Official News page 3

AUTOMATED PLANET LINKING FOR NEW FOUNDERS

by Hazed

Alan certainly didn't have a quiet Christmas break. He may not have had to go to his real life job, but he spent his time very productively, adding new features to the Fed2 code.

His major project was to make it possible for Financiers to get a new stock system and planet linked into the game automatically. This means that if you don't want to customize your planet, and have no interest in planet design, you don't have to muck about in the workbench. You also don't have to wait for Alan to manually link the planet - only until the next reset.

When you are ready to promote to Founder, you use a new command: 'CLAIM SYSTEM systemname PLANET planetname TYPE stocksystemname'. That's complicated, but it has to be to cope with system and planet names that may have spaces in them.

Let's break it down. As with all Fed2 commands, the words in UPPER CASE you type as they are, and the words in lower case are parameters that you replace with your chosen text. The parameters are:

• 'systemname' - the name you want to give your system. It can be up to 32 characters, and can contain spaces. You can use letters and numbers , but no punctuation or symbols, and it must start with a letter. Do not use the words system, planet or type as part of the name. It must not already be in use as a system name in the game.
  Example: Big Star

• 'planetname' - the name you want to give your planet. The rules are the same as for the system name. It must not already be in use as a planet name in the game.
  Example: New World

• 'stocksystemname' - the type of stock planet you want to use. The options are: beach, furnace, iceberg, rubble, rescue, sweet.

So when you type the command it would look something like this:

claim system big star planet new world type sweet

It doesn't matter if you use upper or lower case when you type the command - the game always treats system and planet names the same way, which is by capitalizing the first letter of each word only.

Warning: make sure you have spelled the system and planet names correctly before you press return, because you can't change them once you have issued the command!

The new planet will be linked into the game at the next reset, at which time you will promote to Founder.

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