</lurk>
Using game theory(!), we can deduce:

1. Analyzing the pay off matrix suggests that assaying is a losing strategy. You spend time assaying that could have been better spent developing land, hunting the wampus or even gambling, while sharing the fruits of you labour with the competition.

2. Tragedy of the commons: if everyone plays a winning strategy (i.e. by not assaying), everybody loses in that it becomes difficult to optimize your crystite strategy.

To Assay....or Not to Assay....That is the question...
[...]
As it is now, it is a part of your strategy - do you assay for highs and try to build around them - hoping the other do not steal the mediums or high itself?

The pay off matrix clearly suggests that you're a loser if you assay and a winner if you leach off everybody else' assaying, hence assaying unfortunately is a part of everyone's strategy. The question is only whether you play it optimally (don't assay, but leach) or not (squander your time assaying and inform everyone of where the goddies are stored).

Do you not assay and just try to keep your plots together for production bonus?

The question can never really be answered because each player reagrds the question differently

Even though you don't go after getting the high crystite plots, you would still pick a possible high or medium over a possible low or none when trying to maximize EOS. So, assaying would still be of value to you.

The results are now visible to all, so it does create competion for plots and this IS and WAS part of the fun of the original version (and punching your opponent when he stole your plot)

Even though everyone would have to assay for themselves, there would still be competition for the best plots.  But there would be asymmetric information, benefiting those who make informed decisions after assaying. Also, by making assaying hidden, you would force all players to make more tactical decisions during development - which is good. Assay, develop, hunt or gamble? If assaying, then which plot(s) to assay? Etc.

IMHO: today's assaying scheme can only be played optimally by not assaying. The only ones who don't understand that are newbies. The old-timers are therefore leaching off the newbies using a bad function of the game.
<lurk>

M.U.L.E. was often referred to as an economic simulation as well as a game, so when proposing changes to the game's implementation we should make them relate to some economic theory, IMHO.

I always regarded assaying as representing research and development (R&D). But it is kind of pointless, when you have to share your findings with everybody else. So I would vote for making assaying hidden. I also think that assaying players are penalized enough by spending time that could be used for wampus hunting, development or gambling (what economic theory would this represent  ).

This has been thoroughly discussed in the http://www.planetmule.com/forum?topic=103.0 thread. I suggest you read that thread as it contains some very good points on both sides of the debate.

This seems to be an issue that divides the PlanetMule community. There seems to be three positions:

1. Keep it like it is as I actively use it and it enriches the game
2. Keep it like it is as it was like that in the original game, we can change it later
3. It's obviously borken, so change it by [fill it your favorite solution here]

Personally I agree with position 3, though I have great respect for position 2. Position 1 is misguided, in my opinion. If there is a buyer willing to pay $X and a seller willing to sell at $X, but the transaction is stopped for any reason, an economist will say we have an inefficient market. I cannot believe that the original MULE developers would willingly introduce market inefficiency.

The way to prevent a player from gaining a plot, gaining food, energy or wossname, is to outbid him and buy it yourself.

When it comes to the "fill in your favorite solution here"-part, I will not advocate that players should be forced to buy something they don't want. Rather I think that you should be able to bid whatever you want, but if you don't really want it then you must (entirely) retract your bid thereby enabling others to buy instead. For land auctions this means that you must run all the way down to the initial price line, while for a goods auction it means that you must run down to the store's buy line. This provides one single solution for both auctions and should be easy to explain to new players (it's probably how they expected it to work, anyway).

The current system allowing some players to raise the starting bid to thousands, means that no one will get the plot (in most cases). So whats the problem?

I strongly disagree with your position.

You are preventing other players from participating in a free market *without any cost to yourself*. That is not playing; that is sabotage. Obviously exploiting a bug in the original game.

If you want to prevent other players from acting, it should come at a cost, e.g. buying+outfitting a mule and releasing it.

I think the only logical solution is: If you run up a bid, you better run (all the way) down to un-bid before the timer runs out. This still allows you to use your financial muscles to prevent other players from gaining a plot (or goods in a regular action), but it comes at a cost.

The C64 version did have true four player support using two keyboard and two joystick players. The keyboard players would only use the keyboard for species selection, land grant and auctions and would borrow one of the joysticks for development.

On my C64 emulator the left keyboard player uses Q and left-ctrl (press both simultanously to press button), while the right keyboard player uses delete and asterix.

Normally the players take turn during development in the order of current position; first position first, then second position, then third, and finally fourth. The order is reversed when there are few mules (read 7 or less) left in the corral.

In a recent game I was in fourth position when the corral was running low on mules. As there were eight mules left, the original order was preserved. The other players managed to install seven mules, and would have installed the final one but for one of the players running out of cash.

This causes a potential problem: the last player not getting any mules during development. This is clearly not in line with the spirit of the game.

There are several possible solutions:

1. decrease the time alotted to each player during development
2. make the "reverse player order during development"-rule kick in earlier, e.g. when there are 10 mules left
3. incure a time penalty when grabbing a mule from the corral

What do you think?