**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 94.08.28 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! Well actually this hasn't been compiled by Hazed and a team of specialist newsdroids at all, it's been compiled by the specialist H-by-A cleaningdroid. And since Hazed forgot to tell me where the hidden newsdroids where hiding to do their secret newsgathering, you'll just have to make do with the odds and ends I found while dusting.... **>> STUFF BELLA'S BEEN MUCKING ABOUT WITH Unless you've had your head in a bucket all week you'll have noticed that SpyNet notice is now free and automatic, allowing you to save anything up to the princely sum of 25IG each time you log on to the game. This change has proved to be immensely popular with everyone except the people who hate it! In the words of whoever it was that said it, "How can you hate something that's an automatic turn on?" Just to confuse you, typing doesn't do anything but you'll still get a message telling you what it would do if it did still do something. Clear? Good.... Another change this week means that Captains can now use the Interstellar Link. Since it seems to take an average of about 10 minutes for newbods to get bumped up to Captain these days, that means that new and inexperienced players will now get the opportunity to die on player planets along with the old hands (or equivalent)! More on this shortly. Quite what bought on this sudden bout of gratuitous benevolence from Our Illustrious Leader is unknown, but we suspect it might be because the excessive size of her infeasibly large green bottom hasn't been mentioned in the news for a while. So we won't mention it now! A fix went in recently so that events won't work in ships. We wouldn't have thought Emmi's legendary lack of culinary skills could have such far-reaching consequences, but there you go. Emmi's Sandwich on Tantras' UnCon planet had an event which killed you if you ate it, but if you took it into your ship and then ate it the game didn't know what to do with you! Now, the event won't happen so the sandwich will, in fact, be eaten (in this case, probably with side-effects that make death seem preferable). Planet writers should bear this in mind if they want to use eat events. **>> MORE STUFF FOR PLANET WRITERS TO BEAR IN MIND As mentioned above, you can now expect to have all manner of Poor People tromping their way around your creative masterpiece. As a consequence, you should be extra careful to erect (ooo-errr, Missus) prominent warning signs for dangerous areas. Since people tend to be put off if they have to clamber over a large pile of corpses to get out of their ships, you should try to keep the areas around the landing pad, with the essential services, free from danger. That includes objects that can kill, so think about this when setting lowest possible locations for recycling. The road (or equivalent) that leads to the more 'interesting' parts of the planet should be clearly marked as heading for danger. For relatives of the ne Galdur boys and other psychopaths out there who want to make the entire planet as dangerous as possible, we'd suggest that a large flashing neon sign warning of danger be placed prominently at the link. Of course, if you wanted to be *really* nasty, you could always erect signs saying 'This way to the safe areas' instead... but it's more than my job's worth to mention such a thing! **>> PROBLEM PLANETS Rumour has is that the movement table in the Utopia Bar isn't feeling quite itself at the moment and that the only way out for the teleporter-impaired is to suicide! The planet had spun out when we tried to check it, but a last minute report just before we went to press confirmed the rumour. Of course, it's always possible that this is a cunning ploy to get player time by holding people captive! On the subject of planets spinning out, don't forget that if you log off on a player planet and it's spun out when you next log on, you'll be dumped in the Starship Cantina on Earth. **>> TALL STORY OF THE WEEK Apparently, Gortek has been cornering anyone who will listen to tell them that he was recently kidnapped by aliens! We think this is just the result of overindulging in Diesel's Old Peculiar - after all, everyone knows that when you're kidnapped by aliens they brainwash you so that you don't remember it when they bring you back. **>> PAYING FOR PLEASURE (CONTINUED) As our regular reader will know, wannabe-Emperor Topper has been attempting to corner the market in rumpy-pumpy by forcing people to purchase boinking permits. It now seems that the Senatorial authority in this matter is being challenged. We received the following communique: "About these boinking licenses, well in fact 'Boinking' is not in the dictionary. Therefore paying for a permit for something that does not exist has no legal bearing. Those who paid for permits probably were wrongly charged for useless documents. Also if anyone has suffered from any penalties for failing to possess a permit for committing this so-called act is probably just as wrongly accused. That is if you agree with me that issuing permits for 'Boinking' is senseless due to unclear terminology and lack of definition of the permissible acts thereof." Well, we don't know the answer, but anyone who uses the phrase 'lack of definition of the permissible acts thereof' may have a point. (We do, however, agree that boinking isn't in the dictionary because our spell-checker insists we meant 'bouncing'!) We'd suggest that anyone who feels they have been wrongly charged should approach their local Senator and demand a refund. Stay tuned for further developments.... **>> MORE ODDS 'N' SODS Rai went dead-dead earlier this week because of a runaway macro. Once again, we'd like to remind you of the inherent dangers of long macros whether attended or otherwise, and in particular remind you that if you die as a result of using a macro you will not be reinstated. Rich People who are planning to have dead-dead accidents might like to ensure that all their money is stashed away in their planetary treasury. Your company is liquidated when you go d-d so all those lovely groats in it go up in flames, but the planetary treasury is preserved. For some strange reason, there's a note here to remind people not to use when Cryptothingie is on-line, but we have no idea why. **>> HALCYON DAZE DJMayhem's planet Halcyon became the latest addition to Fed this week. We were planning to bring you a review but the place has piped techno music and we couldn't find anyone willing to stay there long enough to explore it! As if the techno music wasn't bad enough, we hear that there are some events which do particularly nasty things to your stats, so we'd advise caution when you're visiting. DJ has created two special drinks to help promote the planet - the non-alcoholic Halcyon Sunrise and the definitely-alcoholic Halcyon Sunset. He tells us that the latter is rather like a coma in a cup, so be sure you don't order one when you mean the other! **>> SPYNET REVIEW Congratulations to everyone who was promoted during the week. We have no idea who you are or what you were promoted to, but congratulations anyway! **>> 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. But you really ought to. A lot of hard work goes into pasting this bit on the end of every edition of news, you know. In the event of a problem or question, you can: * talk to Hazed, Bella, Emmi, Mira, Tellurian or Tellurain in the game * a message to Hazed * 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 Amiga. You can download a copy of FedTerm from the Federation official libraries (option 3 on the main Fed page). The third edition of the unexpurgated printed Idiot's Guide to Federation is now available, price $15.95. Type ORDER from any GEnie main menu and buy one. Or more! Federation has several categories in the 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 has a Federation player library in the files area, Lib 5. **>> BULLETIN ENDS