September 2003 Update

There have been several major changes since the last update, especially regarding combat and commerce. There have also been quite a few minor changes in just a small amount of time, so I decided to do the update a month early. Here's what's happened recently:

COMBAT
Mentos is back and with help from Titania and Pixel, badly needed space changes and updates are underway. The projected Pilot guild changes were finally announced and are slowly underway. Many skills will change the levels at which they are available, including some HM skills becoming mortal, and some mortal skills becoming HM.

You should now be able to load and unload ships and vehicles from bays while you are standing on the dock, assuming you have the titles to these ships.

The bug which allowed you to launch a distance of 0 from a planet (thus causing your death if you or the planet moved) has been fixed. However, it is still possible to launch 0 distance from asteroids and space stations.

The subdue skill was modified so that after a bounty hunter subdues a mob, (s)he cannot re-subdue it for at least one hour. This was added to prevent the same player from constantly going after the same subdue monster.

Some additions to HM Jedi compel were added to go along with the recent commerce changes.

WIZARD PROMOTIONS
Titania and Amethyst were both promoted to the rank of Councillor.
Willow was promoted to the rank of Ambassador.
Pixel was promoted to the rank of Secretary.
Jessica is now an Applicant.
Congratulations are extended to all of these coders, who are helping to make SWmud a better place to be.

AREAS
The initial area of the planet Togoria opened. Expansions are planned for the future.

A mailroom was added to the diplomat area of the Senate building on Coruscant.

A Sluissi tail bracelet shop was added to Sluis Van Shipyards.

QUESTS
Ivan has been spotted visible (*gasp*) on the mud, furiously coding away on the HM quest and testing it with a character called 'Ivantest' (how original). It is safe to say that things are again underway and might even be done sometime resembling 'soon'. But that's 'unofficial'.

PLAYER-KILLING
Space PK initiation of aggression has been changed. All previous methods of initiating space PK still work, but the following new methods are now being factored into whether or not you may initiate space combat: a) clan aggression, b) persistent aggression, c) retaliation is allowed if you are already agressive via ground combat to a PK player on another ship. These changes only affect the INITIATION of space PK, not space combat itself. Initiating space PK does NOT affect ground combat initiation.

GENERAL INFORMATION
First, SWMud's IP address changed to 65.40.60.14 port 6666.

Second, SWMud's Commerce system is undergoing some major changes. Several phases have already been implemented, with more to come which have not been announced but will be added as they become ready. Among those commerce changes which have already taken place:

• Droid parts must now be sold to droid shops. Ship parts must be sold to ship shops. All other weapons, armor, and miscellaneous items are still sold to regular shops.
• Shops no longer have 'unlimited' stock supplies. All supplies are limited. Shops should also have headings over the columns now to label them more clearly.
• When the shop is low on stock of a particular item, the price increases some due to supply vs. demand.
• When asking for the 'cost' of an item, shopkeepers still haggle with you, so you may wind up paying slightly more or less than you were informed. (Players have whined that they'd never pay more in real life than originally suggested, and the wizards' responded: "Deal with it as is or we'll just remove the 'cost' function".)
• Shops now hold more items in stock and the stock does not rollover or reset as often as it did previously.
• Shop formatting was changed to show quantities of items on the right instead of showing each item individually. Alternating bold and dim white coloring was also added to make line separation easier to see.
• Some shops now refuse to sell to certain individuals based on their team, guild, and/or PK affiliation.
• Shops now have a limited amount of funds with which to buy merchandise from you. This means a shop may run out of money and you may have to travel elsewhere to sell your items.
• New related skills:
  • Merchants now have the 'shopinfo' skill, which will tell them how much money the shop has left, what affiliation it will or won't sell to, and what other shops it may be partnered with regarding funds.
  • Diplomats now have the 'relieve' skill, which will try to boost the economy to raise more funds for a shop to use if it is already near financial collapse.

NOTE: These changes do not apply to most bars or food vendors, just regular shops and spec shops.

Other things that have been added or changed - New commands:
ignore_cabbie - allows players to toggle receiving the messages from smuggler cabbies as they enter.
toggles - changed so that you may specify a flag to see only toggles of that particular type.
weapon_type - defines the category that melee weapons fall into.
who_nhbanned - allows the Player Council to see who been banned from becoming newbie helpers.

Current MUD uptime is now shown before a player logs in. This especially helps HMs who have HM second characters so that they may see whether or not it is a new boot and may want to log in the other character.

Upon login, you are informed if there are any merchant advertisements currently posted.

Also, married players will notice a change in wedding rings that now tells you whether or not you have been widowed (if your spouse has suicided). You will also be informed that your spouse is or is not around as you log out.

The diplomat bin in the Coruscant Senate building no longer costs any money to use.

The Mickey Rukh Hat was changed to start as 'unsized' so that species not of 'medium' size will not have to resize the hat to wear it.

Xerakon and Scyro both achieved the highest ranks of 50/50/19. Congratulations!

And finally, Jedi sponsors now have a special line in order to talk privately to their sponsored padawans or apprentices.