1.3.4 Comprehensive feature list or change log?

[Blitzen]

Hi guys, long time no speak/read, sorry had to take a breather!

Just popped in to see if all my screaming and kicking fell on def ears or not... but it's pretty hard to tell since I can't find out what has changed from version to version!

In case anyone missed it, I am a c-64 version fan-boy and could care less about the Atari version or any other version than the c64 except one that recreates it faithfully.  I have hundreds of games played with 4 qualified players on the c64 and just want to be able to continue that using the wonders of the Internet to play with my 3 buddies more often.  And no emulated Atari Mule over Internet will not do it.

Anyway, is there a change log for each version somewhere I am missing so I could at least paste together a "current" feature list?  I could only find this info for some versions and not all and therefore I cannot figure out what the hell is going on.

For instance I am curious about the following things:

- have you switched the game to a dedicated centralized server yet?
- have you fixed the host advantage in land grant, auctions, cheating sobs?
- have you (properly) recreated the auctions: frequency, max values, ties, sync between clients?
- have you put the max price of smithore back to the proper value?
- have you fixed the time and movement of development to match c64?
- have you made the wampus harder to catch like c64?
- have you reduced the high crystite plots back to 3 from 4?
- have you made it so you don't get "credit" for the existing "outfit" of your Mule, for example it should cost 50 bucks to outfit for energy, and it should cost another 25 to change it to food... NOT negative 25.
- have you fixed who is considered first at the line in land auctions that are tied to be RANDOM (land grant and commodity auctions are different of course)

I think I could think of a bunch more but if I had the answers to the above I could decide if I really want to gather my buddies and try this latest version out or not.  Or whether to bother posting any more beefs.

B

PS If you don't hear from me again (ie. you said no to all of the above), sorry but it's probably for the best.  I worry I might permanently scar your egos every time I speak my mind.  BUT please DO add my vote to whatever C64nostalgia says... chances are VERY high that I agree with him.  I don't think I have read one post of his where I disagreed with him.  So in other words, if all the PM fan boys are saying X and c64Nostalgia says Y, please think of it like two players said Y, but one of them got sick of saying it and went away to keep his sanity.  

PPS Happy holidays all and give Uschi a big ole' lump of coal for me if you see him, pretty please!

[Chuckie Chuck]

Hey Blitzen,

PPS Happy holidays all and give Uschi a big ole' lump of coal for me if you see him, pretty please!

We'll be sure to give that lump of coal to Akire1/Uschi/Simpla the Best/eumel-123/dontspeakenglish/hello.
or whatever you want to call him, he has more smurfs than anyone else here.

Visit this thread to download an update log

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1169.0

I compiled this myself from the front page (took some time to document these among all the weekly trophy updates)

Hmmm, actually, I'll just upload it on this message, you won't have to read tons of stuff to find it.

Let's address your questions...

Most have these are in discussion in the various forums (feedback, and general discussion mostly)

For instance I am curious about the following things:

- have you switched the game to a dedicated centralized server yet?
- have you fixed the host advantage in land grant, auctions, cheating sobs?

Still using player hosted games, but timing improvements have greatly diminished host advantage - Still there, but much much better

- have you (properly) recreated the auctions: frequency, max values, ties, sync between clients?- have you put the max price of smithore back to the proper value?

Again, part of this, has to deal with host advantage and varying pings, there is improvement.
Max value are the following currently...

Smithore: 230
Crystite: 148
Food: 215
Energy: 215

- have you fixed the time and movement of development to match c64?

It's more like Atari than 64, and I grew up 64, so I liked the challenges in the 64 version, it has been noted by many that those do make the game more interesting, and many would like to see it like the 64.

- have you made the wampus harder to catch like c64?

No, it's still easier than it was on the Atari, very easy to get the wampus.

- have you reduced the high crystite plots back to 3 from 4?

It is still 4.

- have you made it so you don't get "credit" for the existing "outfit" of your Mule, for example it should cost 50 bucks to outfit for energy, and it should cost another 25 to change it to food... NOT negative 25.

No, but it is in discussion, on multiple threads in fact, so good chance a purest version may come out that addresses this eventually.

- have you fixed who is considered first at the line in land auctions that are tied to be RANDOM (land grant and commodity auctions are different of course)

Timing improvements have been improved, which was a big part of this issue.  In ties, loser advantage now wins the auction 9 our of 10 times, much better than it was in version 1.2.x  They did there best to ensure this by cause a longer delay in the sale of the first unit to allow for lag time to sync the game properly.

I did notice host advantage played into the land grant in a game I hosted yesterday, but that is the first time I have seen it since 1.3.4 was released, and it's been out for a while, someone had some longer pings, and I beat them out two rounds in a row in the land grant when they were placed 4th and I was 3rd, which isn't supposed to happen, but like I said, out of 30 some odd games, since 1.3.4 came out, it's the first game I saw this in.  (That was a rough game, two players lost connection, and had significant ping problems long before the time out, I was very sad, I've had a great string of games with no abandonment issues, but these were genuine connection problems, nobody purposefully quit I'm happy to say.)

Cited discussions addressing these very questions.

http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1150.0
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=746.0
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1140.0
http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=1119.0

There are more, but as you can see, these points are definately in discussion.

[Blitzen]

Thank you Chuckie Chuck for taking the time to reply to all my questions I know that it takes a LOT of time to create such a post and I do appreciate it.

I guess I won't be playing anytime soon, asides from the fact that most of my concerns haven't been addressed.

Also, I see from the comprehensive change log you posted the following two things which seem to be steps backwards to me:

From 1.3.0
 * Players must walk all the way down to the start bid to exit the Land
      Auction. The maximum price will also go down when the player backs out.
      This prevents players from blocking the auction by raising the price to
      an amount nobody would want to pay and then back out.

From 1.3.3
 * Fixed so that a tie in the land auction will always blink and sell the
     plot to the player with the lower score.

Neither of these changes are accurate imitations of the original, nor do they add anything special to the game:

1) Blocking auctions should be a part of the game, it always has been in the past, running the price back to original asking price is retarded and backwards compared to the original in every way.

2) C64 made it so it was random who was considered first in land auctions.  Why?  Because the price could only change by about 1k, so the guy in last,  late in a game, say after everyone has dumped smithore for the first time, would of been buying the next 2 or 3 plots, likely paying 2k, 3k and 4k for them.  THIS IS NOT AN ARGUEMENT TO INCREASE THE MAX PRICE RISE IN LAND AUCTIONS!  Just make it random who is considered first in a tie, like they did in c64... for very good reasons.  Guess what the guy in last who bought those plots for 2k - 4k, is STILL in last cause only values the land at 500... this is a HUGE advantage in its current form and represents a broken aspect of play.

I really hope my PM next birthday they have stopped trying to fix the original and finally started trying to emulate it faithfully.  Maybe by their 3rd they will be tweeking version 2 but honestly at their current rate they are never going to make a decent version 1 at all.

Sorry to be pissing in the cereal bowl again but how will you guys know if no one speaks up???  Start reverse engineering the original c64 version and stop guessing and going back and forth trying to take the short and easy route.

B 

PS See you again in a few more months I guess!

[Chuckie Chuck]

From 1.3.0
 * Players must walk all the way down to the start bid to exit the Land
      Auction. The maximum price will also go down when the player backs out.
      This prevents players from blocking the auction by raising the price to
      an amount nobody would want to pay and then back out.

This rule was made because people were intentionally running the price up and then not purchasing, hurting other players that truly wanted to by, it was especially abused by the same people who are known for unethical hosting, go figure, this forced them to keep the price more fair (but so would changing the timing so the largest the bid increase can be is $880 or so like the original M.U.L.E.

From 1.3.3
 * Fixed so that a tie in the land auction will always blink and sell the
     plot to the player with the lower score.

This was done mainly because of latency issues, it was one of the things done to attempt to make the land auction sync issue go away, but it has proven to be easy for people to abuse on the 1st round land auction along with the combination of the $972 factor (if anyone outbids that, they won't be able to develop a plot the first round of play)

So, yeah, probably another solution to those issues that would ring truer to the original.  I personally can't verify the claim that the original was random on ties in the land auction, I have only played the original against the AI.  Never had a group of four friends to play like many people here.  Until about 3 years ago, I didn't even know the keys for player 3 and 4 on the commodore.

Personally, I'm quite happy with P.M. for the most part, as I only played against AI before it came along, it's a treat to play against other people, and I don't have a base to compare it to in that aspect (but if I choose to play against AI "training mode", I'd rather play the old mule, the AI in P.M. is horrid, and it wasn't all that well done in the original, but I had fun beating it.)

[Blitzen]

I appreciate your comments re. the reasoning behind those differences, and the fact that we all do have the chance to play a similar game despite great distances or a lack of human opponents/original hardware.

I am sure I would rejoice if I were in your situation too, but I am a very lucky and discerning consumer and I want to spend my free time with high quality entertainment whenever possible...

So here is the long and the short of it on these few issues as I see it.

The argument that the auctions will continue to be blocked and abused is invalid if the rate of increase in land value is limited (as it is now); it should only be a problem in late games with the kind of guys n gals I like to play, as we all know the true value of land very well.  3 - 4k is not unreasonable in rounds 8 or less and blocking when you have the money to buy is probably a deadly mistake more often than not.  Again, blocking someone is a part of the original, a very important part, it just wasn't as easily abused as it was before the land auction price increase was brought closer to spec.

In addition getting credit for outfits and allowing more mules to be switched to different markets per round (time to outfit might be additional source of this issue?), is decreasing the advantage in establishing the proper production in the proper plots early.  It should be somewhat hard to have 12 plots outfitted, let alone switched several times more than the original.  Thus making smithore even more dominant than ever. 

Why did they decrease the smithore's max value to try to fix what something else broke?  You aren't going to make food and energy strategies any more sound than they were... that being mostly unsound and relying on shortages, mistakes and incredibly bad fortune by all your opponents for any hope of a victory.

The original game scales very well from beginner to expert play, with an intricate and very well developed set of early, middle, and late game tactics.  It was played to death by the testers and even had a rerelease on the c64 which addressed a few issues in the even more played to death Atari version.

A surface observation, especially a cursory one, will never capture it properly.  Currently it is going back and forth in baby steps towards a seriously compromised imitation of the original and it bothers me to no end because I don't think the hammer time approach to this project is going to be successful at either being a full featured modern 2.0 version or a "near" flawless reproduction of the original.  Either of which being the only possible avenues for "success" as I see it.  Something in between modern and old doesn't sell well to the new kids on the block.

You must build programs on the right solid foundation or it will just fall over like a cheap house.  ~QED

We can only testify to so much and even then we make mistakes and forget things, some things we never understood properly until we looked at the decompiled parts from kroah, and not everything is decompiled either.... most of the good ideas can hardly be heard over the roar of the crowds, so why would I bother you know?  Why would anyone?

I mean consensus of the masses hardly makes for a good elected goverment, why should it make for good game dev?  I know that breaks QED somehow but it still feels right.

Dan himself said sometimes you can't listen to the players at all, no matter what their consensus is... just think of some of the bad breaks in Mule and how much bitching is done about them, noobs and vets alike, they add something and their absence would simply create a void without filling another or improving anything else at all.  All it would do is increase the players perception that they are getting a fair cut, mechanics wise it would add nothing to gameplay to remove it or soften the potential for bad breaks. 

When they put 3 high crystites instead of 4, for their 4 player game (unfair isn't it?), a similar decision was made.  It works very very well at creating competition and alliances among different players since not everyone can be doing the same things. Both fine examples of the art of the genius behind the original game imo.

I should try to record a game of the original c64 being played this xmas w/4 guys, I'll need to order the right damn cable this time!  Anyone know a good sound capture app I could use to capture the dialogue?  I'm on WinXp.

Its still got to be cheaper and easier to just decompile the original than to try to get a forum community to agree on the right way to do it but I'll make a video that showcases a complete 1.5 hr game with 4 veteran players on original hardware!

Might be a hoot if you guys don't mind flagrant use of explicit words. I think it might be educational as hell for the devs and the apparent hordes of noobs around here... or should I say smurfs?

Any interest out there?

PS I wonder how much longer those systems I have will last... sad days are looming for me. No pressure guys.  Honest.
_______________________________________
Death to all smurfs.  Even the pretty one. 

[Chuckie Chuck]

Best way to capture old 64 to demo video is, output it to a digital camcorder's analog inputs (usually the same cables that hook to a tv for output, will do input mode too when the camera is in playback mode, then you can digitally transfer the tape/sd card, or whatever your medium is, into you favorite movie editor, and compress it to a net viewable format for posting)  It could be difficult to play on the tiny 2 inch screen, so if you have a monitor with passthrough outputs, to forward the signal to the camera (most newer tv's have a monitor out feature) you can still play on a decently viewable screen while recording.

May be difficult to find a site that will let you post a continuous video of one full game, so perhaps you can break it up to to 20 minute segments or so (most sites allow videos of around 20 minutes unless you pay to have something longer.)

Other option (I haven't seen this work well, but it's suppose to function) is have Vice64 capture to AVI during game play, this function seems buggy in Vice64 in my experience though, and the emulator has issues just doing one or two players with joystick emulation, I don't think the keyboard buffer on most PCs would accept enough simultaneous key presses to be viable.

One of the awesome things about the 64 was, it didn't use a keyboard buffer, it had a very well done realtime keyboard interface, with many more wires in the keyboard connection to the motherboard, so the computer could receive input from many more keys at once, and also, you have real joysticks, also a big help.

If you're confused how to pull off the camera thing, I might be able to help you with that (I can make a short how to video, could be fun, something I was meaning to do just because I'm such a nerd anyways.)

[Blitzen]

I need the right cable to output from the c64 monitor port to standard RCA composite video with color, currently my C64 monitor cables will only work with the two channels for color and light.  So I get black and wipe when I use them with modern equipment.

I have an ATI Theatre 550 to capture the video, what I also need is a solid wave/recording application or some kind of additional capture tool to get just the conversation that's going on the whole time too.

I simply don't trust the simplistic Windows recorder application to catch 1.5 hrs of input without a glitch.

[Chuckie Chuck]

Simple fixes

Y-Cable can bring those yellow/red cable together to a high quality composite most equipment can handle,  you can get some unwanted scan lines and some senstive equipment won't sync with it properly, or you can attempt to purchase a 5 pin din and rca plugs and some wire and make a true composite cable of your own, or you can make an adapter to turn that red/yellow on the eight pin into S-Video (this is the best option short of the next option if you have equipment that supports S-vid), or you can buy a pre-made cable for composite or s-vid if you hunt around the net a bit.  I would definitely consider buying or making the 5 pin pure composite cable though, because that will plug into any modern composite input, you would be able to play your good ole 64 on the big 42 inch LCD tv in the front room instead of being stuck on that little 13" 1702/1803 you've used for 20 plus years.  (Getting ready to bring my 128D out of storage, and I will probably bring the 1902 out with it because of the CGA capability for 128/80 mode, but most the time, I'll probably just run in 64 mode hooked to my 27" widescreen tv with my 5 pin composite cable.  Perhaps I'll tinker with my old sx-64 some too.)

Basically what the 1702/1802 monitor cable you have is, is an S-Video Cable, before they invented the mini din S-Video Cable we know and love.  Separating the Lumanance/Chroma signals allows for a clearer crisper image, that is what S-Video is.  Ironically, that cable was created for the 1701/1702 monitor, which is manufactured by JVC, ironically, JVC created the S-Video standard that we see implemented on more modern equipment.  It's the exact same signal, just different cables.

The technique was carried into the 1803 line of monitors, not sure who manufactured them.  When the 1902 and 1084 displays came out, Commodore came up with a totally different cable, to accommodate a version of it that was integrated into those monitors by their manufacture, Magnavox.  There were several variations of the same Magnavox monitor, some were composite only, some were composite/cga dual mode, and the nicest were composite/extended composite (a version of s-video)/cga (and commodore had some of the last branded 1902)  A stereo version came out, and was dubbed the 1084s by commodore.  All used the same monitor housing, you could punch out the missing ports and add them, as long as the monitor's circuit board had all the necessary circuitry.  They all used the same CRT tube, so you could mix and match parts if a board died (and they were prone to cold solder points on the high voltage transformer, I have 3 of those 1902 style currently, and have had 2 open to solder those points, and two of them are in need of that service currently.  Been low priority cause I haven't needed them lately, plenty of high end stereo TVs in the house for the same use, sometimes they come out to work in remote video production, they make great camera monitors, when they aren't cutting out.

(reportedly sharpness goes up from about 300 lines to over 400 lines of resolution, but it's still analog composite video, and a y cable virtually combines them back together, almost as if they were not output separately, I say almost, I have done this method in the past, and it works, most the time.  The sensitivity in some equipment is because you are without any filtering, pushing 400 lines back into 300 lines, you can visually see the lines between the pixels more than if you had a standard composite signal, and some equipment doesn't sync right under that circumstance.)

Digital camcorder suggestion involves using a camcorder with a solid state drive, hard drive, or recordable dvd, or miniDV/digital 8 tapes.

All but the last of these can import directly into the computer without any chance of dropped frames.

miniDV/digital 8 on a decent computer with a firewire port will not have any issues either.

I shoot wedding video, my cameras run miniDV or digital8, I have imported hours and hours of video in a constant stream with no dropouts, but you have to dedicate the computer to that process and nothing else until it's done, screen savers off, power management off, chat programs off, everything off, just the capture program (currently using Roxio video import for my captures, not the best, but def not the worst.)

Using a video card with analog capture support is very unreliable, you're right about that.  Have a Radeon 7200 with the feature, it's very glitchy, but I've had fun using the computer as an analog source monitor.

The nice thing about the digital camera is everything will stay PERFECTLY sync'd and even using a digital tape cam, if done properly, you won't have to worry about manipulating the audio separately.

[Blitzen]

 

Wow awesome info Chuckie, thanks!

I'll try it next week when I'm back home with my equipment for a test run.  Maybe I won't have to buy a new cable after all.

[Blitzen]

Thanks again for the tip re. creating an s-video connection for use on modern equipment.  It looked at least as good as it ever did on the Commodore Monitors on my 32" wide screen -- we turned off stretch though it just messed with us...  absolutely awesome!  You da man Chuckie!

Re. video capture, turns out the Theatre 550 adds a little too much lag to play from the output of its captures... so no video was made this year.  I'll work on getting something that will let me split an s-video signal so that I can capture and play at the same time without creating an unplayable delay.

Any tips on what one of those might be called?

PS  I think I posted somewhere else that second never gets good breaks -- boy was I wrong, in our 3 games, second place got 2 good breaks... rare but not impossible.  My bad.

[Keybounce]

The argument that the auctions will continue to be blocked and abused is invalid if the rate of increase in land value is limited (as it is now); it should only be a problem in late games with the kind of guys n gals I like to play, as we all know the true value of land very well.  3 - 4k is not unreasonable in rounds 8 or less and blocking when you have the money to buy is probably a deadly mistake more often than not.  Again, blocking someone is a part of the original, a very important part, it just wasn't as easily abused as it was before the land auction price increase was brought closer to spec.

In addition getting credit for outfits and allowing more mules to be switched to different markets per round (time to outfit might be additional source of this issue?), is decreasing the advantage in establishing the proper production in the proper plots early.  It should be somewhat hard to have 12 plots outfitted, let alone switched several times more than the original.  Thus making smithore even more dominant than ever.

Why did they decrease the smithore's max value to try to fix what something else broke?  You aren't going to make food and energy strategies any more sound than they were... that being mostly unsound and relying on shortages, mistakes and incredibly bad fortune by all your opponents for any hope of a victory.

The original game scales very well from beginner to expert play, with an intricate and very well developed set of early, middle, and late game tactics.  It was played to death by the testers and even had a rerelease on the c64 which addressed a few issues in the even more played to death Atari version.

The pretense that the original game was perfect and cannot be improved on is flawed.

Land auction blocking was a complete disaster. That it is no longer possible is good. That the current system has everyone that joins in joining in from the lowest possible price, no matter what the "bottom number" currently is is bad -- it means that if one person starts at t=0, you either also started at t=0 or you have no chance at all. Specifically, there's a "sniping" play style -- one person puts in a low bid, no one else comes in, as the time runs out, someone tries to run up and catch the sole bidder by surprise. Whether or not it's proper play style isn't the issue. Since I know that I can prevent anyone from sniping like that by bidding a little more -- as they have to spend the full time climbing from zero -- I do. Since everyone else knows that the only way to have a chance is to run from time zero, they do -- the result is that if all players are knowledgeable, everyone is charging from the start. But more importantly, if someone isn't knowledgeable, they will think that this auction works just like all the others -- when you start running up, you are running up from the current low price -- only to be surprised and find themselves hopelessly out of the running.

Smithore's dominance is entirely different. Food and energy's pricing will go DOWN if you try to produce large quantities to take advantage of a shortage. Smithore does not.

In other words, in Planet Mule, you cannot create an artificial shortage of food/energy and then profit. You can only benefit from artificial shortages of smithore. And guess what -- that's what all the top players do.

Crystite's add of a 4th high spot doesn't even come close to making it dominant. And while I actually asked for longer games, only to have people tell me "Right now everything is balanced, longer games would make it crystite only", the truth is that right now smithore trumps everything. More accurately, manipulating smithore trumps everything.

Want to make the game better and more balanced? Have smithore's price adjust based on production. Everything else does -- even Buterol in the new version.

[Blitzen]

Keybounce you're statement that the original is not perfect is completely groundless.  It is in fact as perfect as you are going to make it without some far too distract changes.  As you illustrated for us, you want to change everything around to make all markets equally dominant and all auctions equally exciting.  I would love to hear about some actual imperfections though... do share.

While I would love to try your Buterol enhanced version, I really just want to play M.U.L.E. (c64 style).

I play this game on c64 still.  3 games this past xmas, always with 3 other quality human players.

IMO, what you really need is some competent competition and a chance to discuss what you have/haven't learned each and every single game you finish...

All your arguments about dominant markets, adding more than 3 crystite plots, and even the auction sniping comments fail to convince me.  The smithore market can be kept dead by any single player, 4 high crystites only increase the likelihood that everyone has an equal advantage, auction sniping still happens later in the game when plots are very expensive and someone is trying to get a deal for it.

Now, let me be clear, PM is in need of massive overhauls.  But c64 M.U.L.E. is awesome, all they have to do is figure out Internet play.

Why do people keep trying to convince them they also need to do anything else, or that anything else is even remotely required/advisable???  WTF!

Think of it like this:

Ever see how they made Monopoly for the PC/iPad?

They changed nothing mofos, oh wait the banker is automated... 1 thing, they changed one thing... they even put in animated rolling dice!!!

Ever hear of Monopoly 2.0?

Didn't think so.  Why not?

No one wanted it. No one needed it.  Monopoly 1.0 was perfect.

I fucking hate Monopoly, always have, nothing you can do except maybe completely changing the game will change that...

I fucking LOVE M.U.L.E. c64.  If you were me, what would you want? Say? Do?

[Keybounce]

Keybounce you're statement that the original is not perfect is completely groundless.  It is in fact as perfect as you are going to make it without some far too distract changes.  As you illustrated for us, you want to change everything around to make all markets equally dominant and all auctions equally exciting.  I would love to hear about some actual imperfections though... do share.

While I would love to try your Buterol enhanced version, I really just want to play M.U.L.E. (c64 style).

Alright, first, lets get two things clear here:
1. I am not saying that I have a "buterol enhanced version". That's something new in Mule 2.
2. You have now twice claimed that the original is perfect, and given nothing to back it up. At best, you can say that you like the original. You can even say that you're good at it.

Being good at manipulating smithore does NOT mean that it's a good game.
One person cannot keep smithore down. Not without making so much, and forcing it so cheap that you are forced to lose.

Can you give me one reason why the computer should pay a fortune for large quantities of smithore? Can you understand how almost all colony wealth tends to come from selling smithore to the store, sometimes multiple times?

IMO, what you really need is some competent competition and a chance to discuss what you have/haven't learned each and every single game you finish...

Here at PM, I tend to find lots of competent competition. I've discovered that crystite, which got me up to around 200th place, is great against beginners, and a loss against the people at the top.

All your arguments about dominant markets, adding more than 3 crystite plots, and even the auction sniping comments fail to convince me.  The smithore market can be kept dead by any single player, 4 high crystites only increase the likelihood that everyone has an equal advantage, auction sniping still happens later in the game when plots are very expensive and someone is trying to get a deal for it.

"None so deaf as those who will not hear" :-).

[Blitzen]

Correct me if I am wrong...

There are 44 plots on the board, that's a need of 44 mules.  Since it takes 2 smithore per mule, the store really only needs about 100 units of smithore (ya 6 extra mules for the losers who keep letting them run wild).  However, the store starts full (16 mules) and further has 8 units of smithore in stock...  that's 20 mules, so now the store only really needs 60 units (30 mules) of smithore over the course of an entire game.

I'll say it again, 1 person can totally fuck up smithore but since you don't see it, look at it this way.  1 triple mountain plot will produce about 3 units per turn.  Let's say over 9 turns, that's 27 units.  Not enough to satisfy the colony granted, but sold at just the right time, your ~20 units will totally mess up smithore.

Now, if its 3 guys against 1 it might not be so easy but it is doable, just have to have some good timing... for example after they all buy plots and can't afford to keep your smithore out of the store.  Or when its on its way up to 255 but only ~150... rarely can they afford to buy them.


Let me just clarify what I mean by the original Mule was perfect... the game logic, the initial numbers, stepping values, random breaks, limits, etc... etc... are perfect.  You cannot tweak anything without changing everything; you will not make any improvement.


Since you are very bothered by the store wanting smithore in illogical numbers I suggest you stick to reality where people don't want things in illogical quantities... oh wait what's the current value of gold? copper? silver?  And they are nearly unused except for their brilliance as jewellery, and only needed in tiny quantities for anything of any practical use at all.


"None so deaf as those who will not hear" - I should of probably opened with that one a few months ago...  I will have to remember that for the next time some upstarts are butchering a classic! 

[Chuckie Chuck]

Blitzen, you don't know much about gold, silver usage do you?

Anything with a circuit board has gold in it.

It's used for wiring most modern circuit boards internally.  Used in the microchips that are placed on the boards, it's very widely used metal.

Similar with diamonds.  They are used in manufacturing on a wide scale.  True most diamonds used in manufacturing these days are made in a lab (CZ) and not as brilliant and not worth as much, but natural diamonds are still the last word when it comes to being able to cut the very hardest materials in the world.  CZ is imperfect, not as pure as natural diamond, and therefore, can't take quite as much stress before it fractures when used as a tool.

I guess I'm stupid or something, but I really can't figure out what's so different in smithore manipulation in the new version.  Seems about the same to me, what's really different is food in the last round dropping to basically worthless.  Of all the things you pick apart, I don't see smithore as one of the dissimilar things in the remake.