**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 92.08.24 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> HERE IS THE LATE NEWS Apologies for the late appearance of this news bulletin. Duchesse Hazed has been suffering from a bad attack of the dreaded Rigellian green plague and was unable to drag her carcass out of bed yesterday. We were going to ask the SpyNet Sport people to fill in and do yesterday's news, but they insisted they wanted to publish exclusive topless photos of Bella having her toes sucked by Clem, her financial adviser. We decided we couldn't subject you to such filth, so forced Hazed out of her sickbed to kickstart the newsdroids today. Personally, we don't think there is much wrong with her - she just wants an excuse to drink hot rum and lemon toddies! **>> WHERE HAVE ALL THE OBJECTS GONE? Recently we've been getting puzzled messages from people asking if there was some kind of bug that made all the objects in the Solar System disappear and not come back. No, it's not a bug, it's Oddball. He's been using the "brute force" approach to puzzle solving. Knowing that he needs to do something with a certain object he hasn't been using deduction or intelligence to study the clues and make intelligent guesses as to which object he needs; he's been taking everything except the kitchen sink back in time with him! On some occasions it appears he's left them there without giving them to a mobile, so they haven't regenerated back in Sol; they've just stayed inaccessible to all other players until the game resets. We can see there will be tears before bedtime the next time somone wants to do the JP or GM puzzles and can't find the objects they need! If Bella gets any more complaints about this, she may turn every location in Horsell into a "lockable room" - which means that any object dropped there will disappear and be regenerated. Oddball also developed a rather unfortunate habit of taking Poor People through to Horsell to help him, then leaving them there. In response to this Bella has lifted the prohibition on death while in the time loop. Although there is nothing fatal on Horsell (unless you choose to starve to death) you can now and you'll be revived in Earth's hospital. However, this does not apply to Barons - Oddball will still have to make his time machine work to bring himself back to the future. Oddball is progressing very slowly with the puzzle, but he's still way out on his own. His nearest rivals are Piemur and Rezrov, and neither of them have completed building time machines yet. However, once they are able to they would be in with a chance to overtake Oddball - provided they can put the pieces of the puzzle together faster than he has been able! However, they can forget any thoughts they might have of spying on Oddball's helpers and seeing just what he's getting them to do. Bella has made the entire Horsell area impervious to spybeams. Even Hazed cannot pierce the shields to see what Oddball is up to, much to her dismay! **>> AFTER THE PUZZLE Bella is continuing to work on the things that Dukes will do to earn their groats. She has made a change which will affect everyone - you will no longer lose stamina as you from one system to another. A new command, , will show you where everyone currently logged on bought their ships. Ships bought on Sol (or bought before the game started keeping track) are registered out of Panama. This is because Dukes will be able to ban ships from certain planets from trading in their duchies. The display has been changed. It now shows the planet of origin of the goods, although at the moment the planet it shows is probably incorrect. Again, this will be so duchies can have trade embargoes against certain planets. To make room for this extra information in the display, the short name for some of the commodities is now used. The format of the display may well change again as Bella fiddles with it to discover the best way of showing the necessary information, so macro users beware! **>> FIGHTING LESSONS NEEDED! Merchant Bart was showing extremely unmerchantly behaviour last week. He managed to annoy just about everyone logged onto the game, Rich and Poor People, by continually begging for groats! One expects this sort of behaviour from new players, but not from Merchants. Showing no shame, and using tightbeam messages to individuals as well as general comm broadcasts, Bart continued to grovel and plead. His whining eventually got too annoying to bear, and several people decided not to put up with it. Over the course of the evening he found himself on the wrong end of many sets of twin lasers. He was even killed by Adventureuse Zoe! So here's a little quiz for you. Bart was killed by a lowly Adventurer because: (a) Zoe is a whizz at fighting, beats Pegasus up regularly, and would be a match even for The Vile Cryptosporidium or (b) Bart is truly hopeless. Don't bother to send in your answers, we know which option we would choose! **>> SHURELY SHOME MISHTAKE! Can it be true that Kimos had a fling with Altar and only found out afterwards that Altar was male? Was Kimos so blinded by passion he didn't notice the sex of the being he was dallying with? Or was he just completely drunk? **>> THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN We recently got wind of a rather ridiculous plot by the Dark Side that would throw trading exchanges into complete chaos and let them make vast sums of money. We chuckled at their stupidity in thinking they could find a groat- making scheme that had eluded all other players (and the Galactic Administration). However, a few weeks ago Occy did seem to be making rather a lot of money all of a sudden. Was the Dark Side's plan in operation? Or did Occy just decide to actually to some real work for a change? **>>CONTACTS The following information will appear at the end of every News Bulletin, so you don't have to read it if you already know it. In the event of a problem or question, you can: * talk to Hazed or Bella in the game * leave a message in the game log * a message to Hazed or Bella * send GEnie mail with the Federation Feedback option from the main menu You can order a copy of the unexpurgated printed Idiot's Guide to Federation by typing ORDER at any GEnie menu. Cost - a mere $12.95. (New edition will be available shortly!) Federation has several categories in the new MPGames RT. To get there, type M1045,1 from any menu prompt and SET category 13 (for information, instructions, questions and answers) or 14 (for general chat and discussions). The Federation Leader in the bulletin board is Krell (Mail ID: K.HILLYER). There are also private categories for Explorers, run by Krell, and for the Conclave run by Oddball (Mail ID: D.STALZLE). The MPGames RT also has a Federation library in the files area, Library 5. Library 18 holds the Federation News Archives. **>> BULLETIN ENDS