THE MONTH IN BRIEF
The really big news in January 2005 was that at the end of the month Fed became free! Yowza! Slithy toves were introduced as a way for players to give us real-world dollars, and get goodies in the game in exchange. There was much jubilation in Fed DataSpace as players celebrated the return to free Fed.
This rather overshadows everything else that happened in the month, but in other changes, the way moods were displayed was changed to a much more useful style, so that players present when you walk into a room, or type 'LOOK' or 'GLANCE', were listed out in full including their moods:
The one, the only, the demi-goddess Hazed is here.
The sexiest Fedder, Pugwash is here.
Happy, delighted and ecstatic, Roget is here.
Ahoy hoy! Birdseye is here.
Much less unwieldy. More wieldy? Hmmm... Moods still vanished at reset, though, so players were encouraged to get into the habit of setting them every day, for example by using f-keys, or FedTerm's start-up commands.
The first talking mobile appeared: the priest in Temple of Gaelaan on Venus. He didn't say very much, but he acted as a "proof of concept" to show how talking mobiles work.
Nightwatch started an operation to deal with vagrants who sleep in public locations such as bars or the Earth landing pad, carting them off to the dormitory on Earth.
The Christmas puzzle was solved after a lot of hard work and head-scratching on the part of players. This was a lot more difficult than the previous puzzle Hazed had written for Halloween! First to crack it, rescue Santa and his crashed sleigh and help him on his way to deliver presents was Jolia.
Fancy won a contest to identify all of the locations in the Solar System that had erected Christmas decorations.
To help new players get started with mapping, we published the planet starter maps showing the routes from the landing pad to the Armstrong Cuthbert offices on all the Sol planets. Plus, the Quickstart Guide to Fed2 was revamped to make it simpler and clearer for new players to grasp the info they need in a hurry.
And speaking of making things simpler... a new version of the Fed2 Rules was published which crystalized them into three simple instructions:
Rule 1 - Don't annoy other players
Rule 2 - Do what staff members tell you
Rule 3 - Don't damage the game
Simple!
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF GALACTIC ADMINISTRATION CORRUPTION
From your very first steps in Fed DataSpace, you have to deal with the corruption that underpins the whole structure of the Galactic Administration. Your first bribe gets you a ship's permit, saving months of waiting while the forms are processed officially.
Now the Fed II Star can bring you exclusive details of other ways you can use bribery to enhance your status and speed your progress. High ranking officials have been accepting bribes for centuries, and there's no reason you shouldn't take advantage of their greed and corruption.
The clerk in the permit office may accept groats as his bribe, but to get really substantial favors, you need to tap into the complex system that the aristocracy uses to exchange obligations. The upper classes do this by trading ownership of rare and elusive alien creatures which are only found on the planet Snark in Hilbert Space. The planet is very hard to get to, and dangerous to explore, and the animals themselves are difficult to spot, let alone capture.
Apart from their rarity, the animals have one very unusual characteristic: if you put two of them together, all but the biggest will merge to form a completely different species. The smallest animal is called a slithy tove.
Ownership of slithy toves gives status, and the certificates of ownership are used as bribes to gain favors and privileges from members of the bureaucracy - such exchanges are now so common that the certificates for slithies have almost taken on the status of currency in their own right.
SLEEPER, AWAKE!
Ever since the hourly charge for Fed was scrapped, players have been in the habit of wandering away from the keyboard but leaving their character logged into the game - even when they go to bed, or leave home to go to work or school for the day. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, the rank of Industrialist, where you buy a company, encourages you to leave your character parked in the game, since factories run more efficiently when the owner is present.
However, you need to give some thought to where you place yourself before going AFK. Sleeping in a public place can cause problems. New players find it very annoying to come across a player and try to have a chat with them, only to be ignored, so you should avoid sleeping in any of the "newbod" locations on Earth - the meeting point, the landing pad, Jarrow shipyard, the permit office, or the roads between those points.
It is can also put a damper on conversations in a bar if there is a slumbering body in the corner. Chatting with your friends is supposed to a spontaneous and fun thing to do, but the knowledge that a sleeper might be recording everything for later review can curtail that spontaneity.
I am not talking about going AFK while you make a cup of tea, feed the cat or read your email - but if you are going to be absent from your keyboard for more than 15 minutes, make sure your character is left somewhere inconspicuous.
In the past I've written about good Fed etiquette, and this is another issue that is a matter of etiquette. It is not against the rules to sleep in a public place, but it is bad manners, and if staff think your slumbering body is causing a nuisance, then they will have you declared a vagrant and Nightwatch will transport you to a new dormitory location near the spaceport on Earth.
EXTENSION OF GALACTIC ADMINISTRATION VAGRANCY PROCEDURE
Following last week's announcement that staff can declare sleeping players vagrant and call Nightwatch, who will cart them off to the dormitory on Earth, we are extending the areas in which vagrancy is deemed to be bad manners. As well as bars in which players are gathering, and the locations on Earth that new players are likely to visit, we are adding all landing pads and all Armstrong Cuthbert locations, and the routes between them. In other words just about all the locations on the starter maps for new players.
So remember, to stop yourself from being declared a vagrant, before you wander away from the computer leaving your character logged on while you go to work, school or bed, make sure your character is sleeping somewhere obscure and out of the way where nobody will trip over you!
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER, EVER GIVE YOUR PASSWORD TO YOUR FRIENDS
Here's a bit of real life news that has deep significance for anyone playing multi-player games such as Fed II.
The cautionary tale takes place in Japan, where a couple met up in the online game Lineage and got friendly. They met up in real life and started a short-lived relationship. Sadly, things didn't work out and the guy broke up with the gal.
She wasn't too happy about this, and she wanted revenge. But rather than letting down the tires on his car, or cutting the crotch out of all his trousers, or boiling his pet rabbit on the stove, or doing any of the other things that spurned women have been known to do, she took her revenge back to the place where they met: the online game. She used his username and password to log on and destroyed the game items he had spent time accumulating online, such as weapons and clothes.
So be warned: share your Fed II characters with your loved ones if you must, but remember to change your passwords if you ever break up! Or you could log on one day and find yourself a GroundHog all over again.
REAL LIFE NEWS: TOUCHDOWN ON TITAN
As I wrote the first draft of this news on Friday morning, the Huygens spacecraft had just begun its descent to Saturn's moon, Titan. It had sent back its first signal, showing that it was still alive and was using its parachute. Everything seemed to be going smoothly.
Four hours later, it touched down on the largest moon in the Solar System. Scientists detected its carrier wave so knew it had made it safely, but had to wait for its data, which was being relayed back to Earth via the Cassini ship which had carried Huygens to its far distant destination.
Then the data started to come in, and with it, some pictures of Titan's surface, taken during the descent and after landing. The surface is darker than originally expected, consisting of a mixture of water and hydrocarbon ice. There is also evidence of erosion which suggests the area may once have been flooded.
Take a look at the pictures and read the latest news about Huygens here.
REAL LIFE NEWS: WACKY WARNING LABELS
An annual competition to find the wackiest warning label on a consumer product has announced this year's winner: a toilet brush that warns users, "Do not use for personal hygiene."
The contest, now in its eighth year, is conducted by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, to reveal how concern about laswsuits has resulted in a proliferation of barmy product warnings.
Second prize went to a label on a children's scooter that warns, "This product moves when used".
See more of these winning wacky warnings here.
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