Fed II 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!