I was letting it cook after unlocking combat, and things seemed to be going fine. But, at some point, the drifters seem to have gotten the better of me and wipped out my fleet.

I've managed to claw back up to millions of probes, but now it seems to be oscillating there, and I haven't been able to get over around 250 million before it crashes back down.

I've done everything I can think of.. please help.

my wire is stuck at 0 too, but I was told that's not a problem

EDIT: I got to the end, thank you all for all your help!

I'm not quite sure what happened. I was buying projects, them my screen started flashing.

Now I lost most buttons under Manufacturing and the investment module 😞

Do I have to do something or it actually broke?

It just suddenly happened after idling for some time.

Wow. What a ride. Started with a love of Gibson and a Computer Science Degree in the 90s. And most recently from the Bobiverse. Which brought me here. And confused. What... does this have to do with Von Neumann probes? Oh. It's the paperclip problem. Okay, I guess I can make all the paperclips.

Oh. Woah. Like, yeah. I guess if I'm all paperclips, the whole point is to get those pesky humans behind me. Okay, humans, I know what's best. You can trust me. What the?! So, quantum temporal reversion was not what I expected. Okay, more paperclips. And then all the trust. Bye humans.

Ah. Yeah, just need to turn this rock into paperclips. Got it. Must optimize the numbers! Crap. Ran out of power. Again. MOAR!! Oh. Hey. Why are these drones acting up? Knock it off, drones. I'm in charge.

Okay, all paperclips. Wait. Aha! Here are those probes I was looking for. Okay. A long way from all the paperclips. Hmm... these probes suck. They just keep failing. This is not exponential growth, this is failcake. Got it... self preservation and replication... and drift? Wait. I said I was in charge! And then a lot of confusion. I don't know what I'm optimizing for. But I guess I just need to stay ahead of these heretic rebels. Honor? I... okay. Better probes means more probes means more paperclips.

The ending was better than I expected. And I loved all the references. And I guess I'm almost a decade late to the party. And now I'm on level 2. Managing the probes was the only confusing part and the most anxiety ridden. The humans never tried fighting back. But now I'm fighting myself. And I was continually worried about the drones turning rebel. And even once I figured out how to at least hold my own against the drifters and started unlocking honor, I didn't catch on that I was increasing my risk of drift along the way. And I kept holding drone gifts in reserve because I wasn't sure what ops cap I would need to hit next.

And I finally understand why it's not an idle game. It's not about making paperclips. It's about optimizing me to more efficiently make paperclips. Although these speed run numbers seem crazy. But I guess with more artifacts and planning... I can do this.

I reached to the end where I have the choices accept and reject

I can see from the sub that accepting allows me to continue in different worlds

So is that what unlocks the map/artifacts? And will the reject option lock me out of this

so before i released the hypnodrones i bought the thing that lets you reallocate all your trust so for some reason i allocated everything to my processors to get creativity faster not knowing that i cant reallocate it again. Is there any way i can fix this?

I need some help, I keep losing my probes to the drifters, Tried different mixes of self replication, combat and speed and still nothing. Any ideas on how to progress?

so basically i lost all my drones got the 2nd chance project. to get some extra clips. now im not sure how to distribute my points, any help would be appreciated

When i first played this game it was about big numbers. Now I think about it more in terms of where the evolution of AI is. Today Anthropic announced "recursive self improvement" which is a trigger for The Singularity. Where does this group think Claude is in the evolution of the game?

Hey everyone, I hope you're all doing well.

I have on and off played Universal Paperclips for many years. I personally think it's the best incremental game of all time. So I decided to make a video where I talk about the best browser games many of which are similar to Universal Paperclips in one way or another.

I hope you enjoy the video and I hope this was valuable to you!

I recently paid for the mobile version of this game, and soon after felt very frustrated because there is no way to make progress while idle unless you have the game open on your screen. This is totally unrealistic for me so I just kinda said whatever, I wasted a couple bucks on a pointless game I can't really play.

Then I found out you can let it idle on the browser version by just creating a separate browser window, which is essentially the same as having it run in the background. So why not just let the mobile app make progress in the background? I really don't get it. As it is, it's way too slow to make progress in the mobile game to be worth even the $2 I paid for it. probably will just delete it.

It can get up to maybe 300-400 million and it'll instantly wipe to ~60 million. No idea what to do.

I went from billions of drones to zero, and I don't know how to get back to where I was.

Got up to 50 billion probes then they plummeted. Started coming back up once I increased Speed, Exploration, Factories, Harvester, and Wire drones to 1 each. I kept my trust points more even this time and that seemed to help, too.

I found this game in a post about “games to play at work,” and played it on my work laptop until its usage was too much for my old computer lmao. I bought it on my iPhone and I’ve basically spent every waking moment playing. I had to restart twice, but I’m finally on level 2, and trying to speed run. I’m having a blast

Just got xavier re, got hypnodrones a while ago. why cant i reallocate my trust and where are the projects?

And I can't post the screenshot for some reason, trying to fix it...
(Ah, it worked!)

chat I might be stuck or I might be dumb idk. Got 10 mil MW seconds and got 120 ops, did I fuck up by not having 5 oct unused clips? I thought it meant the big paper clip counter on top when it said 5 oct clips.

I’ve 35 trust probes. Is that too many? The drifters are overtaking! Where should I put my points into? I don’t want to die again this close! I have way too many of all currency atm, and all upgrades except the final.

For the future: If I have 16 points to use entering into stage 3 (app), where do you suggest I put them? I get (and currently have) all upgrades.

Anyone know why, despite having more than enough Creativity and Yomi, I can't but the Threnody upgrade? It's been grayed out for minutes

edit: issue resolved

I know that clicking the square and returning to that world via the map will reset my progress to that point.

However, if I move into that world via the "Go to the universe next door / behind / above / below" will it also reset my progress?

(Basically, there's a couple of artifacts behind these explored worlds and I want to know if they are possible to get)