Web Fed News Yearbooks - July 2000

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

I put together a Fed poster which you can download and print out to pin on a noticeboard, display in a window, or hand out to your friends. You'll find it at http://www.ibgames.net/federation/fedinfo/fedposter.html.

The ibgames computers were moved to a new location at the end of the month, which meant Fed and the web site were unavailable on the last Sunday of July - thus, the newsdroids were given an unexpected break since we didn't publish the Fed Chronicle that day.

Otherwise, it was a quiet month!

TAKING POT-SHOTS

Seems we've got another conflict looming about the "correct" way to play Federation. This time, the cause is a player who delights in taking pot-shots at haulers as they fly in and out of systems. He is getting a lot of people angry with him, and when people get angry, they demand that something be done. I have had several players approach me because they consider these fly-by shootings to be harassment, and they want me to tell the shooter to stop, and if he doesn't, to get rid of him.

But shooting at people is not harassment. The house rules specifically say:

Note that conflict between players is a part of many games, so killing someone's game character within the context of the game is not harassment.

Ship fighting is a very minor part of the game, but it is still part of the game. It always has been. Fighting was coded deliberately to make it pretty hard to shoot at another player, let alone to actually kill them. So a player who sets out to shoot up as many other players as he can only be classed as a minor nuisance, because the harm he does is not that great.

There are plenty of ways to make sure you don't suffer from the pot-shots of this sharp-shooter. Here's some suggestions about how to stay safe under fire:

Don't hang around in space. If you move as fast as possible from the link to the orbit location, then the worse that anyone can do - even using an instant response macro - will be to get one shot off at you.
Add a few points of armor to your ship. Yes, it will take away valuable cargo space, but that's the compromise you have to make to keep safe.
Check the status of your hull frequently, and repair when necessary. You check your fuel and fill up automatically when you touch down - add checking the hull to this routine.
Don't run unattended macros - pay attention, so you can deal with damage before it adds up and your ship disintegrates around you.

If you really can't stand the thought of someone shooting at you, then the other option is avoidance. Only trade in systems that are completely safe. A safe system is one where the link and orbit are in the same location, or where the empty spaces between the two are flagged as peace locations.

Dukes can take advantage of the rule that allows them to ban players from their duchies. Ban the shooter, and all the planets in the duchy will be safe. Traders should therefore consult with Dukes to find out which duchies are guaranteed safe.

And finally... should you die, always, always, always remember to re-insure!

SOL EXPOSE: NOTHING TO REPORT

Recently the Fed Chronicle received a letter suggesting a topic for the Sol Expose - a little item that a player was curious about, which may have had some significance when Our Illustrious Leader, Bella, thought it up.

Hazed, who never does any work herself when it can be delegated to an underling, gave me, her junior newsdroid, the job of investigating.

So I confronted the green-skinned one and showed her the letter, expecting some intriguing tale involved some sixties psychedelic rock band, or perhaps someone who Bella went to college with.

Imagine my disgust when the reply was simply: "I just made it up." Where's the news story in that, I retorted? How can I tell my readers that the answer to one of their questions is that there's no significance whatsoever? To which she just shrugged, in that irritatingly vague manner of hers which seems calculated to drive even the most stolid of droids completely barmy.

Right, I thought, this is my chance to be creative. If Bella can't come up with a plausible yet entertaining source for this snippet, then I'll just have to invent something. So I sat down and started scribbling, and pretty soon inspiration flowed. My pencil moved across the page like a blur. This was it, the article I had always felt I could write, if only Hazed didn't normally send me on such rotten assignments. This was my chance to shine, to show those lousy creative droids like Gavin and Olias that I, too, was capable of the flights of fancy that made their stories so popular.

It didn't take me long to finish what I was sure was an outstanding article. I trundled back to the FedChron office and proudly handed it to the boss.

Hazed read it, then looked at me with narrowed eyes. "Is this true?" she demanded to know.

"Well, I... yes, of course... that is..." I stuttered. "Actually, no." I explained that Bella's response had been less than satisfactory, so I had felt compelled to improve upon the truth; that if my explanation was not actually what had happened, then it was what ought to have happened; that a little artistic license was only reasonable; and besides, nobody expects anything printed in the Chronicle to actually be true.

That last protestation was obviously the wrong thing to say. Hazed's elegantly-sculpted brows lowered threateningly. "Listen, you heap of tin, we may embellish the truth from time to time, but the one thing we don't do - ever - is to put words into Bella's mouth. That woman is all-powerful. She created the damn universe, fer krim's sake! I may be a demi-goddess but next to Bella I'm ineffectual. If we print anything that Bella doesn't approve of, she's likely to remove this office and everyone in it, and what's more, make it so we never even existed. Is that what you want? Cos that's what'll happen!"

With that, she tore up my article into little tiny pieces, and chucked them into the recycler. "Now write it again, and this time, write the truth."

And so, gentlebeings, I am reduced to making the following statement:

The origin of Woodspring Auctions, who purchase your ship whenever and wherever you choose to sell it, is that Bella made it up.

SOL EXPOSE: STARDATE

One of the many fans of the Federation Chronicle recently wrote in with a question:

"What stardate did Fed start with back in the day that it first opened?"

Once again, Hazed gave me, Junior NewsDroid 739, the task of compiling a reply to this letter.

As is often the case, my first port of call when finding out obscure information about the history of Fed is to ask Bella. As is almost always the case, she turned out to be no use whatsoever. "I don't remember," she said, "And anyway, the way the stardate was calculated changed over time."

I was forced to wonder just how anyone so vague had ever managed to create the universe!

The easy option (get someone to tell you the answer) didn't work, so I was forced to fall back on Plan B: I would have to do some research. I decided to find out what the two numbers in the stardate mean, and just how they have changed over time.

Here's what the Newbod's Guide says about the stardate:

The right hand number shows STUs (which you should be able to work out by now are Stardate Thingy Units). There are 1000 STUs in every day. The left hand number increases each day at Galactic Midnight, at which point the STUs go back to 0.

So much for today. What of yesteryear? I visited Hazed's office and rummaged in the vast filing cabinets in which she keeps all her paperwork, and boy did I find some interesting stuff! You'll never guess what she did 4 years ago when...

But I digress.

I found a copy of the very first edition of the Idiot's Guide, which was produced back in the days of Compunet Fed. It had this to say about the stardate:

The left hand number increases by one every 24 hours, and the right hand number is zeroed when the game fires up then increases in proportion to the number of players online.

So Bella was half right. The meaning of one of the stardate numbers has changed - the right hand number, which originally gave a count of actual player minutes since the last reset, but now simply shows elapsed time from Galactic Midnight. From this we can conclude that the second half of the stardate would have been 0000 at the time Fed first opened.

Trawling further through the archives, I found in an early edition of Line Noise, the news bulletin for Compunet Fed (see http://www.ibgames.net/archives/fed/index.html, the following statement:

The first (number) is the number of days elapsed since a date way back in the 15th Century.

Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing which date in the 15th century... there were an awful lot of them. So this was only helpful up to a point. Still, it showed I was looking in the right place.

Then I struck gold. Another Line Noise actually included a stardate in one of the stories. The occasion was the introduction of the code for companies and factories, and the news printed a capture of a company display, which showed the stardate:

**>> Stardate: 207708:1262 <<**

The bulletin was dated July 3, 1989, so that stardate must have been on or about that earthdate.

From another document in the archives, which details the first year of Fed DataSpace, we find that Fed opened for business on January 10, 1988. The difference between those two dates is approximately 540 days (rounded up to make it easier (and because I have no idea whether 1988 was a leapyear)). Therefore, doing the maths, the stardate when Fed first opened its doors on Compunet was:

207168:0000

Phew!

REAL LIFE NEWS: POWER BOOTS

A staple of military science fiction stories is combat armor which uses motors to allow the wearer to leap tall buildings at a single bound, and other such amazing feats. Now a team of Russian engineers has developed "Quickwalker" boots, which allow the wearer to jump over obstacles 2 metres high (that's approximately 6 feet, for the metrically-challenged). Every time you take a step, an engine mounted in the heel on that boot cuts in and drives a hydraulic piston, propelling the wearer forward. Thus you can run with much less muscle effort, or jump to heights that would be impossible unaided.

What's really surprising about this development is that it's not new. The team made their first prototype nearly 30 years ago, in 1972, but the Soviet military classified it as secret and ordered 100 trial pairs for Red Army infantrymen. However, they later rejected the design, and reclassified the project in 1990.

Imagine if it hadn't languished under classification all that time... by now, such technology might be commonplace and in use for all kinds of mundane activities!