Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: November 6, 2016

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PREPARE FOR WARFARE

by Hazed

It’s the moment we have all been waiting for. All the preparation has led to this. You can now attack another player’s ship with missiles. Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war!

The new command is ‘LAUNCH MISSILE’ and this sends a missile winging towards your opponent’s ship.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Before you can launch a missile, you need to do the following:

  • You need a ship with a missile rack installed, so if you haven’t got one already, take a trip to your friendly local shipyard and buy a new ship. While you are there, get plenty of armour for protection, some sensors to help your aim, and jammers to spoil your opponent’s aim. Get a missile rack and install as large a magazine to hold the missiles as you can. You can also buy a single laser to use for defence. There’s no need to get other types of lasers just yet because they can’t be used until Alan does the next bit of coding. Don’t bother with shields, either, because they will only protect against lasers, not missiles.
  • A missile rack is all very well, but you can’t fight without the missiles yourself, so get yourself to a weapons shop and stock up. ‘BUY MISSILES’ gets enough to fill up your magazine, or you can specify how many you want with ‘BUY number MISSILES’.
  • Now you need to set your opponent as your target, with the command ‘TARGET playername’. ‘TARGET’ on its own reminds you who your current target is, and tells you if anyone else is targeting you; ‘CLEAR TARGET’ removes the target.
  • Now you need to go to a fighting location. In Sol, the main part of the spaceways, around the planets and the asteroids, are designated as safe area with no fighting allowed. However, if you go up to the northeast corner of the map then keep heading east, you will find yourself in Arena Space, where fighting is not just allowed – it’s positively encouraged! You can also set fighting flags on the space locations in your system using ‘CHANGE FIGHTING’. If you want the flags to remain permanently, ‘SAVE MAP’ will do just that – otherwise they will be removed at reset.
  • With all that preparation out of the way, you are ready to ‘ATTACK’ which you can do if you are in the same location as your opponent, and in a fighting location.

When you attack, your ship will fire one missile at your opponent. After that, you fire further missiles with the ‘LAUNCH MISSILE’ command. (The command could not just be ‘LAUNCH’ because we already have a command to launch an IPO. Imagine the confusion if you tried to launch an IPO at your enemy – or to launch a missile in the broker’s office!)

The game will do all sorts of calculations to figure out whether your missile hits your opponent, taking into account your sensors, your opponent’s jammers and defensive laser, and a little bit of luck.

You will be told if your missile hits or not.

If you are the poor unfortunate who is under attack by a crazed missile-throwing fiend, then should the missile hit your ship, you will be told what damage it causes. If you’re using FedTerm, the ship’s display will update in the stats panel; if not, the game will send you a status display. A successful missile strike will always do some damage to the hull, and it may also damage other bits of your ship.

The good news is that right now there is no risk of death by fighting. Your hull will never go down below 1 which means your ship won’t explode. That will change later, but for now you are safe.

Similarly, you can get your ship repaired without paying right now – the charges will be added later.

That doesn’t mean fighting is a completely free activity. You will have to pay for your missiles – and if my testing is anything to go buy, it’s clear that to actually reduce someone’s hull to a colander will take an awful lot of missiles!

So have fun pounding the hell out of each other, and if you spot any bugs please email the details to feedback@ibgames.com – don’t forget to put Fed2 somewhere in the subject line.

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