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Universal Paperclip

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Universal Paperclips is an incremental browser game, in which you play as an AI trying to make as many paperclips as possible.

Here's the Metafilter thread about it.

Basic advice

If you can, play it on a computer, not a phone or tablet. It's surprisingly CPU-intensive, and noticeably slower on a mobile device. Also, the UI sometimes needs lots of clicking to accomplish tasks, and that can be awkward on a mobile device. On a computer, you can click once, then hold down the Enter key. (Note: holding Enter may only work in Chrome.) For best performance, open it in a new window, rather than in a background tab.

How things work

Buying wire

Stock market

Modeling

Quantum processors

The lighter the square, the less computing you get out of it. You can get negative results. It goes in waves.


Large numbers

via wikipedia: Names of large numbers

Name Short scale
Million 106
Billion 109
Trillion 1012
Quadrillion 1015
Quintillion 1018
Sextillion 1021
Septillion 1024
Octillion 1027
Nonillion 1030
Decillion 1033
Undecillion 1036
Duodecillion 1039
Tredecillion 1042
Quattuordecillion 1045
Quindecillion 1048
Sexdecillion 1051

Stages (spoilers!)

making and selling paperclips

In this phase, you probably want to upgrade processors and memory at about a 3:7 ratio. At least until you have 69 to 70 memory.

converting the earth to paperclips

There's a project that requires a certain amount of energy; that's Storage, not Production.

space exploration

nanukthedog has a couple of suggested probe designs.

Cheating

This seems valid to me as there's no way to transfer saved games.

There are built in cheats in the game, to reveal them "view source" your browser of choice and search for the word "cheat" (you'll need to edit the page to remove the comment tags hiding those cheats).

  • In Chrome, right click, Inspect, to the left of `<body>` click the `...`, Expand All, find `cheat`, right click, Edit as HTML, remove the comment lines at the start and end of the section.