Fed II Star - 2005 Review of the Year

SEPTEMBER

The Star returned from its summer break, to report on several dramas that had happened in its absence - unrest amongst disgruntled CEOs who objected to Financiers investing in their companies, and named them Vulture Capitalists; problems when one of them got so cross she suicided twice and went dead-dead, but the game didn't dispose of her company properly so she came back as a GroundHog CEO; new Manufacturers finding themselves CEOs without companies, and finally a new player who was in the process of buying a ship when the game reset, with very strange consequences! Bella leapt into action and fixed all those bugs.

The taxman suddenly realized he had not been taxing Financiers. At all. They'd been getting away completely with paying no taxes. None at all. Shocking! Needless to say, he put a stop to that pronto, and it was only with the greatest of difficulty he was persuaded not to levy punitive fines against non-payers.

CEOs were given a command to split their stock, providing extra shares to sell to investors.

Messrs Trumble, Cruikshank & Bone offered some enhancements to their remote price check service. Those who paid extra could upgrade and get price checks of whole commodity groups, or a list of the price for a specified commodity on all planets. Great, another reason not to leave the barstool...

Factory working capital was standardized and the command to change the working capital was removed. This meant it was no longer possible to hide vast sums of groats in a factory balance where it would be safe from the taxman.

Married couples for whom wedded bliss turned out not to be quite so blissful were offered a new facility: a divorce! Only one of the two married people is required to obtain the divorce, so neglected spouses can rid themselves of absentee partners.

Bella started work on the Workbench that would let players build their very own planets, and gave the first version to the test team to play with. The limits for what Founders would be able to do with their planets were announced: 50 locations (upgradable to 80 by paying over some slithies) and customized no-exit messages, but no objects or events which are reserved for higher ranks.

Desertwolf's excellent FedTerm character picture gallery moved onto the ibgames web site.