Did you come up with these thoughts after you smoked a dube?

No no, this how my mind is unless I know I have to be really Really serious about something.  And theres not a whole ton to be serious about in MULE.

kipley and leahcim99, both great possibilities.  Rogue Cat thanks for the info.

I wonder if after a while the MULEs of leahmin99's world will get annoyed and become the MULEs of kipley's world and start attacking us.  A possible new colony event "MULE Raid" where wild MULEs attack liberating enslaved MULEs, destroying some product or such.

Another idea I had from the wild MULEs thought was a counter somewhere on the website that had an up to date number from all the games counting every mule that got free.  Something documenting the wild MULE population.

Where do all the wild MULEs go?  I can understand back in the day that when you turn the game off they just vanish, but since we have this idea of colonizing sectors and to one day terraform the whole planet means theres a continuum here.  So if we are to one day cover all of Irata then we are gonna run into these wild MULEs someday right?

Do they collect in a herd?  or are they more solitary creatures?
Will we find them just walking around like animals? or will they be performing their task and producing energy or smithore like the machines they are?

OR do they form giant MULE pyramids that decay and get covered in soil and turn back into the Mts we mine Smithore from?

If pirates didn't come if there was no crystite produced, it would change gameplay a bit.  Right now in many games oftentimes nobody produces crystite for half the game, or more, instead going the smithore route at the beginning.  Since the pirates wouldn't come early in those games, either players would tend to wait LONGER to switch over to crystite (for fear that the pirates would come as soon as they do a big switch in production), or somebody will start turning one token plot of land into a crystite producer early as a sacrifice to tempt the pirates to come (and thus reduce the worry about pirates for the rest of the game).  Not saying the changes to gameplay would be good or bad, just observing.

I don't see how it would effect any of that.  if someone wanted to use a plot to try and tempt a pirate hit, it would do nothing more then set the game back to the way it operates now.  Also, is there some part of the programing that says the pirates only attack up to some preset number of times?
I also don't see it effecting when people start mining crystite, is there some part of the programing that says pirates will always attack?

Of the games I'ed played the players often would comment of how they are expecting pirates in round 9-11 a point where everyone is already going through the change to crystite, and have stocks of 20 or more.


As for my thing about events 1st round, i'm still looking through the logs of the games from that night, but its very possible it was round 2 or 3 since i was getting sleepy and such.  But like Mt-Wampus said, its the start of round 2 i only have 1 mule, does it really need to lose a bolt?

[not]

Just a few of the events and when they should not occur

Pirates - if there is not one single piece of crystite, then what are they stealing? If no one has mined any stone, no pirates

Fire - if the store just burned down two turns ago, why is it burnning again? no/low stock (ie less then 10 units of all resources combined) in store, no fire.

Game just starts, everyone just grabbed thier very first plot and development phase starts - person "in 1st" gets their roof eaten by cat-bugs?  This is just wrong, as for the very first turn rank is not an indicator of that persons wealth to the rest of the colony; it's randomly assigned by the computer.  So no rank based events good or bad in turn 1.

(optional) A mule that has just been placed in a new plot (one that has not had a mule on it yet) fresh from the store should not be effected by radiation and go crazy that very turn.  Its brand shiney new even the most cheaply built things last 1 day, but its fine if by the second turn it gets fried and runs off.

i know about all latency, and I've read over the some of the topics about the cons of the current setup, but I still say there should be some form of indicator.

Something I've come to notice is that when people are going back and forth in land auctions, if they are trying to stay really close its hard to tell who really is holding the bid.  In the NES version the person holding the highest bid would blink.  In the atari version (i have via a rom and emulator) the person with the highest bid would change colors between their own and the color of the shop (ie. when land bidding they would flash red (as thats their color) and orange.

In the few games I've played so far, its been stated or seen that someone else looks as though the have the highest bid, in one instance my character had a higher money value under its icon yet someone else won the plot.

Any form on indicator would be fine, a lil arrow/triangle above their head, for them to blink like the NES version, or to change colors like the atari version, etc.
Even if this was lift out intentionality to make it more of a challenge when two people are holding a close battle, I still say to add it because at any auction the highest bidder is always identified.

The NES one seemed to play choppy, and the wampus was so ridiculously easy to catch it was sad - you could grab him up to 4 times a turn, which really disbalanced things against an AI.

I had only ever played the NES version until a re-interest within the past month or so, of which Wikipedia led me to a place where I could download the atari rom and and emulator with it.  After playing the atari version I'ed really only say the sound was better, because the graphics did not have some of the features and "finish" that the atari version had.  Game play wise: computer AI was more simplistic (90% of their action was based of a % off their total money), wampus was infinitely easier to catch (as stated 3 to 4 times per turn), AI was smithore and crystite whores (often times every property was set to produce one or the other at times i've seen one AI in one turn produce 80 units), no form of productivity indicator (or what ever its called, aka the lil icons saying a river was 4 food worth and the plains next to it were only worth 2), no audio indicator for when time was running out.

I'ed give the NES a plus in that they voiced all the different character's names.

If i had to make a choice between them, I'ed go with the atari/c64 over the NES every time.  Can't say between these two tho cuz I'm yet to play any form of the c64 version.

This is a game that I can't seem to stop myself from turning to every now and then.  My first taste of M.U.L.E. came in the form of a misguided but well meant X-mas gift from a Grandmother, or Aunt.  This was the NES version of the game, that I've recently come to see is a bit lacking compared to the original.  Tho I had three brothers we could never really get all four to play at the same time, but it sure was fun all the same.  I'll have to admit that back then we (or at least I) did not see the comical element to some of the events, this more recent discovery has given the game a renewed interest.  I can't say I love the game, but at the same time I can really see a reason to not play it.