[MULE PITY]

About that button pushed to get that wampus, I've lost a MULE discovering that you had to choose between MULE settlement OR wampus catching. I tried to catch wampus with a MULE on my tail. MULE ran away(worth 530$), won 200$, lost 20 sec. Oh great.

Anyway...

MULE PITY : one of first player's MULEs, randomly choosen, goes to one of that last player's empty plots, because it has pity on him.

Make it as expensive as in real life and pay it every turn. So it would not be a privilege to those who are already leading the game, but a bet on how worse this could get.

Of course, leading players would choose that, because the game is already trying to stab them with bad events. But let's say it cost you 200-300$ each turn or so... would you take the risk to pay it ? would you take the risk NOT to pay it ?

That said, I wonder if an "insurance store" would be the best. That auction system makes MULE really stands out of other strategy games. I'd recommend that there was a global event at early rounds that declares one insurance available. When that event occurs, every players start an auction to fix the fee to pay each round. The auction winner has to pay it but is the only one to be protected against bad events.

Important though : we need a way to stop that insurance or sell it. What if there be a insurance auction each turn where the player who pays his auction could try and sell it (or just goes into BUY position to skip that phase) ? Base price would be round fee + 1$ and it would be impossible to sell to the colony.

Would it make sense that way ?

That first idea would be better imho if sabotage was only "declared" by a player and then "bought/discuss" in auction by everyone.

Here's how it would work :

1. some player go to the Land auction room (renamed "Land auction/sabotage" room).
2. he goes to a plot that don't belong to him. By pressing action button, he declares that one to sabotage and pays 150 $ (cost to be balanced). Only one sabotage by plot, only one sabotage by player. A plot to be sabotaged will be mark by a little bomb icon on the top right of the square.
3. at the beginning of production, a sabotage auction phase begins for each plot that have been targeted that way (screen returns to main map to show which is current plot before next auction begins).
During that auction, three players choose a price they're willing to pay to call for sabotage, and one player (the plot's owner) choose a price he's willing to pay to cancel that sabotage. The winning player of this auction is the only one to pay.
4. If the plot's owner won, no sabotage. If any other player won, sabotage occurs : MULE is destroyed. If there's nothing on that plot, that plot is lost.

EDIT : and if no one won the auction, or if someone managed to raise that price high above any budget, nothing happens, sabotage is canceled (the one that initiate sabotage still pays 150$ though).

Benefits of this new game option :
- it could reverse a crazy situation where only one player managed to screw all other three. So there would still be a lot of tension until the very last round.
- it could reverse it for many players at many rounds.
- it could release pressure on an overflooded market by instantly create shortage of some sort.
- you could use of diplomacy in that game !! Youhou   by suggesting others to fight that lead player, you can take over the game, and still never pay any sabotage yourself.

Big problem :
- MULE stops being a parallel competitive game and starts being an open war.


But I think it still make sense anyway

Another nice twist would be that all farms on river are destroyed, or at least unable to produce that round.

I remember events that drop food production on 1 plot and boost food production on all plots... but none that actually kills food production on particular plots.

It would strike hard on players but might add spice on an easy food market. It could create instant shortage and price raise, so running a food based market would be more interesting.

"Hi-Scores" page allows to scoop on different pages of the big rank table using hyperlinks at the bottom. But those URL are a bit strange :

Code:

http://www.planetmule.com/index.php?ore-players=&stats_page=501&ore-players?ore-players=&p=30

example : Link to page 501

The page 501 shows up without problem, but I guess those "ore-players" shouldn't be there. I tried to rewrite that URL like this, to test access to page 502 :

Code:

http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-players?stats_page=502&p=5

... but returns 404 error. I guessed the "p" parameters just doesn't exists. I got rid of it. Now it looks like this :

Code:

http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-players?stats_page=502

... and now it works. That URL string concatenation seems a bit "dirty"
I call it "minor" bug since it has currently so effect on client side whatsoever (at least it looks like it has no effect). Just my opinion, but still looks like a bug.


PS : no I'm not a mad bug seeker I wanted to directly teleport on page 400, that is writing that GET parameter myself, and that's when I found that bug.

Hi there

There was few crucial tweakings in gameplay starting from 1.2. No more Desert plots, crystite and smith spoilage above 50, etc.

For any player that was there before, it's just some fresh news. But every newbie that reads the How to play guide still notices that desert plots exist, that only food and energy spoil, etc.

It'd be wise to update the How to play guide on those crucial changes that occured with recent game updates.