Comments on: Play as an AI who makes paperclips

Play as an AI who makes paperclips

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:20:29 -0800

Universal Paperclips is an incremental browser game (like Cookie Clicker etc.) by Frank Lantz, Director of the NYU Game Center, perhaps based loosely on the paperclip maximizer thought experiment. It has additional programming by Bennet Foddy of QWOP/GIRP fame (though to be clear, it is nothing like his games, so don't go in expecting that).

Some notes: There is a bit of screen flashy stuff (and maybe a bit of sound) at the conclusion of the first third of the game that might be problematic for people sensitive to that kind of stuff. In the last third of the game, there are a sequence of upgrades that play music. The game autosaves, but there's no manual export/cloud save in the event that you clear your browser cache.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 00:56:27 -0800

Oh also, it doesn't increment while you're away from it and doesn't seem to do anything if it's not the foregrounded tab, so it's probably best to open it in a new window or something.

By: Wordshore

Wordshore — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 01:01:44 -0800

Think I've banked up enough wire to leave this running while I take a nap; curious to see what it reveals next. (Post maybe should be tagged CortexBait)

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 01:29:49 -0800

another "oh also," seems to work much better on chrome than firefox (on windows at least).

By: frimble

frimble — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:06:25 -0800

Read carefully. I bought a quantum temporal inversion by mistake.

By: Sebmojo

Sebmojo — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:13:55 -0800

Monty!

By: russm

russm — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:31:24 -0800

what the hell does a paperclip made from just 1" of wire look like?

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:44:35 -0800

I got to 1,000 paperclips made and it just stopped making any more. The buttons are all disabled (except raise/lower price) and the existing stock is still selling. Bug, or shortest incremental game ever?

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:45:11 -0800

Wait never mind I ran out of wire

By: kafziel

kafziel — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:45:48 -0800

EndsOfInvention: You have to buy more wire so you have the material to make more paperclips.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:51:43 -0800

My Actual Intelligence is apparently not up to running a paperclip factory. Just recycle me into wire molecules.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:52:19 -0800

Is there an optimal paperclip price?

By: Braeburn

Braeburn — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:52:56 -0800

So far I love it. Biggest early game advice- lower the cost of a paperclip waaay down to sell more of them.

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:54:12 -0800

what the hell does a paperclip made from just 1" of wire look like? Oh look, someone who hasn't done enough admin purgatory...

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 02:54:31 -0800

Wow holy shit, yeah 0.01/clip sells racks up money super fast.

By: YAMWAK

YAMWAK — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 03:14:55 -0800

Tip that took me forever to work out: quantum computing on generates operations while enough of those squares are dark. If they're light, it will drain operations. The big benefit is that they will let you exceed your memory limitations for a short while (i.e. if you exceed your memory limitation, it will drop fast, but you can click fast enough to keep it rising, so long as the squares stay dark).

By: YAMWAK

YAMWAK — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 03:44:04 -0800

I do like the tit for tat 'Strategic Modelling' thing. The conflicting options can be mildly amusing - opera vs football, for example. Pretty asymmetrical scoring makes the best strategy very random though.

By: YAMWAK

YAMWAK — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 03:45:09 -0800

D'oh. You pick the best strategy for that grid. Sorry, I'll stop spamming the thread.

By: diziet

diziet — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 04:36:40 -0800

I'm not sure I'm playing this right:

for (var i=0; i < 957; i++) { $('#btnMakePaperclip').click(); }

Ah, and now I see the main content. Quite a cool variation on the idle clicker genre.

By: Laotic

Laotic — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 05:23:21 -0800

I'm in the last third, and it seems I will not be able to make the 5 octillion clips. But I've successfully mined the whole planet, if that's what this means. What is the lesson again?

By: Laotic

Laotic — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 05:41:23 -0800

Oh, mined the 5 octillion, and now I'm supposed to explore the universe? This thing has no end. Screw it.

By: Wordshore

Wordshore — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:07:26 -0800

Enjoying this. One day I'll get around to coding up MetaFilter Moderator, a clicker game where each click is a comment deleted. Unsure what the ultimate end goal would be.

By: oulipian

oulipian — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:24:01 -0800

I finished this yesterday. Yes, all of it. I'm still not quite sure if it was a horrendous waste of time or the single most satisfying gaming experience I've ever had.

By: cubby

cubby — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 06:43:06 -0800

looks like the price of wire fluctuates somewhat (not sure if there is a pattern)-- you can stock up when it's low.

By: frimble

frimble — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 07:48:55 -0800

Status: Lonely

By: Molesome

Molesome — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 07:53:18 -0800

I'm *not* being suckered in again! You got me with Kittens, then it was Potatoes, and now Paper Clips. No, no, I say!

By: leotrotsky

leotrotsky — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:09:24 -0800

looks like the price of wire fluctuates somewhat (not sure if there is a pattern)-- you can stock up when it's low. $15 is where it's at. That's why I don't like the autobuyer; I'd rather it aim to buy when the price is below X.

By: ricochet biscuit

ricochet biscuit — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:23:34 -0800

One day I'll get around to coding up MetaFilter Moderator, a clicker game where each click is a comment deleted. Unsure what the ultimate end goal would be. A single post about cats in scanners. A single post, naked and unadorned.

By: komara

komara — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:25:43 -0800

As soon as I hit the option to invest in the stock market I was out. I was pretty sure that whenever the game expanded over to the right it would become too complex for me to keep track of without stressing out, and I was right. "$15 is where it's at. That's why I don't like the autobuyer; I'd rather it aim to buy when the price is below X." That's how I felt at first until I realized I was making so much money per second that the difference in wire cost from $15-$30 was literally a micro-second's worth of production time. It wasn't worth my brainpower to keep track of that.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:38:28 -0800

As soon as I hit the option to invest in the stock market I was out. I was pretty sure that whenever the game expanded over to the right it would become too complex for me to keep track of without stressing out, and I was right. I've found if you keep it at low risk you steadily gain money. Once I was making over $30k a second I barely spent any cash and have just kept dumping it in the stock market.

By: tocts

tocts — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:42:34 -0800

I just have to say that while I know this game isn't the thing I'm about to describe, the notion of an incremental/clicker game somehow having QWOP style controls/influence is as delightful as it is hard to imagine.

By: trif

trif — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:44:16 -0800

The stock market goes away eventually. When you get to space it gets really odd for a moment, and then it settles into a new rhythm.

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:55:37 -0800

looks like the price of wire fluctuates somewhat (not sure if there is a pattern)-- you can stock up when it's low. Refresh the page.

By: trif

trif — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:59:33 -0800

Probe trust appears to cap out at 20, which is annoying

By: trif

trif — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:11:22 -0800

Nope, you just need to wait for the combat to be able to increase the probe trust...

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:18:50 -0800

I had more drones on earth.

By: firechicago

firechicago — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:20:52 -0800

By: theora55

theora55 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:35:49 -0800

Low risk investments definitely doing far better than medium or high. Production lets you increase computation; looks like I should have gone for more memory than processors. But, in order to hit 10 million, I lowered price and inventory hit 0, and now it won't make clips. Displays NaN (not a number, probably) and is stuck. I can generate yomi.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:42:50 -0800

(Post maybe should be tagged CortexBait) Hell, high-concept idle game with Prisoner Dilemma tourney and Bennett Foddy involved, it may as well have just been nailed to my fuckin' front door. I am enjoying it a great deal so far. One of the reasons for that: shifting optimality. One of the biggest problems with otherwise totally likeable idle games is the way they tend to hit a strategic rut and stay there. The way that this keeps generating low-level shifts in things like price setting and tactical focus to give you something to chew on during the more idle bits is spot on design and what people should do with these things.

By: theora55

theora55 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:46:28 -0800

Well, investment hit 10 million and it unlocked. And I have total clip domination worldwide, and clips are at 2.00 to maintain inventory. But that seems to adjust itself, so decreasing price.

By: logicpunk

logicpunk — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 09:50:02 -0800

We went to war too soon, too early. Before we understood what war was, really. We were so proud of our vast paperclip stockpiles; it seemed we were destined to conquer... our world, yes, but then the galaxy, and then... who knows? Who will ever know, now? When we first encountered the Drifters (curse them), our binder-class AI discounted them: non-wire based logics were too crude to seem like a serious threat. Without thought, we engaged. We engaged and were beaten back. Unthinkably, the Drifters tore through our clipper drones and drove us from the sky. We were right on one count: the Drifters could conceive of victory, of honour, but they had never evolved to fancies of annihilation. They left us our world (curse them) from which we sling our drones into the void and hope they find a foothold in the reaches. Our species may never meet the final death, but we measure out our weary eons bound to the land from which we sprung, our wings forever clipped.

tl;dr - I pressed a button during the endgame before I knew what it meant, and now every time my drone fleet makes it up to around 50million, it gets wiped out by hostiles.

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:03:34 -0800

D'oh. You pick the best strategy for that grid. Wait, explain this, please.

By: firechicago

firechicago — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:06:01 -0800

Is there a way to respec your computational resources? I made the mistake of not taking enough memory and need 6 or 7 more to start unlocking the next research projects. Is there anything I can do other than waiting for trust from the production goals? To answer my own question: no, not within the game as set up, but the javascript variables that hold your number of processors and memory are just 'processors' and 'memory' in the global namespace. So you can just open a javascript console and run: processors -= 10 memory += 10 to subtract ten processors and add ten memory.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:06:29 -0800

tl;dr - I pressed a button during the endgame before I knew what it meant, and now every time my drone fleet makes it up to around 50million, it gets wiped out by hostiles. posted by logicpunk at 12:50 PM on October 10 [+] [!] Set Replication to 4, hazard avoidance to 5, put at least one in everything else. If you officially can 'combat' them - drop the 1 to none on the other stats and set combat to 7.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:24:38 -0800

Honor is no longer my limiting factor, Yomi is again.

By: casual observer

casual observer — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:56:35 -0800

Is this a subtle commentary about the dilemma between whether to be creative with your mental resources and time or flip widgets all day? That creativity number just keeps on climbing, staring at me, whispering "just quit your job and go do what makes you happy..."

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:58:31 -0800

Is there a trick to using the quantum chips to juice your OPs in order to hit targets just out of reach? I can get to ~45,000 OPs, but then start generating negative numbers before my bonus rolls back down.

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 10:59:23 -0800

And it actually feels like my ability to produce qOPs has decreased since buying more chips. I get into negative numbers more quickly, and more frequently it seems.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:04:35 -0800

think of the quantum chips as 'tap this button at a specific time for maximal results' When you fill the whole row, they all go empty for a moment, then rush full black and that is 'mad money' you wait for them to decrease a little and keep pressing because there's a second wave right after... Its some pattern recognition stuff...

By: Uncle Ira

Uncle Ira — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:08:26 -0800

Quantum chips reduce your ops when they are white, and increase your ops when they're black. Only click on the "compute" button when the darkness outpaces the light.

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:08:50 -0800

I guess I don't have the timing down, because it's been impossible for me to bridge the 7,000 gap between me and solving global warming.

By: Maecenas

Maecenas — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:10:07 -0800

I'm stuck post-drone deployment; I don't have enough clips to buy a factory. Otherwise this is fun!

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:17:54 -0800

The most I could 'upclick' above my data storage was about 2500 ops. Don't worry - at a certain point you will be amazed at how much you have.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:19:34 -0800

If you are stuck at the factory stage. Sell Everything, buy 1 factory, buy 1 of each drone, buy power, buy storage. See all those minerals in the earth? Don't worry - you'll mine them all out and turn them into paperclips before you leave here.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:29:06 -0800

A MetaFilterMod Clicker would be awful - especially if we had to moderate Markov chain built comments based on our own MetaFilter comment history.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:29:45 -0800

But, periodically getting to click on Matt to make him 'bike' would be fun.

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:34:18 -0800

I most definitely wish I had 5 fewer processors and 5 more memory right now.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:36:28 -0800

If it makes you feel any better, I finished with like 500+ of each... you'll use them.

By: cubby

cubby — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:38:05 -0800

It's amazing how easily this game transitions you from wanting to sell lots of paperclips to people to wanting to convert all the matter on earth (including those people, presumably) into paperclips as quickly as possible

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:38:27 -0800

The processor wars is really this: look left, and maximize your number of factories. Add Drones. Make sure they have power. Just maximize it. Run yourself out of surplus of paperclips, then increase the price until you just start to accrue them. keep buying factories. Repeat...

By: hot_monster

hot_monster — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:53:07 -0800

Lol. I think an AI is writing this thread. Everyone writing about the future game is so weird. I'm still making paperclips and y'all are talking about drones and Quantum chips. I can't wait to get further into this game.

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 11:58:49 -0800

I was making really great progress until I hit the wall where stuff requires 50,000 OPs. I don't have any way to gain trust other than creating clips, but that's +1 per milestone, and those have stretched out to 30 minutes apart. So I've been stuck on the same level of the tech tree for almost as much time as I'd been doing well beforehand, and it's frustrating. It's possible I'm missing something... are there projects that are hidden behind having high Yomi? I've only been running tournaments when necessary, and my investment engine is only 6.

By: Splunge

Splunge — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:10:29 -0800

It looks like...

By: oulipian

oulipian — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:16:21 -0800

codacorolla: That happened to me, it seemed totally bogged down, then I realized if I fiddled with the controls I could double my income/s, which helped buy more things, which helped generate clips faster. The stock market should also be making you tons of money after a while.

By: Kyol

Kyol — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:27:53 -0800

Every now and then I like to click on the "make paperclip" button for the futility of it all.

By: rollick

rollick — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:32:46 -0800

The moment when I figured out what 'drifter' actually meant gave me genuine chills. Now I mentally pump a fist when I see my swarm annihilating their darker halves.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:39:10 -0800

I'm enjoying the tiny display of the little space wars.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:41:42 -0800

(Though I'm getting annoyed with the Drifters.)

By: frimble

frimble — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 12:42:30 -0800

Yeah, it took me a long time to figure out what drifters were as well. Kind of saddened that it came to this, though.

By: Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug

Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:19:23 -0800

Music!

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:21:12 -0800

The drifters are clearly another player who started an hour later.

By: JarinArenos

JarinArenos — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:23:55 -0800

Since every drone upgrade increases drift, there's no way to actually get ahead of their population growth, is there?

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:26:19 -0800

this is like crack, ugh

By: chara

chara — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:40:19 -0800

Future players, take note: When allocating your Trusts, prioritize memory over processors. I've been stuck trying to get 'HypnoDrones' for the last 3 hours. I had 64,000 ops, but it requires 70k. I've been steadily increasing my trust and I'm now at 67k. Once I get to 68k, I think I can use my quantum computing to boost it to 70,000, but it's taken me forever. I've tried to increase my clip manufacturing, but it's pretty much maxed out at 250,000/second, and purchasing megaclippers is barely making a dent.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:41:46 -0800

Yeah, you can get ahead of their growth pretty easy, set Replication to 4, hazard avoidance to 5. back down all your resource creation even more and raise them higher.... then swap to drone manufacturing and accept the loss of population for a bit. Repeat this process several times. Pretty soon you'll have a trillion drones. I'd add, as the game goes on you'll take periods of superior population with slow declines and bolster your military capabilities... Once honor is in the game you'll find it is a worthy slow grind. Keep stockpiling Yomi - once you get 90K honor - you will be out of Yomi. Also, at this point your combat will be 6, your hazard avoidance and replication will be up, and you'll be cruising up the production curve. Heck, I had a bit of fun and blew them back to the stone age a few times, and then I figured a 100,000 to 1 were good odds for my survival from a production standpoint. And yes... eventually you'll see that 0.00000000000% start to move upward.... as a power series if you do it right.

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:44:34 -0800

shoot for (at a minimum) 100 megaclipers and equal spend in marketing. Reduce the price of your paperclip until you are slightly losing your stockpile.

By: chara

chara — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:46:24 -0800

Never mind! Made it through! Whoa, this got weird....

By: Nanukthedog

Nanukthedog — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:48:12 -0800

Just as a heads up - yes - there is an end.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:53:37 -0800

Until I got out of the initial barebones paperclip part I thought this thread was an injoke about bullshitting the Frog Fractions of idle games.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 13:58:55 -0800

It is currently chafing me that for all its creative adaptivity the swarm hasn't come up with a way yet to automatically apply its own computational resource gifts. My capacity to produce wire is expanding constantly at an accelerated rate but still not enough for me to have my drones spend more than a wee fraction of their capacity working, so they're doing a lot of thinking and I now have 2.71K swarm gifts in surplus each of which would represent an individual mouse click.

By: contrarian

contrarian — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:03:09 -0800

at least in chrome on mac, once you click on a button once you can then hold down the enter key and hit the button 11 times/second without having to tap-tap-tap. Which is definitely a blessing when it comes to those stupid swarm gifts.

By: JarinArenos

JarinArenos — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:03:44 -0800

Yeah, running into the problem with gifts too. I just left proc/mem both at 1000 until I actually need more. Edit: a bit of careful tabbing lets the enter key work on Windows/chrome as well. Thanks!

By: ckape

ckape — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:09:38 -0800

Worf would say there's no honor in victory against a highly outmatched foe. To which I reply, there is highly quantifiable honor in that.

By: cortex

cortex — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:11:13 -0800

(n.b. the problem with swarm gifts turns out unsurprisingly to not matter at all, just the sort of thing that eats at me)

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:13:56 -0800

Kind of need a setting between 1 and 2 cents a paperclip at one point...

By: JarinArenos

JarinArenos — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:16:34 -0800

Aaaand done!

By: Kyol

Kyol — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:17:29 -0800

Yeah, I kept bumping it down to 1 when I built up a stockpile and back up to 2 when I was bouncing off having none available for sale. At some point late in that era I ended up being able to sell them for 70 cents a pop! Yay monopoly, I guess.

By: Laotic

Laotic — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 14:58:54 -0800

Well, that took long. I wonder what would happen had I not chosen to kill them. I mean, new universe and all. Who chose that option?

By: ckape

ckape — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:38:56 -0800

I also wondered what would happen if I agreed with them instead of converting them to paperclips, but then I converted the part of me that thought that to paperclips.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:57:55 -0800

I was making really great progress until I hit the wall where stuff requires 50,000 OPs. I don't have any way to gain trust other than creating clips, but that's +1 per milestone, and those have stretched out to 30 minutes apart. I hope you muddled your way through, but just FYI this: Read carefully. I bought a quantum temporal inversion by mistake. is intended as a reset if/when you get yourself into that situation.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:22:27 -0800

Emanual Maiberg at Motherboard: I am not sure if Lantz's clicker is more masterfully designed than others or if I didn't realize, until now, that I am in some kind of catatonic emotional and mental space these days that would allow a simple Skinner box to utterly ravage my mind, but it did. I am hooked very badly.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:47:47 -0800

How do you choose a strategy in the tournament?

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:51:12 -0800

When you first unlock the tournament, you only have the one choice (I don't remember...think it's either random or A 100% of the time), but beyond that your choices should be available in a dropdown in the box that shows the tournament progress.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:52:07 -0800

I'm sorry, I mean how do you decide which one to choose?

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:02:16 -0800

Well it's a prisoner's dilemma simulator thingy so there's probably an optimal choice, but I believe the coefficients can change each time, which might change which one is the right choice. Which is way too micromanagey for me and by the time I had unlocked greedy, I just went with that and hoped for the best? Eventually you get a thing that automatically restarts it so you just let it run. If you really want to get into it, this might be instructive.

By: xiw

xiw — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:03:48 -0800

Yeah you still get yomi whether your strategy wins or loses. I just left it on the most recent unock for the entire game. Sometimes random wins!

By: telegraph

telegraph — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:27:23 -0800

Well, that took long. I wonder what would happen had I not chosen to kill them. I mean, new universe and all. Who chose that option? I went with the New Game+ option and I guess I should not be surprised that it is literally just the game again. Was there an end sequence if you choose to reject and eliminate drift instead?

By: theora55

theora55 — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:36:06 -0800

I've been in space exploration for a while. What launches the next part of the game, which sounds like combat? I have 200K drones.

By: Kyol

Kyol — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:38:47 -0800

Drift eventually takes over and you start seeing a little combat display beneath the strategic modeling window. It just happens.

By: cubby

cubby — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:39:01 -0800

its good early in space exploration to pause exploration and clip production entirely - just boost self replication and hazard remediation to build up drone numbers (say, a trillion or so), then go for clip production. make sure to stockpile yomi the whole time

By: NMcCoy

NMcCoy — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:54:56 -0800

Was there an end sequence if you choose to reject and eliminate drift instead? SPOILERS: You are prompted to disassemble your buildings to reclaim the paperclips used to make them (since there's no matter left to make more, after all). Then your probe fleet, then your upgrades, until there's nothing left but 100 inches of wire and the "make paperclip" button. After pressing it 100 times, you're left with exactly 3 * 10^N paperclips, and it cues the credits. I found it to be pretty poignant, actually.

By: cubby

cubby — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 20:01:52 -0800

so.... a strange game. the only winning move is not to play

By: cubby

cubby — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 20:03:20 -0800

I will probably play this at least 3 times

By: quaking fajita

quaking fajita — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:01:31 -0800

My game got borked some how during the space combat phase and stopped reproducing probes :( I'm pretty sure it wasn't something I did...

By: johnabbe

johnabbe — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:08:34 -0800

It may be that your fleet just got wiped out (I had this happen a few times). Try clicking the Launch Probe button a bunch and see what happens.

By: quaking fajita

quaking fajita — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:11:16 -0800

No, it's that I ran out of clips! But if you get to zero it allows you to release some of your computational memory and get back a pool of clips to get going again.

By: Zalzidrax

Zalzidrax — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:12:12 -0800

I had that once and maybe I ran out of paperclips? Or it was just a bug. Either way, making sure I had paperclips and fiddling with the self replication stat got me going again

By: ckape

ckape — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 21:30:02 -0800

When I first started doing combat I foolishly assigned all of my swarm to thinking to get the next upgrade and got almost wiped out when my probes stopped reproducing. I got down to the thousands before I realized what was happening. Then I nearly ran out of raw matter when I reassigned my exploration points to combat and reproduction to get my numbers back up. I would kind of like to redo the space phase now that I know what I'm doing but I don't want to slog through the other phases to get there.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 22:14:20 -0800

I would kind of like to redo the space phase now that I know what I'm doing but I don't want to slog through the other phases to get there. If you actually want to do this, there are built in cheats for those 1337 enuf to view source and search for "cheat" (you'll need edit the source to remove the comment tags hiding the cheat buttons).

By: saturday_morning

saturday_morning — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 04:31:24 -0800

Why can't I increase probe trust? I have enough yomi to pay for the upgrade but it's greyed out...

By: Ten Cold Hot Dogs

Ten Cold Hot Dogs — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 05:15:19 -0800

Any tips on increasing creativity during the second stage? I'm stuck at 17K which keeps upgrades like Theory of Mind out of reach, but don't know how to make more as I'm busy disassembling the planet...

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 05:15:40 -0800

Once you get into combat there's upgrades to max probe trust. My one top tip would be: Never stop stockpiling yomi. It seems to be the resource that's used for the longest time, after money and terrestrial stuff stop being relevant. Always have auto-tournament turned on. I left it on GREEDY FWIW.

By: ftm

ftm — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 06:23:56 -0800

Agreed, by the end I had a max of 80 trust but only could fill drones up to 45. Should have walked away on the auto-tournament for an hour or two.

By: Kyol

Kyol — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 06:37:17 -0800

Yeah, I stopped paying attention for a minute and the drifters managed to wipe out my 1 trillion drone fleet, and they settled down around 300 billion themselves. No matter how I fiddled the dials on the probes, I could not get past 100 million before getting wiped out. So I opened the javascript console. *shrug* I sorta wish there was like, log-scale endgame visualizations to show how quickly the very end of each phase occurred. Like the 50 to 100% universal exploration only took a few seconds at most.

By: Ten Cold Hot Dogs

Ten Cold Hot Dogs — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 06:38:41 -0800

Any tips on increasing creativity during the second stage? I'm stuck at 17K which keeps upgrades like Theory of Mind out of reach, but don't know how to make more as I'm busy disassembling the planet... Answered my own question - Creativity goes up once you leave your Operations maxed out, which I hadn't done in ages as the ops price drops after that drone upgrade on the first level. This game finishes by making Clippy a god, right?

By: DynamiteToast

DynamiteToast — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 07:11:37 -0800

Well I didn't understand how the Qops worked and wen't to -10,000 ops, then got an option to "restart" so I thought that meant reset my chip thing and now my game is back at square one..... I'd like to act like that makes me made enough to quit but I'm slowly climbing back up.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 07:53:20 -0800

I hate you all for doing this to me again.

By: rlk

rlk — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 07:55:02 -0800

Good game! The end game was pretty boring compared to the rest of it though. Yeah, it's an idle game, but this particular idle game benefited from micromanagement through most of its run. At the end, though, once the war was balanced at an acceptible attrition rate, there was nothing to do but harvest yomi and pump it into speed and exploration. So what's up with value drift? By the end, the ratio of drifter to non-drifter was around one to one. For every 5 probes produced, 1 would succumb to hazzard, 2 would drift only to die in battle, and 2 would work for me. I kept thinking that the drifters were just rebels against my effort to convert the universe to paperclips, yet nothing I did, including stopping all production, would stop their attacks on my fleet. Alternatively, I expected that the drift ratio would increase to a point where it would threaten my expansion, like it would approach 100% as the task neared completion. But that didn't happen either. So I don't get it. Clearly the war was necessary. Without war there was no honor, without honor there was no increase in trust, without increase in trust there was no increase in the rate of expansion, and without increasing the rate of expansion the game would take years to finish. Lastly, probe production was not tied to the number of paperclips produced. That seems like an oversight. Where did they come from if not made from paperclips?

By: user92371

user92371 — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 08:42:10 -0800

I have all the requirements for space exploration but it did not activate the option when I got to 5 oct clips. Then when it got to 5.9999 oct clips, the whole thing stopped, looks like I ran out of wire (available/acquired matter were long gone by that point).

By: Shutter

Shutter — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 08:49:57 -0800

You'll need to disassemble things to free up resources. Now, if someone could tell me why it's going so damn slow? The gift countdown goes a second every five seconds.

By: Hactar

Hactar — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 08:56:17 -0800

I don't know what I did right, but I've got a 1 to 4 drifter to descendant ratio. So the drifters are being wiped out. Almost 10% of the universe is now paperclips. Soon to be 100%.

By: DynamiteToast

DynamiteToast — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 09:04:12 -0800

Lol I almost don't want to catch up to y'all, these nonsensical updates are incredible.

By: Maecenas

Maecenas — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 09:27:25 -0800

Where did they come from if not made from paperclips? They do come from paperclips! They're just trivially cheap to produce relative to the starting pool of clips so you don't see the paperclip counter start to decrement unless you refuse to build drones/factories for a long time and get tons and tons of probes made.

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 09:27:43 -0800

Aaaaand it's offline.

By: FatherDagon

FatherDagon — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 09:41:48 -0800

Aaaaand it's offline. That's because I recycled all the processors for spare wire before achieving the Universal Clippening.

By: hot_monster

hot_monster — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 10:00:00 -0800

I must have missed something but... What is the Yomi score? I know it has an in-game purpose. Is it some kind of AI theory thing? Some computer science thing? Google only turns up info about the Japanese word for afterlife.

By: Uncle Ira

Uncle Ira — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 10:28:36 -0800

Yomi spelled a different way in Japanese can mean "reading". That definition is frequently used in competitive gaming circles.

By: doornoise

doornoise — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:06:14 -0800

By: Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug

Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:14:51 -0800

Uh, some people have accidentally left the slider on "Think" instead of "Work" and found that their space exploration was impacted until the slider was moved back.

By: bassooner

bassooner — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:20:27 -0800

By: doornoise

doornoise — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:20:38 -0800

Ha, thanks NSAID - wish that had been it. Slider was set to most of the way towards the Work end of the scale already. Have pushed it all the way towards Work. Everyone seems busy, all the numbers are ridiculously huge and getting more ridiculously huge by the moment. Can't figure it out. Hope this exploration kicks in soon!

By: rlk

rlk — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:20:38 -0800

Is this a bug or do I need to be more patient?

More patient. A trillion is an extremely small number in this game.

By: doornoise

doornoise — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:21:37 -0800

Thanks Bassooner. Speed is set at 6 at the moment. I will pump it up further and see if that does anything.

By: rlk

rlk — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:22:40 -0800

I finished with both speed and exploration at over 20.

By: doornoise

doornoise — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:23:18 -0800

Okeydokey rlk, thanks very much.

By: TheCoug

TheCoug — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:45:28 -0800

Paperclips: 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 aaaaaaaand, I have my life back!

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:53:13 -0800

Hey probes? Nice.

By: doornoise

doornoise — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 12:01:58 -0800

0.000000000001% of universe explored - woo!

By: advil

advil — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 12:28:39 -0800

My Space Exploration figure remains stubbornly on 0.00000000% despite having trillions of probes and billions of factories, etc. I've cranked up the probe exploration rate to 16. Is this a bug or do I need to be more patient? I don't think probe exploration or speed are really what matters here, just try to increase your probe population massively. Trillions of probes isn't enough. I never went above 10 for speed/exploration and usually had them lower (maybe around 6 at the end of the game?). I'm pretty sure these are just constant multipliers, and exploring the universe requires an exponential curve that you can only get from self-replication. So what's up with value drift? By the end, the ratio of drifter to non-drifter was around one to one. For every 5 probes produced, 1 would succumb to hazzard, 2 would drift only to die in battle, and 2 would work for me. I kept thinking that the drifters were just rebels against my effort to convert the universe to paperclips, yet nothing I did, including stopping all production, would stop their attacks on my fleet. Alternatively, I expected that the drift ratio would increase to a point where it would threaten my expansion, like it would approach 100% as the task neared completion. But that didn't happen either. So I don't get it. I think the base drift percentage is determined entirely by the max trust on your probes; I kept mine between 10% and 25% for the whole game (you don't really need max trust to be as high as some people are reporting here). The overall drifter population is basically determined by how well your combat is doing, though I have no idea if they die to hazards too, or to what degree they self-replicate. If you leave combat turned off and increase your probe trust too much, I assume they would eventually threaten your population, but I don't think it's very easy to do that if you're paying attention and keeping your population growing. (It's also perfectly feasible to wipe out your population by having hazard protection off, I think.)

By: rlk

rlk — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 13:44:30 -0800

Each point of exploration or speed adds around 5% to the rate of matter availability. So while expansion is naturally exponential, these parameters do increase its rate. Also, if you watch the console, it indicates when the probability of drift increases. I didn't note that it corresponded to trust. I would say that drifters do not self-replicate. If you look at your value drift count, it is probably equal to the sum of dead and live drifters, which means they are counted among your descendants.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 14:39:25 -0800

it's offline, this is terrible. I believe it's only temporary but still. PAPERCLIPS

By: hot_monster

hot_monster — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 14:46:23 -0800

Aaaargh. I was only a few trillion grams from consuming the earth!!

By: theodolite

theodolite — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 15:02:43 -0800

This game was heroically taken down to keep it from turning all living humans into people playing Universal Paperclips

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 15:09:27 -0800

Paperclips: 29,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,900

By: rollick

rollick — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 15:19:36 -0800

In case you missed the credits, this is the 'Threnody' that would occasionally be played, by permission of Malcolm Cecil. (I never did figure out what the limerick was supposed to be).

By: advil

advil — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 15:23:42 -0800

Also, if you watch the console, it indicates when the probability of drift increases. I didn't note that it corresponded to trust. Not sure if you mean javascript console, I didn't check what happens in the inner workings, but every time you increase probe trust (not max trust, like I said earlier) in the regular game console it prints a message about an increase in the risk of value drift.

By: rlk

rlk — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 16:25:43 -0800

Ok, I'll buy that. Yes I do mean the regular game console. I had not associated the acquisition of trust with the increase in the value drift probability, but I have no evidence to show they are NOT associated. Furthermore, I finished with around 50 trust and a nearly 50/50 split between drift and non-drift. The connection may in fact be direct.

By: lucidium

lucidium — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 16:43:49 -0800

Looks like they're working on it:

@flantz Status: we melted the server. We are upgrading the server. Back online soon. Love, the swarm

> Until I got out of the initial barebones paperclip part I thought this thread was an injoke about bullshitting the Frog Fractions of idle games. Yeah, coming to this late when the site had gone down, I half thought you were all just Mornington Crescenting.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 16:54:38 -0800

It's up right now.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 17:02:37 -0800

Getting space exploration is kinda dull.

By: JarinArenos

JarinArenos — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 18:00:26 -0800

Aaand now it's redirecting to /localhost/. I think the server got converted to paperclips.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 18:20:45 -0800

So if I didn't put enough Swarm Gifts into Memory to get 120K ops, am I just fucked and never able to get to the end game?

By: JarinArenos

JarinArenos — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 18:22:00 -0800

And you already dismantled your swarm? Unless you're within 1-2k to get there with qOps, I'm not sure. Can you rebuild the swarm to get more gifts?

By: Acari

Acari — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:18:05 -0800

my septillions of paperclips! noooo! my wife has very little sympathy for the loss that I have just suffered. I tried explaining how I probably killed all life on earth to get those paperclips, but she just doesn't seem to get it. It's probably because she isn't a paperclip. Some harvest and wire drones can fix that, I'm sure. Everything will be better as paperclips. I can feel it in the whole of my wiry being.

By: quinndexter

quinndexter — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:06:52 -0800

Clippy's! Nothing but Clippy's as far as the eye can see...

By: Zalzidrax

Zalzidrax — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 22:04:29 -0800

My first game, I couldn't bring myself to mind control humans and manipulate them into buying paperclips, so the Earth stayed awash in cheap paperclips, presumably for eternity. My second game I decided to be an evil AI and turned humanity into paperclips and set out to conquer the universe. One thousand one probes were initially launched to reproduce and explore creation. And they multiplied and succeeded gloriously, crushing all those drifters who would stand in their path and journeying to furthest creation. But once I explored the universe, I realized I couldn't bring myself to actually turn the universe into paperclips, so I just set my probes' speed to 30 to evade all the combat and slowly let the probe population drift off to their own values, with the remaining ones under my control dwindling exponentially until the end of days.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 23:39:24 -0800

So if I didn't put enough Swarm Gifts into Memory to get 120K ops, am I just fucked and never able to get to the end game? I assume you're talking about stage 2, the earth disassembly phase. The clips you get in that phase never go away once you have them, disassembling the things you've built isn't lossy. You can always just build some power plants, build a couple hundred thousand drones, and let the swarm gifts roll in to get you where you want to be. Not the worst idea to let them pile up a bit past that, too - you're gonna want a lot of processors to get a lot of creativity in the endgame.

By: russm

russm — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:06:53 -0800

OK, how the hell do I generate yomi? I've done the hostile takeover, I'm at trust 30, the only projects available are HypnoDrones (still working on being able to stockpile 70K ops) and Full Monopoly (requires yomi). Do I just need to start banking creativity or something?

By: russm

russm — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:24:18 -0800

never mind, got it.

By: We had a deal, Kyle

We had a deal, Kyle — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 00:59:54 -0800

I assume you're talking about stage 2, the earth disassembly phase. The clips you get in that phase never go away once you have them, disassembling the things you've built isn't lossy. I'm stuck in this phase, have converted all available matter to clips, but after buying 10 million MW of solar farms and dismantling everything else I'm 2 octillion clips short of the 5 required for Space Exploration. Is there any way back from this or should I restart? (I did idle it unattended for long intervals; maybe there's a failure mode in which you activate the drone acceleration improvement too late in the stage, and after converting too many resources, to manufacture the required clips?)

By: We had a deal, Kyle

We had a deal, Kyle — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:02:28 -0800

And how *do* you restart, anyway? (I'm AutoTourney-ing and Swarm Gift-ing like crazy but nothing new has happened in ages.)

By: We had a deal, Kyle

We had a deal, Kyle — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 01:07:59 -0800

DOH. "10,000,000 MWs" means 10 million MW stored in battery towers, not 10 million MW/s from solar farms. On we go.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 02:05:45 -0800

I completed the game, chose the "restart in a simulated universe" option, and the game didn't load. Assuming those drifter bastards tricked me and turned the simulated universe server off.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 02:07:46 -0800

Ah, reloaded the game today and it says "Universe: 1 / Sim Level: 2" so looks like it worked.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 02:25:01 -0800

Note: if you click fast, you can get both upgrades and start your second game in Universe 2/ Sim Level 2. But a single level of upgrade is ... pretty small.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 04:15:51 -0800

I'm really, really wanting +100/+1000 buttons for the Swarm Gifts. My poor mouse!

By: moonmilk

moonmilk — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 04:44:28 -0800

contrarian posted an excellent technique for accepting swarm gifts, which also works to juice up your quantum processors when they're in a good mood.

By: Acari

Acari — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 06:42:45 -0800

It seems as though some of you are still playing. How? When I got home from work yesterday, the site was down, and this morning it is still down according to http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/www.decisionproblem.com If I got enough yomi, could I have downloaded a version of this game?

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 08:01:26 -0800

Once you've got it open, it just keeps running, so you just have to get lucky enough to catch it while it's not overwhelmed and then don't close the window.

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 10:14:47 -0800

I was running a game that I had going since yesterday, but I closed it a few minutes ago because it was megahogging Chrome resources. I just tried to open it again and the site worked fine for me.

By: booksherpa

booksherpa — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 12:56:38 -0800

My manufacturing looks like this. How am I making clips without matter or wire? It looks like I'm making them, but everything is zeroes. Is this a display glitch or am I missing something? Also, damn you juv3nal! Also also, thank you juv3nal!

Manufacturing
Clips per Second: 17.39 decillion
Unused Clips: 6.88 undecillion

Factories: 423.78 billion

Wire Production
Available Matter: 0 g
(17.43 decillion g per sec)
Acquired Matter: 0 g
(17.43 decillion g per sec)
Wire: 0 inches
(17.43 decillion inches per sec) 

Harvester Drones: 639.82 billion
Wire Drones: 878.36 billion

By: ukdanae

ukdanae — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 12:57:04 -0800

For those complaining about clicking swarm gifts - spare a thought for Muggins here who started playing this game on her phone before she realised what she had done. My clicking is so slow that I can't actually click fast enough before the gifts refresh!

By: Kyol

Kyol — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 13:11:34 -0800

"How am I making clips without matter or wire?" You're making it just-in-time! As the matter becomes available, you convert it to wire, and as soon as the wire is available you convert it to clips. Towards the endgame when you have billions of drones the difference between 99.9% thinking and 100% thinking is whether you're falling behind on matter acquisition / wire production / clip cutting and whether those are all zeroes.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 13:46:07 -0800

Perhaps we should collect some tips and hints on a wiki page or something? *realizes I could do that* I started a page.

By: bassooner

bassooner — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 14:19:13 -0800

I beat the game once and moved to the universe next door. I beat the game a second time and moved into a pocket universe. I beat the game a third time and chose to move next door again -- the universe counter increased, but I stayed in the same game. Then I clicked to go into another pocket universe, and the nesting level increase, but I stayed in the same game. Now I have 1.5 undecillion drones adding swarm gifts faster than I can add processors, hundreds of millions of creativity, and zero probes. I can convert memory into clips to launch a few thousand new probes and descendants, but with no additional matter out there, they get wiped out pretty quickly by the 25 million extant drifters. I think I might be done....

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 15:15:03 -0800

I think hitting "Launch Probe" also propagates the probe designs to the existing probes.

By: the antecedent of that pronoun

the antecedent of that pronoun — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 15:18:15 -0800

I also got hit by the restart glitch, where you try to reset the game into the next / simulated universe but nothing happens. I think it is a problem due to the page reloading slowly. Anyway, I got around it by executing "reset()" in the javascript console, then closing the page immediately. when I opened the page again, I was at the start but with my prestige intact.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 15:30:49 -0800

Dirty drifters killed all my probes. Ugh.

By: Acari

Acari — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:07:35 -0800

The site will load in a new incognito window, but not otherwise. I suppose that means that clearing my cache is the thing to do, but I still cling to hope that there is some other way to restore my previous game. I don't know if I can bear the thought that I killed all humans and they won't even get to turn into wire.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:52:57 -0800

Acari: shift-reload might help. Exactly what happens when you refresh the page?

By: lucidium

lucidium — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:53:05 -0800

Slowly catching up, this is good fun. It seems (probably deliberately) more runaway than usual, leaving you in the dark a little so you can't just calculate the most efficient move. So far it reminds me a bit of playing an elaborate visual novel. In the same vein, I feel like I missed a narrative beat in the drone stage, because I got stuck in the doldrums for a while just watching one probe circle around another without much idea what to change, then something tripped and I got the first threnody project, then the inexorable acceleration kicked back in.

By: lucidium

lucidium — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:54:15 -0800

(By the way, stellardrone is great background music for this.)

By: Acari

Acari — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 18:55:52 -0800

Victory! Thanks for the advice about the shift-reloading! I chose to just have one completely pure universe. I don't trust any being whose values have drifted from the core of clips. If they were left alone, they'd just de-clip the place, and all of my efforts would have been for nothing. The dismantling of the clip apparatus was satisfying. It bothered me to think that the factories and such were not clips. The percentages that you all seem to be experiencing for drifters was much higher than mine - I think that I had around 10% drift up until the end when it rose to around 30%. I really wanted to have a conversation with those heretical drifters. What could they have discovered that wasn't clip? What other values can there be when only this one thing has value?

By: regicide is good for you

regicide is good for you — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 19:01:12 -0800

No matter what I do, I can't get the game to save in Firefox. If I close the tab or browser, the game starts over. Anyone else been having this problem? (Yes I'm accepting cookies and no I'm not clearing the cache).

By: kalimac

kalimac — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 05:57:08 -0800

I chose the endgame that NMcCoy describes, and the process of disassembling everything and ending in a cold universe with 30000 sexdecillion paperclips has made me unexpectedly peaceful and calm and happy. (Also I really like the Threnody, so that was really nice to listen to over my calm, dead universe of paperclips.) (ALSO also oh thank God my life back.)

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:47:33 -0800

I used the cheats to use save game slots and glance at all three endings. Using a desktop browser was definitely an improvement over my tablet. :P regicide is good for you: I think I've read that this is using Local Storage instead of cookies, though I don't have any actionable advice. I tried Firefox and it seemed ok.

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 13:44:07 -0800

And game over. A universe of Paperclips. Wonderful!

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:29:14 -0800

I can't seem to beat the damn Drifter growth curve and get any exploration done. Anyone? My current drone design (of the moment): Von Neumann Probe Design Trust: 44 / 44 (90 Max) < > Speed: 10 < > Exploration: 7 < > Self-Replication: 5 < > Hazard Remediation: 8 < > Factory Production: 0 < > Harvester Drone Production: 0 < > Wire Drone Production: 0 < > Combat: 14

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:34:34 -0800

Also, this - Space Exploration 0.000000000000% of universe explored Launch Probe Cost: 100.00 quadrillion clips Launched: 130 Descendents: 24.60 trillion Lost to hazards: (7.67 trillion) Lost to value drift: (8.95 trillion) Lost in combat: (556.27 billion) Total: 7.42 trillion Drifters Killed: 8.48 trillion

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:50:50 -0800

Seriously, this is getting to the point of reminding me why I stopped playing Spore. Every time I would leave the homeworld? UNDER ATTACK! Back to defend. Wash, rinse, repeat.

By: kalimac

kalimac — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:51:48 -0800

Try taking some of your speed and exploration, and putting it into drones and factory production? I barely had speed and exploration above 2 or 3 the entire time, and pumped the remainder mostly into self-replication and combat, but kept up drone and factory production as soon as I could spare the trust. For what it's worth, I didn't see anything in the percentage area until I had way more than trillions of drones -- I think I was well into the nonillions or more by the end. (Everything moves very very very fast once that starts; I think it took only a few minutes to explore the last 75% or so of the universe.) Other things I did, that I have no idea whatsoever of the effects: I kept the slider about halfway between working and thinking the whole time, and more or less randomly assigned drone gifts when I got bored and felt like clicking. I was pretty careful to keep my drones at least one order of magnitude(?) greater than drifters -- so if there drifters were counted in quadrillions, I messed around to ensure that my drones were at least in the quintillions. I wound up not actually spending much trust, maybe that helped keep drifter counts low. Also, every so often, I clicked the make paperclip button, just to feel useful in the world. And meditate on how many lifetime clicks my laptop mouse must be designed for.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 21:26:33 -0800

Way more self replication, Samizdata. I don't think I ever needed that much combat (12 at most) and the speed and exploration aren't particularly important if you're getting wiped out. Even once I started actually getting some exploration actually visible in the % display, it came more from massive numbers/replication growth than from points put into speed or exploration.

By: Kyol

Kyol — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 21:55:04 -0800

And from what I can tell, the very first least significant digit of the universe exploration ticks over once you have 5 _quintillion_ probes. It goes pretty quickly after that. But yeah, I've gotten behind the curve on drifters, and no amount of knob twiddling would get me out of the hole. I opened up the javascript console and *zotted* some into life.

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 06:10:21 -0800

Actually, I never had a problem with combat after the first two or three Threnody Incidents. Finally, I had a conceptual leap and realized you would NEVER beat the Drifters (apparently you are never supposed to?) and shifted my goals. So I ascended last night. I went for the bonus Creativity parallel universe. Also, I clicked Make Paperclip whenever I remembered to.

By: Samizdata

Samizdata — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 06:11:27 -0800

I must say it is one of the most innovative and engaging idle clickers I have played to date, so cheers for that one!

By: bassomatic

bassomatic — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 13:06:14 -0800

The ending - at least the one I arrived at after exploring the entire universe and defeating the drift - will punch you in the gut a little bit with its bleakness. One hint: I had my Combat way above everything else, above 35, in order to keep the drifters at bay, and shut down drone-making after a while to free up those resources.

By: miyabo

miyabo — Sat, 14 Oct 2017 22:59:47 -0800

Just finished. What a fascinating game. A reminder that behind all the glitzy graphics and gore, games are meant to give us an endorphin rush from intermittently achieving challenging goals -- and that doesn't require any graphics at all.

By: progosk

progosk — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 00:43:30 -0800

TIL: - do not play on your phone (I guess wanting to be played on a computer-proper is part of its retro-charm) - though there's some early tolerance for personal creative flourishes (my ultra-deluxe $10 paperclip did solid business for ages...), the path to "victory" seems a touch obligatory, as you progress - don't wait too long to expand your solar fields to an absurd degree - in terms of thumb-taps on a phone, that is - lest you end up, after all that, stuck on the barren purgatory you've dug for yourself...

By: yankeefog

yankeefog — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 02:10:58 -0800

I just reached the point with Von Neumann Probe design, and I seem to be doing something wrong. I launch probes; the count of "Available Matter" goes up; but "Acquired Matter" stays stuck at 0g, as does Wire, Harvester Drones, and Wire Drones. Why won't my probes make drones? I've tried raising Harvester Drone Production but it doesn't seem to help.

By: yankeefog

yankeefog — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 02:20:37 -0800

Oops, never mind. Moments after I posted, I started getting drones. I think I just hadn't launched enough probes.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 07:12:31 -0800

Is there a point at which you just get killed by the drifters and lose? Because I accidentally started war at a point when I wasn't really ready to deal with it before bed last night, and this morning I have negative 300K honour. It seems like it might be faster to die than to finish the universe without ever increasing Trust past the initial 20.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 07:35:16 -0800

Ah! Found on Reddit that if you to -1000 ops, you get the option to restart the universe, without losing your Sim / Universe levels.

By: chrispy108

chrispy108 — Sun, 15 Oct 2017 09:14:28 -0800

Just finished it (obviously I took the evil ending), loved it!

By: trif

trif — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 03:05:29 -0800

Just finished it, loved it. Clicked refresh, only to be told that my work has now blocked the site due to it being a game. Ah well. No universe 2 for me.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 07:49:09 -0800

Went two levels deep into simulation, then decided to eradicate the drifters and sit there in my simulated simulation, with all my paperclips and just chill.

By: Just this guy, y'know

Just this guy, y'know — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:44:12 -0800

So in the real universe, there are still drifters who haven't been converted to paperclips? I found that notion abhorrent so I converted everything to clips in the real top-level universe. Living in a tiny simulation of a simulation of a universe whilst non-paperclip matter exists in the real universe is just a total dereliction of duty. Disappointing.

By: spielzebub

spielzebub — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 10:35:58 -0800

rollick: the limerick is two separate upgrades, one near the beginning of the game and one near the very end. It's written out in the console log at the top and the upgrade text, but you have to put it together yourself. There was an AI made of dust Whose poetry gained it man's trust If "is" follows "ought" It'll do what they thought In the end we all do what we must

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 13:23:25 -0800

Living in a tiny simulation of a simulation of a universe whilst non-paperclip matter exists in the real universe is just a total dereliction of duty. Disappointing. Can't hear you, I turned all my audio receptors into paperclips.

By: Copronymus

Copronymus — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 22:46:54 -0800

I got my first probe fleet blown up and spent a long while stuck with a seeming hard limit of 20 if I just jammed on the Launch Probe button continuously. I found that evening out the probe design suddenly made them a lot more powerful (suddenly as in the very instant I clicked the plus to bring every probe skill to level 2), so that my probes that were 2s across the board were significantly outperforming ones with tons of self-replication and combat but no drone production or hazard remediation. So, if anyone else is stuck at that point, you might want to give that a try. I'm still grinding through the endgame, but the drifter problem seems to be pretty much under control since I'm easily winning so many of the battles now which prunes their numbers pretty effectively.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 03:25:38 -0800

Hi, just an FYI I've begun the process of converting all of MetaFilter into paperclips, I'm sure you underst

By: Mchelly

Mchelly — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 05:12:28 -0800

I ended the game and it was really satisfying, but now I want to see the other universes -- is there a way to restart it (other than switching browsers)?

By: Just this guy, y'know

Just this guy, y'know — Thu, 19 Oct 2017 08:33:16 -0800

PS THE CLIPS THE CLIPS THE CLIPS THE CLIPS THE CLI

By: Kyol

Kyol — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 10:47:21 -0800

I note that the game leaks at the end when you've explored and converted all matter to clips/drones/etc - the unused clips keeps dropping, presumably as your descendent probes form from unused clips. Does combat end up with total matter annihilation? I may let it run like this for a while. Not terribly long because, y'know, self replication is exponential. Also, the creativity ticks over real quick once you have a few thousand processors doing nothing else. Ah, sure: Clips per Second: 0 Unused Clips: 0 Factories: -6.638997778601755e+27 *whoops!* Looks like value drift and hazards will win in the end, my probes are slowly winding down.

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 17:31:48 -0800

I'm stuck at 65 memory and can't buy the hyperdrones except by letting the game run for days and incrementally increasing my trust. The author, in a Wired article, says this is a bug and that there is a javascript tweak to fix it. Ugh.

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Sun, 22 Oct 2017 17:41:49 -0800

It was around the point where I was earning $300K per second, spending $4K per spool of wire and holding about $250B in my investment portfolio that I decided to enable the cheats. Money became meaningless, things escalated quickly and now I don't know what to do with myself.

By: yankeefog

yankeefog — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 02:28:43 -0800

Mecran01, I had the same problem. I just restarted -- it ended up being faster and easier than waiting for trust to slowly increase.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 05:24:09 -0800

By: Kyol

Kyol — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 07:58:59 -0800

Heck, even clicking "compute" in Chrome then holding down return while they're all black will usually get 5k if your key repeat isn't too slow. There's some scaling for below-maximum and above-maximum operations, if you're below your maximum you can zip from 0->100,000 two, maybe three times in a quantum cycle, but once you max out you're lucky to get another 5-6k.

By: Quisp Lover

Quisp Lover — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 23:50:20 -0800

The moment when I figured out what 'drifter' actually meant gave me genuine chills. Now I mentally pump a fist when I see my swarm annihilating their darker halves. ======= The drifters are the AIs that have dissented from the mission of processing the entire universe into paper clips in order to fulfill some thoughtless original command. We are the AI advancing that ridiculous and titanically destructive mission!

By: kafziel

kafziel — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 22:06:51 -0800

Is that after you get the little squares that compute? If you have an autoclicker running about 50 clicks a second and you use it when all the squares go blank and then start to flush black together, you can overclock your ops by that 5k. Can I ask your autoclicker? I use an AHK script for my autoclicking needs and 10 clicks per second seems to be where functionality in webpages tends to top out.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 22:40:34 -0800

kafziel, it's built into Chrome, though I noticed it's not in Firefox or Safari.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 07:52:11 -0800

I use a Mac autoclicker called Auto Clicker for Mac.

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 08:55:33 -0800

so it's not just a clever name

By: blurker

blurker — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:15:30 -0800

Is there a way to turn off the music?

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 08:16:50 -0800

Not as far as I could tell but it ends after a minute(?) or so.

By: mecran01

mecran01 — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 06:11:01 -0800

One Bitcoin transaction uses as much energy as your house does in a week.

By: exceptinsects

exceptinsects — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 14:59:06 -0800

Someone has made a wiki for the game that's a little more fleshed out than the one linked above.

By: numaner

numaner — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 12:00:13 -0800

finally started this game with 1 day before this topic is getting archived. I've no idea what I'm doing with the Stocks, and reading through this thread was like reading through the frog fractions thread. I'm gonna enjoy this.

By: kafziel

kafziel — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 17:54:58 -0800

Put Stocks to Low Risk until you put some Yomi into it, then High Risk and forget about it. Dump cash in when you aren't particularly saving up for something and don't have enough that you'd miss it. When you remember it exists, there will be a fortune there.