Planet M.U.L.E.

Personal Events
These happen to individuals at the start of their Exploitation turn, each round.
There is a 27.5% chance that a player will have a personal event (The game manual claims it's 25%).
If this is the case, one of the 22 distinct events is chosen randomly, and checked to see if it can be applied. The game will continue to try and pick an event until the following requirements are met:

• The event cannot have occurred before in that game. SEE Reply #12
• If the player is in 1st place, the event must be Bad.
• If the player is in 3rd or 4th place, the event must be Good.
• The player must meet the specific requirements of the selected event (see below)

Additionally, if the player is not in 1st place and has no Food, he automatically gets Care Package if it's still available.

If none of the events are valid, then the player doesn't get an event.

Most of the events involve a monetary bonus (or penalty). This amount, which I'll call the cash factor (CF), is $25 * (Round# / 4 + 1). In other words:

Rounds 1-3: $25
Rounds 4-7: $50
Rounds 8-11: $75
Round 12: $100

Good

Name	Effect	Requirements
Care Package	+3 Food, +2 Energy	see above
Hospitality	+2 Smithore	none
Best Built	+2 CFs	1+ installed MULEs
Tap Dancing	+4 CFs	Requirements
Agri Council	+2 CFs per Food MULE	1+ installed Food MULEs
Wart Worms	+4 CFs	none
Antique PC	+8 CFs	none
Eel Eating	+2 CFs	none
Charity	+3 CFs	none
Artificial Dumb	+6 CFs	none
Inheritance	+4 CFs	none
Moose Rat	+2 CFs	none
Extra Plot	Gain an plot	1+ unowned plots

Bad

Name	Effect	Requirements
Glac-Elves	Lose 1/2 of Food	none
Lost Bolt	-3 CFs	1+ installed MULEs
Mining Deterioration	-2 CFs per Smithore/Crystite MULE	1+ installed Smithore/Crystite MULEs
Dirty Solar Panels	-1 CF per Energy MULE	1+ installed Energy MULEs
Inlaws*	-6 CFs	none
Cat-Bugs	-4 CFs	none
Kazinga Losses	-4 CFs	none
Bat-Lizard Bite	-4 CFs	none
Botched Claim	Lose last plot	1+ owned plots

The Decompilation does not indicate whether a player needs enough cash to pay for a Bad event, for it to be applied to him.

* This one's called "Space Gypsies", which may be slightly offensive these days depending on what country you're from. I'm not about to claim PCness, but it'd be easy just to omit the slur and refer to them as "your obnoxious inlaws".

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Global Events
These are events which occur either just before or just after the Production phase (splat splat splat splat splat...)

For the first 11 rounds of the game, a random event is chosen from a collection of 20. Certain events have a greater chance of occurring than others, and once it has occurred once, it is less likely to happen in the future. The best of way of visualizing this is as a deck of 20 cards, which is shuffled at the beginning of the game and then dealt out, 1 card per turn:

Event	Max Occurrences	Description
Pest Attack	3	Random food plot of the player in 1st or 2nd place loses all its production.
Pirate Ship	2	All Crystite is removed from Store and player storage/production
Acid Rain Storm	3	Storm passes through a random row. Food MULEs in the row produce 4 more, Energy MULEs produce 2 less. All other rows produce +1 Food and -1 Energy.
Planetquake	3	All Smithore/Crystite MULEs lose half their production.*
Sunspot Activity	3	All Energy MULEs produce +3 Energy (max of 8).
Meteorite Strike	2	A meteorite strikes a random plot (other than the Store or the river valley) that does not already have a 3-Crystite deposit, turning it into a 4-Crystite deposit and destroying the MULE there, along with its production.
Radiation	2	A random plot belonging to the 1st or 2nd place player loses its MULE.
Fire in Store	2	All goods in Store are removed

* In the Atari version only (and also currently in Planet MULE 1.0), 50% of the time Planetquake occurs, a random mountain plot among columns 2, 3, 7, and 8 has one of its actual "mountains" move to either the left or the right. Both plots lose their MULEs.

Kroah fortunately did the indulgent math in case you are wondering:

Event	Never	1 time	2 times	3 times	At all
Pest Attack, Acid Rain Storm, Planetquake, Sunspot Activity	7.37%	34.74%	43.42%	14.47%	92.63%
Pirate Ship, Meteorite Strike, Radiation, Fire in Store	18.95%	52.10%	28.95%	n/a	81.05%

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How can this be expanded?

Obviously, if most of the Player events revolve around gaining/losing a set amount of cash, then all that is needed are creative descriptions of how that occurred.

Global events can be decidedly more bizarre and fun, and can be inserted into the "deck" in whatever frequency is desired (though it will water down the chances of other events, unless they are substituted for other events, rather than just included).

As a challenge to all of us, I encourage everyone to give their ideas for player/global events by replying to this post and adding them below. Remember that any event which is decidedly negative to a single player (i.e. doesn't give anything good to a player, like Meteorite Strike does), cannot happen to the players in 3rd or 4th place, and a decidedly beneficial event for a single player cannot happen to the player in 1st place.

I have definitely seen the same player events happen multiple times in a single game... and I kinda remember that being true of the original, too.

So I think rule one, "... cannot have occurred before, to anyone." actually needs "... this turn." appended.

Perhaps - just going by the letter of the document at this point - although I'm sure I can ask Kroah what he meant by that statement. If someone can confirm they saw (in the C64 or Atari version) the same player event happen multiple times in a game, and whether a player could encounter the same event twice, please reply.

The mountain moving thing of the Earthquake global event occurs in Planet M.U.L.E. too - I lost a Smithore mule to it.

Just had the "bugs ate your farm" event happen to the same player twice in the same game.  Same farm even.  Turn 2 and Turn 8 I believe.

That can actually happen, because global events which target a single player, can target whoever happens to be in 1st/2nd place.

It's the pre-development player events that I'm curious about.

Excellent summary ... particularly the math regarding acid rain (which I never knew).

Some other points (a few of which have been touched upon):

a) The same player event should never occur more than once, as it commonly happens now.  (EXCEPTION: during a food/energy shortage, multiple players can receive the package.)

b) Among the possible planet events, include the 'nothing happens' event.  This is possible, if rare.

c) I definitely like the idea of expanding the number of player events.  Perhaps we can open a separate forum for ideas, the best of which can be used.  (Maybe also include new ideas for planet events.)

(For those who have played the boardgame Agricola and have seen the 'banach' website, that forum allowed for member-defined occupations and improvements; now some of them will actually be published.)


Really for me, 'a' is too important to ignore.  It's just too weird to have two players get money off Artificial Dumbness, on the same turn!

Minor squibbles.  Still a great site.  (Still wish I could get my computer to work for hosting.)

27.5% of the time or 100% of the time?


And are you sure a global event happens every turn? I don't think I have seen this.

27.5%. Again, this is what Kroah's doc says, so nothing is for certain until the devs confirm.


I may have caught it not doing one, but my memory is fuzzy (sweet, sweet Patron...), so everyone should BOLO (Be On LookOut) for this.

Having been in the not-first-place (emphatically), and out of food (oddly related)... I can tell you for sure it's the 27.5% odds. :)

BOLO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_%28tank%29)!? Augh!  *runs & hides*

I just lost three mules in one game, so that obviously doesn't work.

Losing a mule is a round event, not a player (personal) event. So it can happen several times a game.

PS: I talk about the radiation event "MULE GOES CRAZY!" of course.

Also got info from Kroah stating that the original did not have personal events occurring more than once per game, even between different players.

So at this point, 1.1 is functioning off-spec in that regard (not to mention, it's ignoring bad events entirely for the first round, based on player suggestion).

Perhaps with adding the above change, terrible personal events won't be as crushingly annoying as they appear to be right now.

My suggestion for a player event:

"Bored M.U.L.E. haxx0rz perform unauthorized surgery on your M.U.L.E.  They left behind 1 smithore in unused parts.".  One mule is randomly changed to a different type of mule, but the mule's owner gains some smithore that was left lying around.

This is annoying in that you now have to waste time changing the mule back to what it was (unless you like the change), but the smithore you find should pay for the alterations (depending on the price of smithore).

Question:
When a meteorite strikes a land, it produces 4 pieces of Crystite - but what about other stuff? For example, if it was a 3-peak mountain before, would it further produce 4 pieces of ore or not?

Everything on that plot that was before gets destroyed, so it should be simply an "empty" plot with high crystite.

What I think we're asking is whether the plot's terrain BPV values change; if it was a 3-mountain square before, does it remain one after the meteor hits, or (as you stated above) does it become a Plains space (with the proper BPVs; Food 2, Smithore 1, Energy 3)?

It should be a plain with the mentioned BPVs and High Crystite.

This is debatable.

It depends if you want to keep original rule (that's what i was used to) or to give an other meaning to the meteorite strike.

Personally, i see the strike as a meteorite fall which destroys the installation, but not strong enough to wipe out the whole land. So, only the Crystite deposit should have the BPV updated (and the mule installation removed). But i can understand you want to adjust some rules.

None of this sounds definitive enough. The question is whether or not a 3 mountain plot would still be able to produce +3 smithores after a meteor strike. Yes or no.

Is a mountain plot in the original still displayed with mountains after the meteorite that hit that plot vanished?
If not, I guess it would be more logical it has destroyed the mountains...

Of course you could argue its now even more easy to pick up the smithore from the rubble  ::)

I think the land should stay the same in case of a smithore war

I can only contribute information on the Atari 800 version. The pseudo-code of the "Meteorite Strike" is the following (according to 6502 assembly):
To sum up, steps are:
- choose a random location with the contraints: no store, no rivers, no high or very high crystite
- set the crystite BPV to 4 (very high)
- remove the exploitation and production

Smithore BPV (mountains) aren't affected at all, so mountains are still here and visible after a strike.

But i should have asked this question before: what's your goal?
You want to:
- keep the vanilla Mule behavior
- or adapt it according to the majority feedbacks and feelings?
If a "planet mule" author can answer this, i'll be glad :).

So basically all it does is raise the crystite to very high, kill the existing mule on it and erase any production that happened for that turn.

Exactly, and only for a random plot picked among the non-store, non-river, non-high & non-very high crystite.

When we think of a meteor strike we think of something so devastating it flattens the planet.

What the game is suggesting sounds more like smaller meteorites, not Deep Impact / Armageddon. Something that would pelt the landscape and destroy structures / MULEs, but would leave natural features alone.

Technically speaking  :o

Some more details on global events in PlanetM.U.L.E. 1.3.4:

Planetary Pests and Radiation can only apply to the #1 player (this may be an off-by-one bug in the code, since I think the intention was for them to affect #1 or #2).

When a quake occurs and the mountain-moving coin toss passes, a mountain may only move if it is owned by no one or the #1 player, and it has a plains beside it. Of the mountains that meet this criteria, the game will prefer one that can move to an unowned plains.

When cutting plot production in half for a quake, round down.

A crater produces like a plains with 4 crystite. A meteor can theoretically strike the same place twice.

It is possible for no event to occur in the following circumstances:
1) Planetary Pests was selected and the leader has no food M.U.L.E.s
2) Radiation was selected and the leader has no M.U.L.E.s (unlikely)
3) Sunspot was selected and no player has a Solar M.U.L.E. (also unlikely)

Another interesting fact I hadn't noticed before:

Bad personal events do not happen in the last two rounds.

Never noticed this thread before, but if we are staying true to original M.U.L.E. we should change this formula.

On c64, the meteorite just destroyed the mule.  It did not effect the plots mountains, or change the ability to produce, it only boosted the crystite.  We currently have it wiping out EVERYTHING.

I am playing an Atari emu game, on round 5, only I produced 2 food units, cpus none and the store had none. On round 6, EACH (3) of the cpus got the package (and I had to clean my solar collectors ;)). I don't remember this happening ever before.

I have played on c64, and this is my experience.

1) the same personal event cannot repeat for the same PLAYER twice.  The same personal event can and will happen to different players.
2) the first place player CAN still get a good personal event on c64.
3) Mule goes crazy and pest attack only ever seemed to hit first place in my experience.  (it's why you should never be flapper!  Pest attack is ludicrously common on turn 1 on c64 (over 75% of the time on tournament mode), and if you are flapper it WILL hit you every single time, and the computer WILL buy out the store, and you will not be able to place a mule turn 2 or get any food, and you have lost all hope, since you won't get the care package cuz you are in first place still.)