I'm puzzled there. Unless I've missed some change with newer updates, this had never been like that before. Either there are mules, or there are not. It's not updated in-round, unless some player happened to sell his mules to the corral, that doesn't seem to be the case.

The store produces one mule for each two units of ore they have. So, new mules are created each turn as long as the store has enough ore, and the corral has less than... 14 mules was it?

It's based on the current in-game rank. The lower the rank, the higher the priority to get the land/item in case of same price.

Seriously, worst ad ever. Specially the last part. Even the fossilized shark teeth in Animal Crossing had more appeal. Wait... IT'S TOM NOOK!!! So, that's what he does with all those fossils...

Well, mine was done with Macromedia Flash 5, which was quite old already by that time. Maybe activating compatibility with previous Windows versions? What exact error does it display?

Long time I didn't check the forum. That of "no-trading" in round 12 summary was added in one of the updates to prevent one player giving away all their resources to another player too boost his rank and/or altering the item values by selling them at inflated prices to another player. This has been done before, so they changed it to prevent it and work this way.

Based on that, should we all refrain from catching the wampus? Because it was a hell to catch it in the original game, and this one is very much like "Wampus hunting for cheetahs". You don't even have to "attack" when it is being displayed. (And you could easily do 4 assays in that time, enjoying the signs and not having to remember them at all.)

How do we know that it was the idea of assays being done? There was just a single screen for all players back then, how do we know that the original stuff was not intended to be "my turn now, everyone else looking at the floor until I'm done"? Because you might want to make your assays in private, after all, it was your own time.

We are back to the same topic, it all depends on the "standards" each community uses for their gameplay.

I'm not sure if changing variables values would work in that case. If the player has a different value than the server, would the server take the value set by the cheater and re-send it to the other 3 players, or a desync would occur?

Keep in mind that there are free open source programs like the one I talked about at the grasp of anyone (program tools for dummies), no need at all for being programmer anymore. Not sure if it would work with Java, but in theory all programs work the same way. Variables are "floating around" somewhere, and once located they can be read by the user. If that is the case for MULE, it might be happening already.

Also, luck factor. Of 45 plots, 4 having high crystite, that is a 4 of 45 chances of getting one of those plots when grabbing (44 discarding the colony plot). So, a 9.09% (6.81% if one high is at the colony plot) chance can happen, but grabbing exactly each of the plots each round at the first grab would be weird indeed. Tracking said player for some time would help to solve the doubt.

Oh, memories... I had a lucky game when I got three high plots, but I guess I lost to ore anyway. All this stuff about cheating is usually simple stuff, it reminds me to a MS-DOS tool/program back in my days, I'll call it just "CM", but I guess some of you might already know it.

While you had it active, you could search for variable adresses into the loaded game. Example: If I'm in a game and I pick up 500 gold, I use the CM to look for variables with value 500. It returns several ones fitting those values. I keep playing, and I get 250 gold more, search for variables with value 750 now. Bingo! Only one variable returned. I give a custom name for that variable address and I can change its value in any "future" visit. Set it to 10.000, and you have free gold now. It would be the same case if there were any similar tool like that one for windows.

I'm not into Java, but I guess the thing would go like this. When a MULE game is created (when map is defined, possibly), the Crystite plots are defined on it. In that moment the plots are defined, no need for assays, the values will be out there somewhere, into some unknown addresses, into variables. Let's imagine it uses an array of variables to define the field, 45 values in it. If you manage to detect the location of those values, you would be able to "read" them in any game with that tool as soon as those variables are created. No need even to start the game, as soon as those variables are initializated you would have access to their values if you know their location.

If the crystite "seeds" are randomly created, only the address locating would work. However, if they used some pattern based on other stuff (like map number), they would be more predictable and easier to deduce. Truly you can make a crystite tracker that "solves" the field as soon as you have the right assays done, but it would be much slower than the "direct-to-address" espionage. And yes, this kind of tools kill the fun factor of the game if abusing them, but they are out there anyway.

"Storelifting"?

I think in the pre-release betas pirates did take ore, but that was never so in the original Atari/C64 versions and so a correction was made by official release time.

Didn't the pirates loot ore too in C64 version when you played in the non-tournament mode? In tournament they took crystite, in the other mode I guess they took ore because crystite was not available in that mode. Planet MULE uses crystite in both modes, so it makes no difference. Was it this way? Or I don't remember it well?

Break time.

http://theroguecat.deviantart.com/art/Sexy-dancing-cat-52049185

Love is in the air of Irata today. Well, you both agree that there is no criticism in the thread, so forget what I said about it in previous post.

Sounds more like a plagiarize of Chuck Norris meme. But seriously, threads for making personally criticism on other users usually don't have a lot of future. I have seen them in other forums before, and I think they are a kind of threads that should be avoided, both for good or bad. Don't turn them into the center of PlanetMULE, you'll find unsportmanship players everywhere on the Net. Just treat this as the joke it was intended, and let it go.

I'm getting into this thread a bit late, but the topics are worth it. I guess we already talked about these before, not sure... Some tools certainly kill the funny factor of any game, (call them calculators, simulators, bots, automatizers, etc), but each one will consider them in a way or another depending on the "standards" they have for the game.

The classic pen-and-paper has been used since old days, as many users consider it as fair, while the "memory" standard would not. Some users consider the trackers as fair because they don't do automatic actions, while others consider it as cheating, be it because of violating the "memory only" policy, or for providing more than the classic "pen-and-paper" functions. As every user has different standards about it, they would never reach an agreement, unless they played in different "categories" or "groups" in the game.

Let's imagine that there were a league for pen-and-paper users, other for memory-only, and other for trackers. In that case, everyone would be happy about their ways in the game, because they all would share the same standards for the game. But because there is no "universal" rules or guidelines set for it, no one can "force" any standard for the rest of players.

Sadly, crystite is no what it used to be in original MULE. I loved exploiting my crystite fields facing the risks of pirates and random market prices, but we all know that this doesn't happen that often nowadays. It's the "ore trick" what gets the highest profits. That also kills the funny factor of the game in certain way for me, but I'm no one to "force" my standards or rule sets on others, unless they agreed to play under those guidelines.

Might be an interesting way to give more dynamism to the game, adding limiting factor rules or something: allowing no more than 3 ore plots for a "crystite mode" (killing the ore trick), reducing the number of available high crystite plots to 1 for a "hardcore mode" (making gameplay more aggressive among players), allowing no assays for a "blind mode" (this would make the trackers mostly worthless)... you know, challenge paths. Scripting this versions for MULE might require having multiple instances installed. Discuss.