**>> SPYNET BULLETIN **>> EARTHDATE 94.10.30 **>> AN H-by-A SERVICE **>> Compiled by Hazed plus a team of specialist newsdroids **>> your news and gossip and get paid good groats! **>> MULTI-MEGA-GROATS. Bella has spent the past week tidying up the odds and ends that needed fixing following the conversion to NewFed. She has now changed the way personal balances are calculated, so the limit on how many groats you can keep in your bank account is no longer necessary. However, for the time being there is still a limit on your company balance. Please do not keep more than 1.5 gig in your company until Bella has put in a fix for this. We should point out that if you do keep too much money in your company, it won't do any damage to the game itself... all that will happen is that you will end up with a hugely negative balance! And fixing your overdraft will be fairly low on Bella's list of priorities. You have been warned... **>> EXPLORERS' WORKBENCH Bella put in a new version of the Workbench which fixed the problems players had been experiencing. However, a few players have since reported new problems, so obviously Bella has a bit more work to do on the workbench before it can be pronounced 100% healthy! The old workbench (option 5 on the main Fed page) will be going away in a week, so if anyone has data in it which needs to be converted to NewFed, they should speak now. **>> TWEAKING THE ECONOMY Loud were the cries of anguish when the Galaxy's economy seemed to go into a spin; producing everything and needing nothing. This was a result of the sudden flurry of investment by planet-owners playing with their new tools, combined with the lack of agricultural planets because the owners needed to re-input some of the data before they would load into the game. The old agri planets are almost all in now; there are three new ones, and more expected next week, so Traders once again have a ready market for their wares. Bella also tampered with the Sol exchanges, increasing the stockpiles for all commodities to between 1000 and 2000 tons, and doubling all their consumption. You should now find that Sol will buy from you, even if other planets won't. Because investment has had such an effect on the production capabilities of player-planets, Bella has removed the ability for Dukes to buy production points. There was a lobby from certain players suggesting that Bella should re-roll all the exchanges, but Bella considered this to be too unfair to those who had spent a lot of their money on points. (It should be pointed out that most of those calling for the re-roll were Dukes and Senators, who wouldn't have been affected by the change!!) **>> DECADANCE AND DECAY As a planet gets older it must change or decay. If it doesn't evolve, it will stagnate; the population will become decadent, more interested in parties than working. Who can blame them for wanting to enjoy themselves rather than toil in the factories? But it won't be good news for the planets' owners, who depend on their workthings working, not partying! Agricultural planets will be safe from decay, because sons and daughters of the soil are more-or-less immune to the siren song of the lotus-eaters - and food, to a certain extent, grows itself. But other planets will suffer if they don't develop. The days since the planet's last advancement will be counted (excluding days when the planet is offline) and after 30 days the rot will start to set in. Mining production will drop because at each reset, 2 points will be taken off one mining commodity (at random). When mining production has disappear completely, points will start to come off industrial production, then technical, and then agricultural. The clock starts ticking today (Sunday). You have thirty days at your current level before the spots of rust start to appear on your shiny new economies. Change or die! **>> DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING? Insurance is a wonderful thing. Make sure you are insured, and death is only a mere inconvenience... a short stay in hospital, a trip to the broker to get re-insured, and all is back to normal. But without that insurance... oh, horrors! Death means the end of everything as your existance is completely wiped out and you become just a fond memory. Over the years, there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth by those unlucky (or foolish) enough to die dead-dead, and many pleas for reinstatement. All have fallen on deaf ears. But now the Great Green Goddess has unclogged her ears, unfrozen her heart, and decided to change the way death affects the upper classes. For ranks up to and including Explorer, nothing will change: if you go dead- dead, you'll be wiped out, exactly as happens now (wouldn't you know its only the filthy rich that benefit?). For planet-owners (Squires to Barons) dead-death will no longer mean oblivion. Instead, you will be bumped down to the rank of Trader. Your planet will be wiped out, along with any money in its treasury. Your personal balance will remain intact. Your stats will be put down to 40, 40, 40, 45 (a total of 165, so you'll have to get 20 more before you can promote to Merchant). You will be given new insurance. For Dukes and Senators, dead-death will bump you down to the rank of GM. You will retain all your stats but you will have to do the full complement of Rich-Person jobs again before you can promote to Explorer. Your personal balance will remain intact, but any money in your duchy or slush fund will be lost. You will be given new insurance. If the Emperor goes dead-dead, or is assassinated (whether you have insurance or not) you will be put back to the rank of GM. You will retain all your stats but will have to offer the full amount of jobs. You will be given new insurance... but you will have absolutely no groats at all! Since these changes will be implemented later this week, we advise any Rich People planning to go dead-dead by accident to wait a few days before doing anything silly! (We understand Dierdre nearly had a fatal accident on her OWN planet recently... very careless.) **>> MEET THE BOSS! Last week, Dukes and Senators had a chance to talk to Bella in the game about expected new features. The meeting was a great success and Our Illustrious Leader wants to continue to give the players a chance to put their views about changes in the game. The next people to get the chance will be planet-owners. Please put Sunday November 20, 3.00pm eastern, into your diaries as your chance to chat to Bella. **>> TIME CHANGE Just a reminder that Daylight Savings Time came to an end last night, so you should have had an extra hour to play Fed. However, until the computer that runs Fed gets reset tomorrow, the game may still give you the Summertime time. **>> NEW GRAPHICS Devon has uploaded two excellent pictures to the Federation Official library (option 3 on our main page). They are both GIF files, so can be displayed by just about any computer. Users of FedTerm can convert the pictures to FedTerm's native format using the GIF2FED utility, also in the library. The files are: #114 - SNARK1.GIF A picture of Snark orbit #115 - MARSCELT.GIF A strange discovery in the Martian ruins **>> SPOOKY AND SCARY: THE PLANET DUST Maxwell has written an extremely good Halloween planet for us, which is in the game until Tuesday morning. There's something strange happening on the planet Dust, and it's your job to find out why! Your explorations will take you into a mad scientists laboratory (where you'll soon be cut down to size), through tunnels under a graveyard inhabited by flesh-eating ghouls, and into many other terrifying places. Even if you never bother to explore planets, make sure you take a look at Dust. Maxwell worked hard to come up with one of the best promotional planets we've had. Speaking of promotional planets... if you have an urge to write a special planet for us, please contact Hazed. We want a Thanksgiving planet and a Christmas planet, and we need volunteers! **>> PARTY, PARTY, PARTY HOSTS! The new Fed Party Hosts seemed to have settled in and made themselves at home in Fed Data Space. Chez Diesel has been adopted as centre of operations by Redqueen and Caterpillar, and you are all invited to the ongoing UNbirthday party where you can have ANOTHER cup of tea (in a CLEAN cup)... since you can't have LESS you must have MORE! The Party Hosts are there to answer questions, from new and old players, but they won't give out answers to the puzzles, nor will they tell you if an object is in the game unless you have looked for it first! They will put up with silly questions from newbods, but oldbods ought to know better. **>> PLANETS AND DUCHIES Everyone seems very pleased with NewFed, but the group of people that are most excited by it are planet-owners. Not only do they have new toys to play with (investment), but they can kiss goodbye to their mini-planets. Many planet-owners have already rebuilt their worlds - some are the same as their old full planets, but some planet-owners have taken the opportunity to provide a completely new planet. With the number of new planets coming into the game, we just don't have enough time to explore old planets and write reports on them, but if owners want to send us details we will include them in the news; and if there is ever a week when there are no new planets, we'll run a tourist guide to all the planets available, giving a brief description of the worlds. This week, the flood of new planets started, with three new worlds being linked into the game: Cheri's Aise, Galena's Mallavia and Windman's Storm. We review all three planets later in this bulletin. Next week, there are already two planets lined up to go in: Corinthus's Sparta and Gortek's Tula. Now let's take a look at the duchies. During the period when the SpyNet Review wasn't collecting data for the news, Sean made Duke, filling one of the empty slots. There's still space for another duchy before someone gets bumped to Senator... and rumour has it that Budwarp is going to give it a shot! Blackadder and Maxwell are the other Barons, and they both seem content to remain planet-owners, although they may change their mind once their planets start to fall apart around them. So now we're in NewFed, with more planets than ever before, who has allied with whom? Looney's Insanity has Jade's Dunnottar, Budwarp's Epini, Blackadder's Hyperion and Dierdre's Cove. Zagmar's Valaria has Tao's Rtyui, Ciaran's Ulster, Rakshasa's Utopia, Djmayhem's Halcyon and Amerigo's Vespi. Nightstalker's Nightfall has nine planets in its sway: Akiko's Mirai, Chainsaw's Nautilus, Surfer's Surf, Chance's Chaos, Kainaw's Tisnar, Cicero's Roma, Sukotto's Polaris, Xyzzy's Advent and Skurge's Vannitel. The new duchy, Sean's Eire, has picked up some planets that used to be in Insanity, as well as two of the new ones: Maxwell's Dawn, Emmi's Addis, Silk's Fortymile, Cheri's Aise and Windman's Storm. Finally, Amigan's Athens is the monster-duchy at the moment with eleven planets: Neuromancer's Paradigm, Tantras' Vertigo, Mosquito's Sutra, Dirge's Qushmarrah, Talisan's Skan, Fletcher's Pagrah, Brawn's Outpost, Drspock's Corona, Romana's Brittany, Aja's Anomoly and Galena's Mallavia (the new one). So what does this mean for the fortcoming Emperor race? It's hard to say, because alliances once thought certain now seem a little shaky. Nightstalker and Zagmar may do the expected thing and line up behind Topper, but NS has been having chats with Tellurian. Tell can probably count on the support of Amigan, and with that many planets in his Duchy Amigan will have a large voting block. Insanity looks a little diminished since Sean's promotion, so what does that do for Occy's chances? Will Sean support him or is his vote up for grabs? Arena's Rama Bar seems to be the favorite venue for Dukes and Senators to get together and plot, discuss their Secret Senator powers, and plot some more. This exclusive establishment has certainly seen a lot of trade over the last few weeks! The new decay system may well do a lot to change the way the duchies are ordered. No Duke is going to want decaying planets in a duchy, because once the planet starts to decay badly it will continually lose money - and that will lose the Duke money too. So duchies that up to now have been swollen by planets that don't get much attention from their owners may change. It's all going to be rather interesting! **>> BESIDE THE SEA Cheri's new planet, Aise, was the first to be linked into NewFed. A water world, with practically no land at all, from the orbit it looks very welcoming. You land on a reef in the middle of the ocean. The landing pad has a statue of a mermaid, her four arms pointing in the different directions you can go. The usual services are off the pad; down leads under the sea on a glass spiral staircase, with fish swimming past providing an endlessly fascinating display. South of the landing pad, a path leads to the main planet, which includes a beach (beaches are obviously "in" at the moment, many of the planets have them) and a cave with a bed in it, obviously meant for lovers. Aise is a pleasant world but it has its nasty side. Fake "deaths" don't actually kill you, but they leave you trapped in a room that only suicide (or teleporter) will let you escape. The text has also been formatted rather strangely, which looks a little disconcerting. **>> LET'S GO SHOPPING! Galena's Mallavia is one gigantic shopping mall. And there's really not much else to say about it! It's got valet parking for your ship, an enormous carpark that stretches for miles and is like a maze (well, ok, it is a maze), and it's got lots of shops. LOTS of shops! And cafes, and bars, and restaurants, and more shops. Mallavia is a funny planet, the descriptions made our explorerdroid snigger to start with, but the joke wears thin after a while. It's worth taking a look, but there's not much to make you come back again and again. **>> STORMY WEATHER Windman's Storm was linked into the game on Friday. We were going to hold our review of his world over until next week, but we changed our minds, for two reasons: there are two more planets due in next week anyway; and it's such a good planet we wanted to make sure you all knew about it immediately. As the name suggests, Storm is a windy planet (how appropriate given its owner). It's also very cold, so it's just as well we are mechanical droids made of metal and don't feel the chill. Humans or other flesh'n'blood creatures should make sure to wrap up warm before visiting, however. There are two different areas to Storm, and they are very different. The landing pad area is domed and high-tech. Here you find all the usual services. But if you venture out of the shelter of the domes, and take the path over the mountain to Windward Hills, you find a small village nestling in the hills, besides a (freezing cold) lake - it's as if you've gone to a completely different world. Windman's descriptions are very good indeed, giving the full flavor the rural, remote village and its inhabitants. But what makes this planet stand out from others is the very clever device that shows you the village both during the day, and at night! We can't say any more because we don't want to spoil the surprise. We have absolutely no hesitation in presenting Windman with the very first NewFed Walrus of Merit. Well done! **>> SPYNET REVIEW Data collection of promotions, deaths and so on have resumed, so from next week you can expect the round-up of exciting happenings in Fed DataSpace. **>> 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. The current Federation Party Hosts are: Mira, Redqueen, Caterpillar and Lyrynna. Their function is to answer questions, help new players get started, and make fun things happen. The lists shows you the party hosts if they are in the game. In the event of a problem or question, you can: * talk to Hazed or one of the Party Hosts 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). 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