THE
MONTH IN BRIEFFebruary
was the month when we started to charge for Fed, after
three months of running for free on the web.
Unfortunately, when charging began we could only take
payment by check and not by credit card.
The Universe became very quiet and
for the first time in ages it was safe to type 'WHO'
again. A player called Tron had the dubious honor of
being charged the very first cent.
Just before the billing clock was
turned on, Hazed held a question and answer session in
Fed. You can read the transcript at
http://www.ibgames.net/stuff/hazed2.txt.
With the charging came new
promotion requirements, lowering the amount of time it
would take to do just about everything in Fed! The
biggest change was the abolition of company cycles, which
used to require JPs and GMs to make the required profit
in a certain number of days.
Factories were changed so they no
longer had their own balances; instead groats they spent
and made were taken out and put into the company balance.
The Snark Puzzle came back, but it
still had a bug towards the end which meant it couldn't
actually be solved. However, the DNI computer was working
again which meant Barons could get information about the
builds they would need to do for the Duke puzzle, even if
the puzzle itself wasn't in.
Networths were finally abolished.
Originally an indication of a player's overall wealth,
they had become fairly meaningless for the higher ranks,
so finally the whole concept was junked.
A very long-standing bug was
finally fixed - the one that made room descriptions
disappear if the room had an IN event which was not
triggered. The cause of the bug turned out to be a
misplaced semi-colon!
The fixing of another long-standing
bug caused consternation amongst POs who had got used to
things working the way they shouldn't - see below for an
explanation.
A new bug gave GMs an unexpected
bonus - they were promoted to Explorer even though they
hadn't maxed out their stats. A minor typo in the code
meant that all GMs who logged on were promoted. This was
fixed in a hurry.
Links to player's web sites about
Fed were added to the ibgames web site. More importantly,
billing records were added to the accounts page so you
could check your billing.
The first Walrus of Merit for
supreme excellence in planet design was awarded to
Sephiroth for the planet Meteor. Icedrake also gave the
lesser Carpenter award to Bartholomew's Boomtown,
Belgarath's Mrin and Dillinger's Shoot.
Valentine's Day saw parties, a
puzzle planet called Psyche, and a Valentine message
service in the news.
LONG-STANDING
EXCHANGE BUG FIXED
A long-standing bug to do with
commodities being produced on player-planets, which has
been the cause of a great deal of confusion, has finally
been fixed.
It says in the Advanced Idiot's
Guide to Federation:
"If your planet produces
the commodity, it will produce it until the amount in
stock is twice the stockpile, or the stock reaches
10,000 tons, at which point it will stop producing
(provided there is at least 10 tons in stock)."
But POs knew that this was not the
case; commodities did not stop being produced when the
stock reached 10,000 tons. Except for the few occasions
when it did. And everyone thought that the bug was the
commodities that stopped!
But that wasn't the bug at all.
What was supposed to happen, was what it says in the
Guide. What was actually happening, was that production
was stopping when the stock was EXACTLY 10,000 tons but
was not stopping if the stock was more than 10,000 tons.
Hence the confusion.
Anyway, now the bug has been fixed,
so exchanges should behave as described in the Guide, and
stop producing when the stock reaches 10,000 tons or
over.
ROLE-PLAYING
IN FED
Many people want to encourage
players in Fed to role-play, and this is a very worthy
aim which is supported by ibgames and all the staff.
However, you cannot force people to role-play if they
don't want to, and you shouldn't censure them if they
choose not to join in.
Fed is not a traditional
role-playing game where players choose a race,
profession, religion, alignment and so on, and then stick
rigidly to the attributes of their characters.
We don't insist that players choose
a name that fits into the genre or the period of the
game. Fed is a much more free-wheeling environment.
Similarly, we have never tried to
tell people what they can and cannot discuss in the game,
either privately or on the comms, apart from the few
rules that are set out in the House Rules (no vulgarity,
talk about sex, encouraging drug use, discussion of
hacking, and so on) and in the Fed Rules (no talk about
macros, don't give away puzzle secrets, etc). If people
want to talk about sport, what was on TV last night,
their girl/boyfriend or their new washing machine, that's
just fine.
Players who enjoy role-playing and
do want to stay "in character" while in Fed are
welcome to do so, but they can't impose their ways onto
everyone else by claiming that Channel 9ers shouldn't
talk about "real life". If you wish to keep
your conversations free of real life matters then you
need to find an empty channel and conduct your
conversations there in peace.
Here is an explanation of how the
rules and etiquette of the comms works.
Channel 1 is the Help Channel and
is for newbods to get help, and existing players to ask
questions of staff.
Channels 2 to 9 are the rank
channels and are intended for all players to use. No one
group of players can take over any of these channels, and
the only time staff will intervene is when a player
breaks the rules, or a conversation is such that the
majority of players on the channel find it offensive or
disruptive.
Channel 10 is the events channel
and while an event is on, it is reserved for the use of
that event. The rest of the time it is a free channel.
Channels 11 upwards are free
channels. No player or group of players can lay permanent
claim to these channels, but during any game session they
operate on a "first come first served" basis.
So a group can tune to an empty channel, designate it
"their" channel for the duration, and
thereafter dictate what it is used for, until they leave.
So, those of you who wish to have
totally in character conversations should use one of the
free channels because here you can steer the conversation
in the direction you choose.
But you cannot tell people what to
talk about, and what not to talk about, on Channel 9.
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