**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.01.31 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> OOPS! Apologies to anyone who reads the news online, rather than capturing it to read offline. Last week we switched to using new software, and it didn't strip out the page breaks like we expected when we converted the text to ASCII; GEnie interpreted the codes as "clear screen" commands! Hopefully we've got it right this week. **>> CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES We've been talking for several weeks about the major work Bella has been doing on the way the game's data is stored. She's now completed this work. The final conversion work meant the game had to be taken down during the day on Wednesday. We apologise to anyone who normally plays in the afternoon, but she had to work on the persona file and all the other data files, and it would have been too dangerous to leave the game running while she did this. Her work changed the way the game behaves at just about every level, but since everything seems to have gone OK you should see very little evidence that the game runs differently, apart from actual changes to the game mentioned below! Duchy information is now held in a special file for the Duchy, rather than attached to the individual planets in the Duchy. Previously, Dukes had a bank account on each planet, a customs post on each planet, and a separate account for taxes collected. That's now been amalgamated. They just have one account for the duchy, into which goes their income from all their planets, and all taxes collected by customs. They pay for customs forces from this account, and can take money out for their personal use at any time. When a Duke looks at the Duchy display, it now looks something like this: >display duchy Duchy of Scratchwood 4 planets online: Muse - Industrialised 1234MIG Vitro - Technological 5678MIG Tristesse - Mining & Extraction 8765MIG Rookery - Agricultural 4321MIG Trade: Most favoured Trading status: Aruba Trade embargo: Zippy Tax rates 10/5 Collected: 111111111 Customs expenditure: 720 Naval Base: Location: Orbital. Efficiency: 10% Detectors: 0 Cutters: 0 Destroyers: 0 Cruisers: 0 Personel: 0 Marines: 0 Intelligence: 0 Alert status: Condition Green No smuggling this session. The Naval Base information isn't relevant yet. "No smuggling this session" would normally give a summary of how many times someone had tried to smuggle goods into the Duchy, how many times they had succeeded, and what they had done if they failed. When the conversion was done, Duchy information was all zeroed, and Dukes had to reset their customs points, taxes and embargoes. They lost all existing cash held on the individual planets, but Bella credited that back to them a few days later (and sent them a message telling them how much they had received). To get money out of their Duchy account, Dukes use . You now need to specify the amount, you don't just take everything available. The new command is now available, so if Dukes don't want a particular planet in their Duchy, they can boot them out. If a planet's economy is run badly and it loses money, it will cost the Duke money, and if he, she or it can't (or won't) help the planet owner turn it around he might prefer to wash his, her or its hands of it. While undertaking these changes, Bella discovered that she'd been calculated Dukes' networths incorrectly. The game had been adding a few extra digits, thus inflating them by billions or trillions! This has now been remedied. Because the Duchy information is now held in a special Duchy file, and not with the planets, there is currently no way for non-Dukes to find out about Duchy tax rates, embargoes and favoured planets. Bella will be amending the listing to include this information towards the end of the week. Meanwhile, you will just have to ask the Dukes if they have made any changes! **>> THE BABY BOOM First it was the marriage epidemic, now it's the pregnancy plague. Over half of the females in Fed are showing signs of pregnancy, or talking about babies, or starting to knit booties, or getting that brooding look on their face. Indeed, it's been rumoured that Marcia's absence from Fed Data Space is due to a combination of morning sickness, and embarassment at her inability to narrow down the identity of the father to a list shorter than six! Freya has stated very loudly that she is most definitely -*not*- pregnant, but we think she's protesting too much! **>> OOH LA LA! It might be the case that Marcia is pregnant, but we know that's not why she's been absent for a while. She has been visiting the land of the Marquis de Sade, La Bella France. Presumably she is visiting the -*real*- Roissy for a training session. She's been a frequent visitor to French Fed, but whether she's made as big an impression on the French players as she does on GEnie, we don't know. If we hear any gossip about what she's been doing we will be sure to let you know. **>> HMMM... We received a strange message from Destiny recently. It said "By the way, Jade has always been my one and only all through out.. so please, no spreading of rumours." Now, we had absolutely no intention of spreading any rumours about Destiny, so we wonder what prompted this message. Guilty conscience, perhaps? **>> THE LONG WALK HOME Poor Cynicist has become thoroughly acquainted with the Martian ruins. He availed himself of Chez Diesel Executive Services over 25 times before he realised he could return to the bar without walking through the ruins! Still, the exercise was probably good for him. **>> THE FEDTERM LIBRARY This week we only have one new file to report. Cauliflower has uploaded a picture of his ship, the good ship Palindrome! It's file 61. Has anyone painted a picture of Marcia yet? Don't forget she's offering a Gift of Time for the best portrait. **>> PLANETS AND DUCHIES Khan's planet, Neutarus, zoomed through the economic levels during the week, promoting from Mining level to Leisure with hardly a pause for breath between! A new planet went in at the beginning of last week: Aruba, owned by Squire Total. Unfortunately, just before it was linked into the game, Total vanished (last seen entering a sleazy dive on Venus) and hasn't been back, so five days later Aruba vanished too. We did despatch a droid to explore Aruba before it was removed again, and it came back rather confused. Aruba is a lovely tropical paradise, just the sort of place we'd like to relocate the H-by-A office to, but apart from the landing pad and the usual services surrounding it, the droid couldn't access the main part of the planet. Either there's something wrong with the movement table, or something wrong with the droid. We've sent a message to Total asking what is going on, but of course he's not around. If and when he returns, we'll report some more on the planet Aruba. Aruba isn't the only planet that has vanished because the owner is absent. Marcia's disappearance has taken Roissy out of the game. You can see which planets are in the game with the command, and which duchies they are in with the command. Occy's duchy, Zippy, is still the most popular duchy. He has 11 planets under his control. Oddball's Inversity has 4, as does Hazed's Scratchwood. Rezrov's Megalusa has 2, Krell's Gotham has 1, and there is 1 Independent world. **>> SPYNET REVIEW Congratulations to everyone who was promoted during the week. This week's new Captains are Highlander, Orvandel, Cucamonga, Sandtiger and Rover. Highlander and Orvandel went right on to make Adventurer. Three people were promoted to Trader this week: Sharp, Noe and Orvandel. Felice, Akiko, Cynicist and Zara all made it to Merchant. Trania solved the awesome JP puzzle and became a Journeywoman. The fiendies GM puzzle finally yielded its secrets to Jade, who went on to become an Explorer soon after. She's now writing her planet. Topper -*didn't*- become a Squire, even though his planet was linked into the game. Planet promotions only take effect when you actually log onto the game, but he hasn't entered Fed Data Space since the planet was linked in, so the promotion hasn't been posted yet. Khan has obviously been accumulating money in his planet's treasury: he promoted three times during the week, from Thane to Baron. **>>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 FedTerm, the multimedia front-end program for the game, can be downloaded from the Federation library (option 6 on 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