set up an alt, you don't
have to tell everyone who you really are when you come on
as a groundhog. But don't mess navigators around by
pretending to be completely clueless. That just wastes
their time. Tell them you don't need help, and they will
leave you alone.
THE FEDIQUETTE OF COMMUNICATIONS
Communications doesn't just mean
using your comm unit; it means all the different ways
there are of socializing with other Fedders, both face to
face and at a distance. And there are good ways and bad
ways to communicate.
Comm Rules
But first, let's talk about using
the comms. These days, that usually means Channel 9,
which is where everyone tunes so they can be part of the
crowd. There are a whole load of things you can do to
annoy other players on the comms. Many of them are
against the rules, so strictly speaking they don't come
under the heading of Fediquette. But it's worth me
listing them here, as a reminder:
- Don't use vulgar words.
- Don't talk explicitly about
the sex act or sexual bodily parts.
- Don't insult other players.
- Don't be racist, sexist,
homophobic, or any kind of "ist".
- Don't talk about illegal
drugs.
- Don't talk about hacking
techniques.
- Don't scroll. That means,
don't send the same message over and over again,
and don't send messages so fast they won't give
people time to read what's on their screen.
- Don't send messages that are
gibberish. This also applies to foreign languages
- the language of the game is English, so sending
messages in other languages is not allowed. Not
even Klingon!
Apart from those things, which are
actually against the rules and may bring you to the
attention of a staff member, just exercise a little
judgement. Be polite. Think before you send a message to
the comm channel. If your message is intended for just
one person, would it be better to send a TB instead?
TB Rules
Now let's talk about TBs. These are
private messages, but do remember that just because you
want something to remain private, it doesn't mean the
person you are sending the message to will keep it
private. And don't forget that spybeams may be pointing
in your direction, too.
If you TB someone, she may not want
to talk to you. If you don't get a reply, you can send a
couple of reminders, in case she missed your first TB,
but that's all. Maybe she is afk; maybe she's in the
middle of something that demands all her attention.
Or it could be more personal. Maybe
she doesn't want to hear from you at all, for some
reason. If a player tells you not to TB her again, then
that is her right - you should abide by her request. If
you keep on sending someone messages after she has asked
you to leave her alone, then your actions become
harassment. At the very least, they become annoying!
Don't run down the player list,
sending the same TB to every player. That's the
equivalent of spam.
Face to Face
There is an etiquette to dealing
with people face-to-face in Fed, too. When you are in the
same location as other players, you can interact with
them directly, and Fed has a number of great commands
that let you do so. But like so many things, those
commands can be abused.
Don't use "ACT" to
attack anyone, unless it is part of a role-playing scene.
You should only role-play with people who want to
role-play back. It's fine if you both agree that you're
going to pretend to have a knock-down, drag-out punch-up
in the middle of the bar; but it is not acceptable to
come up to someone out of the blue and use an act to
punch her in the mouth, or to sexually assault her.
It's also not a good idea for two
people to walk into a bar where people are having a quiet
conversation, and break into a big fight. That can be
very disruptive. If you want to play for an audience,
make sure the audience wants to see your show.
Finally, don't overuse those
one-on-one interaction commands - "KISS",
"SNOG", "GROPE", etc.
Use them on your friends, to express your affection, but
don't assume that someone you have only just met is going
to appreciate being groped. Some people just don't want
that kind of contact. If a player tells you to leave her
alone... do it!
EXTRA INSURANCE REQUIRED
The other day I had cause to go
visit a strange planet. Yes, believe it or not, I do
occasionally leave CDs! So I activated my teleporter, and
my component atoms were split apart, beamed through
across the Galaxy, then reassembled back into the shape
of my body... in a space location. I'd mistyped the
destination! Hello, hospital.
Not a huge problem for a
demi-goddess - after all, we divine creatures have
auto-insurance so there's no chance of an accidental DD.
But as well as "hello, hospital" it was
"hello, hospital gown" as I was recreated
wearing that fashion disaster with the unfortunate split
up the back, guaranteed to make onlookers scoff and jeer.
As I scurried off to the nearest
boutique to replace the institutional robes for something
more fitting to my status, I wondered why insurance
couldn't handle replacing clothes as well as body. After
all, the insurance company manages to rescue your ship
when you die and tow it back to the landing pad nearest
the hospital where your clone is going to be revived; if
it can manage a dirty great big spaceship, you wouldn't
think a small bit of fabric would cause much trouble.
Personally, I'd be willing to pay
extra groats for an extension to my insurance policy to
ensure my clothes survived intact. Anything to stop the
indignity of waking up wearing that scratchy, ugly,
drafty hospital gown!
ORDERING A FIRE PLANET
I had to dredge the deep, dark
recesses of my memory recently in order to come up with a
workaround to help a player. He was an Explorer wanting
to buy a fire planet, but couldn't make it work so asked
for my help.
The command to purchase a planet
from Slarti's is "ORDER mini-name",
where mini-name is the name of the mini-planet you want:
ice, rock, candy etc. Therefore, the command to order a
fire mini should be "ORDER FIRE". But
the game was barfing on that command.
The reason for the problem is that
the word "fire" has another meaning in
Fed: it's the command to fire a weapon. So the game was
getting its knickers in a twist and not understanding
this other usage of the word.
Now I knew there was a way to work
around this annoying problem, but it hadn't come up for
several years - hence the memory-dredging. When I finally
remembered and was able to help the Explorer buy his
desired planet, I decided to write down the solution so
if I was asked in future, I wouldn't be left scratching
my head!
The solution is to use the command "ORDER
PLANET FIRE". The game seems quite happy with
that. So now you know!
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