Trust

Trust is a Computation Resource in Universal Paperclips.

Summary

Trust is the main upgrade measure of Stage 1. Trust governs how many processors and memory you have, which in turn govern the rate of operation/creativity generation per second and how many maximum operations are available at a given time(respectively). Trust is gained through projects or paperclip milestones.

You earn Trust by

• Paperclips milestones (starting at 2000)
• Some projects (see below)

You spend Trust in

• Processors (IMPORTANT NOTE: Do not raise over 30 on Stage 1). See below on "Milestones".
• Memory
• Some projects
  • Beg for More Wire (1 Trust) (to avoid)
  • Hypno Harmonics (1 Trust)
  • Release the HypnoDrones (100 Trust)

Although usually Processors + Memory = Trust, you can still spend Trust on projects even if you've already spent it all into processors and memory. However, you won't be able to spend more Trust on processors/memory until your total Trust is again more than Processors + Memory.

Milestones

You start with 2 Trust (message: "Trust-Constrained Self-Modification enabled") when you reach 2000 paperclips, already invested into 1 processor and 1 memory (which unlock operations). Afterwards, you earn 1 Trust when you reach certain paperclip milestones.

Paperclip milestones can increase your Trust above 100. There is just one reason to do it: if you overinvested in processors (over 30) and have too little memory to reach 70,000 operations in order to Release the HypnoDrones. As this will greatly slow your progress, we caution you against this in the strongest possible terms. In extreme cases you may need to use the cheats to reset your game, or the Xavier Re-initialization project (requires 100.000 creativity).

Milestones (number of total paperclips produced)

• 3000
• 5000
• 8000
• 13000

As you can see, they increase as a Fibonacci Sequence (the next number is the sum of the previous two). Giving some approximations (for total trust derived from paperclip milestones):

• +10 Trust: 89.000 paperclips
• +13: 377k
• +15: 987k
• +20: 11M
• +25: 121M
• +30: 1.3B
• +35: 14.9B

The paperclips required to receive a desired amount of trust from milestone can be calculated using this equation (where ${\textstyle Fibbonacci_{n}}$is equivalent to the ${\textstyle n^{th}}$ Fibonacci number):

$1000\times (Fibonacci_{(trust+5)}-5)$

As these numbers grow, depending on your business infrastructure and your investments progression, it may be easier to increase the Trust by creating more paperclips or by outright buying it through repeated uses of Another Token of Goodwill...

Projects

There are enough projects for 66 Trust before it caps and Trust starts to cost "just" money:

• +1 Trust for A Token of Goodwill... ($500k)
• +1 Trust for each Another Token of Goodwill... ($1M the first time, and double the amount for each following one).

You cannot increase Trust above 100 with Projects. See above on Milestones for potential pitfalls.

• Limerick (10 creativity) (+1 trust)
• Lexical Processing (50 creativity) (+1 trust)
• Combinatory Harmonics (100 creativity) (+1 trust)
• The Hadwiger Problem (150 creat) (+1 trust)
• The Tóth Sausage Conjecture (200 creat) (+1 trust)
• Donkey Space (250 creat) (+1 trust)
• Hostile Takeover ($1.000.000) (+1 trust)
• Full Monopoly (1.000 yomi, $10M) (+1 trust)
• Coherent Extrapolated Volition (1000 yomi, 500 creat, 20k ops) (+1 trust)
• Male Pattern Baldness (20.000 ops) (+20 trust)
• Cure for Cancer (25.000 ops) (+10 trust)
• World Peace (5.000 yomi, 30.000 ops) (+12 trust)
• Global Warming (1.500 yomi, 50.000 ops) (+15 trust)
• A Token of Goodwill... ($500.000) (+1 trust)
• Another Token of Goodwill... (+1 trust, repeatable until Trust 100)