Planet MULE 1.3.5

[Chuckie Chuck]

It's not stupid, it's desperate strategy when the cards are stacked against them, but that's how the stock market is!  That's what the game is meant to reflect! Don't be narrowminded!

[Rhodan]

Finally having food calculate price in the 12th round according to supply and demand like it does in the previous 11 rounds is wonderful! It will give river plots more value in the end game. Instead of the one dimensional spike ore and finish with 11 crystite plots in round 12 you will now have to consider and fight to control the food market just like you do for ore and energy. Do I go all stite in the last round and hope for a high price? Will two players collude and sell or buy a energy ore or now a food unit to maximize their profit in the 12th for a win? Do I attempt to spike ore, energy or now food on my own for the 12th round? Will my opponents switch over and produce enough units to block me from spiking it?  Are all your plots on the right side of the river? Now you have another option to quickly switch plots and match the price and production of the player who has all the crystite plots to the left of the river. Its still a gamble. If to much food is produced over the demand of 20 then the price will still be considerably less then the cap of 215. This is a fix not a change! You played energy, smithore and FOOD in the first 11 rounds when ever  events, another player or you managed to spike the price! Finally food is back in the mix in round 12 instead of always being $15!

Thank You for fixing the food price in the 12th!

[Bossi]

and btw: if its so easy to spike food in 12 - why you didnt spiked energy in 12? worked all the time...?
Because you need to spike 2 players?

And yes, it makes tite weaker - but: whats the problem? if there is the tite player, who goes straight to the pub in 11 and 12, why no food-spiking? or is it unfair to spike ore just because all plots are given and have a mule working on it?

[Chuckie Chuck]

Funny stuff, lol.  When I see that strategy put into practice it's by a player that saw the impending short fall on tite or smith, and the likely spike in food or energy.

[muleace]

Hey Folks,

Could it be you're all too fast jumping to conclusions on what the update eventually will do to the game?

Most of us out here follow the commonly known strategy to play the game. The real difference is that we all adopt our gameplay in a different way once that strategy needs some adjusting due to whatever happens during a particular game.

I think we must take the time to getting used to the new playing styles this new version is offering us.

I'd rather not jump to conclusions at this point. There's really just one thing that comes to mind while typing this, some sort of moral thingy:

Isn't food i.r.l. the most precious thing we 'posses' rather than all that materialism?  

O yeah, i nearly forgot.. this is just 'a' game after all....  

[Chuckie Chuck]

It's not any of that, that concerns me muleace.  It's the idea that this is supposed to be a capitalistic game, and some jerks want a regime change in round 12, where the economy turns socialist with the government regulating limits.  It would ruin the game.  No one allowed to make money if they aren't invested in ore or tite?  Come on, that's insane don't you think?

[muleace]

Yep, point there CC.

Furthermore, how come ore still has a high price even when everyone produced more than 50 units a person for example? Imo that price should drop too. I think they really should change that rather than what they did to the food recently.

But then, this may spoil game play as we know it for quite some time now. Games rely very heavily on the ore bizz.

Hmmm, maybe we should redraw the whole concept..

[C64]

Its time to fix the price bugs in auctions!!

1.  If you sell your land, and it doesn't sell, the price doesn't lower.

2.  If a land auction is held but the current price is higher than any players can afford, the price should be set at the greater of (1) the land's net value or (2) the maximum amount held by the wealthiest player.  This fixes overbuying plots by $60 in a fair way, and doesn't waste time with pointless auctions.

Fixing these two price bugs would go a **long** way to improving M.U.L.E.!  More so than the 3 changes you just made.

[Chuckie Chuck]

It does lower, it cuts in half, and that's used as a strategy to get cheap plots when the richest person has the opportunity to undercut the competition by "mock selling" his own land so he can buy cheap plots.

As for changing the price on ore, I get why they don't have over production cuts like they do with food and energy.  The store needs the ore, we need the food and energy.  The store doesn't produce ore, so it relies on us to produce it, the stores demand doesn't change.  However, food and energy are high spoilage commodities.  If we are short, we are the ones who suffer (time shortages, production shortages.)  If we produce enough for ourselves, then there isn't any demand or as much demand and the store won't make any money if it doesn't come down on the price because no one would buy it when no one needs it, unless they are doing price fixing like they do with ore, and then that can be very costly for the player because of the spoilage factor, and it's easily overcome just by the players who are short making adequate productions the following round.

I believe all that was considered when the original was written.  Food spoils at 50% and has the greatest fluctuations in oversupply adjustments because that's fairly real world.  Energy spoils at 25% and has less pronounced fluctuations, but it does still have them, because storage batteries do slowly drain even if not used.  I believe the reason they capped ore at 50 is because a depot has a limit as to how much it can store at any given time, and they decided to make it 50 units.  Of course the store has much larger depots to store the ore than the players do, and for whatever reason, food and energy don't spoil in the store, probably because of refrigeration for the food, not sure how you'd preserve energy though.  Maybe that wasn't thought of?

In any case, the game finally reflects the original pretty much entirely I think now, and I'm very happy about that.

[Death_Mule17]

 I guess i jumped the gun on my views toward the new patch, It sucks!. It was my understanding that in a land race(land auction) , the last most player will win race everytime. Found out the hard way that this is not true, losing yet another plot to a higher ranking player(pappy).

Ties in later land auctions will always be won by the player in the last place (4th).

Now I find out this is for all other auctions besides the land auction. Question, when did anyone ever lose a race in buying food/nrg/tite/ore when in last most placement? Never as far as I can remember. So this auction fix is basically useless. Please fix this in next patch as people with high pings(250 or higher) are running wild buying plots in races for land when the're in first place. Which everyone replies with "wtf?"



 
Dm17

[Chuckie Chuck]

The only change to auctions was to randomize the 1st round auction.  There is no possible way to overcome the lag issues that effect the other auctions.  Pappy's ping timings are perfectly matched to the lag differential programmed into the game, and makes him very likely to win most land auctions.  I don't think that's gonna change.

[Peter]

It was my understanding that in a land race(land auction) , the last most player will win race everytime.

Hi,

Could you, Death_Mule17, or somebody else, describe a scenario where the last player didn't win the land auction?

If the players are standing at the same price and waiting for the land auction time to run out, then the last ranked player should always get the land, otherwise there's an error with the game.

However, if several players are still walking upwards when the auction ends, then there's a high probability that the host will get the land if there is a large network latency. That's how the game's networking code works currently.

[Chuckie Chuck]

We are noticing players with a lag just over 250ms tend to win in foot races (walking up until the auction ends)

This is very common in the bot games where grandpappysmurf (a.k.a. Rodz / Zdor) is playing.  He usually wins with an astounding lag of around 250ms when the other players are aveaging 80ms to 150ms.

We've attributed it to the adjustments that were once made to try to make the lag differential less notable.  I'm guessing it would take some special programming for the game to actively adjust the timings in the auctions to truly compensate for each players individual lag to bring everyone into perfect sync.  It should be doable though.

[Death_Mule17]

 

Pappy's ping timings are perfectly matched to the lag differential programmed into the game, and makes him very likely to win most land auctions

   Correction, Ive never seen grandpappysmurf lose a land auction race since the patch before last. I was hoping to see this fixed in last patch and watch pappy cry. This is a known issue amongs players, pappy averages 12plots per game....no joke. Which means you better be able to beat his magic 12 bonus or he wins everytime. I think this is an unfair advantage, and I think as of today I will never play pappy again. Here is the last game i played where i was shafted because of paps high (250)ping.-http://www.planetmule.com/hi-score-game/game?game_id=64574 and heres some of the chat-
MuleSizeMe: hes gonna win cuz of that

MuleSizeMe: that plot should be mine as new patch says lastmost always wins race

MuleSizeMe: fucking gitch city

MuleSizeMe: *glitch

shrtngr8: ur a noob

shrtngr8: he just had u beat

shrtngr8: there was no glitch

shrtngr8: glitches dont happen

MuleSizeMe: and you would know?

MuleSizeMe: i was holding up before it started

MuleSizeMe: this goes forum

shrtngr8: maybe u have too much semen in ur keyboard

shrtngr8: and it doeesnt work right

MuleSizeMe: maybe thats a fantasy of yours

MuleSizeMe: semen

grandpappysmurf: it has been like that for ages, you know i have hi ping!!

MuleSizeMe: ya but patch was suppose to fix that

MuleSizeMe: its one of the main points

grandpappysmurf: nope was never ,emtioned

grandpappysmurf: mentioned

MuleSizeMe: 3rd fix was lastmost always wins race

grandpappysmurf: nope

MuleSizeMe: ya

MuleSizeMe: its on home page

grandpappysmurf: not landauctions only for commoditities

MuleSizeMe: thats dumb

MuleSizeMe: why not for land?

Round 8 of 12

grandpappysmurf: how do y know

grandpappysmurf: i know

Please fix this in next patch, Its really a game breaker. and paps reaping the benefits



Disappointed,
Dm17

[Rhodan]

I have also experienced the same problem. Last place is not always winning the land auction race.
When it occurs it tends to be the player with the highest ping who wins despite not being the lowest ranked player for that round. I will try and gather more information as it occurs.