Squad SoLiCiDaL has decided, based on information that they have allegedly recovered, to close down Aman space and to prohibit any Amananthii equipment from being hauled out to the other faction and personal stations.

"Due to recent information discovered on a rusty DSS, Amananth is now off limits to all TRI personnel. Our recent discovery shows that the Amananthi government is in league with the conflux. This cannot be tolerated. Aman leaders have given access to TRI space in exchange for technology secrets that
make Amanathi equipment far superior than that of other factions.
They fill their fat bellies with the blood of TRI pilots.

Purchasing Aman produced equipment is supporting the conflux menace. Henceforth, all TRI pilots entering Amananth space will be turned back, until further notice. If pilots persist, they will be dealt with accordingly."

SoLiCiDaL has claimed that the blockade will end if Amananth agrees to share the secrets of its production with the other factions.  While the Solrain government (STCC) expressed  support of this initiative, the Quantar Fa'hil Memta and the Octavian Empire have opposed the blockade -- each in their own way.

TRI Establishes Defense Status Guidelines

Based on new data available from the CLAWS system, TRI has established a new pilot warning system consisting of five Conflux threat categories:

TRI Defense Condition 5: There are no known threats, although readiness training should be performed. Risk of attack is low.

TRI Defense Condition 4: A non-specific threat has been detected, pilots should be on alert for anything unusual. There is a general risk of attack.

TRI Defense Condition 3: A threat has been detected, and there is significant risk of an attack. Pilots should be on heightened alert, and key sectors should be actively patrolled. Beacons should be tuned to provide the earliest possible warning.

TRI Defense Condition 2: Risk of an imminent attack is high. Non combat pilots should exercise extreme caution, while combat pilots should be in flight, and ready to actively engage enemy targets. Private and secure communications channels should be primarily used for command and control operations.

TRI Defense Condition 1: An attack is in progress. All pilots are requested to respond to the attack. Emergency personnel should be pre-positioning to respond. Non critical station personnel should move to sheltered areas.

This new simplified pilot warning system is expected to help in maximizing efficient response to imminent threat of Conflux attacks.

economy report:
Commodity Shortage Begins Affecting  Equipment
                Production

Commodity shortages are beginning to have an impact on equipment production, though as yet there appear to be no "critical" shortages.

JGCentral reports that five base commodities, including Carbon, Cesium, Palladium and Water currently have universal inventories of fewer than 1000 units.  Cesium is generally available through the NanoAssembler in Amananth station sector, but the Carbon shortage is bound to quickly begin impacting missile production.

Miners are encouraged to increase ice and semifluxor harvests as quickly as possible to avert a commodity crisis.

Online Number Consistency Shows Improvement

We have continued to track online activity by taking a snapshot of the online numbers each hour, capturing this in a database and then pumping the data into our graphing engine.

What's looks interesting isn't just that we hit 50 or 60 players in a given night -- what we have seen is online numbers averaging 40 or so, but the graphs have gotten fatter.  The online numbers have not simply been peaking for an hour or two, they have been consistently stronger throughout the day, and in the "wee hours" when we used to see a few people on, we're now often seeing 7 to10.

It's just "baby steps," but still . . .this is encouraging stuff!

GAME DEVELOPMENTS.

"October Patch" Delayed - Istvan, the lead developer on Jumpgate, notified the community that it did not appear that he would be able to stay on his "patch-a-month" schedule.  What he did offer was:

"The content I'm working on has very little to do with the delay. However, some folks may be interested to hear that I've begun investing time on the programmatic areas of Jumpgate's graphics and rendering, including altering the texture loader to handle compressed textures. Changes to the loader will allow us to use what internal art resources we have available at NetDevil to begin a gradual re-texturing of the game. I've also been examining changes to the game's skybox and sector backgrounds, in accordance with exploring simple changes that could dramatically affect the game's appearance and visual appeal. Gameplay features that are expected to see development time prior to releasing the next patch include some economic problems and the original agenda of work on the conflux.

"Conflux work is even more likely to be further spread among several patches for the rest of 2004, which I'm rapidly running out of, rather than one big conflux patch as originally intended."

JPR Update - JPR has continued to come back from its hiatus with new faces, old faces, improved sound quality and continued great content!

For Halloween weekend JPR will broadcast all three nights with things like the Rocky Horror sound track, the continued broadcasts of "Hitchhiker's Guide...", some ambient music for the Samhain (pronounced sah'-wen), along with all of the great DJ personalities, music, news updates and commercials we've come to expect.

JPR is also looking into providing pre-recorded content on a 24x7 basis (WOW!).  Is there any other game that has anything like this?

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Darkspace Dispatch Back-Issues

Volume I, Number 1 (104.7.24)           Volume I, Number 2 (104.8.12)           Volume I, Number 3 (104.10.2)

 
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