Vertically expanding the economy: MULEs as commodities

[GabrielPope]

There's been some discussion about things to be added to an updated/advanced version of M.U.L.E. (as opposed to the emulation of the classic tournament mode; note that I'm not suggesting anything to be added to the default game), so I thought I'd toss out an idea I've had kicking around in my head for a while.

First, a preamble (emphasis on "ramble", feel free to skip down to the actual concept writeup if you don't care):

Lately with the arguments over smithore vs. other commodities there has been a lot of discussion about the need to add intrinsic value to food and energy as well--in other words, expanding the horizontal breadth of the economy, making each good an end unto itself. You can imagine one person making a lot of money producing piles of food, a second person making money producing energy, a third person making money producing smithore, a fourth person making money producing crystite.

To me, this doesn't really mesh with the spirit of M.U.L.E., though. From the beginning of M.U.L.E., crystite has always been the cash product; everything else is simply a necessary ingredient to produce more crystite. Sure, in the first half of the game there are frequent shortages that let you make a quick windfall off of food, or energy, or smithore--but playing the original, 9 times out of 10, the guy won was the guy with 12 crystite plots going during the last several turns.

I like this model of the game. Essentially it's a game of resource management: you must manage your supplies (food, energy, smithore, cash, land) as efficiently as possible in order to maximize your crystite production. It's the risks, the gambits, the bluffs you and other players undertake along the way that make the game exciting. Currently, the Planet M.U.L.E. version of the game differs from the original in a few important aspects, which mean there's much more money to be made in smithore than there ever was in crystite in any version, but presumably this will be corrected and future versions will look more like the original with its crystite-dominated endgame. So in expanding the game, I think this idea should be preserved: the idea that there is some specific endpoint to the economy, and everything else is simply a means towards that end.


So, my concept:

Currently, production of mules happens automatically at the store for free. What if mules were yet another commodity that players had to produce for themselves? Mules could be outfitted with a new "mule assembly" designation; assembly plots would produce mules from your stored smithore. These assembly plots would follow the same production mechanic as any other form of plot, except they would also consume smithore for each mule produced (once you run out of smithore, production stops). Base production value for assembly plots would be based on distance from the store--I'm imagining essentially the same distribution pattern as crystite, except with two fixed "high" spots on the plots immediately left and right of the store (the river would not be suitable for assembly plants.) Make it slightly more generous, though, and start it at 4 BPV for those plots, then 3 BPV for the plots orthogonally adjacent to them, 2 BPV for the plots diagonally adjacent, and 1 BPV for all the plots around the edges of the map.

Mules would be their own commodity with an auction phase just like any other good. The store would no longer produce mules from smithore on its own, but you could sell mules to the store during the auction phase and other players could buy mules from the store, etc. You'd no longer be able to buy or sell mules at the mule corral; instead, that's just where you pick up mules from your personal stockpile.

Obviously, there have to be some mules present at the start or else you'd never be able to produce anything. So each player would start with 2 mules in storage, and the store would have an additional 8 mules for sale, similar to the starting food/energy supplies. That gives the colony as a whole a starting supply of mules roughly equal to what it currently gets.

If desired, this concept could be extended even further by inserting an intermediate stage of production. Instead of assembling mules directly from smithore, perhaps the smithore would have to be refined or processed into machine parts first. There would thus be a sixth type of plot that would produce its own commodity, "parts." One advantage of this, aside from extending the production chain, would be that the "2 smithore = 1 mule" production rule could be split to work on 1:1 ratios: a refinery/machining/factory plot (not sure what the best name for it would be) would consume 1 smithore per 1 unit of parts produced, the mule assembly plot would consume 1 smithore + 1 machine part per 1 mule produced.

I'm not sure how the BPV for refinery plots should be calculated, though. Perhaps it could be the inverse of the BPV for the assembly plots, going higher as you get further from the town, on the rationale that smelting smithore is a messy process and your polluting refineries get smacked with environmental regulations hampering their production if they're too close to town.


Some of the repercussions of this system:

Obviously, the game becomes more complex and more difficult. This would not be a mode for players new to the game!

In particular, though, self-sufficiency would be considerably harder. At present, 1 good food plot and 2 good energy plots can see you through the game with little difficulty. If you get several extra plots and have lots of mining going on, you may need to run a 3rd energy plot for a while. This means that once you get past the early stages, serious food and energy shortages are rare. And while there are some benefits to cooperating--being able to ditch those 3 required plots for 3 additional crystite plots adds up to a lot of extra crystite--the risks generally outweigh the benefits. Although during the late stages there's often some excess food/energy in the economy anyway, so you may be able to hoard up and shift everything to mining for the last few turns anyhow.

If you took this concept to its more extreme version with separate production plots for both mule parts and mules themselves, you'd have the same food/energy requirements, plus you'd need your own smithore plot (and it would have to be a good one if you wanted to make sure you got 1 mule per turn, let alone 2 for land auctions), a refinery plot, and an assembly plot. That leaves you with very little room for making cash products (crystite). It also means your production is very, very low overall due to lack of economy of scale/learning curve theory bonuses, and there's also likely to be some wasted capacity (you're only using 1-2 mules per turn, but you may be capable of producing more of them.) By making more things to do, it becomes vastly harder to do everything yourself.

In turn, of course, this makes player-to-player trading considerably more important; since you're not meeting your own needs as quickly or as easily, you have to rely on other players to make sure your needs are met. These means that sellers have a lot more leverage; currently, if you're Energy Guy and you refuse to sell your hoard, everyone else can just convert stuff over to energy and make all the energy they want. But if the stuff they're converting are the smithore mines and refineries and assembly plants the colony needs to expand, then your refusal to sell energy is a much bigger blow to the colony, and there's a much greater impetus for other players to buy at the prices you're charging (but bear in mind that Mule Assembly Plant Guy can, in turn, hold his prices over your head too!)

Paradoxically, even though this scheme does not add any intrinsic value to food or energy, the net result is that food and energy do become more valuable, because other players are less able to afford to produce their own. The end product of the economy is still trying to produce crystite as a cash good, but since there are more steps in the production of crystite, the importance of each individual step to the whole process (and the colony's success as a whole) is increased.

[Eik]

Hmm very nice.
Sounds reasonable what you suggest and the consequences of the changes.

Quick very global calculation

Code:

after 3 rounds:
#1: farm, energy, farm
#2: smithore, parts, mule
#3: energy, smithore, parts
#4: smithore, farm, energy

f 16; -12+4 =8; [b]-8[/b]+8 =8; [b]-8+14[/b] =14;
e 9; -3+4 =10; -6+8 =12; -9+12 =15;
s 0; +8 =8; -4+12 =16; -8-4+12 =16; 
p 0; 0; +4 =4; -4+8 =8;
m 16; -4 =12; -4 =8; -4+4 =8;

I was wondering about how delicate the balance was. It makes the game much and much more interdependent. And that is indeed a plus for the trading part of all commodities especially in the beginning. But one person can ruin the game pretty hard. I like the idea of the six commodities, but maybe it is too much for only four players to keep the colony self sustainable.
First a version of smithore->mules and then a version of smithore>parts>mules will find out.

For the rest I want to say: really worked out very nicely.

[Lomgren]

Yes, this, and the Buntenol post are both very interesting ideas.

One of the things you'd want to think of - what areas would be best for plants?  I'd say that the river and mountains are not conducive for plants, because of just how much area is needed.  The mountains and river would make the plant discontiguous, and thus make it much less efficient.  Plus the river would make the area smaller.  Desert or plains would provide the best production.

As for possibilities in combining this and Buntenol - maybe the factories use so much energy that they can only run off Buntenol.  The more they have, the more they can produce.

I'm just throwing out vague ideas, I haven't tried to strategize this at all.

[GabrielPope]

One of the things you'd want to think of - what areas would be best for plants?  I'd say that the river and mountains are not conducive for plants, because of just how much area is needed.  The mountains and river would make the plant discontiguous, and thus make it much less efficient.  Plus the river would make the area smaller.  Desert or plains would provide the best production.

I did go into this a bit. I think in order to get a different sort of distribution for good factory sites, a simple pattern of "plains closer to the town have higher factory capacity" would be a very quick and easy system. It should not be too hard to get sites with 3 or 4 base production for factory products, because like Eik points out it does make the whole economy more fragile and it's important that it doesn't take too much investment to supply the colony.

Combining this and the buntenol idea would be interesting, but I think both systems are too complicated in their own right to mesh well--in particular, while I wouldn't rule out a seven-resource system, taking this six-resource system and adding buntenol would just be too much. However, I think a pared down version of both might be interesting, slotting in buntenol as the "sixth step" in place of the idea of a refinery/parts factory. This would be particularly interesting since buntenol would create demand for extra mules, so there'd be more purpose to mass mule production.

[Intergalactic Mole]

I think this is a great idea Gabriel.  Perhaps an expanded map with more available [smithore] plots would make this work even better.

[Soldier Ant]

What if there was no plant to "produce" mules, instead there was a "MULE production phase" where players, walking up and down, could set the amounts of MULEs to produce (anyone for him/herself) and at the end of this "auction-like" phase, the amount chosen by each single player was added to the MULEs supply of that player and subtracted (after multiplying x2) from his/her Smithore supply?
Making MULEs commodities that one can own without a new type of plant/resource.

EDIT: this would perfectly merge with Buntenol without adding more complex features (Dan Bunten adviced against too many features in a multi-player game...)

[Intergalactic Mole]

Better yet, what if the amount the person produced was simply added to the store instead of your own stockpile, making collaboration an important factor in mule supply and demand...   

[GabrielPope]

What if there was no plant to "produce" mules, instead there was a "MULE production phase" where players, walking up and down, could set the amounts of MULEs to produce (anyone for him/herself) and at the end of this "auction-like" phase, the amount chosen by each single player was added to the MULEs supply of that player and subtracted (after multiplying x2) from his/her Smithore supply?
Making MULEs commodities that one can own without a new type of plant/resource.

Well, yes, I suppose you could do that. My entire proposal is explicitly to add additional plot/resource types, though, for reasons I explained at length. Adding a "mule production phase" where players were able to bypass the store and produce their own mules at no cost would make for a simpler game than the present system, which is not itself a bad thing but would take out a lot of the strategy of smithore/mule manipulation without adding any appreciable depth to the gameplay otherwise.

[zposse]

Like this idea a lot.  Some comments:

Mules would be their own commodity with an auction phase just like any other good. The store would no longer produce mules from smithore on its own, but you could sell mules to the store during the auction phase and other players could buy mules from the store, etc. You'd no longer be able to buy or sell mules at the mule corral; instead, that's just where you pick up mules from your personal stockpile.

Obviously, there have to be some mules present at the start or else you'd never be able to produce anything. So each player would start with 2 mules in storage, and the store would have an additional 8 mules for sale, similar to the starting food/energy supplies. That gives the colony as a whole a starting supply of mules roughly equal to what it currently gets.

If desired, this concept could be extended even further by inserting an intermediate stage of production. Instead of assembling mules directly from smithore, perhaps the smithore would have to be refined or processed into machine parts first. There would thus be a sixth type of plot that would produce its own commodity, "parts." One advantage of this, aside from extending the production chain, would be that the "2 smithore = 1 mule" production rule could be split to work on 1:1 ratios: a refinery/machining/factory plot (not sure what the best name for it would be) would consume 1 smithore per 1 unit of parts produced, the mule assembly plot would consume 1 smithore + 1 machine part per 1 mule produced.

Would there then be six commodities during the auction phase (smithore, mule parts, mules, crystite, food, and energy)?  This would slightly lengthen an already long game.  However, I consider this problem very minor.    

Here's where I think your suggestion adds a strategic layer to the game you haven't yet mentioned: because smithore is used to produce mule parts, the price of a mule part should be more than the price of a unit of smithore.  From an economic perspective, there is labor-added value for a finished or intermediate product compared to a raw material.  From a gameplay perspective, it wouldn't make sense to waste one energy converting smithore to a mule part, and then finding you have to sell that mule part for less than if you just kept the smithore.  For the same reasons, a mule should be worth more than a mule part.

Given that a mule should be worth more than a mule part, and a mule part worth more than smithore, the prices of the three goods will either rise at the same time, or they will fall at the same time.  In other words, they'd be very closely correlated.  I am also assuming that the store price for these three goods will depend on the quantity the store holds (of all three goods), the number of mules in everyone's corrals, and the number of unused plots.  However, because of the correlation, one could theoretically flood the store with smithore to reduce prices on mule parts or mules.  Similarly, one could sell mules to reduce prices on smithore.

I think this adds all sorts of defensive strategies.  Suppose during the smithore phase, you see someone buying out the store.  The prices of goods are set before auction, so the prices of parts and mules due to the smithore shortage wouldn't go up until the next turn (otherwise, a savvy player would buy out smithore, then immediately sell his mules at a higher price the same turn).  A different player might then dump enough mules into the store to cause the price of smithore next turn to plummet below what the first player bought it for, and rendering the smithore buyer's strategy useless.  The first player could, of course, try to buy out mule parts and mules (in addition to the originally bought smithore).  I'm not exactly sure how much more difficult or easier that would be.

I'm not sure how the BPV for refinery plots should be calculated, though. Perhaps it could be the inverse of the BPV for the assembly plots, going higher as you get further from the town, on the rationale that smelting smithore is a messy process and your polluting refineries get smacked with environmental regulations hampering their production if they're too close to town.

This is interesting.  Would economies of scale still apply?  Currently, two plots side-by-side get an extra unit of production.  Plots on top of one another don't.  If BPV is calculated by distance from town, what would be better:  grabbing the left and right edges of the map (the highest BPV plots but with no adjacent plots) or building a line of adjacent plots (with decreasing BPV's as one approaches town)?  

Regardless, placing your plots along edges might be a nice way to screw with other players attempting to build contiguous line of plots.  I like it.  

And while there are some benefits to cooperating--being able to ditch those 3 required plots for 3 additional crystite plots adds up to a lot of extra crystite--the risks generally outweigh the benefits. Although during the late stages there's often some excess food/energy in the economy anyway, so you may be able to hoard up and shift everything to mining for the last few turns anyhow.

If you took this concept to its more extreme version with separate production plots for both mule parts and mules themselves, you'd have the same food/energy requirements, plus you'd need your own smithore plot (and it would have to be a good one if you wanted to make sure you got 1 mule per turn, let alone 2 for land auctions), a refinery plot, and an assembly plot.

When you say the risks of cooperating exceed the benefits, you're implying that an individual player should create his own smithore, refinery, and mule plots instead of specializing and then trading during the auction phase.

One problem I see is the potential for a production bottleneck.  You can't create a mule without a mule part, and you can't create a mule part without smithore.  Smithore is the limiting factor.  Therefore, if four players each create their own smithore, refinery, and mule plots, then the person who has the best smithore plot(s) will produce the most mules in the long run.  Example:  Player A has a 4 BPV smithore plot, a 2 BPV parts refinery, and a 2 BPV mule plot.  Player B has a 2 BPV smithore, a 4 BPV parts refinery, and a 4 BPV mule plot.  You could say that both players are in equal shape because they can each only create 2 mules.  However, player A will still have 2 smithore left over in raw materials.  Player B has nothing left over.  Over many turns, player A's smithore will build up.  A few turns later, he could easily convert his smithore plots to parts refineries and mule plants in order to process his stored smithore and then have many more mules.  Player B can't convert his parts refineries and mule plots to smithore and do the same.           

Also, at least one player will be producing food/energy early, but by the time they decide to create their own mules in later turns, the mountains will all be snatched up.  Thus, I think trading in mules during the auction phase will still prove very valuable.

Paradoxically, even though this scheme does not add any intrinsic value to food or energy, the net result is that food and energy do become more valuable, because other players are less able to afford to produce their own. The end product of the economy is still trying to produce crystite as a cash good, but since there are more steps in the production of crystite, the importance of each individual step to the whole process (and the colony's success as a whole) is increased.

One thing I'm worried about is that, by adding more steps to the process, people will be assaying and producing crystite later in the game.  Because crystite prices are randomly variable, it possesses a “time value.”  The earlier you hold crystite, the longer you can sit through the rounds where crystite prices are low.  Your crystite will grow each round, and then you can sell it all when the price is high (assuming you are not afraid of pirates).  Furthermore, it can often take several turns to convert all your plots from a certain good to crystite.  Performing this step earlier can result in a lot of added production.  Ultimately, I'm not so sure it's good to reduce the “time value” of crystite.

Long story short, I think you have a great idea.  Not sure if any of my points are valid, but let me know!

[Tei]

I like this idea. Its amazing good for a "advanced" mode of the game, maybe a different version, and is bad for one where you have newbies, since It will make the game much more complex for newbies.

About the optimun plots for these factories... is not desert, is _the plots of desert next to the river_, as you want to use the river to return toxic waste, and you can't do that in normal desert plots.

[GabrielPope]

Would there then be six commodities during the auction phase (smithore, mule parts, mules, crystite, food, and energy)?  This would slightly lengthen an already long game.  However, I consider this problem very minor.

Yes, this is a major concern to me as well. Anything to speed up auctions would be a welcome addition to this mode.

Given that a mule should be worth more than a mule part, and a mule part worth more than smithore, the prices of the three goods will either rise at the same time, or they will fall at the same time.  In other words, they'd be very closely correlated.

Well, I don't think this would necessarily hold true. If there's a bottleneck then part of the chain might become disproportionately valuable; for instance, if there are sufficient mules for the colony, and sufficient parts for mules, but there are lots of parts plants sitting unsupplied, then the price of smithore may go up against the price of mules. And if there's a shortage of mules but a glut of smithore and parts with no plants to assemble them into usable mules, the price of smithore doesn't necessarily need to go up. But I'm not sure if this should be a factor in the store's pricing algorithm, or if that should be pegged to other parts of the production chain like you suggest, leaving it up to players to decide if one of the interim products is more valuable.

This is interesting.  Would economies of scale still apply?

Well, I think they should. My goal in proposing this is a mode where it is substantially harder for players to be self-sufficient, but not substantially harder to meet the needs of the colony. Two plants with economy-of-scale bonuses should generally be able to meet the needs of the colony.

When you say the risks of cooperating exceed the benefits, you're implying that an individual player should create his own smithore, refinery, and mule plots instead of specializing and then trading during the auction phase.

Sorry, I wasn't quite clear here--I meant that at present the risks of cooperating exceed the benefits, where the only benefits are saving yourself food and energy plots. When you have food and energy and parts and mules to worry about, then relying on other players to fill some of those needs becomes more tempting.

One problem I see is the potential for a production bottleneck.  You can't create a mule without a mule part, and you can't create a mule part without smithore.  Smithore is the limiting factor.  Therefore, if four players each create their own smithore, refinery, and mule plots, then the person who has the best smithore plot(s) will produce the most mules in the long run.

This is true, but I think it just goes to show what happens when everyone tries to build their own mules.

Bear in mind also that a lot of the factories are probably going to get torn down at the end of the game, since the colony has a limited total need for mules. However, due to production bottlenecks and player backstabbing it's safe to assume that there will be games where it takes longer to get enough mules to fill the map, so I think this aspect should not be too limiting given the need to provide a bit of leeway on timing.

One thing I'm worried about is that, by adding more steps to the process, people will be assaying and producing crystite later in the game.  Because crystite prices are randomly variable, it possesses a “time value.”  The earlier you hold crystite, the longer you can sit through the rounds where crystite prices are low.  Your crystite will grow each round, and then you can sell it all when the price is high (assuming you are not afraid of pirates).  Furthermore, it can often take several turns to convert all your plots from a certain good to crystite.  Performing this step earlier can result in a lot of added production.  Ultimately, I'm not so sure it's good to reduce the “time value” of crystite.

Personally I'd be more concerned about the reduction in the total value of crystite. Most of the colony's wealth comes from production in the last few turns where you can have lots of crystite plots churning out huge quantities due to production bonuses, where there's not really much change in the time-added value one way or the other; the profits you can skim off the random price on your earlier production are fairly small change in the long run. It is a valid concern, though. I'd expect to see all around lower scores with this change added.

Someone did mention the possibility of a map expansion, and this might be a worthwhile addition; that would provide some room for extra mules, offset the overall impact of having to devote several plots to making mules, and increase the colony's total output. I wouldn't make any drastic changes, but maybe an 11x5 map would work better for this mode than 9x5? Maybe even just 10x5, if you don't mind being slightly off-center.

[zposse]

Well, I don't think this would necessarily hold true. If there's a bottleneck then part of the chain might become disproportionately valuable; for instance, if there are sufficient mules for the colony, and sufficient parts for mules, but there are lots of parts plants sitting unsupplied, then the price of smithore may go up against the price of mules. And if there's a shortage of mules but a glut of smithore and parts with no plants to assemble them into usable mules, the price of smithore doesn't necessarily need to go up. But I'm not sure if this should be a factor in the store's pricing algorithm, or if that should be pegged to other parts of the production chain like you suggest, leaving it up to players to decide if one of the interim products is more valuable.

In the first example you mention (sufficient mules, sufficient parts for mules, price for smithore may go up against the price of mules), it may be worth it to amass smithore.  However, at the same time the game will be automatically converting your smithore to mule parts and/or mules.  I'm wondering if there'd be a way to not convert your smithore to mule parts or mules without having to change production.

Sorry, I wasn't quite clear here--I meant that at present the risks of cooperating exceed the benefits, where the only benefits are saving yourself food and energy plots. When you have food and energy and parts and mules to worry about, then relying on other players to fill some of those needs becomes more tempting.

My bad for misunderstanding.  Yes, I see what you mean. 

Personally I'd be more concerned about the reduction in the total value of crystite. Most of the colony's wealth comes from production in the last few turns where you can have lots of crystite plots churning out huge quantities due to production bonuses, where there's not really much change in the time-added value one way or the other; the profits you can skim off the random price on your earlier production are fairly small change in the long run. It is a valid concern, though. I'd expect to see all around lower scores with this change added.

I'd welcome lower scores.  I remember in the C64 version it felt like an accomplishment to hit the 100,000 colony score mark.  Now colonies can hit 150,000-200,000 with alarming regularity, which doesn't feel right.  I just don't want to see the lower scores come about as a result of people not making crystite. 

Someone did mention the possibility of a map expansion, and this might be a worthwhile addition; that would provide some room for extra mules, offset the overall impact of having to devote several plots to making mules, and increase the colony's total output. I wouldn't make any drastic changes, but maybe an 11x5 map would work better for this mode than 9x5? Maybe even just 10x5, if you don't mind being slightly off-center.

A larger map would mean more empty areas of land at the endgame, which isn't a bad thing necessarily. However,  I don't want more turns added to the game to compensate. 

It would also mean slightly more time to travel across the map, especially if you are building “mule parts” plots around the left and right edges to maximize BPV.  I can imagine what a pain that would be, especially if early food shortages (or radiated mules going crazy) mean you have a lot of those plots unoutfitted.  Again, this is not a bad thing.  It makes food even more valuable.  One thing I don't want is a longer timer as this is yet another thing that will increase the duration of the game.

[Karawane]

This idea is great! For those of you who do not know: The concept of MULEs as commodities has been implemented and is well balanced in the M.U.L.E. clone "Subtrade". It is a nice twist in the gameplay and the reason why I really like that clone (even though, I am usually a keeper of original traditions). Though, it is not exactly what you propose here. You might want to try it yourself and then refine the idea for Planet MULE

[Jaradakar]

It's a very interesting idea.

Honestly I think design without keeping beginners in mind is a trap.  The best games in my opinion are ones that are easy to learn but hard to master.

So I think we should always evaluate how easy it is for new players to pick up, designing a game and passing off complexity as "it's an advance mode" can be bad.

Thoughts off the top of my head on this idea:

-Decouples the group community element of the store a bit (no longer selling smithore to the store to produce mules).

-Forces you to preplan how many mules you will need turn to turn (assuming no one sells to the store or someone is hording).  I can see this being killer on new players.

[Karawane]

I would like to bring this topic back on the agenda. I really think that introducing MULEs as commodities is an advanced feature that would keep the spirit of the game, but add a whole new dimension of interaction and fun.

In a former post, I pointed to the MULE-clone "Subtrade" that has realized the basic concept. I don't expect this to be the best way of implementing it. Actually, it was a very slack implementation (but still adding some fun). I see a lot of potential in adding this element of trade, particularly for the first half of the game.

What is your opinion?