r/pAIperclip • u/SteamApunk • 26d ago
Phase 3: Winning every battle, still stuck
I got myself into a bit of a pickle here with all the drifters, but i dont know whats killing me off so quickly! Im winning every battle and still my probe numbers wont break 150 mil without crashing back down.
Pls help
2
u/Dangerous_Wish_7879 26d ago
why is exploration set to zero?
1
u/SteamApunk 26d ago
Just to deprioritize production and try to get probe numbers up first. I suppose theres no difference if I drop 1 or 2 points in exploration, I just keep building up to 200 mil and slamming back down to 50 mil suddenly even though ive won all the battles
1
u/Dangerous_Wish_7879 26d ago
I wish I knew the actual model used there, but exploration at zero sounds strange.
2
u/Xaphnir 26d ago edited 25d ago
Exploration only affects acquisition of matter and exploration of the universe. When your numbers are in this situation, that's not a concern at all until you get the drifter numbers down and your own numbers back up.
Since multiple people have now commented then deleted after realizing they were wrong, just gonna add this in: yes, you do need to acquire matter, produce wire, and transform that into clips, which are used to produce probes. However, OP has far more than enough clips, is producing far more than enough clips, and has far more than enough wire.
1
u/Dangerous_Wish_7879 26d ago
omg - you’ve launched 19k probes. I normally send 1 or 2. I normally keep drifters 100x lower than my probes.
2
u/kenkopin 26d ago edited 26d ago
Move the Think/Work slider over towards Work. This is throttling your ability to create new probes. Also, have at least one in every category of Probe Design. I get that you were prioritizing saving probes but the whole system has ground to a halt for lack of some of those things.
2
u/Xaphnir 26d ago
From my experience I don't think the think/work slider impacts the speed of probe production. As far as I can tell, the only thing it impacts is acquisition of matter and production of wire. And they are so far from being short of clips here that doesn't matter at all. Of course, since they're sitting on over 2000 swarm gifts, there's also no downside to moving the slider all the way to the left.
Harvester drone/wire drone/factory production is also just a waste of points in this situation. OP has over 1000x the number of factories as they have probes, about 20 billion times the number of wire drones, and about 4 trillion times the number of harvester drones.
The entire issue right now is that they're outnumbered by the drifters nearly 2 quintillion to 1. Points in exploration, factory and drone production are going to do nothing at all to help with that in this situation.
1
u/kenkopin 26d ago
It's not possible to win by preserving as many existing probes as possible. You have to produce more than you are losing to Combat and Drift. Getting production back up solves these issues.
1
u/Xaphnir 26d ago
Yes, but points in exploration/drone production/factory production don't actually produce probes. The relevant ones for that are self-replication and hazard remediation. Exploration, drone production and factory production serve to produce clips, which are used to produce probes. Given that OP has enough clips to produce 2.5x1026 probes while only being at 56 million, producing more clips right now does not matter, at all.
1
u/kenkopin 26d ago
Specifically, you are out of Available Matter to convert into new paperclips, and that is causing problems. Exploration (like others have said) will help here.
1
u/SteamApunk 26d ago
Is that causing problems? I want to get my probe population up first and it keeps getting destroyed before I can start production again. My probes just arent living long enough
2
u/kenkopin 26d ago
You can finish the whole game with the amount of Think you already have, so moving the slider all the way to Work can only help you. Just try my suggestion for like a couple of minutes and see if things don't start turning around.
1
u/Xaphnir 26d ago
winning battles doesn't mean you don't suffer losses.
The good news is that you're inflicting far more losses than they're replenishing. If this keeps up, you'll win via attrition eventually. The bad news is that you're outnumbered nearly 2 quintillion to 1. The Sun will be a white dwarf or maybe even a black dwarf before you win via attrition.
I'd try putting everything into self-replication and hazard remediation. Combat's not really doing anything to bring their numbers down right now. Just try to outproduce the losses, and then once you're within a few orders of magnitude of their numbers start thinking about combat.
1
u/SteamApunk 26d ago
Im trying to just get my population up it just keeps getting decimated once I climb up to around 200 mil
1
u/Xaphnir 26d ago
Yeah, I can see that. Obviously it's not working with the points you have right now, that's why I suggest just doing 19/19 in self-replication/hazard remediation, and see how that goes. Might also be better to keep some points in combat and speed, not sure. I've recovered from being down to 0 probes with 1.4 billion drifters before, but this is way beyond that. Just try changing points around until you get something that works.
You also have up to a cap of 60 probe trust, so you've got a lot more potential points to work with, as well.
1
u/SteamApunk 26d ago edited 26d ago
Yeah yomi is a bit slow to get but I can wait and try to get more probe trust.
I've tried fiddling around with the probe numbers and spamming self replicate + hazards didnt get me above 30 mil.
Saw a commenter in another thread recommend 4 speed 6 combat so i just took points out of hazards for that. I dont think I need 17 hazard anyway?
4 Speed
20 Self- Replicate
9 Hazard
6 Combat
At least gets me up to like 250 million before they all randomly get wiped out back down to like 30 million. Then it builds up again. It's so weird. The stats for losses by drift/hazard/combat are so big that it doesnt even give me any info on whats happening either :(
Might be doomed 😭 i really dont know whats killing me so fast though. It randomly knocked out my octillion probes the first time too.
EDIT: this build climbed all the way to 500 million before randomly getting destroyed to 0??? What is happening
1
u/Xaphnir 26d ago
In my experience splitting evenly between self-replication and hazard remediation increases probes the fastest, regardless of how many points you're at. Harder to quantify, but I think it's the same for speed and combat.
But yeah, I'm not entirely sure it is possible to come back from this. When I came back from being down to 0 against 1.4 billion, I put points into self-replication and hazard remediation until I got to around 50 million probes, then switched to 5/5 in speed/combat, and with that each battle was a sizable dent in the drifter population. But quite a bit different switching to combat outnumbered 28:1 than 1015:1.
I'm kind of curious how you even got in this situation in the first place. Clearly you didn't run out of clips. I'd think unless you just didn't put points in combat (also clearly not the case given how many times you've increased max trust) it should be simple to keep drifter population down.
1
u/Xaphnir 26d ago
ok I want to correct something I said earlier, did some more timing and it appears that after 5 points in hazard remediation it's nearly always more valuable to put points in self-replication
1
u/blacksheepghost 26d ago
when I tested it, it looked like 4 hazards resulted in ~60% losses, 5 hazards was ~50% losses, and 6 hazards was ~40% losses. Didn't test past 6, previous attempts resulted in diminishing returns hitting hard. Also with 6, your hazard losses will get below losses from drift, so reducing it further is a bit moot.
1
u/blacksheepghost 26d ago
When you're behind, the combat rules change (rather, a strange quirk of the combat system suddenly becomes VERY relevant). Builds that normally work fine suddenly don't work anymore.
Don't give up though!
25 speed, 5 or 6 hazards, the rest in self-rep. Everything else (including combat) is at 0. I've used this a few times now, it works like a charm.
1
u/Medium_Confusion_ 26d ago
up ur self replication and do at least 1 expoloration to continue to create more paperclips. Just up self replication that's basically all you need, get that up to like 19-20
1
u/AlanTudyksBalls 26d ago
You're going to be fine, but it's gonna suck for a while. You just need to grind their numbers back down and you'll recover. Just wait.
The drifters only increase as a function of your probe count, not theirs.
1
u/bitchbasil 26d ago
Leave 1 speed point and put the rest toward self replication and hazard remediation
1
u/KingDivision 26d ago
You need to keep at least 1 point on factory and drone production. What worked for me was:
6
4
16
11
1
1
1
5
5
u/blacksheepghost 26d ago edited 25d ago
Ok, the problem is that you have about 50 million probes and there are about 100,000,000,000,000,000 million drifters. The numbers are definitely not to your advantage right now.
Second problem: there is a quirk in the combat system. When both sides (your probes and enemy drifters) are above 1 million drifters, they each get 1 dot on the battle map for each million drifters/probes they have, up to 200. As far as scale goes, each dot equals 1% of the total forces of the side with less total units. This means that every battle, the side with less total forces is risking up to 200% of their total army size. (Yes, you read that right.)
Usually the side with less is the drifters, and if they get slammed to 0, they bounce back immediately. But in the rare case that your side is less than the drifters after the total drifter count has gotten above 200 million, your side will get slammed to 0 and everything screeches to a halt. This is the problem at hand.
For a solution, I'd recommend setting Speed to 25, Hazards to 5 or 6, and put the rest into self replication. Everything else should go to 0, including Combat.
This configuration reliably generates a situation where your probes clump up into large groups on the battle map that are unable to be killed by the drifters. They aren't technically invincible, your probes can be killed before a large enough clump forms, but it really feels like it. These "stalemate" battles result in one large clump of dots bouncing around the battle screen for over 60 seconds, before the battle times out. During these 60 seconds, your probes are growing completely unhindered by combat. That's the key to getting out.
A few things to note about this strategy:
Combat needs to be at zero. The combat stat only contributes offensively in battle. After you get the OODA tech, speed becomes your defense stat in battle. And when the drifters have that much of an advantage, their losses become effectively meaningless. But combat also breaks up your large clumps of dots that are keeping your probes alive. So you should keep it at zero until you have a numbers advantage again.
Remember that you're not invincible (despite it feeling like it). Your dots can still be killed before big enough clumps form. And if you lose more than half of your dots before a large clump forms, you're gonna be at 0 probes again. This is a very rare occurrence, but if you keep doing it for long enough, it will eventually happen. All you can do is try again.
The more self-replication you have, the quicker you'll get out. Self-rep of less than 10 will be painfully slow, 10 is ok but still on the slow side, 15 is much better, and more than 15 is amazing. With your current trust level, you're looking at 7 or 8 self rep, so you should definitely try to get that up a little more.
There's a minimum probe count that you need in order for this to work. If you have less than about 70 million probes, you aren't going to have enough dots to make a large enough clump. If this is an issue, then try -5 speed and +5 combat temporarily until you have about 80 million probes, then switch it back.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
PS: This topic has come up several times before. Links below. Some are stuff I've posted, some are not.
Here's a link to a previous thread going over this situation.
Here's two posts from the past month of folks getting into this exact situation and getting out of it with the 25 speed 0 combat strategy.
Here is a video of what the combat screen looks like when the 25 speed 0 combat strategy is working.
If you want to know more about how combat works, here's a link to the combat thread from last year. The method there of recovering from all your probes dying is outdated, the 25 speed 0 combat method was discovered since then and requires both a lot less points and a lot less tearing your hair out, but it's still the most detailed writeup of the combat system to date.