Fed2 Star January 8, 2006

WHILE WE WERE GONE...
We're back! And most of the newsdroids are refreshed and relaxed after enjoying their Christmas break; shame about poor former Junior Trainee Assistant NewsDroid Robby, who is now residence in the Sunset Home for Terminally Disturbed Droids. Because, far from being a quiet three weeks, Our Illustrious Leader Bella had a manic spurt of over-work and churned out loads of new stuff that had to be reported in special bulletins.

For those who weren't paying attention, here's a brief rundown of what happened:

You can now give objects to other players, using  'GIVE playername objectname' - for example, 'give Robby toy human'.

Type  'STAFF' and you will see a list of all the staff members who are currently in the game.

There is now a new, more fluent way of talking to mobiles, using the  'TELL'  command. It works just like sending a tell message to a player -  'Tell Victor hello'  is the equivalent of  'Victor hello'. It only works if you are in the same room as the mobile - you can't chat to mobile remotely.

Planet owners can get rid of unwanted factories with  'EXPROPRIATE FACTORY factory# companyname'  where  'factory#'  is the number of the factory you want to get rid of, and  'companyname'  is the name of the owning company - for example,  'expropriate factory 4 universal exports' . They can also get rid of depots with  'EXPROPRIATE DEPOT companyname'.

SpyNet have now split out the financial information into a separate service -  'SPYNET FINANCIAL'.

The commands POs use to open and close star systems have been changed. They are now  'OPEN LINK'  and  'CLOSE LINK'. You still have to be somewhere on your space map for them to work, but now if you're not in space, you will be told that you need to be.

Find out who the CEO of a company is with  'DISPLAY CEO companyname'.

The restriction on buying arts factories has been lifted throughout the Galaxy.

The Idiot's Guide to Fed II and the Fed II Commands list have been updated with all of these changes and new features.

A new version of FedTerm was released that including sound effects - you can download the upgrade package, or if you are not currently using FedTerm (or using a very old version) you can install the complete program.

Mac users can now design their own planets using the new Workbench for the Mac, programmed by Filbert.

As well as all this exciting new stuff, everyone had fun with Santa's Grotto - taking a sleigh ride around the Solar System, delving into the lucky dip tub and pulling out a toy to play with, sitting on Santa's lap and getting a candy cane or a lump of coal. Chez Diesel also offered entertainment for the new year, with the fireworks on the roof being particularly popular - and a number of her waitdroids got so battered they have been sent to join Robby in the junkyard... erm... retirement home.

Catspaws ran loads of special role-playing events with Christmas themes, including a Christmas spaceship parade, a snowball fight, and a bar crawl and carolling evening. Jessecka's Kick the Can event was converted into Kick the Red-nosed Reindeer (poor Rudolph!) and Freya ran the Christmas Scavenger Hunt which had players scurrying over the Solar System planets trying to solve Hazed's fiendish clues and find the hidden objects. See the Event Reports section for write-ups of these and all the other events held in the past three weeks. The events are now back to the normal schedule - see the event calendar.

Archer's Fed Radio station ran the Top Ten Tunes feature throughout the holidays, where staff and players sent in their favorite songs which were played on the radio twice a day.

And finally, some non-Fed news: Alan published The Journal of Jonathon Lindey. This is a story that comes out of the game Age of Adventure, which is set in the Victorian era. Mr Lindey makes some ghastly discoveries in this very creepy, Lovecraft-ian story.

Happy new year!

PLANETARY PROGRESS
Bella has been continuing to monitor planetary economies and thinks things are now running the way they should be, so promotion to Founder is getting close. At tomorrow morning's reset, all planets whose treasuries are negative will have the balances set to zero; positive balances will be left alone. This will be the last time the balances will be zeroed, so from now on all POs will have to start paying attention to their economies and tweaking the spread and stock levels to make sure they stay in the black - and, with any luck, make some money too. The Idiot's Guide to Fed II has a section on planetary economies that will remind you of the commands you need.

We plan to promote all existing planet-owners to Founder next weekend (assuming nothing happens to delay things...). What will happen when you become a Founder is that the company will sell all the shares it owns, with the proceeds being added to the company balance. The company will then be liquidated and all the cash will be distributed amongst the company's shareholders, with the portion belonging to the company's treasury stock and that belonging to the CEO personally going into the planet treasury. For all the existing POs, who already have planet treasuries, their share of the cash will be added to the groats already in the planet balance.

In the first instance, the promotions will be done manually, but then Bella will code in the actual promotion mechanism, and in next week's news we should be able to tell you the exact requirements.

FROM THE POSTBAG: ARTIFICIAL DUCHIES
Actually this is a question that I have been asked several times in the game by various players, as well as getting emails about, so it's clearly something that a lot of people are curious about. The question is:

The short answer is:

The long answer is an explanation of why we can't do that. What you need to remember is that when Fed opened up on AOL, and later when it moved to the web, the code already existed for all the ranks right up to Duke. In both cases, the game code had to be ported to make it work on the particular operating system of its servers at the time, but that's all. Duchies had worked on GEnie Fed so they worked right away on AOL, once the code had been tweaked to conform to AOL's networking stuff. So the only reason not to have Dukes and duchies on AOL Fed was the lack of players at that rank - it was therefore easy to artificially create a few fake Dukes with their duchies, so planets had somewhere to go. The same happened when web Fed opened up.

But now, it's a whole new ball-game - quite literally. Fed II has been rewritten from the groundhog up, and none of the code from classic Fed has been used. That means nothing appears in the Fed II universe until Bella writes the code for it. She is only just working on planets themselves, and hasn't got anywhere near to coding in duchies. So we can't make any artificial duchies; all star systems will have to remain independent entities for now.

REVIEW OF THE YEAR
We at the Fed II Star are sometimes forced to go to extreme lengths to get our stories. Investigative journalism isn't just about sitting back and waiting for the press releases to come in; sometimes we have to get out there and interview people, worm secrets out of Government employees, even resort to a spot of breaking and entering when necessary.

And so it was that when we decided to put together a review of all the high spots of the year, we decided that the best way to get the information we needed was to go straight to the top and get it from the horse's mouth. Not that we are implying that Bella is a horse, of course, that was just a figure of speech!

So we sneaked into her palatial mansion and had a snoop around. Nice underwear, I must say! Then we installed a tap on her computer so we could access it at our leisure from the comfort of the Fed II Star offices. Which we did, and we found the complete documentation of all the things she did to the Fed universe last year. Unfortunately, in the process of downloading this, she discovered our hacking and cut us off in mid-byte, so what we ended up with ran from the beginning of March to the end of December. We were forced to go back through the Star archives for details of what happened during January and February, which entailed a bit more work. Still, when we put all the information together, we ended up with the Review of the Year. Read and enjoy.

DIESEL IN TROUBLE WITH AUTHORITIES
Diesel, the proprieteuse of the popular bar on Mars known as the Social Center of the Solar System (if not the Galaxy!) has got herself into trouble with the ruling council on Mars, and could face a very heavy fine if she is found guilty. But her friend the craftsman faces far worse - he could be sent to jail!

The problem stems from the New Year's Eve party, where the craftsman set up shop on a table in a corner of Chez Diesel where he made and sold miniature musical boxes to celebrate the new year, which could be attached to keyrings. As always, his work proved very popular (although not as big a seller as the farting turkey he offered for Thanksgiving, which gives you some idea of the level that Diesel's clientele operates on).

If you have bought one of these tiny musical charms, or if you've seen anyone else wearing one, you will know that they play Auld Lang Syne, a song associated with new year celebrations. However, as the song plays, a hologram figure of the ex-Emperor Ming appears and shouts "I'll be back" - an auld acquaintance we would all far rather be forgot, I am sure!

The craftsman thought this was very funny. Diesel thought it was funny too. So did everyone who bought one of the charms. Unfortunately, not everyone was so amused. What Diesel and the craftsman had both overlooked was a little-known statute passed by the Martian ruling council some years ago, which states it is an offence to glorify Ming and his reign of terror. Under this statute, the selling of Ming memorabilia on Martian soil is strictly against the law, and anyone found doing so can be fined and/or sent to jail.

This law is very little-used - in fact the only time somebody has been prosecuted under it was not long after Ming's overthrow, when a publishing company brought out "Ming Kampf", the despot's authorized autobiography. The company was fined and all copies of the book were supposed to be destroyed, but of course it continues to be available clandestinely to those who want to read the deranged ramblings of the mad ex-Emperor.

Diesel is spitting mad that this out-dated statute is being used against her and the craftsman. "Why," she asks, "have companies been selling coffee cups with Ming's face on it, Ming dolls with a set of pins to stick in them, punchbags with Ming's face on them, cartoons of the man, all kinds of Ming memorabilia - and it's been sold right here on Mars too for years and years - and been left alone to get on with making a profit, but suddenly the zealots in the Martian bureaucracy decide to come after me?"

She has an answer, too: she thinks that someone, somewhere has been stirring up trouble and has persuaded the bureacrats to launch a crusade against her. She points the finger of blame firmly in the direction of Anton Gallagher, owner of the expensive gadget shop on Earth, who is dead set against the craftsman selling unauthorized accessories to be attached to the TenBrane keyring. Diesel reminds us that after the St Patrick's Day party last year someone tipped off the Galactic Administration's Environmental Health Department that she had put appetite accelerants in the free beer, in order to make people feel more hungry than usual, and buy huge quantities of her pizza, the profits from which would offset the cost of the free beer. She's sure Gallagher was behind that attempt to get her in trouble, and she's sure it's him this time, too.

"I don't so much care about him setting the authorities on me - I'm old enough and nasty enough to be able to take care of myself, and I can afford to hire lawyers to see off these spurious claims," Diesel told one of our newsdroids. "But I am worried about the craftsman. They are threatening to send him to jail. Isn't that over the top? All for making a joke? It's madness!"

Diesel is confident that these ludicrous charges will not be taken any further, and that the publicity surrounding the case will highlight the fact that this draconian law needs to be repealed. But meanwhile, Anton Gallagher is not her favorite person at all!

VOTING FOR FED MADE EASIER
Remember how we keep on and on at great length about how you should vote for Fed II as your favorite game on The Mud Connector web site, to keep us high in the rankings? (We're currently number 4...) Remember how we tell you that you can only vote once a day, but that there are three ways to vote? Remember how confused you were about just what those three ways were, and how you wondered how you should do it?

Well wonder no more because we have put a new voting page up on the web site which makes it all very much simpler. There are now three separate links on the page, each one of which directs you to the place where you vote in the three different ways.

FED RADIO WANTS YOUR VALENTINE'S DAY LOVE SONGS
February 14 is Valentine's Day, the day for lovers everywhere, and this year to celebrate the Fed Radio station is going to be playing your favorite love songs. So if there is a song that makes you fall into a romantic daze and sigh with nostalgia for lost love, or that reminds you of the day you met your true love, or a song that reminds you how crazy or awful love can be, then please email feedback@ibgames.com and give your Fed character name, and the song and artist names for your love song. Please don't send in MP3 files at this stage - all we want now is the name of your love song.

BE A GUEST DJ ON FED RADIO
Ever wanted to take over control of Fed Radio and try your hand at being a DJ? Here is your chance! Fed Radio has implemented a Guest DJ program. There are four simple steps to using the Guest DJ broadcasting streams.

Bingo, you are now broadcasting your music to the masses! If you don't happen to like the format being broadcasted by a Guest DJ you can continue to use the main Fed Radio streams, as the Guest Streams will be running in parallel to Fed Radio.

Archer is available for technical support via email at requests@fed-radio.net.

STAR CHAMBER by Freya
Yes, ok, I admit it, the Lucky Seven pub on Level Seven, Earth is the Secret Centre of the Solar System! For those of you who don't know, I'm the Fed2 Game Manager. Lucky Seven is my headquarters; from there I and the Fed2 staff run Fed DataSpace.

It's not a secret and it's not a private location, in fact we welcome everyone to stop by, have a drink with us, ask questions, have a chat. But it is our HQ and we do work there, running Fed2, planning new fun, new events, new adventures, new planets. We also deal with player problems there, provide information, advice, troubleshooting, etc.

So what does this mean for players? It means it's really, really, really unwise to come to Lucky Seven and behave like a troll. This would include sleeping there – we'll call Nightwatch to remove you. It also includes constantly interrupting us, annoying us, and doing anything that interferes with our doing our work.

The good thing about Lucky Seven is that you can come there almost any time for quick help. We'll try to answer your game related questions, troubleshoot your connection to Fed2, resolve problems with your account, provide planet design advice, etc. It's your express route to staff assistance. And possibly a New Joke™.