**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.08.01 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> HOT SUMMER NIGHTS August is here, which means it's time once again for GEnie's annual month-long happening, Hot Summer Nights. All over the system there will be special events, parties, contests... lots of things for you to do and join in with, as well as chances to explore areas of GEnie you haven't been to before. For full details of all the happenings, type HSN from any main menu. Federation has several things lined up for Hot Summer Nights. Some time during August, we'll be holding one of our mega-popular Free Weekends, giving new players a chance to experience the fun of Fed Data Space for free. As always, we don't tell you exactly when the free weekend will be until it's almost time... just keep your eyes open for the notice on the Fed main page, and the GEnie logon banner. We had planned a joint promotion with the Romance Exchange area on GEnie. Jade was going to write a special romantic planet for us. Sadly, pressure of work means she's had to pull out of the promotion, and since experience shows it's almost impossible to take over a half-written planet, we've sadly got to cancel this event. But never fear, Bella's come up with something else for you. She'll be the guest at an RTC in the MPGames conference room, talking about programming Fed. This will be of interest not only to programmers, but to anyone who wants to hear about how Bella designed the game and came up with her ideas, and of course some of the great bugs in the history of Fed. The date for this RTC hasn't been fixed yet, but it should be towards the end of the month. We'll keep you informed! **>> SMUGGLING PROBLEM Bella put the new version of smuggling into the game last week, and it didn't go exactly as planned! First off, she forgot to link in the file that generated the customs ships, so when someone was moved to Arena Space prepared to defend themselves against cutters and destroyers, nothing happened! That was easily fixed: she added the necessary file, and fights broke out all over Arena Space as people had fun blowing up cutters - and being blown up in turn by destroyers and cruisers! But things started to go wrong again and the game crashed several times during the night. Bella immediately took smuggling out again - she simply disabled the command. This left in the new base management tools, so she was able to check that they weren't causing any problems, while she exterminated the bugs in the smuggling code. The hiatus also gave Dukes the chance to build up their naval bases, so they would have some chance of fending off smugglers. As always with a major new feature, it was only when Bella and the players saw it running that all the implications became obvious, so a few changes will be made to the way it works. The one you will notice straight away is the removal of the "smuggling ability" from your score display. The capabilities of the naval base are far more important when determining whether smuggling is successful or not, so smuggling ability was deemed obsolete. Other changes involve the way Dukes manage their bases, and Bella has started a discussion topic in the Explorer's Category of the BBS. All Dukes and planet owners should go and read the information Bella has posted, and contribute to the discussion. It's topic 19, cat 43. We're not going to list all the commands and information about managing your naval bases in the news: they've all been put into this topic. Smuggling should go back in on Monday, with the problems fixed. Unfortunately, one of the crashes had an adverse effect on a couple of personas in the file. The data for the planet Loki was overwritten by that for Hell; and Otoole's planet Brewski vanished completely! Bella will be sorting these problems out with the affected owners. **>> OTHER NEW STUFF Dukes and above have a new entry on their display: it now tells you your current teleport address. Extremely useful if you want to teleport to where you already are. Two changes will be made on Friday. The first will be welcome to high-level players who suffer at the hands of customs ships: you'll be able to bribe a Galactic Administration employee to "lose" the records of your previous insurance! Any player can do this, but since the technician requires a very large sum to convince him to zero your insurance, it's really only an option for planet-owners and above. The command is and it costs 100 meg. Following discussions with several owners of Agricultural planets, Bella has decided to reward those that design planets that attract a lot of visitors. There will be an alternative cost for promotion to Thane. As well as the existing cost: 2 giga-groats plus 10,000 minutes, planets which achieve 20,000 minutes will only have to pay half a giga. The second option will become an automatic promotion; once the 20K minutes are achieved, the planet will go up at next reset, and the half giga removed from the treasury, even if this results in the balance going into the red! **>> FEDTERM NEWS We've had some problems with the new front-end program for the Amiga, so we've temporarily removed it from the library while we sort things out. Meanwhile, we want to hear from you if you have downloaded the file. We particularly want to know if anyone has been running it without problems, because we think it's just particular high-end Amigas that have had trouble. Please contact us and let us know what machine you are running FedTerm on, and if you've had any problems. **>> IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM OUR ILLUSTRIOUS LEADER Bella has asked us to print this important message: ----------------------------------------------------- | I am considering resolving this misaprehension that | | some people seem to have that I am married by | | terminating all the personas involved. | | Bella | ----------------------------------------------------- You have been warned! **>> STAFF CHANGE IN THE MPGRT The staff in the MPGames RT have been playing musical chairs and shuffling around. As a result, Krell is no longer the Fed category leader. Her shoes will be filled by Oxcart. (Quite what he will be filling her shoes with, we don't want to even think about!) He'll be taking over her role as topic cop, making sure the correct messages go into the right topics, and running the the Fed RTCs. We want you all to show him the respect he deserves (Oxcart? Respect? Ha!) in his new position (what new position has he come up with now?). **>> SLEAZEBAG TABLOID SO-CALLED JOURNOS! We're very much afraid it wasn't a fluke. We hoped, oh how we hoped, that last week's issue of Under Fed was a one-off occurrence. But it's happened again. Yesterday, our mailbox was stuffed with this... well, we hesitate to call it a newspaper! Incidentally, we've heard rumours that Sleazy, the editor of this muck-raking mag, is angling to get a promotion to Senator so he can pick up gossip by spying on everyone. Bella assures us (much to our relief) that she has no plans to comply with his request! If you haven't seen a copy of this disgusting journal, you are lucky. If you want to see a copy, you must be very sick. If you insist on seeing it, mail UNDERFED or send a message to Sleazy, asking to be put on the mailing list. Then get help! **>> THE DELICATE ART OF ASSASSINATION Assassination has been much in the news recently, so we thought we'd tell you a little of the history of this controversial behaviour. In Fed terms, assassination is tricking a player into doing something that results in their death. It first became popular way, way back when the game was young and ship to ship fighting hadn't been implemented. There was no way to kill anyone, no matter how obnoxious they were being. Until Pegasus (the player, before he was immortalised as a mobile) handed a violent, foul-mouthed GroundHog the TDX and told him to drop it and he'd get groats! The resultant explosion started a new trend, and Pegasus began thinking up elaborate ways to dispose of unwanted players, helped by his cohort Pugwash. After ship fighting came into the game, assassination went out of fashion and became something of a myth. Recently, it has been revived by a new batch of players. The true art of assassination involves coming up with new (and fiendish) ways to fool other players. It is obviously more difficult to assassinate high level players, which is why the victims are usually new players. Unless it is used to censure a player who is behaving in a way that doesn't fit in with the style of the game, an assassination is usually nothing more than an elaborate practical joke. The recent history of assassination culminated in the spectacular blowing up of the martian ruins, killing eleven people in one go (including one planet- owner). This shall be the milestone by which all future assassinations are measured. What prevents assassination from becoming oppression of new players is that the true proponent of the art ensures that the potential victim is insured before setting up the scam; and afterwards, they compensate the victim by paying for his, her or its insurance (and probably giving a huge bonus too!) and making sure they reinsure. Without these touches, assassination would be bullying; with them, it remains jolly good fun. **>> ELF ALERT! Remember the fuss Altasren made about leaving, how he dragged out his farewells to make absolutely sure no-one could miss the fact that he was off? Well we don't know why he bothered, because he was back in Fed Data Space during the week - apparently spotted having a pint with Elvis in one of Sol Space's seedier bars! **>> FEUDS CORNER Galimos certainly seems to be an abrasive character. He's making enemies every time he turns around! He and Menace spend all their time on the ground sniping at each other, and their time in the air firing! The bar board always has rude messages from one to the other. Now Otoole has taken a dislike to Galimos: he's offered 100 meg to anyone who can kill Gal dead-dead. We have no idea just what Galimos has done to upset Otoole so much, other than just being himself. Glurg has offered to do the job if he gets 50 meg up front. Meanwhile, Galimos had married Caryna. Poor girl, does she know what she has let herself in for? Let's hope this marriage lasts a little longer than his previous wife did. His new marriage may have mellowed Galimos a little, because one of our newsdroids spotted him helping a couple of newbods to get started! On the other hand, he might have been just gaining their trust prior to betraying them later! Speaking of marriages... Marcia got married (again) last night to Telidon and Zagmar. It's getting to be quite a habit! **>> PLANETS AND DUCHIES Noe's new planet, Elsewhere, was linked into the game earlier this week - and what a good one it is, too! The usual services are situated around the landing pad, although frankly, the locals don't seem very welcoming, and they seem to begrudge having to take time to serve you - in some cases they become violent! Away from the landing pad, one finds hidden elevators, portals that send you unexpectedly to the other side of the planet, man-, woman-, or thing-eating sharks, strange pyramid structures, jungles... this certainly is a mixed planet. The standard of player-planets seems to have improved immensely from the early days: seeing what other players can achieve obviously acts as a spur to new builders to outdo those that have gone before. Noe's planet is excellent, and you will have a great deal of fun exploring it. On a side note, Condor has no ship and gets around using the command. He was rather amused that he can now . Barberousse's new planet should be added to the game early next week. Several planets advanced their economic levels during the week. Tellurian's Nemesis became a mining planet. He'll be going mini soon. Three planets advanced to Industrialist: Zagmar's Valaria, Plantking's Canna and Looney's Insanity. Insanity has just gone mini - the shrunken version is a must for dog-lovers, and has inspired a new fashion trend in Fed Data Space! Bochiman's Hell switched to Technical. There's been minor upheaval in the duchies: like rats deserting a sinking ship, all Piemur's vassals have seceded. Not before time, because there are definite disadvantages to being shackled to an absentee Duke (Piemur's been gone for several months). Mirai and Valeria have both signed up with Elex's Scadia. Noe has hitched Elsewhere to Elex's star, too. This means there are now two active Dukes, who actually bother to run their duchies. Elex and Niun (the new Duke on the block) both have six worlds under them. There's seven Independent planets (one of which is Arena which will always be Independent). Krell's Gotham still has two planets, who seem quite happy with her for the time being: Piemur is left with no planets at all. Khan's Neutarus has vanished completely (he's not been on the game for a long time and we understand he's not going to come back soon). It's worth noting that Krell has still got an embargo set for Zippy, which hasn't been a duchy for an awful long time. Old grudges die hard! Meanwhile, there's several Barons building for Duke, so things will change again soon. **>> SPYNET REVIEW New players continue to flock into the game; welcome to all of you. The week's new Captains are Flambe, Jasmine, Corwin, Icepirate, King, Wolfe, Jammur, Janth, Raoul, Grendel, Stark, Barney, Seeker, Joel and Hosmer. Adventurers and -euses were Sean, Bork, Otto, Danl, Tc, Quarl, Rand, Barney, Caryna and Killeshandra. The Traders' Guild opened its doors to Killeshandra, Sean, Justy and Nightstalker. Baron, Titania and Lurana became Merchants. Amber, Zan and Ramius solved the awesome JP puzzle. Noe was promoted to Squire as her planet was linked to the game. Tellurian achieved Thanity; Zagmar, Plantking and Looney became Industrialists, and Bochiman made it to Technocrat. There were no notable deaths (we count "notable" deaths as those happening to Traders and above), but a couple of Captains that went dead-dead had rather suitable names: Flambe - did he fly into the sun, we wonder? - and Fear, who obviously wasn't fearful enough to avoid death! **>>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 * a message to Hazed or Bella * send GEnie mail with the Mail about Federation option from the main menu A front-end terminal program is available for Federation, for the PC and the Amiga. You can download a copy of FedTerm from the Federation libraries (option 3 on the main Fed page). 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 Senate, 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