Web Fed News Yearbooks - May 1999

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

May saw the introduction of a new service: the Federation Chronicle mailing list, which delivers the news direct to your mailbox every Sunday morning, so you don't have to remember to go to the web page to read it. At the same time we set up a mailing list of IB Announcements, which mirrors the information posted on the What's New page. Details of the mailing lists at on www.ibgames.net/ibinfo/mailinglists.html.

In the middle of the month, the Internet suffered a bit of a siezure, with many people unable to connect to Fed or our web site - or to many other games and sites on the net. Whatever it was, it cleared up on a few days. In the light of the problems, we recommended the Internet Weather Report at www.mids.org/weather/ which provides maps showing areas of Internet lag.

The Meet and Greet event on May 9 was shocking for everyone there, including poor Chiefsgirl, when the guest, Pintomike, announced he was leaving Fed and slashed his wrists in the middle of the Duff Modem. As if that wasn't enough, Onyxgod suicided DD too. As far as we know, this avowal of disgust with Fed did not extend to their alts...

The Fed programmer, Nick Osborn (Cryptosporidium) left IB.

Hazed published an article about business email on her personal web site, f-space at www.ibgames.net/fi/.

SEX IN FULL VIEW

Once again, I am going to say something that makes me sound like some puritanical censorship freak, and no doubt the free spirits of Fed DataSpace will roundly castigate me for curtailing their personal rights to express themselves howsoever they choose.

A few days ago, a group of players had a heavy sex scene involving bondage and S&M, in the Starship Cantina on Earth. This certainly doesn't count as a private venue and thus was against the House Rules.

Now, I don't care one bit what you get up to in private. Despite calls from a few busybodies to put a stop to all sex, wherever it takes place, I don't have the time or the inclination to worry myself about the behavior of consenting adults in private.

My personal politics are that you should do whatever makes you happy, so long as it doesn't annoy anyone else, and that's the way I have tried to frame the IB House Rules. Sometimes I feel as if this doesn't please anyone, with on the one hand those who think they have a right to swing naked from the traffic lights if that's what turns them on, and to hell with anyone else's feelings; and on the other hand those who think that sex is evil and dirty and shouldn't be allowed anywhere at all. But I persist in trying to treat all the Fed players like sensible adults, and therefore my rules reflect that.

I have no doubt that the people involved in the Cantina show did not sit down and plot, scheme and plan to break the rules. I'm sure they started off just chatting and fooling around, and then got carried away without realizing they were going too far.

But please, everyone, show a bit of sense. If you want to have sex, choose somewhere private and then go to it with my blessing. Invite an audience if you wish. Sell tickets. Just don't pick a place where GroundHogs will walk in!

DUCHY TAXES

Two new Dukes in the last few days have been confused about taxes - how to set them, what they do, and where they are displayed - so here's an explanation.

Duchies have two separate taxes which do different things. First is the planet tax, which does exactly the same as it did before you became a Duke - it is a capital transfer tax, taking a percentage of any gifts made between players which are over 5,000 groats, and any haulage payments over 5,000 groats. This is the tax that shows up on the planet display as the turnover tax. You set the tax with the command 'SET PLANET TAX percentage' where the percentage is between 0% and 30%.

The duchy tax equates to the customs duty which takes a percentage whenever a player jumps into the duchy carrying goods. It's set using 'SET DUCHY TAX percentage' and the percentage can be between 0% to 50%. Unfortunately, the only way to find out what the duchy tax is - for your own duchy or anyone else's - is from the 'DI DUCHIES' display, which isn't really recommended unless you have 5 minutes to spare!

There is another tax for duchies, and that's the percentage you cream off from your POs earnings. You can't change this - it's set at 10% for all duchies except the duchy of Sol, where Ming takes an extortionate 25%.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: NEW RANKS

A question that gets asked again and again is, do we plan to put in any new ranks above Duke?

While I am not willing to state that we will never do so - all kinds of wild things might happen in the future - I can say that we have no plans right now to do this.

I think the real problem is not the need for new ranks; it's firstly the fact that players get to Duke much too quickly, and second that when they do get there, they don't have much to do so get bored. Those two problems need to be tackled before we look at extending the hierarchy.

IGNORAMUS OF THE WEEK

This is a true story. I know, because I was there. I would say, "I know, because I was that soldier", except that I have never been in the army, or played cards in church. And besides, you youngsters wouldn't understand the reference.

Once upon a time...

Well, let's be honest. This didn't happen long ago in a Galaxy far, far away. It happened yesterday, in the very familiar environs of Fed DataSpace. I was dozing in the corner of Chez Diesel, as I often do, waking up from time to time to when a Fedizen TBed me to say Hi or to offer me the worship which is my rightful due, when I got a question that I thought was from a Poor Person:

Your comm unit signals a tight beam message from [Unnamed Questioner], "Sorry to bother you but I keep getting fined for wasting transportation's time whenever I try to accept a job. What am I doing wrong?"

Well, my immediate assumption was that the poor, ignorant newbod was trying to take jobs that wouldn't fit into their ship. So I told the questioner to type ST to look at his, her or its ship details, to see how big the cargo bay was, and make sure they looked at the size of a job before accepting it. Well, wouldn't you have made the same assumption?

The querant then came back with, "It says 575/575. Does that mean I have cargo on board?"

At this point I did a spynet on the person asking, and my jaw dropped, hitting the table with a clang. It was a Merchant. A Merchant who was trying to do jobs. Why? Why would anyone want to do jobs if they had a better way to earn money?

I explained, in some bemuzzlement, that Traders and above couldn't accept jobs from Transportation Central.

My eyes popped out of my head, and joined my jaw on the table, when I heard the reply.

"Then how can I earn enough money to start my company?"

All my comm unit could relay at this point was a gurgling noise, as I struggled to pull my facial features back into their natural position. Finally, I composed myself enough to explain - very slowly and clearly - that once you reach Trader, you buy goods from the trading exchange and sell them to another trading exchange. I didn't go as far as to explain that the idea was to sell for a profit. I wasn't sure he, she or it could have grasped an idea that complex. One thing at a time, I thought.

Well, then I explained gently that perhaps this ignorant person should go and read the Fed manual, to find out what they should be doing at the rank of Merchant. Whether they did, I don't know. People don't seem to like reading manuals. They'd rather jump in and mess things up on their own.

There's a moral to this story. I'm damned if I know what it is, though!