NEW SILK ASTEROID OPENED FOR TRADE

Announcing the new trading opportunities on the asteroid Silk
(designed by Freya), which can be found NE, N from the asteroid belt
entrance. Armstrong Cuthbert are now offering both cargo and akaturi
jobs to and from Silk, the exchange is open for business, and the
workthings are queuing up to come work in factories. The map of the
asteroid belt at http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/maps/solmap.html
has been updated to show the new asteroid (scroll down to see the
asteroid belt map).

Silk is an asteroid inhabited by an exosolar race of arachnids. Little is
directly known about the Xiphosurans, as they call themselves. They
can communicate via modified Galactic comm units but their society
and conversations are not particularly suited to humans. Thus far they
have declined all requests, by sociologists and other credentialed
academics, to conduct studies of their community. They are, by nature,
highly skilled manufacturers and traders. They are also natural
mathematicians and devote considerable efforts to its study. Everything
the Xiphosurans create or know is for sale, if the price is right.

Among the few facts known about the Xiphosurans is that they arrived
in the Solar System on solar sail crafts spun from silk. Some settled the
asteroid known as Silk, the rest continued on their cryptic journey.
They seem to periodically migrate with the spaceblooms but the
relationship between them is not clear. They may occasionally be
observed launching their hatchlings into space with the assistance of
spaceblooms. The arachnids can function in vacuum, again we know
little of that mechanism and they are content that not much is known
about them. They prefer a diet of certain worms and mollusks, which
they cultivate; but also seem to enjoy a variety of Solar insects.



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WORKTHING SHORTAGE PROMPTS BAN ON ARTS FACTORIES

The Galactic Administration has today announced that they will be
implementing a ban on the building and running of factories producing
artifacts in the Solar System. The ban will take effect on Wednesday,
and once it is in place it will impossible to erect any new arts factories.
CEOs are advised to sell their existing arts factories before the ban
comes into operation because any remaining arts factories will be
confiscated - with no compensation to the owners.

A spokesthing made the official announcement and then added an
explanation: "With the increase in the number of people going into
business by setting up their own companies, we have seen a rapid rise
in the demand for workers on all the Sol planets. This has led to
inflation in the wages structure, with workers' pay increasing out of all
proportion to their counterparts in other fields of endeavour. Company
owners have been having to pay larger sums to obtain a workforce, and
there has been bad feeling between CEOs as they compete for the ever-
dwindling pool of labor. Meanwhile, workers in other sectors such as
retail have been disgruntled to see factory workers pay rise to enormous
heights, while their own stays static.

"A glance at the labor requirements for different types of factories
reveals that by far the most labor intensive facility is one producing
artifacts. On the face of it these factories seem a good buy, since they do
not require any inputs, but they suck up such a tremendous number of
workthings that the presence of 2 or 3 on a planet can severely curtail
any other industrial activity.

"This ban on artifact factories is intended to relieve the pressure on
workthings. We will be monitoring the situation and if it seems
necessary in the future, we may bring in a similar ban on other labor
intensive facilities, such as monos; however, we hope that will not be
necessary."

So to summarise: at Wednesday's reset, new code will go in which will
stop anyone from building artifacts factories, and will delete existing
arts factories - so sell up before then, or lose out!



Play Federation II
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THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING COMPANIES

Disaster struck yesterday when the game came back up after the
morning reset, and some CEOs discovered their companies had
completely vanished. There seemed to be no logical reason why some
were afflicted in this way but not others: both Industrialists and
Manufacturers were victims, some of them owning just one non-
operating factory, and others running a string of active plants.

So who ya gonna call? Bella, of course. She rushed to the rescue to try
to figure out what had gone wrong.

While she investigated, the stricken CEOs took advantage of their
enforced idleness and a whole bunch of mini parties spontaneously
erupted across the Solar System. Well, actually, they ran around and
panicked, but that was probably as much fun as partying!

Bella discovered that the companies had not completely vanished into a
black hole - they were still in the data file, but they were not being
loaded in to the game because of a problem with the format of the file.
Further investigation found what that problem was: a rogue & character
(an ampersand) in somebody's company name, which the new code
Bella had just put into the game was not dealing with correctly. This
meant that when the game tried to load company data from the file it
got to this one particular company, called Sword & Dagger, and then it
choked and refused to load any more.

Bella fixed the code so it could cope with the & in the company name,
and then reset the game. That worked, and the missing companies all
reappeared. Hooray! But wait - although the companies had come back,
the factories and depots belonging to those companies had all vanished.
Oh no!

Further investigation showed that when the game had failed to load the
missing companies, the Galactic Administration had assumed that the
depots and factories belonging to those companies were orphaned
because the CEOs had died, so it had demolished them. Well, that was
one way to solve the workthing shortage!

Bella fixed this problem by backing out the factory and depot details to
the one for the previous day's reset. So everyone had their property
back, we could all breathe a sigh of relief and get on with working for a
living.

Well, almost... CEOs had lost any new depots or factories bought on
Friday night/Saturday morning, poor things. But then they make so
much money that it shouldn't take them long to recoup their losses, so
that's alright. Sorted!



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GENDER REALIGNMENT WHILE YOU WAIT

We know that a couple of people were caught by the "FedTerm made me
female" bug, and Our Illustrious Leader, Bella, did her programming
thing to change the two we knew about back to male. But what about
the other people who intended to be manly men, or neutral neuters, but
ended up feminine females?

The good news for them - and for anyone who just fancies a change - is
that the gender realignment machine in the hospital ward on Earth is
no longer out of order. What's more, the service is currently being
offered for free. That's right, get your gender changed while you wait, for
no charge, and guaranteed pain-free. This special offer will last until
Friday, after which a gender change will cost 999 groats - still a
bargain.


Play Federation II
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THE FIRST MANUFACTURERS

The SpyNet Review on Friday showed a batch of promotions to
Manufacturer as soon as the game fired up. This was the valiant bunch
who make up our test team, being promoted so they can try out the new
code Bella has just put in for the next rank. It is their job to find all the
annoying bugs so that Bella can fix them before the real players use the
code.

Depending on the magnitude of the bugs they find (if any) (no, don't
laugh, it's possible there won't be any bugs, stranger things have
happened) the promotion mechanism should be available to
Industrialists sometime in the next ten days.

So what, I hear you ask, does an Industrialist have to do to get
promoted to Manufacturer? Well it's a simple time-based promotion.
Industrialist is the probationary period for CEOs, during which they get
to grips with holding the reigns of a multi-planetary company.
Promotion to the next rank will happen when the company has run
through three accounting cycles, and the owner has been in the game to
keep an eye on things for 24 hours. Both those measures are shown on
the company display.

Since there is a limit to how much probation anybody can be allowed,
absentee CEOs will be promoted after five company cycles, even if they
have been supervising the factories for less than 24 hours.

In both events, the promotion will happen at the next reset after the
requirements are met.

Being out of probation, a Manufacturer is allowed to do things not
available to Industrialists - but at the same time is subject to pressures
and disadvantages too. More details in next week's news.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT AUTO-MAPPING

A group of old-time Fedders were gathered in a bar, discussing the new
front-end.

"Auto-mapping!" exclaimed Trader Oldster. "We never had auto-
mapping in my day. We had to explore each location and try out all the
different possible exits to see if there were any hidden locations."

"That's right," replied Industrialist Ancientone. "We had to draw our
own maps, using pencil and mapping paper."

"You were lucky," said Adventurer Decrepit. "We couldn't afford
mapping paper; we had to make do with whatever scraps of paper we
could find lying around."

"Paper!" added Merchant Dodderer. "We used to dream of having paper.
We had to draw maps on the back of our hands with a biro."

"Luxury!" declaimed Oldster. "There were no biros in our house, we had
to carve the maps into our flesh using a knife..."

Ok, that's quite enough bad Monty Python parodies for one week, thank
you! But I have heard some grumbling from old players that having
auto-mapping makes things too easy - for example, it makes the
Martian ruins simple to explore. Well that's not quite true, because you
still have to read the room descriptions in order to figure out which
locations you don't want to walk into - the auto-mapping displays the
exit leading to the deep pit in just the same way as any other exit.

It's also worth remembering that the Up and Down exits are not shown,
so anybody who relies solely on the visible links on the map is going to
miss any place that can only be reached by going up stairs, down a
gravshaft, or into a hole in the wall. It will still be possible to have
"hidden" exits using those non-compass directions.

Anyone who has already mapped Fed II the hard way is going to be able
to whizz around all the planets and get FedTerm to auto-map without
much effort, but that only applies if you already know your way around.
New players are still going to have to think about where they are and
whether a displayed exit leads to somewhere they want to go or not!

Having auto-mapping doesn't stop you from having to explore
everywhere, but it does take out the drudgery of having to draw a map
of where you have been, and that's a big help for new players.


Play Federation II
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NEW FEDTERM

The big news in Fed II DataSpace this week is the release of a new
front-end for the game. FedTerm has a lot of the features of the old
front-end but adds a more gooey feel (that's GUI - Graphical User
Interface). It separates room descriptions out from the text it receives
from the game and displays them in a separate window, and lists the
people, objects and mobiles present in the room separately too.

You can move around by clicking on movement arrows, as well as the
usual method of typing in commands directly. You can also use the
numeric keypad on your keyboard to send direction commands.

The most radical addition to the front-end, though, is auto-mapping.
The front-end makes a note of every location you visit and displays it on
a map, showing you which directions you can move in. Since computer
screens are only 2D, it can only display the compass direction exits -
up, down, in and out are not shown, so you will still have to read the
room descriptions to see if there are stairs, gravshafts, holes in the
ground, or other non-conventional exits.

You can see a screenshot of the new FedTerm at
http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/fedterm/screenshot.html and download
the program at http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/fedterm/index.html.

As with the previous versions of the Fed II front-end, the program is a
Windows program. However, thanks to an enterprising member of our
test team - Gandolf - we know it can be run on Linux computers if they
use the Wine emulator. There are instructions about how to set it up at
http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/fedterm/linux.html.


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DIESEL'S BACK - AND THIS TIME, SHE TALKS!

The Galaxy's favorite mobile has emerged from her private office and is
now presiding over her establishment once again. The proprieteuse of
Chez Diesel, Diesel herself, can now be found seated at her bar.

What's more, she talks! You speak to her by saying her name followed
by a word or phrase that you think she knows something about: for
example, 'Diesel hello'. Amongst the topics she will respond to are Mars,
Martians, ruins, drink and pizza - but there's lots more too.

Actually, Diesel is more of an immobile than a mobile, since she doesn't
actually move, but she can still wield her baseball bat if you annoy her.




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ANOTHER ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA ENTRY

If you talk to the clerk you may notice him refer to Heisenberg's
Warehouse. What's that, I hear you ask? In reply, I direct you to a new
entry in the Encyclopedia Galactica, at
http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/galactica/heisenberg.html.


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CHANGE TO TAX RULES

The tax rules have changed, with immediate effect. The taxman will no
longer seize all your excess groats, but will instead take 20% of the
excess once a day, the first time you log on after the game resets. The
limits remain the same.

So if an Adventurer logs on with 580,000 IG in her bank account, the
taxman will substract the limit of 500,000 IG leaving an excess of
80,000 IG, then take 20% of that sum - 16,000 IG.

Why this sudden change? What made the taxman become so much less
rapacious?

Everybody hates the taxman, from the lowest workthing to the highest
bureacrat. Nobody likes to give any of their hard-earned groats to the
government, and since the Galactic Administration was formed, one of
the favorite pastimes of all the denizens of Fed DataSpace has been
grumbled about the onerous tax burden imposed by the revenue men.

Usually, this grumbling amounts to no more than the discontent people
aim at the weather, but recently, as the taxman has tightened his grip,
the unrest has increased. The fact that the taxman confiscates such a
large amount of money outrages people; they consider that it removes
the incentive to work hard, since any groats they make above the
artificial limits set for each rank are just stolen away by the Internal
Revenue.

Finally, the unrest became so great that the Galactic Administration
was forced to take notice. They set up an official inquiry to examine the
operations of the Internal Revenue, and an inside source has told us
they were shocked by what they discovered. They concluded that the
revenue had amassed far too much power, thanks to the enormous
sums of money the organization was raking in. The natural rivalry
between different departments of the government was set aside, and the
other ministries united to condemn the activities of the Internal
Revenue. The chief taxation officer has been removed from his position
and may face criminal charges; the whole taxation organization has
been scaled down, throwing many bureaucrats out of work; and the way
tax is levied on citizens has been changed, much to the relief of groat-
earners everywhere.

Of course, this hasn't stopped the grumbling about tax; nobody likes to
pay tax. But it has made it harmless grumbling again.