**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 93.10.31 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS... We're continuing to experience mysterious crashes that are having strange effects on personas. We've had reports of factories vanishing, planet treasuries going up or down unexpectedly, and even insurance vanishing! With appallingly bad timing, Bella is out of contact at the moment while moving house. She won't have a phone put into her new place until the middle of the week, so can't sort things out till then. Meanwhile, we ask everyone to please contact us if they are on the game when it crashes, and tell us what they were doing. We particularly need to know what is the last command you issue before the game goes "boom". Keep a note of losses incurred by your persona because of the crashes, and if possible save log or capture files. We'll make sure everyone is compensated once things settle down a bit. Actually, Hazed is convinced that the reason the game is crashing so much is BECAUSE Bella is out of contact - the game code is obviously sentient, and it is missing its master... **>> ALL CHANGE! Don't forget that your clocks all went back an hour last night, so you had an extra hour's sleep - or an extra hour's partying! **>> DOWN IN THE DUMPS The NewsDroids are not at their best today. After last week's bumper, fun- packed issue of the news (which has been nominated for a Pullover prize), they are convinced they will never be able to top that and are wondering whether it's even worth trying. Hazed is not being much encouragement: she says she's got a cold, but we reckon it's just the result of too many Bloody Marys at the Halloween party last night! **>> SPOOKY HALLOWEEN FUN Oxcart wrote us an excellent planet for the Halloween weekend, called Ritz in the system Skiva. It will be in the game until tomorrow (Monday) afternoon, so if you haven't explored it yet go and do so. There are no actual death locations on the planet... but there are lots of little traps that take small amounts of stamina off, so beware! Be sure to visit Lon's Bar (which doubles as the hospital and insurance office) to replenish your stamina. Many familiar creatures from horror movies stalk the planet. Experience the massacre at Camp Lode, the eerie hotel where all the bedrooms are numbered 13, and the strange glowing island in the middle of the noxious swamp. To make room for the planet Ritz, Freya's Vitro and Tellurian's Nemesis were removed for the weekend. Arena Space also vanished, and with it went smuggling. Things will be back to normal tomorrow. (Normal? Ha! What are we saying?) **>> COSTUME CAPERS Hazed hosted a Halloween costume party last night in Chez Diesel, with prizes of groats for the best outfit. There were a lot of entries, and she had a great deal of difficulty choosing between them, but she was helped by the bribes she was offered. We are not going to describe all the contestants outfits; but some of those that didn't win are worth a mention: >ex gemini Gemini wears a yellow pod with black stripes. On her ascii is a stinger. Two boingy things bounce on her head. She carries a violin case. Gemini's boingy things were certainly very obtrusive throughout the party, and a number of people fell foul of her stinger. >ex tabby Tabby is dressed as a minor goddess in brilliant white spandex. The accessories make it clear she is supposed to be the goddess of bondage. Hazed was a little unsure about this outfit - was Tabby masquerading as the demi-goddess, and if so should she be flattered or offended? >ex screwup Screwup, the ghost of Duke, is an eerie presence, pale and shadowy, leaving an icy mist wherever he passes... Poor Trader Duke went dead-dead on the Halloween planet - possibly the victim of one of the mysterious crashes! >ex tellurian With black fishnet stockings, black bodice and matching panties, Tell is the spitting image of Dr. Frank N. Furter! Hazed was very tempted to declare Tellurian the winner. She thought the sexy stockings suited him, and his outrageous attempts to bribe her were very attractive. But, in the end, she decided she had to at least pretend to be honest and award the prizes on merit! A special prize was awarded to Oxcart for the most disgusting costume: >ex oxcart The body before you reeks of death. Bits of rotting flesh seem to have been haphazardly thrown together to form arms and legs. Hey! That's my hand! Oxcart's prize was a night out with Glurg. He was delighted with the prize, and hopes that Glurg's donkey is part of the deal. Now, onto the main prizes. In third place, winning 1 meg, was Sean: >ex sean A swashbuckling pirate, with eyepatch, cutlass in hand, flint pistol tucked in his pants and a parrot, its the dreaded Redbeard Second prize of 3 meg went to Tim: >ex tim Tim is wearing a dinosaur costume with Barney's head sticking out of his mouth. And the Grand First Prize, the Supreme Accolade, the award of 5 meg, went to Amigan: >ex amigan The person before you looks normal except that where his head used to be rests a carved pumpkin with a candle in it. Congratulations to Amigan and to all the other winners, and thanks to everyone who took part in the contest. **>> PARTY TIME Once the contest was out of the way, the real fun began. Being Halloween, everyone wanted to play party games but it was hard agreeing what to play. Someone suggested bobbing for apples, but Hazed would only do it in a hot tub. Twister was ruled out because half the people wanted to play it clothed, and half naked. Occy objected to the suggestion that they should play Pin the Tail on Occy. A game of blind-man's bluff started out well, but when everyone wanted to be blindfolded Hazed decided it would be easier to just turn out the lights. Chaos ensued, with people blundering into each other and the furniture... Later, the party adjourned to the martian ruins, where seated around the altar the celebrants scared each other spitless by telling ghost stories! **>> BAD PR The slogan we used to advertise the Halloween weekend was "In space, no-one can hear you scream". It's total rubbish, of course, because everyone has a comm unit that makes it possible to hear them scream, laugh, fart, or whatever noise they want to make, wherever they are in space! I think we need to change our ad agency. **>> CROSS-PROMOTIONS AND SPECIAL EVENTS If you missed Bella's RTC in the Religion and Philosophy RT about the ethics and morals of writing a multi-player game, never fear! You can now download the transcript from the R&P library on page 390. There are two versions of the file: 2311 is in plain ASCII text, and 2312 is zipped. It was obviously a fun conference, with discussion about how the players evolve their own morals and rules; how the philosophy behind Fed makes it differ from other games; and how a games designer can affect the way people play a game. Work has been started on a Home Improvements planet! Page 1430 is the Home Improvements RT, and they are drawing up the blueprints to design us a planet as a cross-promotion. Go join their discussion and help them out, in Cat 1, Top 4. Coming next: Krell's UnConvention planet will be in the game November 12- 15. Find out what Fedders do on their holidays! You didn't get to see the planet Cabbage last week, because Bella moved house on just the wrong day. Hopefully, it will go in for one night only towards the end of next week. Watch the bar-boards for information. Finally, it's nothing to do with Fed, but it's worth a mention: GEnie's Livewire magazine is now available in multimedia formats! There are versions for the PC (either DOS or Windows), the Mac (colour or black and white) and the Amiga, plus boring old text versions for other computers. You can download these magazines from GEnie - there's a menu item on the Fed page that will take you to the right place. **>> HOW THE NEWS GETS WRIT The news makes much mention of the NewsDroids, with stories of how they get turned into ashtrays when they make mistakes. But joking aside, here's an insight from Hazed into how the news actually gets created each week. The main function of the news is to pass on important official information from Bella and the Federation Team. News about new features, changes and anything else that will affect the way you play the game. Sometimes I will report this kind of news "straight", sometimes I will try to write about it in a "game context" - for example, last week I reported that Bella was going to delete the sendmail file, but I invented a Galactic Administration postal strike to justify it. Any information that I include in the news in an official capacity will be true and correct (to the best of my knowledge). But when it comes to the gossip and scandal... well, I have never claimed to write the truth about other players!! The main problem I have is actually finding out what's going on in the game, and who is doing what to whom. I can't be on the game at all times, so I rely on people passing me information. Since there's actually only a small number of people who bother to tell me things, the news sometimes seems to revolve around the same people. Sometimes I am given no more than a rumour. If I can't substantiate it, I might just mention it in passing, or I might run with it and develop a story out of it. However, I never knowingly print lies about anyone, and if I am unsure of the truth I only print a story if I know the person involved will take it in good part. If someone tells me something, either in the game or out of it, and asks me not to put it in the news - I won't! I am not a scurrilous investigative reporter, and I do respect people's confidentiality. I often ask people to write whole articles for me for the news - for example, a report of a party or event. If they wish to be credited, then I put their name on the report. If they wish to remain anonymous, I will say it's by a special correspondent, or I'll make up some name for them. I pay groats to people who write me articles, or who just give me information that I can make into a story, so don't be backwards in coming forwards. The system of Guest NewsDroids taking over a whole issue started earlier in the year when I went on holiday. I asked two players to fill in for the two weeks I was away. They did an excellent job - so good I almost didn't come back - and I decided to continue to use Guests every month. This turned out to be an excellent idea! It gave me a week off each month (and believe me, churning this stuff out every Sunday can get to be a real chore) and gave other people the chance to be a journalist for a day. I started by picking guests from among the pool of people who already wrote articles for me - since they had proved they knew how to write! Now I am using anyone who volunteers, so long as I think they can do a good job. So if you want to be a Guest NewsDroid, please contact me! Next week the news will be compiled by a Guest Newsdroid: Emmi. Send her all your interesting titbits during the coming week. **>> THE WAR THAT WASN'T The war between Ocean and Hell has been... well, pretty boring, really! Despite the worries about innocents being shot down in cold blood, there has probably been less fighting than usually goes on in peacetime! The main combat has been confined to Arena Space - there have been a number of duels fought, and lots of attempts to ambush would-be smugglers, but nothing to endanger anyone going about their peaceful business. Even the economic side of the war has been rather dull. Both sides claim that the other side is completely undefended - Hell, because it is too large to have effective detectors; and Ocean, because their customs fleet keeps getting destroyed! It looks like Hell is the more vulnerable of the two, but it's too early to tell whether the Hell planet-owners are suffering. This has mostly been a war of words, conducted on the electronic bar board and the bulletin board. There's been posturing and expostulating from both sides, with the occasional small voice of reason being ignored as usual. What an anti-climax! **>> PRIZE-WINNING STRATEGIES Baron Otoole unexpectedly returned to Fed Data Space after a long absence. His break from the game hasn't improved his disposition at all: he's still as objectionable and rude as ever. However, Glurg came up with a strategy to cope with his curmudgeonliness: loving kindness! He chased Otoole around, hugging and kissing him whenever he caught up. This infuriated Otoole, who responded by slapping Glurg. Otoole bought himself a new ship and orbitted, but people who were expecting him to fly in space and get blown up by Glurg were disappointed: he just stayed in orbit. Even here, though, he couldn't escape Glurg's affections. Since it's possible to kiss and hug people in their ships, that's what he did, and this time "Tooley darling" couldn't respond by slapping back. It was Bochiman who came up with a prize-winning strategy to use Otoole as a secret weapon in the war. He intends to persuade Otoole to join the duchy of Ocean, then bribe Bella to remove the command! Several thousand style-points to Bochi for that idea. Sadly, Bochi didn't keep his style-points for long... it's a bit crass to put an embargo up against Ocean this weekend, when smuggling isn't in the game. He then made some very rude remarks about Emmi on the bar board, because he thought something Sean said came from her! Minus ten million for style, Bochi. **>> A NEW HERO! [A report on one of the outbreaks of fighting, by our special war correspondent.] Concerned citizens had been calling in reports of sporadic fighting in the solar system all evening, so I was dispatched by the unrelenting bi--err--I mean, the lovely lady Hazed to get the full scoop. Icepirate seemed to be one of the protagonists involved in the fighting, so when he was detained in the hospital being cloned and getting the required physical, I snuck into an empty cargo bay in his ship. Thank the gods for my Acme Space Parachute(tm) or I wouldn't still be alive today. I saw many ships almost fly into us that evening. The Mescara, Nastygreen, FightingMutes, and Equivirapper, among others. The ones I wished I hadn't seen were the Nastygreen and Equivirapper. Over and over again, they kept pummeling the MilleniumPigeon, but not before Icepirate skillfully handed back the fire. What provoked the exchange of fire between Icepirate, Glurg, and Tellurian still remains a mystery. When even a crack reporter such as I cannot uncover a detail, you know that it is well hidden. There was much bloodshed and deaths. Icepirate single-handedly killed Glurg and Tellurian innumerable times, and was unfortunately wiped out himself too many times to count. When I saw the Nastygreen explode in the viewscreen, I was beside myself. This was the mighty Glurg? I hadn't been so disillusioned since I found out Santa was an old, fat nerd who smells of reindeer excrement. Flying the Xhit flag, Icepirate returned home to a rousing ovation of cheers and admiration. A war hero, even! Perhaps with his new-found reputation, Icepirate will no longer have to defend his honor against weaker foes, instead he will simply scare them off by his formidable skills. Either that, or every young punk in Fed who wants to test his fighting skills will go up against The New Master. For the Hazed Yellow Journal, this has been Philip M. Offe reporting on the war front. **>> SMUGGLER'S BLUES [A trader's perspective on the war.] So there I was, tuning up my ship one last time, in preparation for the war. The Duchy of Ocean had put all of FedSpace on a war footing with it's 3-day notice of intent to fire, and I wanted to be sure I was ready. I had already sold my ship that was registered to one of the belligerents, and had reflagged in Panama. This wasn't my war, and I wanted to make sure people knew that. However, being a free-thinker, I knew that war could be very profitable for me. Everyone knows that privateers and smugglers always make a killing in times of strife. My plan was to play both sides and further my own monetary gains. The deadline for the war came and went, with little to show. Ocean was out in force, with Hell nowhere to be seen. A quick poll of the registry showed a heavy Panamanian presence, with a smattering of Ocean mixed in. As the opening night of the war dragged on, scattered Maydays came in from Sol space, but nothing major seemed to happen. People were holding their breath for the resumption of smuggling. I couldn't wait. Filthy lucre was mine to be had, once the bans on smuggling were lifted. So off I went to my sleeping quarters, with visions of groats drifting through my dreams... The next day found my ship on the LP of one of the Hellish worlds. Prices for monos looked good, and I saw a target in Ocean just begging to be hit. Buying my 225 tons worth, I set-up my computer with an advanced program I'd bought on the black market. Sure, it cost me some groats, but it was a work of genius. I was excited as I punched it in, and took off for Ocean. I exited jump space over my destination, to the sound of alarms going off. Customs ships had detected me. I quickly attempted to bluff my way through, to no avail. My goods were confiscated, and I was tossed in jail. Thank Ghu I knew how to get out of jail. Muttering to myself, I made my way back to the Earth LP, and decided on a new course of action. Ocean obviously was ready for this, and rumours had circulated over the airwaves that Hell was not. So I took off for an Ocean planet that was selling some goods that were desperately needed by a Hell planet. I programmed in my destination, and held my breath. Coming out of jump space in Hell, I found myself over my target -- and not one customs ship in sight. Smiling to myself, I landed and sold off my goods at a nice profit. I set the computer on auto-pilot, and began a very profitable night's work. From time to time I would test the Ocean defenses, just to see if it was a lucky chance that I'd been caught. I lost that bet every time. The next night, there came some startling news. Hell was reporting that the Ocean defense fleet was destroyed. Having gotten a bit cocky, I decided to give it a shot. Buying some rare libraries on a Hell world, I prepared for the jump. Once again, I warped into Ocean, and lo and behold, I was once again being hailed by the customs officials. Scratching my head, I pushed the escape routine, and found myself in Arenaspace. I started hauling butt out of there when several Ocean cutters began firing on me. "Ocean fleet destroyed?", I muttered to myself. "Then what in Ghu's name are these?" I didn't have much time for that thought, as I found myself blown to bits. I shrugged it off to foolishness in believing all the propaganda I was hearing. I should have known better. The comms were crackling with propaganda, and I had determined that I would follow my instincts, and learn for myself which was the best course of action to follow. I probed the various duchies all that night, and came to my own conclusions. Ocean was too tough a nut to crack, while the populous worlds of Hell were crying for my goods. I've made a mint since then, and I will continue to do so. I won't even go into the profits I've made in playing privateer. Pull up the wanted list some time, and see what's there. There's money to be made. Just call me, M. Akin Bucks **>> HUSBAND WANTED Zodiac and Ni have been rather disappointed about the lack of replies to their advertisement a few weeks back for a new husband. They were so worried earlier in the week that they were contemplating kidnapping someone! Thankfully, one application has now been received, and their marriage broker Hazed will be conducted an exhaustive suite of interviews, auditions and tests to evaluate the suitability of the candidate. But they really would like to have a choice, so please, do apply for the position. Send your applications to Hazed for vetting. **>> GOSSIP, SCANDAL AND LIES It appears that three of the females in Federation are very worried that Sheba is trying to steal their beaus away from them. First, Emmi had a fit when Maxwell told her that Sheba had been very concerned about his health when they met on Dawn. Then Azure had a fit because Sheba's mood was 'Sitting on Menace's lap'. Now Amber has been making threats to Sheba, demanding she stay away from Altasren! Poor Sheba - seems like she can't talk to anyone! Meanwhile... one of our spies caught Jade and Glurg snogging in Sam's early one morning. Do you think they are up to something? If not, maybe they should be! **>> SPYNET REVIEW We've probably missed some of the promotions of the week, thanks to the problems, but here is what we know about: The new Captains are Duke, Alejandro, Waste, Reno, Johanas, Dirge, Bink, Shamus and Mulligan. Adventurers and Adventureuses are Tarus, Tantras, Duke, Mj, Ajax, Byterunner, Astromike, Johanas, Dirge and Omicron. Mcbain, Emirikol, Gypsyrose and Dirge have joined the Traders Guild. Fletcher and Tabby were promoted to Merchant. The JP puzzle was easily solved by Freya and Stalker. Freya went on to become a GM soon afterwards. Then a Squire. Then a Thane. Then an Industrialist. Then a Technocrat. And finally, a Baroness! This must be some kind of record. Commerce and Industry in thriving in Fed Data Space, and the following people bought themselves new companies: Chainsaw - Kieri's Ccreations; Freya - Valhalla Labs; Nightstalker - Lighter-Than-Air Industries; Tabby - Feline Fantasies; Fletcher - General Supply Corp; Bandar - alto-madness. Merchant Zenka, Trader Duke and Trader Billy all went dead-dead during the week. Rest In Peace! **>> 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. You can download a copy of FedTerm from the Federation libraries (option 3 on the main Fed page). The Amiga version is in beta-test. 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 - and this time we really mean it!) 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 Oxcart (Mail ID: J.LONG29). There are also private categories for Explorers and the Sentate, run by Krell (Mail ID: K.HILLYER). The MPGames RT also has a Federation library in the files area, Library 5. Library 18 holds the Federation News Archives. **>> BULLETIN ENDS