LINE NOISE News from Chez Diesel 24 July, 1989 PLODDING ALONG Ah, bliss! It's been ages since we've had a real idiot in Fed Data Space - and now one has turned up to entertain us all. Adventurer Plodder is his name. A harmless, bumbling sort who just can't seem to stay out of trouble! He'd been playing for a few months without making much of a mark on the game, when dear old Cryptosporidium, the scourge of the spaceways, decided it was time to embark on another of her periodic reigns of terror, and picked Plodder as her victim. She stalked him through the Inter- planetary Wastes, twin lasers at the ready, taking pot shots whenever their ships coincided. Plodder started to get a little nervous about this, but instead of stopping for a drink in the hope that Crypto would get bored, he carried on plodding around doing jobs. And sure enough, Crypto killed him. The hapless Plod woke up in hospital, a little disgruntled, and wondered if it was safe to go to the Insurance Broker's Office on Venus. He decided it was, which was a bit of a silly decision with Crypto in one of her homicidal moods. So off he trotted - and surprise, surprise, Crypto cornered him between Earth and Venus and hit him 3 times. One more and he would have been a goner! But he managed to escape by the skin of his teeth, and breathed a sigh of relief as he landed. He dutifully went and re- insured himself. It cost him 28K. This figure rang a few bells for Crypto (who was spying on him). If you can't think why that number is significant, wait a while and all will become clear. Thinking that Crypto had had her fun and games and would now leave him alone, Plodder set off jobbing again, delivering goods for Explorer Pugwash (The Sexiest Fedder). But Crypto lay in wait and tried to blow him up again. By this time, Deadly was feeling a bit sorry for Plodder (and wanted to annoy Crypto (the fool)) so he ran inter- ference - which really did disrupt the mayhem. But perseverance paid off and Crypto killed the poor sod yet again! Once more, Plod braved the journey to the Insurance Broker's, to find Crypto waiting for him with a smirk on her face. And when he tried to re-insure, he found out why! 'Your insurance will cost 520000 groats, and you don't have that kind of money' he was told to his horror. Because that death had been his tenth death, which is the point at which the insurance premium rockets sky-high. So there was Plodder, without the money for insurance. And no-one would lend it to him! What was he to do? Several people advised him to suicide and start again - he was only an Adventurer so it wouldn't take him long to get back to that stage again. But he wasn't happy with this idea at all! Eventually Deadly came to the rescue and lent him the money he needed to insure. Plod was happy again! Until the next day... when he blundered into Monty and got killed. And didn't have the money to re-insure... What we all want to know is, how did a lowly Adventurer manage to be so careless as to die so many times? Answers on a postcard please... Oh what fun the players have been having with their factories! Remember Hawkie- poos and his input problem? Having bought a Pharmaceuticals factory, he just couldn't get enough bulk rna/dna to run it. The obvious answer was to buy a factory producing that - until a careful scrutiny of the companies info showed that bulk rna/dna needed quite a lot of Pharms to get it going! Vicious circle!! To help out, Our Illustrious Leader bought a bulk rna/dna factory and a rare earths factory on Mars. But when she logged back on the next day, the factories seemed to have got lost! She reported their absence to the Galactic Administration's Lost Property Office... and would you believe, they had both been reported found? Pugwash and Zugger had each found one factory lying about unattended and decided to take them over. Bella is threatening to reposess the strays, much to the chagrin of the lucky recipients. But I say, finder's keepers! To lose one factory could be regarded as unfortunate, to lose two is carelessness! Shortages of inputs have been causing a problem for several owners in the last week because of a change to the way the exchanges run. Bella fixed it so that when a factory was loaded into the game, the exchange wouldn't produce that commodity. So, for example, when Hawk's Petrochemicals factory on Mercury was running, Mercury wasn't producing Petrochemicals of its own. This guaranteed him a good price for his products. However, the factories weren't producing fast enough to overcome the consumption rate of the exchange - no matter how much he produced, nothing would ever be on sale to other people! So anyone who had a factory producing a commodity that was only available on the planet they had set up on, and which needed a small amound of that commodity as an input, was stuffed! As soon as they logged on, the exchange wiped out its stockpile. The real answer to this problem is inter-player trading, which will be implemented soon. But to alleviate the problem in the meantime, Bella has tampered with the exchanges and factories a little, the results being seen in today's new version. Firstly, when a factory is loaded in, the exchange won't wipe out its stockpile level of the commodity. You still won't be able to buy any, but it shouldn't take too long for your factory to produce enough to satisfy the planet itself, thus making some available on the exchange for other players. And she has speeded up factory cycles. The current cycle number (which refers to Factory Thingy Units (or FTUs)) now clocks round every 40 seconds, instead of every sixty. And the time remaining in dataspace refers to FTUs, not minutes. This means goods will be produced every 13 minutes (or thereabouts) instead of every 20. Goody, more profits! Also in today's version, a new command: which sets the working capital for each factory. Any money the factory has above this amount is automatically transferred to the company every time you log on - or from the company if the factory is having problems. So at last, companies will show a profit as well as the individual factories. And since shares are valued at 10% of the profit for the last accounting cycle, factories will now be reflected in networths, which should shuffle the Conclave round again! However, since this command has only just been implemented, the levels are all set to zero. So when you log on, all the factories' funds will be sucked out into the company. Which means no wages paid and no inputs bought. The answer is to set your levels and then log off and back on again. Just display the factory in question, then set the level to a sensible amount. Of course, this will mean that your company will be showing a loss for the current accounting period! But this will even out in the next period. Something that needs a little clarification about factories is the Galactic Tachyon Transfer. This went in last week but seems to confuse some people! When your factory takes goods from your warehouse, it now pays you for them, at the base price for the commodity. This will appear as a negative figure on 'Funds for Xfer' in the factory display. If the goods the factory produces are going to the warehouse, you are charged for them, again at the base price, and this amount goes in as a positive number. Whenever you log on, the balance is added on or taken off your bank account. The funds for xfer does not refer to the profit the factory is making; merely to any goods going in and out of your warehouse. The base price is the standard price for each commodity, which never changes, and from which all the exchanges work out their fluctuating prices. I have a complete list of all base prices, so if you would like details of particular commodities, let me know. Also new today - the public spybeam has been modified slightly. I'll leave you to work out what the difference is! Today Bella reimbursed most of the people who had lost money because of the time- slip a couple of weeks ago, but there was a bit of a cock-up. Not on the part of Our Illustrious Leader, for a change, but by Pugwash, who was co-ordinating the claims. She submitted a list of the claims to Bella and omitted to include the ID of the claimants - which Bella needed to find their persona file records. Bella knew the IDs of most of the recipients, but four unlucky players haven't been compensated. And while Pugwash has now provided Bella with two of the missing IDs - Draxx and Bandit, who will be reimbursed soon - she has lost the IDs of unlucky Bug and Nodrog, who won't get their money back until they tell Bella their IDs! I've been sneaking a look in Bella's Big Red Book, and there's quite a lot for you to look forward too. Things that Our Illustrious Leader will be working on over the next few weeks include inter- player trading; the event writer for the Explorer's planets; sex change operations; changing your name by deed poll (this will cost about 2.5 meg and will also have the welcome side-effect of zeroing insurance premiums); making it easier to keep an eye on your factories by shortening the word DISPLAY, and by making DISPLAY FACTORY default to your first factory; selling factories or converting them to a different product; and, something she is still undecided upon, the question of whether factories shold run when there is no-one in Fed Data Space to make the exchanges run. She'll be uploading a piece in FOCUS shortly asking for your opinions on this. And finally - WELCOME BACK SIKO! After a five-month absence, Fed's first casualty of war returns. Of course he has lost his persona in the meantime, but The Conclave are deliberating on whether he should be re-instated. I'm sure they will be as fair about his claim as they are about all others!