what's still missing from the original

[mikman]

If being like the original is the ultimate goal, then:

1) The pirates should be able to show up in round 12.  They did on the C-64 version (dunno about the Atari version).  it would def ad an element of surprise :-)  I know it did when they hit the first time on the C-64 in round 12.  both the pirate ship and the colony ship could "land" on the store in the C-64 version at the same time because they actually landed in different spots.

2) anything else?

[Big Head Zach]

I played the C-64 version and I have never seen this happen. Not that I'm unwilling to believe you, but that contradicts the basic idea of how events work. If pirates can happen, then that means any other event could happen as well (based on how events are selected, i.e. a "deck").

Can you provide a screenshot showing the pirate ship landing in a different place?

[mikman]

you know I could have swore that the 2 ships landed in different spots on the store.  But I downloaded an emulator and and got a mule ROM and they actually are landing in the same spot.  I might have to dig out the old C-64 and fire it up and try and load mule up and see on there...  not like my old 1541 would work anymore prob out of alignment HAHA  Any chance that there are different versions of mule that ran on the C-64? maybe this ROM has been tampered with and is no longer 'original'.  Maybe my memory is fading in my old age lol

[piete]

What's still missing:

- players start with only 2 units of energy
- player events round 1
- ALL global events round 1
- land auctions round 1
- store mule building capacity (all available smithore to fill the store)
- radiation and pest attack also possible to happen to 2nd position (I don't have any empirical evidence that this would be the case at the moment, although somebody commented the contrary)
- less available time/slower player movement balance with original (will also correct the complained land auction behaviour)
- double check the probabilities of the events compared to the original
- top/down exits of store (actually they help only getting out but hinder getting in compared to the original...)

I'm already happy with the current state, after all, it's the same for everybody. The original just seemed to have the "magical" balance between all things...

[Big Head Zach]

What's still missing:
- double check the probabilities of the events compared to the original

Based on Kroah's pseudocode, it's a "deck" of 22 events, from which 11 are drawn. The makeup of this is deck is completely known.

[piete]

What's still missing:
- double check the probabilities of the events compared to the original

Based on Kroah's pseudocode, it's a "deck" of 22 events, from which 11 are drawn. The makeup of this is deck is completely known.

Yeah, maybe it was unnecessary. I just wanted to emphasize the fact that the probabilities change if certain events are not possible to happen on round 1.

[Big Head Zach]

What's still missing:
- double check the probabilities of the events compared to the original

Based on Kroah's pseudocode, it's a "deck" of 22 events, from which 11 are drawn. The makeup of this is deck is completely known.

Yeah, maybe it was unnecessary. I just wanted to emphasize the fact that the probabilities change if certain events are not possible to happen on round 1.

In agreement with you. Irata is not a friendly place.

[Pescado]

The big thing that is missing is COLLUSION.

[Big Head Zach]

Almost overlooked that, thanks!

Also, just been informed that player land auctions do not let the selling player set the minimum bid as in the original. I figure this would be one of the last things to add considering I've never seen it used that often, and its interface is slightly different than that of the other auctions.

[Pescado]

Well, collusion and land auctions are pretty much things joined at the hip. I cannot think of any circumstance in which you would willingly part with a piece of land OTHER than an intentionally orchestrated deal with another player to achieve adjacency or other similar purpose. As you've seen from the "true value of land", it's basically impossible for you to randomly sell land to a random person at anything close to its true worth, so you'd never actually DO it unless you were trading plots with someone.

[Tsar]

well i can't seem to get collusion working on the 800 emulator either, so.

[zaphod77]

collusion works differently for normal and land auctions.

Collusion for land auctions is simple. seller presses button until the desired buyer is activated, lowers reserve, player goes up and buys it. Very easy to implement in planetmule i think.

Collusion for regular auctions requires that both players press their button on the exact same frame, and it freezes the other players where they are. This one is hard to implement.

[C64]

My general sense is the pricing algorithm is not quite right.

For example, in the original, Food and Energy are less sensitive to actual production in the current round and priced more based on demand/production in the previous round.  In this version, producing for food and energy drastically cuts down the store price and these commodities are rarely useful.

Similarly, Smithore pricing is out of balance.  At least to me, C64 version's smithore was often the LEAST valuable commodity, providing few price swings but consistent returns.  The increase of Smithore's value and massive price swings in this version diminishes that of Crystite specifically, and food/energy generally.

Whereas food/energy are very sensitive to supply/demand, crystite is completely insensitive to it in the old version (oscillating randomly although often depressed in a weak economy where other commodities are high in price), and smithore was sensitive but in a generally narrow range of price, often not topping $64 and certainly not getting to $230.  Food and energy were the ones that could often fetch $200+ prices and were slower to come down in price, allowing some attempt by suppliers to enter these markets and net a solid profit.

I'll be happy to play old more Mule and confirm my suspicions on the differences.  I know I play Planet Mule very differently than C64 MULE. 

[veridia]

If being like the original is the ultimate goal, then:

1) The pirates should be able to show up in round 12.  They did on the C-64 version (dunno about the Atari version).  it would def ad an element of surprise :-)  I know it did when they hit the first time on the C-64 in round 12.  both the pirate ship and the colony ship could "land" on the store in the C-64 version at the same time because they actually landed in different spots.

2) anything else?

The pirates never showed up in round 12 in the original.

As for what's missing.

- three high crystite deposits. (as opposed to four)

- food and energy requirements in the 12th round. To have enough food in the 12th round meant that you needed 1 unit of food for each plot. Energy was needed at a rate equivalent to the number of non-energy producing plots. Believe it or not, this changes late game strategy a lot.

- Smithore prices when not spiking were assigned values based on a $7 variation. 22,29,36,43,50,57,64,71, and 78 were the variation numbers when smithore was not scarce. I'm not sure if 15 and 85 were a part of the variation, since they would have occurred extremely rarely in any event.

- Crystite prices are correct. Although auctions were skipped in the event there was no production.

- Pub gambling is a tad high in the early game. AI regularly wins more than $200 in the early game pub.

- The original pirate ship was cooler in the original, and the sound effect of the pirate attack was also cooler. The same applies to all the events. Make the events sound more sinister, like the original.

- It's hard to tell when there is a sunspot activity, because every production round now seems to say "energy at 100%," even when there isn't a sunspot activity. Should it say energy at 200% in the event of a sunspot activity. Maybe I didn't notice.

- The store is correct.

- The AI was better, largely because it can catch the wampus now, and it gets really good results at gambling in the pub. Other than that, the AI seemed to make bizarre choices, like making 8 plots of food when food wasn't at a high price. They played better than the Nintendo version (but worse than the commodore version)

- The AI seems to have a lot of time on its hand. For instance, I've seen an AI player do this much in a given turn. It would develop a plot of land, then catch the wampus, then assay three plots of land, then gamble at the pub for a large sum of money as if it didn't use up any of its time. That is a lot, particularly variable is the time it takes to catch the wampus.  On top of that, the pub gambling after the AI did of of the above stuff, and then won about $200 in the first round. Pub gambling in the 1st round was usually about $50 if you've used up most of your time. You'd get about $100 in the first round if you used up a small amount of time, and that is if you're lucky. $200, is a bit much in the early game.

- The AI failed to purchase enough energy on a few occassions where it could have relatively cheaply. One time an AI player was short 3 units of energy and it sat of the $2x dollar line (I think around $28 or so) and that was the highest it was willing to bid for energy when it was short. Of course the old AI had the opposite problem, paying $300 per unit of food and the like.

- In the classic version the maximum number of times any event could occur is as follows.

From http://www.smithore.com/eventstats.php

Out of 1093 games, each of these events occurred a certain number of maximum times. For instance pest attack occurred 4 times in two out of 1093 games. Meteor Strike happened 3 times in three out of 1093 games.

Pirate Ship:
 2 x
 (in 301 Tournaments)
 No. 1091
 
 
Pirates take all crystite
 
Sunspot Activity:
 3 x
 (in 150 Tournaments)
 No. 1089
 
 
Energy output is increased
 
Acid Rain Storm:
 4 x
 (in Tournaments)
 No. 883
 
 
Food output up, energy reduced
 
Pest Attack:
 4 x
 (in 2 Tournaments)
 No. 580
 
 
Meteorite Strike:
 3 x
 (in 3 Tournaments)
 No. 1080
 
 

Meteor makes new crystite deposit
 
Fire in Store:
 3 x
 (in 345 Tournaments)
 No. 960
 
 
All the stock in the store is lost
 
Planetquake:
 4 x
 (in 4 Tournaments)
 No. 716
 
 
Mining production half of normal
 
Radiation:
 3 x
 (in 14 Tournaments)
 No. 1082
 


 

[veridia]

What's still missing:

- players start with only 2 units of energy
- player events round 1
- ALL global events round 1
- land auctions round 1
- store mule building capacity (all available smithore to fill the store)
- radiation and pest attack also possible to happen to 2nd position (I don't have any empirical evidence that this would be the case at the moment, although somebody commented the contrary)
- less available time/slower player movement balance with original (will also correct the complained land auction behaviour)
- double check the probabilities of the events compared to the original
- top/down exits of store (actually they help only getting out but hinder getting in compared to the original...)

I'm already happy with the current state, after all, it's the same for everybody. The original just seemed to have the "magical" balance between all things...

Starting energy at 2 is important. 1st turn events can make the game really interesting, especially 1st turn fire in store. This should be added back. 1st turn player events should be added back, although player losing a plot of land on the 1st turn was limited to players who had more than 1 plot. I'm fairly confident of this.

1st turn events/player events are the most important of these. Except that players with only 1 plot of land should never lose a plot of land on the first turn.