Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: September 4, 2016

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WHERE WILL VIOLENCE BE ALLOWED?

by Hazed

My fellow Fedders, I have to announce a change of philosophy, to do with where you will be allowed to get into fights. Don’t worry, it’s still fighting in space – nobody is going to be bringing missiles or lasers into Chez Diesel to shoot the place up.

In classic Fed there were limits on where you could fire your weapons: interstellar links, planetary orbits, and any location designated by the PO as a peace location. When Alan drew up his plans for fighting in this version of the game, he assumed he’d do things the same way.

But that causes a problem. There are hundreds of star systems out there where there are space locations not marked as peace locations, because when the owners designed the planets they didn’t know we were going to bring back ship fighting. Many of the owners are no longer around.

The last thing we want is for innocent players who are going about their trading business to be ambushed by a homicidal maniac firing a missile at them. Fighting should be for people who have agreed to fight – the equivalent of a duel – not to wreak havoc on anyone and everyone.

So Alan and I were discussing ways to make sure peace properties were added to every space map, especially those where the owner was no longer around, when suddenly he had a brainwave.*

Instead of peace locations, let’s have fighting locations. Instead of fighting being allowed everywhere except where it has been barred, let’s prohibit fighting everywhere except where it has been authorised.

That solves all of the problems: it means nobody can be ambushed in random unattended systems. The only place they could get shot at would be in systems where the owner had deliberately set up fighting locations – and word would soon get around that traders should avoid those systems unless their ship carries defences.

So the peace property is no more, and instead there is a new fighting property. There will be limits on where you can put it – you won’t be able designate the link as a fighting location, and Tesla will whinge if you use the property on the orbit location.

Meanwhile, if you did put the peace property on any locations when designing your planet, it doesn’t matter – the game will just ignore them.

The new version of the editor, which lets you add this property to your space maps, will be ready in a couple of weeks, when the Star returns from its holiday.

* Actually, this genius notion was my idea, but in order to accept that it really was the way things should be, Alan had to convince himself that he had been the one to think of it.

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