Official News page 4

WE NEED MONEY

by Hazed

The main reason for making this move to the cloud is that it will be a lot cheaper.

At the moment, the game and the website run on a dedicated server - “our” server - which we rent from our co-location facility, and pay a rental fee for. In fact, we only use a fraction of the processing power and disc space the computer has, because Fed2 is not a large or power-hungry program.

In the cloud, Fed2 won’t run on a dedicated server, but will use a virtual server, only taking up as much space, bandwidth and processing power as it needs. The cost we pay to the co-location facility will therefore go down.

Great news for my credit card!

However, Fed2 may be one of the best things in life, but it sure ain’t free, and moving to the cloud won’t make it so. We’re still going to need money from you. We get that money when you purchase slithy toves.

Slithy toves are tokens that you buy, using real dollars, and can then use in the game to get a variety of useful and entertaining things. Here’s a sample of what you can do with slithy toves:

• Price checking - there’s a variety of souped up remote price checkers available that will aid anybody trading goods on the exchanges
• Navcomp - if you’re running cargo in the Solar system, a navcomp upgrade can make it easy to find your way from planet to planet
• Teleporter - for truly luxury travel you can teleport from place to place with ease
• Boost your planet cash - exchange a slithy tove for funds in your treasury, to help you do those infrastructure builds quicker
• Planet design - if you’re feeling creative but the limit on locations on your planet is cramping your style, buy some extras
• Charms - regular items of jewellery that go on sale for a limited period, like the April Fool charm from last week’s Star. Build up your collection!
• Finally, you get that warm, smug feeling that comes with the knowledge you are helping to keep Fed going.

There’s a full list of   all the exciting things you can do with slithies here.

A slithy tove costs $5. You can make individual purchases, or you can take out a subscription and get a big discount: $13 a month gets you four slithies (which would normally cost you $20).

Go to the Extras page to make a purchase or subscribe.

If you do, you’ll be helping to ensure you can carry on playing Fed2.

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