What if, we like to compete online, from the same IP?

[ratata]

Look, guysn'gals!
I was raised with this game. Of course I introduced it to my family when it evolved to 'planetMULE'. However, we all got the same IP, from outside seen. In here, in the house network, we all play on diff putors. But the firewall and router (same unit as the modem) makes us all look we are the same person eventhough we got several internal IP's. Since 1.23, all our efforts are worth nada since we are all in the same network. This makes me and my son go crazy since we want to kinda raise our scores eventhough we share the same IP. What's the solution? Is there any? Should we play on different times?  

[Pescado]

If one of you is hosting, and the other person connects from "inside" your network, the game will probably see you with a different IP, the internal IP addresses used in your network. I do not think you will be able to both play an externally hosted game with this setup unless one of you uses a VPN/proxy to achieve a different IP.

And honestly, everyone should at least cultivate such a thing. It seems increasingly the case that your natural IP address can become politically inconvenient, and land you smack in the middle of some pesky Internet censorship. Like any true Internetizen, you should treat such an occurrence as damage and reroute around it!

I, for one, never post or do anything from my actual IP anymore. It's so inconvenient.

[Big Head Zach]

If one of you is hosting, and the other person connects from "inside" your network, the game will probably see you with a different IP, the internal IP addresses used in your network. I do not think you will be able to both play an externally hosted game with this setup unless one of you uses a VPN/proxy to achieve a different IP.

And honestly, everyone should at least cultivate such a thing. It seems increasingly the case that your natural IP address can become politically inconvenient, and land you smack in the middle of some pesky Internet censorship. Like any true Internetizen, you should treat such an occurrence as damage and reroute around it!

I, for one, never post or do anything from my actual IP anymore. It's so inconvenient.

How's the weather down there in the South Pacific?

[Keybounce]

You cannot connect to another machine inside the local lan. I tested this recently, with "Keybounce" and "Keybounce2". Both could connect to the game lobby, but when "Keybounce" hosted, "Keybounce2" could not connect.

Log for Keybounce's computer did show connection attempts from the local lan address, but nothing actually connected.

Keybounce was on a mac; keybounce2 on microsoft windows xp.

[mikman]

I was able to play a local lan game with two computers:

1) Both start in play local mode.
2) computer 1 starts the game.
3) computer 2 joins computer 1's IP address (in my case: 192.168.1.XXX)

Note: the games don't show up in the lobby's game list.
Note2: obviously this is getting away from the OP's problem but just wanted to share that you can play a local game only with multiple computers networked together.

I just had trouble with MULE on my XP machine it does some very goofy stuff, slowing to a crawl then going lightning fast... it's virtually unplayable on it for some reason (by yourself or on a networked game).

[Keybounce]

I just got a training game to work with multiple local players and internet players.

The trick: The local lan players have to specify the local IP address, and connect to address, not connect to game. People from the internet did come by and watch, but did not stay to play. (The game ended after the first turn).
They will be reported as being from the same IP. One showed up as no plays, no wins; the other as one play, one win. The ranks were reported correctly in the player list on the left.

I did not try it in a tournament game, so I don't know what happens there.

[Pescado]

How's the weather down there in the South Pacific?

Haven't the slightest clue. Presumably, way hotter than anyone sane would like it to be. Glad I don't really live there.

[Intergalactic Mole]

Planet MULE wont let you play online from the same IP because you could be cheating.  You should be able to play offline though.  Alternatively, you could try playing the original game from www.atarimule.com on your LAN.

[Pescado]

Unfortunately, "playing from the same IP" is such a poor determinant of cheating, given widespread NAT usage to alleviate the deficiencies of the IPv4 address space that it is almost entirely worthless as a means of catching and foiling "cheaters". You are more likely to encounter cases like these than cases of actual cheating with purely IP-based detection, and IP-based detection is incredibly easy to defeat the way MULE works, because MULE is hosted from a user's computer rather than some kind of central gameserver, and therefore can be trivially hacked. Since the game doesn't run on any Planetmule server, it is not necessary to even HAVE a game at all! You could just transmit the fake results of a game that never actually occurred at all, devoid of any players, back to the server. Transmissions appear to all be standard HTTP anyway, so they are completely exposed to packet sniffers, and if there is even any authentication at all, the program is in Java and therefore easily disassembled and reversed. Anyone trying to cheat by actually playing faked games is doing things the hard way.

Even analyzing player behaviors doesn't really shed much light on the issue, because of the diverse ways MULE can be played. Whereas in a more typical game, one can spot a cheater "shill" by the way all pretty much all of his gameplay benefits a specific "real" player, this is not as useful in MULE, because playing in a self-interested fashion is not the only way to play the game. Some people play just to run up the colonial score and individual victory is secondary-to-irrelevant, resulting in players that engage in apparently self-destructive or anticompetitive acts.

[Intergalactic Mole]

Unfortunately, without the IP protection, it is too simple for someone to just open 2 instances of the game on the same computer or play from 2 adjacent laptops and play himself over and over until he is rank #1.  It is really just protection for the ranking system, not so much for anything else.  I understand everything you are saying, but my opinion will not change no matter how many different ways you try and justify playing from the same IP.  If we were playing an unranked game, I would care less about what IP you're playing from.

[Pescado]

Unfortunately, without the IP protection, it is too simple for someone to just open 2 instances of the game on the same computer or play from 2 adjacent laptops and play himself over and over until he is rank #1.

The flaw in this plan is that you can do this ANYWAY, due to the present weaknesses in the entire system. I suppose if I really cared, I could do a proof of concept by making two users and cheating my way to #1 in a night, but I'd rather not make this into an object demonstration. The fact of the matter is that if you REALLY wanna cheat your way to #1, this is the slow-boat way of doing things. I would just discard the game client entirely and create a bot that spews forth fictitious games.

It is really just protection for the ranking system, not so much for anything else.

Oh, I understand that. Without the ranking system, nothing you do matters anyway, and the game doesn't really care that much other than to notify everyone that someone has the same IP.