Planet M.U.L.E.

Vote, it will be closed in 655.25 days!  :o

none of the above

well then what?

 ??? ???

ok, new vote option:
Do what Mt-Wampus Says

dunno.  Not seeing anything up there that I would be interested in.  As of now, the game as I know it seems to be great as is.  If there is another comming out, I really dont see anything I would like to add to the game itself other than maybe more server side gameplay options that can be toggled.  Maybe some lobby options with AFK players in mind.  As the game stands though, it seem to be perfect the way it is.  Having more than 4 players seems to be a bit much for my taste, but hey, could offer more competition.  At the same time, it'll be like having to play against a bot and more potentual to end up playing with bots as it opens up more potentual for someone dropping out.


If anything, I would like to see PING displays for all players without needing to ask everyone for their ping durring really slow games.  This could fix some problems.  IMO, I think M2 should be more about fixes rather than additions.

IF I had to choose something, then all I can think of is this:

Allow servers to serve without having to play.  This could give players better chances for gameplay on slow days where the person serving wouldnt need to activly play.

A few more types of land tiles could be fun.  The deminsions seem fine as they are now.

Fix the ore problem.  Players can take advantage of this from the start if they happen to have the money on hand (others buy land quickly in the 1st round), and if you're careful and quick, and while say, dropping a mule to assure yourself in last place, you can completely lock others from beating you out if you do it right.  This means no mistakes, but still shouldnt be this easy to totaly conquer a game in the first 3 rounds of gameplay.  Placement bonuses should be redone a bit.  Not enough bad events for 1-2 place and not enough good events for 4th place.  4rd seems ok.

Meteor plots does seem unfair.  Could be just the games I've played, but they always seem to happen for players who are either already winning, or already have a leg up.  I know it's supposed to be random, but more times than not, I've watched the game litteraly hand feed a game to a player through out the whole game.  Unknowing players do this alot, but the game itself shouldnt just give up a game to someone so easily.

I would like for their to be more players and a near simultaneous play so that the game doesn't slow down.

More players require more size, which leads to a reason for travel (roads, ships, etc) and more resources that aren't the clones which requires completely new industries and game mechanics.

I would also suggest technology. What's a business without R&D?

Let's throw in the ability to choose who you sell to, not just forced to highest bidder. We all know this is more realistic and adds strategy.

There has to be a representation of two missing features: labor and government.

A nice feature would be more interesting geographies. I love what is currently there but so much more can be done.

And it needs weapons and ways to defend from them. I don't want to add war per se. But it would add to tactics if their were other ways for players to conflict, it opens up a whole new market and many possibilities. 

Soon this is gonna become Mule Laberynth with these suggestions.

jajajajajaja (hahaha in spanish)  ;D

Ok Chuckie Chuck, then what other option i could put?

Base it on a quake engine and make FPP Maps with a big auction house where everyone can go to do bidding, the auction never ends you just go and participate when you want to sell or need something, development is continuous with seasonal pauses for the food, and slow downs in the winter months for energy, mining cave ins in the mine, you actually lead mules around, and there is a blacksmith shop for outfitting them.  It actually shows the mules being built from smithore, and there is only a forced interuption in the flow for the yearly land grant everyone is required to attend.  (Could do the global 3d selection interface here)  Land Auctions would be announced at regular intervals with time allowed for those who are interested to run to the land auction house if they want to bid.)

Yeah, getting way complicated here, but there is the ground work for mule labyrinth edition

LOL

M.U.L.E. Colonies!  MMORPG version, endless Masters of Orion type M.U.L.E..  Could be onto something here.

Since I voted "other(comment)", I will comment.

     While many of the optional changes you have listed may be nice additions/alterations for a game sequel, I'd rather not employ any of them in the current PM game format.  As it stands the current game is a fair remake of the original, which is the primary basis of its appeal.

     But, if alterations were desired, I do agree with Null in improving the peripheral features of the  game, such as showing pings and automated hosting options, etcetera.  I also agree that the events could be a little more balanced.  In the 80 some games that I played so far, too many positive events seem to fall into 2nd's hand, and not enough events occur for 4th.  A higher chance for a positive event (free plot, food & energy package, and most especially money; save the 2 bars of smithore for 3rd) should be given to 4th place players, for two reasons, it helps the player that played a risky 1st round only to get burned by a 1st round store fire to get back on their feet, and it would make it more difficult for a player to purposefully ride out the initial rounds in last only to reap the benefit of the placement in the land grant phase.
    In regard to round, or post production events, I believe they should remain completely random, however I would like to see 2nd place get hit with the pest attack from time to time, this one is geared too much onto 1st (maybe a 60-40 chance between 1st and 2nd would be good).  As for meteor strikes, I have mixed emotions when it comes to making any changes.  While it's painful to watch a meteor fall upon a 1st or 2nd place stite lord in the later rounds of a game, even when randomized, the odds will and should favor the greater land holders in the game (shouldn't be surprised to see the player with magic 12 get a meteor plot in round 11).  The side by side strikes do bother me; I've seen this occurring more often than I would like in tournaments.  I think I'd rather see it strike the same plot again before striking the plot adjacent to it (at least that way it would force another mule loss, but without providing the additional stite bonus onto the more than likely same player that received the 1st strike.

     Apart from tweaking the events, the only thing I feel that I might (stress might) be comfortable with adding to the existing game would be upgrade bots.  Enter an outfitter without a mule and pay 1 or 2 times the outfit cost to receive an upgrade bot for that commodity production type to take out to enhance the production output of that type of plot (excluding stite, with maybe one exception).  In terms of plot production it will turn a 1 into 2, or a 2 into a 3, but never a 3 into a 4, etcetera.  Maybe allow a 0 to 1 upgrade for stite, but no more.  An upgrade bot will also relocate with the mule that it was installed on, so for example you can move a food mule with an upgrade bot from a mountain plot, 1(+1 from bot) to a plains plot and now get 2(+1).  Should you move a mule with an upgrade bot onto a high production plot for the same type of commodity you will gain no bonus from the bot, such as moving the previous example to a river plot 3(+0), but the bot will stay with the mule until the mule is outfitted for a different product, in which the bot is then scrapped for no costs or refunds. The downfalls to upgrading plots is that it consumes time to perform the upgrade process, and if you change the outfitting of the mule, you lose the upgrade bot.

Thanks,

Speaking of helping 4th place, and early game issues:

I want to see land valuation for ranking changed. If you spend $972 on turn one, don't value the land at $500, giving you a $472 loss and an extra plot.

How about this: Value land at the second best price offered in the auction.
If there was no second price, value it at what you paid.
===

Land auctions: If I join in an auction late, start my bid climb at the current bottom. Do not start me from the original bottom.

This means that it is, in effect, completely impossible to catch up unless you are going up from the start. If someone has gone way, way, up, and is now pulling back down, I want to be able to snipe.
===

Something I'd like to see: Larger land area.

The hills, crystite deposits, etc, are all still clustered around the store -- this is why the colony ship picked this place to set up the colony. However, the river continues for a long, long distance, and there's bare, flat land with no crystite or anything else for a large distance around.

In other words, there's always plots available for food and energy, but they are farther away -- they are time sink issues.

Note that this helps if crystite is on the border of the "playfield" -- normally you wind up with unusable 2's and 1's outside the board, with this you can actually mine them.

===

Mule 2 specific? Sadly, I have yet to play it with other people. I got the web start version to play, and have played two solo games.

The big problem with that would be in regard to auctions later in the game when players can afford to spend $3000 or more for a plot.  If your a player that only had $2900 at the time of the auction and could not outbid your opponent for the plot, you most certainly don't want guy's plot valued at $3000.

It would be better to counter the initial perceived $472 loss in your example with a bonus event for 4th on that following round.  A $100 or $150 award bonus would go far into quickly eliminating that small early loss.  It would most likely provide the player with enough money to outfit a mule, which leads to production gains.  Before you know it the player will have made up for that $472, and moved up out of 4th place.

Thanks,

Keep the game exactly the way it is, but PLEASE recreate it for the iPad. M.U.L.E. would be soooo sweet on the iPad!!!

I think you misunderstand the point.

We don't need to give that 4th place player any bonus.
We just need to give them enough "assets" to keep them in first place, where they belong.

The point here is that they have something which, over the course of the game, will have a value of several thousand. They paid only 970, and are moved down to 4th place -- they won't get bad events, may get good events, and get beneficial ordering aid.

The only downside I've seen to the 972 turn 1 land is that you lack cash, and cannot do smithore manipulation as well, and cannot get the next land plots to come out. I've seen so many people go on to win from that 972 purchase that I think it is overpowered.

So let me see if I understand this correctly:
1. You're willing to pay 2900 for a plot.
2. Your opponent pays more, and gets it.
3. I say: Value that land at 2900 -- because you were willing to pay that much.
4. You say: Value that land at 500 -- because some programmer, 30 years ago, assigned that value arbitrarily.

Ok, that is fine for Mule 1, keep it pure, original, but this forum is for Mule 2 and it's supposed to be different.

Why not have inflated land values, it would be like the real world right, maybe even include the land bubble concept and watch the value of land crash near the end of the game when all the plots are filled.

Keep in mind, the original was written for a computer with 48 KILOBYTES of RAM and ran from a 170K Floppy Disk.  The only way they could have made the formulas more realistic would have required additional code and slowed the game down quite a bit do to needing to go through the rounds in stages loading different pieces of code of the disk repeatedly throughout the game, and even at that, I'm not sure you could do it on just one side of the disk, may have require disk flipping to make the game much more realistic.

On the Commodore 64, the constraints shrunk even more than the Atari, with only about 55% the memory available to the program.  The rest was dedicated to running the OS.  (Because running the DOS in ROM without loading it into RAM during power up would have made the computer intolerably slow, not that it was by any means a fast computer anyways.  Even in 1982, the 1 Mhz CPU in the Commodore and Atari were Slow CPUs by comparison to the business computers running 16 bit CPUs at nearly 5 Mhz.  Granted there were design flaws in the 64 that made the disk system slower than it should have been, but many of us found ways around that, via accelerator cartridges and fast booters.)  A stock out of the box 64 took 2 minutes to load a game that filled the RAM to full capacity.  With the Fastload I use, that cut down to under 30 seconds.  With some of the more invasive options (JiffyDOS with Parallel accelerator cables, etc, you could cut the time down to almost nothing.)  The fact remains, those were different times, and for the machine it was written for, the original M.U.L.E. was AWESOME.  I don't want to loose that feel, but I do think Mule 2 deserves some new concepts.  The computers can handle it now.

      I would love to see a NO LUCK version of M.U.L.E. No events at all good or bad. 1st round everybody starts out even with no advantages and no 1st round auctions. Each player could buy up 25% of the resources from the store for the 1st round only and after that anything goes and reverse order rule would go into effect after round 1. Im talking about a game of pure skill with no influence from events at all. No excuse making! Everybody starting even and planning a winning strategy.
      I know most would think this sounds repetative and all but with the different Mountain layouts and Crystite locations plus the various playing styles of Planetmule players i think guys would be surprised. Not talking such a idea for Mule 2 but as a 3rd option. Regular Mule/No luck Mule/Mule 2

Back to my thought...

Make Mule 2 have selectable features options.

Options....

Random Events (on/off)
Map Selection (Classic/Extra Plots/Sphere)
Colluding (on/off)
Development (Simultanious/Turn Based)


Anymore?

1st round Auctions- on/off
Plot loss/award- off/on/starting 4th round

Another one

Number of Players

In Classic, Automatically 4

Extra Plots (3,4,5,6)
Sphere (3-8)

Could get really long games here, but maybe at some point someone may just want to take advantage of that option, get a whole gang of friends together for an all nite local lan game or something - (Be like playing the Risk Board Table Game)  Those can go FOREVER!


P.S. Numbers include AI players.

Should also include options for number of human players as a sub option.  Maybe you want to be 1 player on 8 AI for training mode, lol.  Def could be a challenge if AI was done right.

     Nice to meet you the other day Chuckie. Dont get to talk Chico/Los Molinas/Red Bluff with to many. Was bringing back the memmories. I might have to break out the old 60s home movies from the classic summers at Sycamore pool and the happy acres playground or whatever its called. Haha

Haha, Caper Acres, my kids love that place, there are a few new things in there in the last decade, but the original stuff we remember is still there too.

      Thats what i love about Bidwell Park. Everything is exactly the same as it was back 40 years ago. Very rare in todays day of upgrades and tearing things down that we love. I am 46 and have gone there since the late 60s. Lots of home movies of the area going back to the 60s

     Do not confuse real estate with land value.  Land is valued by dimensions, terrain type, and location, whereas real estate includes inflated values from structures constructed on the land.
     If one had forty acres of clear and level land that they divvied into twenty lots, each being equal in size, say two and a quarter acres (having subtracted for roads), each plot will be of equal value with only a slight deviation from location, such as a corner plot on an intersection.


     I don't believe the original land value of 500 was contrived arbitrarily.  It's of relatively low value held at a flat rate, thus making it a very low influencing factor of the game, which is why a player with 9 plots can win against a player with 12 plots, because the game is concentrated more upon the market strategies.  In your proposal to value auctioned plots at the price for which they are purchased would greatly unbalance the game, because the guy who spent 2900 on the plot now has a 2900 point advantage versus only gaining a 500 point advantage (assuming all values remain static).  If this were the case I'd spend every cent I have to win a plot, because there is no money loss, thus no risk in spending a fortune for it!


     A bonus will increase a player's net worth via money, assets (food and energy package/2 bars of smithore), or land (free plot).
     Here you now suggest land value changing during the game versus being static with your proposal to value auctioned plots at their purchased price.  So what are the conditions required to increase/decrease land values?  Will the outfitting of the plot influence the land value?  What is the base value of a piece of land,  in other words what are the free plots selected during the land grant and the free plot award initially worth?  Anything?  Explain.  Nonetheless purchase price has never influenced value in capitalist systems. 

     In regard to adding a variable land value table for Mule 2, I would suggest something along these lines so it would still keep the game more centered on the production of the market commodities, rather than being the greatest landholder.

Giving a base value (v) of 500 (I'd still keep this low) for each plot, terrain type is valued at:
Mountainous = v-10%(v)
Plains = v
River =v+25%(v)*

* assuming same board layout containing only four river plots.

plus an additional land value modifier based on the outfitting of the terrain type, such as:

Food = +10%(v) on river, +0 on plains, -10%(v) on mountainous
Energy = -5%(v) on river, +10%(v) on plains, -15%(v) on mountainous
Smithore = +0 on plains, +5%(v)/+10%(v)/+15%(v) for mountainous*
Crystite  = +0 on plains and mountainous

* assuming same structure 1-3 mountains contained on a mountainous plot.

     IMO this will add a more true real estate factor to the game.  If you want to take it another step further by adding locational value,once again assuming the same first edition board layout, add a modifier that increases land value the further it is from the store, and/or a outfit modifier such as:

F & E = -%v on right, +%v on left
S & C = +%v on right, -%v on left

     Another alternative/additional modifier could be to have a varying number of plots available on the boards each game that would slightly change the base value of land in relation to total number of plots on the board, greater value for below average and lesser value for above average total number of plots.

Etcetera.

Thanks,

That's why I suggested "Housing Bubble"

Through out the game, you have that advantage of land being worth more, but on round 12, it could plumet back to reality of what it's really worth because all the plots were claimed by round 9 or 10 usually, demand dropped, price dropped, just like everything else that we manipulate and do bubbles with (Smithore Bubble, Energy Bubble, Food Bubble.)

So last round, suddenly that big advantage disappears, could be a shocker to people who think they're doing really well, and suddenly land is back to $500 in last round.  Could definitely change the dynamic of game play.  Mean trick, but mimics what really happened the last 6 years.

Alright, lets try this one more time.

I'm saying that if you paid 972 for land on turn 1, value that plot at 972. Actually, my suggestion was to use the second best price -- what the other person would have paid. That still makes it 972 based on most games I've played in having two people at that price.

It doesn't need to change with time, with outfitting, etc.

"free" plots are still the 500 per plot.

>      A bonus will increase a player's net worth via money, assets (food and energy package/2 bars of smithore), or land (free plot).

But the point is to recognize that this person is really in first place. You know it's a big value because other people were willing to pay that much. You know it's that valuable because over the course of the game it will more than pay for itself.

If your goal is to give them an automatic "benefit" sufficient to bring them into the first place curse, then it becomes really valuable to buy yourself into rich trouble.

In fact, if you are going to give them a bonus, then it becomes possible to spend more than 972, and still get a mule down.

     It's just a friendly debate, don't let it frustrate you for I do not hold you ill regard.  Ultimately I think we're both looking for similar results, but just disagree as to how to best achieve those results.


     Agreed, due to the potential production that an additional plot (especially earlier in the game) offers there is great potential value in having that additional plot.
     The reason the player that spent 972 on a plot in the first round moves to fourth place is due to the 472 loss generated from the difference of the 972 spent and the 500 land value.  The problem typically generated by this first round action is that it becomes rather easy for that player to ride out the first half of the game in fourth place reaping the fourth place bid and land grant benefits, and the eventual <8 mule benefit.  Fourth has the advantage of being first in buying/selling, and of winning the plot they want in the land grant phase.  Odds are in favor that this player will eventually end up with some good crystite plots by end game.  It's may also lend them an advantage to the first big smithore dump that is common to most games.  If timed and executed well mule dumping during the <8 mule round can prove to be a very lethal weapon for fourth place to employ.
     I believe you would like to see that plot's potential added into the value of the plot by valuing it at a price relatively close to, if not, the price that it was purchased as a means to eliminate the aforementioned.  Correct?
     While inflating the land value will keep that person out of fourth place; I feel that it would eventually do more harm than good.  In my perspective it removes a lot of the risk in buying a plot of land, especially in later rounds when the auction plots could go for up to 3000 (and sometime even more) because most players are willing to pay that much for the additional plot.
     IMO to value an auctioned plot at ~3000 would unbalance the game tremendously.  A player that obtained the average 11 plots in game during land grant without having purchased one would have a land value of 5500.  While a player that did the same and paid a little over 3000 for an extra plot valued at 3000,  finished with 12 plots valued at 8500,rather than 6000.  That's a huge difference for others to compete against, plus don't forget, it's compounded on top of the production potential value that the plot provided to the player.
     I see this as adding an advantage on top of an advantage.  I think it would eliminate the chances for the players not as fortunate in acquiring land (9 or 10 plots total) to win.
     It's one thing to compete against the extra 500s and the extra production that other players with better land advantage have, but one skillful enough at playing the market (possibly playing off of an event such as a late store fire) still has the potential to win the game.
     I think that if you remove the equality of land in this manner you'll end up placing the greater landholders further out of reach from the lesser landholders, thus making it nearly impossible for them to win. 
     And as far a removing risk, there have been games where I've witnessed players buying their defeat by overextending themselves in late auction rounds.  They spend too much for the piece of land, and end up not being able to rebound the loss.  Probably because they didn't have the time to develop it for a few rounds.  If the value of the plot were overinflated to roughly the purchased price it wouldn't matter, because there would be very little loss, if any.  Do you disagree?


    First, player events only occur from rounds 2-11, thus the latter statement would not be true for round 1.
    Secondly, my goal is not to hurtle the player that bought a plot in the first round into first place (although receiving a free plot on round 2 could end up putting them in first on round 3).  I just want it to be more difficult for them to ride along in fourth for the first half of the game while the whole time snagging all of the best crystite plots during each land grant.
     I think the early monetary awards are generally around 50-150 for rounds 1-4, while the 2 bars a smithore award would most likely have a steadily increasing value of 50 up to 230.  The food and energy package would also have it's small added value.  In general the awards are a small and temporary  added value, with the free plot being of greatest value in the early rounds.   
     In many of the Planet Mule games I've played it at appears to me that second and third tend to get more early round bonuses than fourth.  Seems like fourth more often doesn't get awards until the later rounds when they tend to be more superfluous  It's my opinion that fourth should be the one getting the awards in the early rounds over second and third.
     I believe that an early award to fourth (especially on round 2) will help nudge (or persuade) them out of fourth.  A small money award would nip away at that 472 deficit that helped a player into fourth, and it would add incentive to get the plot developed, thus causing the player to make back that purchasing loss through productivity.
    I think this would help deter the low rider tactics that I see a lot players, including myself sometimes, administering during the early game to purposefully sit in fourth for the land grant perks (granted lag can affect this as its no surprise to occasionally see the host win out over another player).
    However this shouldn't unbalance the game as the player events are already a part of the game.  I would just like to see fourth get them more in the early rounds as opposed to the later rounds, when they have a little more impact on the player.


Thanks,

     That's an interesting concept Chuckie Chuck.  It would certainly be intriguing to try.  Might even want to segregate the plot types (river, plains, mountains) for independent values as the availability for each type declines.  Or possibly even varying the depreciation of the land depending on how the game plays outs (are all the plots consumed by round 9,10, or round 11, or 12 because 2nd lost a plot on round 11), thus having endgame land values ranging from something like 300-700.
     Also setting the auction house to begin bidding at current land values might change things up a bit, versus -60 last purchase price.
     You know the more I think about it, the more I like it.  It would add more risk to 6-8 round auctions, because everyone still want an extra plot for its potential, but knowing that the earlier all the plots are consume that its more likely to score a lower land value at the end.  It could affect how much one is willing to spend, or to grudgingly spend because bidding began at 2800 and another player is willing to run it up to 4000.
     I think you'd still have a pretty good balance game though.

Thanks,

Correct.

Here's a revised proposal:
As long as there are empty land plots, value plots acquired at auction at the second best price (or the base price if there was only one bidder).

Starting at the end of the turn where all plots were already claimed at the start (no land grab), change all plots to be $500.

So during the "Get land at any cost" part of the game, you don't drop.
Once land is done, well, all that cash you spent is now gone.

My proposal

Value all plots of that type "Plains, Mountains (1, 2, or 3), or river" The same as the second highest bid in the auction (not just the plot sold, but across the board.)

As long as plots remain available, the value can change up or down with each land auction, if a plot doesn't sell, the value of all plots devalues by 40%.  Represents a bubble collapse.  When all plots are claimed, the plots all fall to the lowest low seen throughout the game. (If a plot sells for $200, everyone would have $120 plots at game end.  If the lowest sale is $1200, all plots would be valued at $800 at game end.)


Just examples of a potential system.

I know it's mentioned elsewhere but I would say expand the audience and release on iPad... It would be amazing, and I am sure priced correctly, you could recompense quite handsomely... I'd pay 5 pounds for it easily !!!!