Planet M.U.L.E.

I've had this idea since 1984.  What if there was petroleum-like liquid below the surface of Irata called Buntenol.  Each plot would have two factors regarding this new commodity, amount and depth.  Some plots would have lots of it (4 pips) and others would have very little (1 pip). Some plots would have it at a depth that one MULE could drill down to and other would need several MULES outfitted to drill in order to get to it.  The deeper the well, the more energy that plot consumes every turn to produce its Buntenol.

Here's the kicker: There would be a filling station in the base where you can fill up MULEs with Buntenol. Since MULEs with a secondary energy source can work faster/longer per day, each unit of Buntenol allows a MULE to produce 25%-50% more for one turn.  So you could outfit a MULE for food, then bring it over to the filling station and fill it with 4 units of Buntenol, then drop it on your food plot.  For the next 4 turns it will produce 25%-50% more food.  You can always grab a MULE off your plot and bring it in to the base for a refill or to top it off.  This way there is a demand for Buntenol within the base so it's not purely a luxury item like Crystite is, but rather a necessary commodity to remain competitive.

The thing about Buntenol is that it does not have as predictable a pattern as crystite.  Sometimes it follows an X pattern, sometimes it follows an O pattern (there the center plots have very little but the ring around the center has a lot), and sometimes it has a diamond pattern like crystite does.  You never know until you start seeing the pattern.  The assay robot can tell you how much Buntenol is below the surface, but not how deep you have to drill to get to it.  A MULE can drill one layer down.  When you place a drilling MULE on a plot if you reach Buntenol, it gushes up like an oil derrick. This way you can keep outfitting drilling MULEs and placing them on the plot during your turn until you strike Buntenol and you don't have to wait until the production phase to know if you succeeded.  Of course, if you didn't already know how much Buntenol was on that plot, only then will you find out how fruitful your well will be.

I think this could add a deeper (no pun intended) element to the game. Perhaps there could be a mode beyond Tournament that uses it.  It will increase energy usage, which will help that commodity grow in value, and it will use up time during turns which should increase food value as well.

ha, cool... and maybe you can drill from an adjacent plot? (there are horizontal/angled drills, you know!)

Yes. Perhaps it would allow players to DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!

DRINK IT UP!!!

Actually I think this is one of the best new gameplay ideas I have seen so far.
But there are couple of more things we have to think about:

- Do you want a distribution of between 1-4 buntenol (nice name btw) per plot, or between 0-4?
0-4 would be more like in real life. Just like crystite cannot be mined on every plot. And what about the Assay bot? Would it give you the amount of buntenol in the plot, or only the depth? Is the well located on one layer in the ground, or the deeper you go the more buntenol you can produce?*
- Several MULE needed to dig deeper: what would happen if you remove MULE's from the plot? Do you remove them 1 by 1? Or do you only remove 1 MULE before the plot is empty again (other MULE's are deep in the ground and cannot be recovered anymore)? Removing 1 by 1 doesn't look like a nice idea to me, because then you can use a plot to store MULE's. You strategy can then be: install a couple of your plots with all the remaining MULE's so there are none available for the rest, and every next turn I can get one of my cheap MULE's from those plots to further develop.
- Nice idea of the filling station. But what would the price be? Are you selling your produced Buntenol to the shop and the shop gives you the availability to fill up your MULE's if you pay the shop (like outfitting your MULE)? Or do players need their own amount of Buntenol which they use for their MULE's themselves?

*Graphical example of buntenol in plot.
surface
0    1
4 or 3
0    4

You are right, the amount should be from 0-4.  But that being the case, a player would be foolish to drill for buntenol without assaying the land. It could be expensive to keep drilling down if there's nothing there.  The assay bot will never tell you the depth the buntenol is at.  It is your choice to keep digging for that gusher or to give up and use the plot for something else.

You don't get any buntenol out of your plot until you reach the depth it is at, so it would be like this
0
4
x

The x is because once you reach the depth of the buntenol deposit in that plot, you can't add more MULES to drill.

As far as your question about what happens when you pull a MULE off that plot. When you put a second MULE on a drilling plot, the first MULE is completely converted to driilling shaft and is no longer a MULE. So no matter how many MULEs you added to the first, there is still only one MULE on the surface. If you changed the plot to energy and then later back to drilling, those other MULEs would still be there and it could be used as a buntenol plot with just one MULE.

Buntenol must be refined into MULEfuel at the colony base to be used in MULEs. It takes 2 units of Buntenol to make 1 unit of MULEfuel.  So when you buy buntenol in the market auction, you are buying futures or speculating.  You are not buying what you can put in your MULE any more than buying smithore lets you have MULEs instead of buying them at the store. When you fill up a MULE in the base, the cost of a unit of MULEfuel is calculated on the current price of buntenol, just like the price of MULEs are based on the current price of smithore.  If it is selling at $130 per unit, that's what you pay to fill up.  If the price falls to $40 per unit, you might use the turn to fill a bunch of your MULEs while the price is cheap.

Thanks for your support of my idea. Like I said, I've actually had it bumping around in my head for 25 years.

I think it's a good idea, but it sounds like theres going ot be a lot of mules needed. Currently theres a store cap, so in your idea you may need to take that into consideration and modify that rule as well.

I like this idea also. With any good idea there are bound to be little things that need to be tweaked to implement something into new code. I don't think that we should rule this out but instead see if the guys @ Planet M.U.L.E. might be willing to give this a trial run.

I love the idea of Buntenol...you guys think of everything :)

Melanie Bunten Stark

here's a thought...

What if Buntenol was mined like any other commodity (using 1 mule), but you could only get it on land with an actual Crystite deposit so you would have to decide to mine Buntenol OR Crystite.

Further to this, what if buntenol was worth Crystite x2 but was both subject to spills and to pirate theft. Add a chance of Buntenol spills equal to Pirate theft. but see to it that a pirates and Buntenol spills never happen on the same round.

Basically, twice the risk of Crystite but twice the profit as well.

I like the idea, but i dislike 'buntenol'

Its like Butenol and is too close to stop me thinking of that. Also the OL on the end would denote it as a alcohol rather than a petroleum like fuel which whilst flammable and thus usable as a fuel is not a commonly used fuel.

To be honest i would just use an existant fuel such as Octane which is already found in petroleum

Anyway thats an entirely aesthetical  viewpoint :)

An interesting bad event could be a fire and explosion, destroying the mule and any pipes. It would require a complete restart of mules to get operations going again.

In fact, the explosion could affect other Buntenol plots around them. Say something like a 0 to 25% chance that they too would catch on fire and explode, including other player's Buntenol plots. You could have a veritable runaway firestorm wiping out all the nearby Buntenol plots. In this way its more of a global event rather than limited to just one player.

Also, a quake might cause a Buntenol plot to gusher - the compacting forces of the quake squeeze the fluid to the top sort of thing. of course any mules on the plot would be wiped out when it did that, similar to a meteor strike or moving mountain.

Nice idea.

I like the basic premise but in its presented form it drastically adds to complexity, and I don't think it needs to. My refinement (no pun) would be to suggest:

You have the quantity and depth attributes as initially suggested, but rather than more mules, we simply add a time factor for drilling to take place.
option 1 - you get nothing until you reach the oil, which can take 0-n rounds.
option 2 - the depth you have left to drill is subtracted from the quantity so as each turn you get closer, you get more oil.

I also don't see the need to hide the depth during an assay, this simple version adds a lot more to the game as it is. Better to make a simpler version than jump in with some huge change initially.

Regarding distribution - what about one seam of oil in each map, i.e. a straight line which cuts the map at some random angle... so once you get two good fixes, you can determine the course of the seam?

I agree with your assessment. It probably was to complex as I created it. That's why I put it out there, so people can take that idea and come up with improvements like you did.
 :)

What do you think of my suggestions, based on your original 'vision'?

I think they are all good ideas and they make my original vision more practical to include in MULE 2.  They seem to be using my land grab idea, and I hope they are willing to try out Butenol as well to make the game more dynamic.