I feel like the whole secret prototype idea kind of went down the tubes when they ditched the separate forum and didnt move all the posts over.  Truthfully Im not all that motivated to continue discussing it with the general public, since most people just keep bringing up the same ideas over and over, and most of them dont bother searching or reading the sticky posts.

Seems like it would be redundant to move all forum posts over, as we still have access to those old posts.

While it would not be a bad idea to have a "recap" post that copy/pastes all the proposed ideas into one location.

Overall my take on the two forums.

1) Public is for the masses to talk about ideas.  We has proto testers should still go to these forums to look for good ideas (along with the developers).

2) Protected forum is to talk about more specific ideas that either the developers are wanting specific feedback on, or to further talk about our own ideas along with possible ideas from the Public.  

Overall there is really not that much difference except that here we have greater visibility (to the devs), and can talk about very specific ideas that the Devs want feedback on.  While the conversation can happen in the public forum, I think it has a greater chance of diverging course, or just getting bogged down by ideas that don't really relate to what the Dev's might be asking for.  

That said, a greater number of eyes and brains is not always bad but it can force you to have to weed through the bad to find the good.   I suspect these protected forums are designed to help with that and reduce the devs time spent reading forums.

-Jara

While there are many different and interesting ideas so far, the key is to relate them all together to a playable prototype. Most ideas would mix rather good or bad, but from the discussion here, it seems no one has put forward a sound complete overview how the game is gonna be played.

Adding species specialities, a fifth good or even going RTS are all fine, but have to make somehow sense to roll them into one piece.

We are thinking about two ways to try:
1.
Boardgame round-based style with adding fifth player+species specials+shortened game time(+eventual fifth good)

2.
RTS version with fixed 30 min gametime

Any ideas+thoughts related to these two routes is very much welcomed.

As a timeframe, we expect the game to be released this summer.
So testing would begin as soon as we have something playable, which isn't very far from now... 

I know you want to speed the game up but I think going 30mins might be too fast.  You want to have the proper pacing -- I.E. an ebb and flow of settling gaining plots of land, to the advanced stage of owning most of the planet.  I'd personally suggest starting with 1 hour.  But I suppose this is an easy variable to tweak so not a huge issue.

Good points...

It's true, when ever you play a new board game or many computer games their is always a learning curve.  I might just be over worried about learning the "races".

I like the reminder idea... might be very handy.

Thanks for responding and and adding additional information!

Looking forward to testing it out :-)

-Jara

PS: I also think the whole insurance discussion is a classic case of players thinking they want something when in reality it won't really improve them game play and in fact hurts it.

Overall I don't like the idea of a race selection preventing a global event.  Using the pirates as an example It's sort of screws with the whole  risk Vs reward of Crystite that I don't think should be tampered with.

Current outline for some aliens seems very against the original descriptions for said aliens.  For example:

Packer: From the Silicon System. They love food, and make excellent farmers when they don't gobble their crop.

So to me this means the Packer should have something to deal with farming -- Crystite seems like a big stretch.

See this site for a reminder of all the original alien text:

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/M.U.L.E./Getting_Started

Land auction on race selection
Current land auction it's possible to not gain a land, but I'm assuming you need/want everyone to pick an avatar for the round.  How will this be handled?

Instead of re purposing the land auction, I've always pictured in my head a screen looking like the original race selection.

Where all the races are shown, when you select one it has a short description of what the race is about and then additional information on the bonuses.

After all you're asking the players to make a choice and it needs to be an informed one -- this will of course be tricky as some players will be overwhelmed with small amounts of information while others will want very detailed information.  The more this effects a players choices down the road the more they need to know.

I was also sort of picturing that the order players get to pick shows up in the top right corner with a cursor showing who's currently selected 9and previous choices shown as well).

I think you want this phase to be fast (and I think it would be once everyone is familiar with the races/roles).  

Of course this is one of the problems attaching the roles to a race.  Races don't have much meaning to most players (or new players) where as a role of "Land Granter", "Miner" or "Farmer" might have much greater meaning (and could then have an icon/iconography made to help present a graphical meaning to each role (Something the races will never have).  You could then cut down the total number of roles so that selection is more meaningful as well.

Having 5 players and only 7 roles means only 2 get left out.  Which assuming the roles are all important makes the whole process more interesting.

Of course one of the other goals is to speed the game up so that games don't take 1.5 hours (I think the goal is to get it down to just 1 hour).  Which if you think about it, adding a 5th player adds time so it's not an easy challenge.

Not necessarily, see what I wrote earlier. If development AND auctions happen simultaneously, a game can become even shorter. Handling the auctions simultaneously in practice will be a challenge and will require at least mouse control.

I'm not sure adding mouse control is a great idea.  It really depends on future plans for consoles.  If they developers plan on expanding the game to consoles it might be better to stick to the more joystick control scheme.

As to simultaneously phases that is also being discussed as well as a more radical real time version.

Problems that occur in my mind is that for auctions to really work well and be a social experience they need to happen at the same time.  Yes, you could move to a more ebay like structure where you post min and max bids so that you can choose when you want to go to the auction house.  One idea I had was that all auctions would resolve at a specific time no matter when you post them.  So that way everyone (if they want to) could head to the AH to try to under cut each other all at the same time.  Unless of course you set your max bid to be really high and don't care...

While real time (RTS?) would speed things up a ton... I'm still not 100% it's the right direction to go.  Would it still feel like MULE?  To me part of MULE's charm and character is it's turn based board game like feel.  So will see what the dev's think (I'd love to try a real time version ;-)

One thing to remember is that LCT may be powerful, but there is still a max cap of up to 8 production per plot.

Don't see how that really is much a factor.  Someone else who is not building everything the same is just relying on the base production and a bonus from the land.  Maybe they have 2-3 production bonus for EOS due to having a few plots together, but not all of them.

Overall I'd love to test out reducing the LCT/EOS bonus to see the effects, my hunch is that land type will become more important and I think that makes more sense -- especially to newer players.

Granted, part of that could be the lack of visual feedback of EOS bonus

Personally, I like the EOS rule as it is.  It's simpler concept for the more casual players to grasp.  It's not as easy to grasp when you start talking about fractional units of production.  EOS is also not too overpowered, as it only allows a bonus of 1 extra production per plot.  Even in later rounds, EOS doesn't really increase total production except by maybe 9-10 units, and that's only if all the plots are utilizing EOS.  This of course is looking at the aspect of pure production.

Where EOS actually is useful in the game is in power and food production.  Power and food are typically less valuable, and getting better production from fewer plots allows players to concentrate on the big commodities.

IMHO, if we start messing with EOS or LCT, it makes the game less rewarding (and in turn less fun).  People want to play a game because it's fun to be a powerhouse, not because they have to work at it like it's a real job. 

I don't know 9-10 units is quite a bit of a difference! 

It might be that EOS is not adjusted, but you just increase the bonus that the specific land types produce.  Granted, if you do that then you might need to increase the cost of resources (mule cost, energy cost, food cost, etc).

So maybe Soldier Ant is on to something with just removing the stacking option.  I'm not against same type factories getting a bonus.  I'm just wondering if reducing the bonus would increase Land type importance.

Also imo that bonus could use some user feedback/visual input to show that it's actually happening.  Currently the only way you know is by how much is produced, which is not that intuitive imo.

-Chad

Wait a minute, you say that EOS is preferred over land type, but I actually think LTC is overpowered.
Think about it: EOS doesn't stack: each factory would receive the bonus only once. Now since LTC stacks, it makes land type and EOS a second choice strategy: if you are going to specialize you want to have many factories of the same type.
My solution: reduce the LCT bonus to +1 in total (not for each factory), or don't make it stack.

LTC?  Not sure what that is, can you clarify?

Just so we're all on the same page:

Economics of scale: If two factories of the same kind are adjacent they both produce one more unit.

There should be powerups like more speed.
You should be able to select the size of the board to a maxium of 9x9.
Also up to 5 players.

Currently I believe the discussion for MULE 2010 is to increase the number of players to 5 -- which naturally leads to needing the map/grid to also be bigger.

Of course one of the other goals is to speed the game up so that games don't take 1.5 hours (I think the goal is to get it down to just 1 hour).  Which if you think about it, adding a 5th player adds time so it's not an easy challenge.

[Humanoid:]

Alternatively instead of choose auction order (which I fear might take too long) you could have:

Humanoid:
Queues up an Auction phase -- hirer gets a N% Reduction/Bonus in all purchases and sales.

or

Humanoid:
Queues up an Auction phase -- hirer wins all ties on the auction line.

----------------------------------------------------------

Anyway any feedback? on this idea overall?

Some of the things I like about it is that in any give round you might not do all phases.  So for example early game you might skip the auction phase for a few rounds.

Not a 100% sure about splitting up the production phase into two parts -- might be better to have just a single role that activates production.

I think ending early would really piss people off.  THe other events are disappointing and throw a wrench in the works, but ending early would be a big "screw you" to the players I feel.

It would only work if players new about it.  I.E. many board games use this type of mechanic along with some table top strategy games (Warhammer 40K) but in all cases it is something you communication to the player.

So for example lets say the game is guaranteed to be 1-10 rounds but could end on 11, 12 or 13.

On round 10, you'd need to provide players with feedback that the game will end in the next 3 rounds and that it could be next round or 2 later ones.

Personally having it end early or later can screw you just the same imo -- it might not be worth adding sometimes having a fixed constant that people can rely on makes the game more strategic.

-Jara

PS: Maybe if the event came at round 10 always (if it was going to happen) so at that point people knew how many total rounds were going to be played?

[Race Phase]

Okay so I'm trying to go bigger.   For this exercise lets assume at the start of a round we have a new phase -- Race Phase.

In the race phase every player selects which race they'd like to hire for the round.  In the first round, a player is randomly selected to choose first.

So at the start of each round each player would pick one of the races to represent them that round -- it's a free action but on any given turn, only 1 race could be selected by a player no two players can pick the same race.

I think that by making it free and having it just be a selection would be much faster than doing it via an auction.  Also decoupling it from money lets you keep money for things like actually building mules, buying land and of course just buying/selling in auctions.   I guess I question the need for a money sink.

Mechtron:
Gets first pick first in the next race phase (who to hired), previous order is kept (so if you were 1st before you're now 2nd) players just slide downward in the turn order (think Caylus).

Gollumer:
Queues up an land grant phase.  All players will gain a plot of land -- the hirer gets first pick.

Bonzoid:
Queues up a production phase in which Smithore and Crystite are produced -- hirer gets a bonus to production.

Packer:
Queues up a production phase in which Food and Energy are produced --- hirer gets a bonus to production.

Humanoid:
Queues up an Auction phase -- hirer chooses the order of Auctions.

Spheroid:
Queues up a Development phase -- hirer gets a bonus to time limit.

Flapper:
Grants you good luck at the pub! -- hirer only gets a bonus to cash.

Leggite:
I'd remove this race.  In a 5 player game you'd only want 2 roles/races not chosen, so you want a total of 7 races/roles.

After each player has chosen a role, the phases of the round would be played out based on the order the races were chosen in.  So for example in a 5 player game we have:

1) Mark
2) Aimee
3) Josh
4) Chad
5) Ethan

Mark is randomly chosen as first and he selects Gollumer.
Aimee then picks, Spheriod.
Josh then picks, Packer.
Chad then picks, Bonzoid.
Ethan then picks, Flapper.

For that round we'd see each player controlled as the race they chose -- Player colors would become very very important!!! (I'm still not convinced Races/Roles should be together).

The round would then consist of the following phases, in the following order:

-Land Grand
-Development
-Produce Food & Energy
-Produce Smithore and Crystite
-Ethan gains bonus cash.

In this case no Auctions would happen as no one picked to be a Humanoid.

Next round:

Mark picks Gollumer again.
Aimee picks Packer.
Josh picks Mechtron.
Chad picks Spheriod.
Ethan picks Bonzoid.

So then you'd have the following phases:

-Land grand
-Produce Food & Energy
-Josh gets to pick his role first next round.
-Development
-Produce Smithore and Crystite

I'm also assuming any role not chosen in a give round would give a bonus in cash and each turn it's not chosen that bonus increases.

Anyway just a thought/idea I had...

I think the development currently is the weakest phase of original Mule...

That's interesting.  I've never really see MULE in that light.  I need to think more on it, but you could be totally right....

Maybe we have a specialist (the robot mechtron) that can outfit any mule type as backup

I like where you're going with this! :-)

Maybe have all species be able to outfit food and energy, and only have specialists in smithore/crystite?

This might also be a good way to go...  I'm going to try to come up with an idea for the species and abilities tied to roles and post it soon-ish.

Since the free plain plots are the most in current mule, I would value them differently for Energy:

If it is not surrounded by any mountain or colony, it yields 4 energy.
If one mountain/shop next to it yields 3, two mountain/shop gives 2 and three or more gives 1.

That would make free plots not surrounded by anything much more valuable.

How do you teach a player how those rules work?  That would be the hardest part with a system like that I think.

In some ways adding back in the desert I think would be cleaner and more easily understood and their by reducing the number of plains locations.

True in PR if a phase was chosen and activated prior to when you planned for, you could be screwed. 

(All your examples data2008, are good ones of that happening).

But there is a huge difference between getting screwed every round due to super limited role choices or getting screwed every once in a while, due to poor planning on your part (not correctly guessing when a player is going to pick X, Y or Z role).

So overall I still think the parity of the roles is very important as it's less about getting screwed every turn/phase but more about possibility getting less options due to when a role is picked.

For example, if hiring a Leggite let you pick a plot of land giving you first pick and then afterward, everyone else gets to pick a land.  Versus, just the leggite hirer gaining a plot. One is infinitely more powerful than the other.  In PR you may or may not get the plot of land you want, but by always getting a plot of land it keeps you from falling too far behind.