- 01Read the cost curve
- 02Compare batches/payback
- 03Buy producers
- 04Recompute marginal returns
Rising costs and bulk purchases
Each producer raises the next one's price; a bulk purchase sums successive prices rather than multiplying today's unit price.
The player's decision
Buy a few now for income or save for a batch that crosses a quantity milestone?
Original scenario
Original: windmills start at ten coins and rise ten percent each; the fifth grants an efficiency bonus, with single and milestone batch prices shown.
Start with this prototype
Build two producer types with buy-one, buy-five and buy-max controls plus one quantity bonus. Sum identically rounded sequential prices, show payback time and bound values for inspection.
Change one variable
Vary only cost growth and examine when switching producers becomes preferable.
What to observe in a playtest
Match sequential purchases; test zero funds, exact affordability, buy-max and overflow limits.
Take the full design card
Includes rules, scope, tuning questions and sources for further planning. It does not create a project automatically.
Original analysis · version 1
Common pitfall
Different rounding between formulas and single purchases creates unintended discounts or overspending.
Observations and sources
Cases refer to public documentation. Developers and community wikis are credited separately; document review is not a claim of hands-on testing.
- AdVenture Capitalist
The developer's math article uses AdVenture Capitalist to explain exponential costs and bulk sums.
- Universal Paperclips
Original code recalculates clipper and mega-clipper costs from owned counts with different curves.
Brief for the studio
Opens the AI studio with the brief below in the input. You can edit it. Nothing starts automatically.
Build two producer types with buy-one, buy-five and buy-max controls plus one quantity bonus. Sum identically rounded sequential prices, show payback time and bound values for inspection.
Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.