 |
WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate November 2002 |
|
WEB FED NEWS YEARBOOKS Earthdate November 2002 |
 |
INSIDE SCOOP |
|
STARSHIP CRASH STUDIES Some time ago, I was standing on Earth's Landing Pad chatting away and waiting on Genike to return from where he was (since SpyNet Couldn't give me his location) when suddenly, "Pilotrangers's ship has just crashed!" I had never seen this happen before. A ship? Crashing? In Fed? You've got to be kidding me. Suddenly I thought, I have to try that! I strapped on my helmet, jumped into my ship and spied someone waiting with me on the LP. I orbited, Chewbacon's ship has just taken off, then landed, Chewbacon's ship has just landed. Odd. I decided to drain my fuel tanks. I moved back and forth from Earth orbit into an adjacent sector until I ran out of fuel. Finally (it took quite a while, fuel tanks will drain quickly only when you don't want them to), I ran out of fuel and landed on earth spying the occupant of the landing pad. Chewbacon's ship has just crashed! I grabbed my comm. unit and said, coughing up smoke from the sparking flight components, "Wheee!" My ship or myself hadn't been badly damaged (if at all), so I kept crashing the ship into the middle of the landing pad. I began to experiment with crash helmets around the 57th time I was pulled from the pilot seat and smashed teeth, fur, and eyes all over the viewscreen thanks to the properties of inertia. People eventually got angry with the holes I was putting in the pad, so I carried my experimentation elsewhere. Crash helmets weren't doing enough, so I traveled from hospital to hospital and clone bank to clone bank looking for bodies to use. I strapped them into the pilot's seat, sent the ship planet-bound and got my best judgment of how the crash affected the "pilot." Within a month, one of my many political advisors (had too many back then) approached me and told me I had enough data to build state-of-the-art safety restraints and preventative warning systems for crashes and that the planet didn't have to buy ships to crash anymore because there was nothing more we could learn from them. "You mean, I can't crash ships for the fun of it anymore?" I asked this guy. "Nope. It'll save the planet millions!" This guy was fired… out the missile tube on my ship and into Solar orbit. The data was destroyed and the fun continues.
BIRDS OF A FEATHER I have a simple question for you. When you meet someone for the first time, how do you make the determination that you want to be friends or not? And what is it about that person makes you even want to take the initiative to meet them? I think I'm a pretty open minded person. I hear a lot of things about different people in the game. There are some very strong personalities here that make quite an impression. Let's play a game. I'll say someone's name and you write down the first thing that pops into your head about that person. Ready?
Now look at what you wrote. Then ask yourself this, have you ever met this person or are you making judgments about this person based on who their friends are in the game or the duchy they are in? I would bet that most of the things you wrote have more to do with what you've heard than what you've experienced. Why don't you take a bit of time to widen your circle, meet some people? Decide for yourself who is good or evil. Don't take anyone else's word for it. You might be sorry you made a snap judgment based on what duchy a person is a member of or who their friends are. Remember this, there was a man who hung out with the prostitutes and thieves, not because he was like them, but because he thought everyone deserved a chance.
ANOTHER TOP TEN PRODUCTS IBGAMES SHOULD MARKET
ALSATIAN'S FORTUNE >tb gypsy Gypsy... Ma'am... Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from Gypsy, "Hello." >tb gypsy ::big tongue lolling grin:: Do you know what I do in Fed? Aside from impress all the ladies with my handsome dogginess, of course. Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from Gypsy, "Ahh. pee on tires of Spaceships?" >tb gypsy Bingo! >tb gypsy I was pondering writing a story for the Chron where the Famous Gypsy gives the even more Famous Alsatian a reading regarding his bright and glorious future as stud dog. Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from Gypsy, "What is a senator, who are you, and what would you like me to do? Give you a reading?" >tb gypsy Yes! Where is an appropriate environment for such a thing? Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from Gypsy, "Anywhere private I would say." >tb gypsy That would be the loo. >tb gypsy Or maybe not. No one cleaned last night. Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from Gypsy, "Yea, kinda tacky. Would Iolcus be ok for you?" >tb gypsy Of course. I'll use the tree before I come there. Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from Gypsy, "I have a lovely garden." >teleport iolcus 15 Gypsy's Gardens Gypsy says, "ahh." >ex gypsy Alsatian exclaims, "You're a
dead Gypsy!"
HOLIDAY TAXES The holidays are getting near and people are going to start doing a lot of shopping. On my planet, the employers start handing out bonuses so their employees can make their children happy with toys that will eventually be forgotten. I find this quite unfair since I won't get a bonus for Christmas, so I call my good advisor, Chewchicken to decide on raising the taxes. "The taxes are 15% and the people complain quite a bit," Chewchicken explained. I had no idea: "The people complain?" "Yes, they do." "Why don't I ever hear about it?" I asked him. "Because it's my job to listen to them whine, Chewie." The loyalty of my under-qualified and over-competent advisor is unbeatable, but I do have a heart and knew he'd hear more complaints if I raised the taxes. "Okay, Chewchie, I see your point. Are you a gambling man?" "You can bet your life on it," he grinned. I pulled out a sheet of cardboard with a free-spinning arrow on it and laid it flat on the floor. "Okay," I explained, "chance will decide what happens to the taxes. If it lands on green, the taxes go up to 30%. If it lands on red, they stay." Chewchicken examined the board and looked at me, "There's hardly any red space." "Do you have any idea how expensive red ink is these days?" I stood crossing my arms. "I see." I spun the arrow and, of course, it landed in the green area. Taxes will rise. Taxes did rise with a few keystrokes at my computer, then Chewchicken took his normal dosage of nine ibuprofen and a couple servings of Old Peculiar for good luck then left.
LET'S BAN SPYBEAMS!! I bet I have your attention now! I figure if we can have a rule to ban people from duchies we might as well get rid of the root of most of the problems that run rampant in the Multiverse: Spybeams! How many times have you been in a conversation with someone and the person who was the topic of your conversation shows up and starts arguing with you about something that you said, or how they took what you said? I figure if someone is spying me, they deserve what they get, but other people really get put out! Some people sit and watch people and log their every move. That way, if they ever need anything to use against someone they have a log. My favorite is when accused of something that you've done, someone says "Well, I have a log of it!" Funny thing is, the log is never produced. If it were, chances are a misunderstanding could be cleared up right away. I have many conversations in emails, Instant Messages and even in Federation. There have been so many times, even with everyone is there from the beginning of the conversation, that someone takes something out of context, doesn't get the inflection you would have with a voice conversation (or the sarcasm!), and jumps merrily to the wrong conclusion. Then all hell breaks loose! How much worse can it be if someone says to you, "Oh I was spying Suchandsuch and Soandso the other day, and they were talking about how inept you are. They were so rude! I logged the conversation for you," and sends it on its merry way. Now, you're already up in arms because you KNOW they think you're inept because your good friend told you so. Therefore you read the log with a clouded perception and read into the words what you want to see. In reality the conversation is "I wonder why he sets his deficits at 99? I wouldn't do that on my planet." This is blown into you feeling inept, not you having a different perception on planet economics. Then there is the sex and lie logs, where someone catches you in a private or indiscrete moment. Believe me, they'll get to your fedmate before you can consider confessing or explain an awkward situation. So I say let's ban them. We can get rid of the perverts and trouble-makers in one fail swoop. People will be forced to talk to each other and resolve differences. Not use spy logs as fodder for gossip and breeding discontent. What do you say?? Vote YES for Banning the Beam!!
TOP TEN FED COMMANDS YOU WISH
YOU HAD IRL
CHALLENGE? I GOT YER CHALLENGE
RIGHT HERE! Many of you have heard this: "Fed is boring. There's no Snark puzzle. It's all (insert staff members here to fit)'s fault. People promote too quickly. There's no challenge!" There are some challenges in Fed, but challenges are different for each player. There are probably still players in Fed DataSpace who find running a planet or company difficult. I think it'd be safe to assume a lot of the reasons many people cannot find a challenge is because they find ways around the work in them: POTerm, AutoFed, zMUD (which has numerous forms of challenge elimination in itself), etc. I use zMUD, but haven't used it for hauling in quite some time. Why? Unless you count avoiding Ron, there is no challenge in hauling on Fed using zMUD. It's boring and I'm too paranoid to leave the computer while it hauls for fear of death-death. Then there are the generous players who like to give away money. Very few Fedders have not given away money. Now, on to puzzles. If I asked you for the name of the Foo Fighters' drummer, you guessed wrong, and then I gave you the correct answer, you'd probably know it the next time I asked you. Wouldn't solving the Snark puzzle follow suit? You'd know what you'd have to do and exactly how to do it. No challenge there, is there? Or what if someone ruined the puzzle for you just to show you they were smart enough (or dumb enough so someone could tell them) to solve it on their own? Hazed spelled it out in plain English at her Meet and Greet: "Well we took Snark out as a promotion mechanism for a reason: it was no barrier to promotion, because the answer was handed around freely." As for puzzles, it's the problem for the people who spouted off the answers to them. Blame them. Oh, but wouldn't it be better if someone put in puzzles that picked up flags from players (name, score, status, etc.) that would change elements of the puzzles? Or write numerous puzzles so it would be unlikely for a player to have to solve one twice? I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been dying to glue my furry bum to my seat and write out hundreds or even thousands of mind-boggling puzzles! Once you reach the end of the ranks or as far as you want to go, the challenge will be to amass a larger fortune (in Imperial Groats) than any other player, using any means, fair or foul. Unfortunately, that stops at 2,147,483,646 IG, but that's still a good lump. If you have a planet, it doubles for you. You have a challenge? Hook the rest of Fed up so the people who moan about the lack of challenges on 9 will shut up. If anyone is looking for a meaningful challenge outside of Fed, I'm open to any suggestions as to how to free a sticking flywheel on a Kioti tractor.
SPYBEAM BAN PART II Believe it or not, I received some responses to my Spybeam Banning Idea. Surprisingly enough, it was a 50/50 vote to ban the pesky things! Of course, some valid concerns were brought up as well. One reader suggested that locations could be shielded from beams, allowing some privacy in the Multiverse. Privacy! Imagine that?! I mean really! What fun would it be to not be able to stir up trouble? We'd actually have to be present and hear a conversation or have a friend of a friend inside of a duchy that we don't like in order to get our information. And could it be more fabricated than some of the beam logs that have found their way into my mailbox? I think not! One reader suggested that banning of spybeams would cause peace in the Mulitverse. Could be. Another reader suggested that banning spybeams would be banning a useful tool that allows us to help newbies along in the game. I couldn't believe folks actually used spybeams for that purpose anymore, but it was a noble argument. In addition, the same reader suggested banning folks that used the Spybeam inappropriately. What do you think of that idea? I've visited many other realms and Multiverse, and none other that I've visited has this little tool that helps as much as it creates panic, unease, and just plain trouble. However, there always seems to be something else that can be used to cause as much irritation to everyone. I guess the main point that I have to make on the subject is this: Spybeams are a useful tool. However, it seems that malicious users of the beams would find something else to cause as much heartache and trouble if they weren't given the spybeam to use as a tool. So the next time you click on your beam, ask yourself what you're using it for. If you're using it to gather information to use against a person, do it with pride! If you're using it to help out newbies, be noble about it! If you're using it to see if your fedmate is trustworthy, well, maybe you should find another fedmate. And for those of you who hate the burn of the beam, take your conversations, actions to IM's. Or better yet, take a trip to Horsell!
LET'S BAN COMPLAINERS!! I bet I have your attention now! I figure if we can have a rule to ban people from duchies we might as well get rid of the root of most of the problems that run rampant in Fed: mindless complainers! How many times have you been reading the Federation Chronicle when you find an article written by someone that thinks they know what is best for Fed and advocates others to vote YES or NO for something that you really couldn't care less about? I figure if someone is trying to get something changed by writing about it in the Chronicle, they deserve what they get - ridicule, jokes about their opinions, and award-winning brilliantly written parodies of their articles in the next issue, but other people really get put out! Some people move around Fed, looking for things to complain about or 'features' to exploit. That way, when they don't have something of substance to write about in the next Chronicle, they can use their log as a reference while writing their article. My favorite is when they actually think people take the writer seriously. People ask them why it's a good idea and the author says that he, she, or it has a good reason. Funny thing is, the reason is never produced. If it were, chances are they would be laughed at. How much worse can it be if someone drags on about banning this or that or doing it this way instead of that way instead of doing us all a favor and keeping their trap shut? Instead, how about they do something productive to actually help Fed like volunteering to help new players. So I say let's ban them. We can get rid of bad grammar and pointless articles in one foul swoop. People won't be forced to talk to each other because the Chronicle will actually contain useful, poignant articles such as this one, not hit the back button or delete when they see the mindless dribble oozing from their computer monitors. What do you say?? Vote YES for Banning Complainers!!
TOP TEN MOST THOUGHT-PROVOKING
NAMES IN FED
Each week as I line my doghouse floor with past issues of the Chronicle I get to read through the articles. A personal favorite are the transcripts of prior Meet and Greet events, where players are put under the spotlight and asked to share their Fed experiences with the audience. One question seems to keep popping up during these sessions: What would you do to change Fed? No one has come even remotely close to what we really need in Fed now. We are severely lacking in new and unique complaints these days. Year in, year out – it's the same old grievances recycled and regurgitated. I try to run through the list at least once a week myself, and by the looks of things much of DataSpace seems to be complaining off the same catalog. If you've not done your share of standard moaning lately, here's the index of major complaint activities you can work from. If you find a new one – please, pass it around!
ACCOMPLISHMENT? INSANITY? WHAT? I keep asking myself what I'm missing in the world. You'd think I have everything I need to survive in a place full of strange worlds, people and creatures. In over two years, I've managed to get rich having over 2,000,000,000 IG on me, my planet is a home that can never be repossessed, people work for me on the planet so my lifestyle is nearly carefree, and I'm not lonely as I have friends scattered about DataSpace and there's always some nut bickering on 9. Though with all this accomplishment there is something missing. Accomplishment? Great Ming! Have I really accomplished that much? That little?? Planet, money, and friends; I think just about everyone has that in Federation. If you don't own a planet, surely you own a company and even if you don't have that someone will gladly help you along to Merchant. Okay, so if I have what the majority of Fedders already have, where do I stand out? I'm the only w00kie. That's about as much as I can think of. So individuality is my true accomplishment? Damn it, I could've done nothing and had that! If I wanted to achieve individuality I could've simply said hello to everyone, told a few jokes, shared some ideas and logged out. The goal has been met. Can't I experience the ranks? See what it's like to be a Duke? No, no. Someone will tell me before I get there; the minute I open my mouth and say, "Let's Duke!" The puzzle sounds like great fun, though. Gack, it was ruined for me a long time ago. When it comes down to it: most of us own a planet (those that don't probably will or have owned one), we all have groats out the planet-owner warehouse, and there's always someone to talk to. Ah, I believe I know what I've been missing: my last shred of sanity! After all, what sane person could conjure such ideas above?
YIPPEE!! WE PLAY NICE TOGETHER! How excited I am this week. I have something positive to write about! Something I'm sure that most will agree is a great trend in the Metaverse. Teamwork and Helping Out Your Fellow Fedder! I have witnessed several unfortunate DDs since my return to the Metaverse. Some are porting accidents, some people are just being sloppy with their army knives, and some folks just forgetting to insure after a fighting loss. There is one thing that all of these DDs have in common: the unfortunate souls are quickly restored to their former selves. It seems that people will go out of their way to help restore a persona. They will offer great hauling jobs, plum factories, and an endless supply of groats. It's especially interesting to see other Fedders, those who don't even know the person who DDed, come to their aid just because they knew they were a Baron, Baroness, Duke or Duchesse. It's quite fun to see all of the Multiverse having a common goal of restoring the unfortunate soul. Most are even excitedly encouraging on the comms. Of course there is always the dark side. Some folks, the more excitable and negative ones, do have a few negative things to say, but fortunately are ignored. This represents such a spirit of teamwork that a few grumbling and complaining people are unable to dampen the enthusiasm and the help. Even when harassed on XTs and Comms by others, the restored come back gloriously thanks to the help of their friends and the rich upper ranks. It's good to know that if I ever want to rush the ranks, I too can call on my friends who supported me in the past and can return to my former glory in no time. This almost makes the entire issue of spybeam abusers, complainers and coding issues a moot issue. As long as we have each other, we can overcome anything. So if people love you, or just love to hate you, and you have an accident, you should feel confident that people will come to your aid if you return. An extra kind of insurance!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
