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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS FOR CLASSIC FED PLAYERS
A: For technical reasons. The old version (which we now call classic Fed) was nearly 15 years old, and the code was very tangled and fragile. It had become impossible to maintain - any changes we made to it risked breaking something else. In addition, the hardware the game ran on was old and starting to be temperamental.
A: No. We kept classic Fed running as long as we could, because there were still some people that wanted to play it, but eventually the dodgy hardware gave out for good.
A: It's set 200 years in the future. The flavor of the game remains the same, but there are some differences in the commands you use. You can see a list of the changes at http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/manuals/changes.html. A: Well you would expect some changes in 200 years... you will find the basic shape of the maps in Sol hasn't changed much - the roads and corridors are more or less the same. However, the buildings are all different. So you're going to have to map the planets again, you can't just use your old classic Fed maps. And we have also added some new planets to the Solar System, as well as the asteroid belt.
A: No. You have to start again as a GroundHog in Fed2. A: Apart from the technical difficulties - different file formats and so on - what you do to earn a living has changed so much that it would make no sense to plonk you in Fed2 at a high rank without having climbed the ranks first. You wouldn't have a clue how things worked.
A: No. We no longer have the files from classic Fed because the ancient computers that version of the game ran on gave up the ghost some years ago. But even if we did, the files were in a completely different format. If you have a capture of your old workbench files, or a walkthrough, then you could cut and paste the location descriptions over.
A: We don't want high-ranking players to be able to bankroll newbods, in the way they did in classic Fed. Every player should work through the ranks on their own. That's why a player can only receive a small number of groats each day.
A: The channels in classic Fed were intended to split people up into ranks, but because the game got a bit top-heavy, channel 9 (the planet-owners' channel) became the default channel that everyone tuned to. In Fed2, there are no fixed channels at all - you set up a channel when you want one, and give it whatever name you want. If everyone wants to all tune to the same channel, that's fine - it just won't happen automatically. At the moment you can use the 'COM' command to send your message to everyone in the game, which allows general chit-chat, but when the game gets busy staff may ask you to take the chat to a channel to avoid overloading new players.
A: We probably won't have puzzles as a promotion mechanism - experience shows that once one person solves a puzzle, it doesn't take long for the solution to become common knowledge, which means that the puzzle isn't a test any more. However, there are some puzzles in which have other rewards, and we plan to add more in the future. And that will probably include bringing back the Snark asteroid, with a different puzzle on it.
A: The basic idea of the rules remain the same - they set out things you cannot do because they annoy other players or disrupt the smooth running of the game. However, the rules for Fed2 have been rewritten to make them clearer and easier to understand. In addition, Fed2 has more tools that enable players to protect themselves against annoyances - such as being able to block messages from other players you don't want to hear from. Read the Fed2 rules at http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/info/fed2rules.html. |