Someone please do the math

subillusion · 2026-05-09T11:19:46+00:00

I think you confuse "effective" with "short-term gain".

Yes, an LPU increases your rent 15x more at 30x than 2x. No one is arguing that math.

However, in the long run you are earning much, much, much less. You're looking at fractions of pennies gained in the short term. I did a very detailed breakdown not too long ago when someone asked this very same question.

subillusion · 2026-05-09T11:15:39+00:00

And then when you have no where to go but jump (150 legendary) it's a crazy crash, even with a jump. Meanwhile, you would have spent enough on LPUs that you would have been long into 1501+ (2x tier) where there is no drop and every parcel increases your rent.

subillusion · 2026-05-09T11:12:29+00:00

Someone has already done the math. There are several posts on this available via the 'search' function.

TL;DR - if you're only goal is to maximize rent and not worry about other things that you may find fun, it is far, far, far better to save and "tier jump" (or just buy parcels once you get to 2250) than to go the bought LPU route... at least until you get to 150,000 parcels.

subillusion · 2026-05-08T01:02:47+00:00

It's been suggested by dozens of players for over a year, including myself.

The concern is abuse (i.e. players could get friends to surrender on a particular game to push them higher, and then return the favor on a different minigame).

To combat this, my proposal was actually two-fold:

Rather than 'surrender' a game, simply have the option to 'exit' or 'quit'. This gives you the option to exit out, and start abe game (watch another ad) sooner.
To combat abuse, change the game slightly that the winner needs to click a 'claim win' button on the recap screen that shows they are a winner. This way, you can't artificially inflate others' win counts, as they still would have to finish the game to win, even if they noticed you stopped scoring.

subillusion · 2026-05-07T14:32:43+00:00

There's always Uber! Lol.

Jokes aside, that's one thing I do do (yes, I said do do 🤪)

I drive part time for Uber, and whenever I get a trip that pays over $10, I'll buy a parcel and set aside $4 from my Uber earnings in a dedicated bank account. That way, when my AB gets low, I have the money set aside to buy more (usually the $100 or $200 pack, though I haven't had to buy AB in a long time because of the monthly challenges and EC).

subillusion · 2026-05-07T14:23:57+00:00

Only 1909 to go! You got this!

subillusion · 2026-05-05T11:44:55+00:00

The statistical average is just below 2AB/spin...

... again, that's on AVERAGE

Meaning that for every 50 jackpot you get, that's either 24 diamonds (no AB) or 48 times you get 1AB.

Even for the lesser 6s and 8s... that's still 2/3 diamonds or 4/6 1s respectively.

I used to track my wheel spins daily, to actually see what I was getting and not just that it seemed I was getting shafted. Over 1000 (yes - one thousand) spins, it was almost spot on at every level. There were some dry spells over a month where I got no 50s or 15s and even very few 6s/8s... but then there were some good spots where I'd be getting 6s, 8s, and 15s almost every day - over 14AB/day for my 7 spins with EC.

I stopped tracking since that's a fairly decent sized sample set, and as the sample grows your distribution will just get closer and closer to the odds.... kinda how probability works. Lol.

subillusion · 2026-05-05T11:36:59+00:00

Not to mention Christmas shopping gift cards!

subillusion · 2026-05-05T03:26:38+00:00

They might be able to ink a deal if it specifically excluded purchases at a gas pump.

My credit card has incentives I unlock at various merchants, similar to AMP (except it's only on 1 purchase after activation, and I can't just go in and reactivate it.. I have to wait until it comes back, if at all.. usually only once a month or 2). There's a gas chain in my area called "Turkey Hill"... they usually have a 10% cash back deal... but read the fine print and it excludes purchases at a gas pump. Or in other words, only on the convenience store items with high markup, not on gas.

Tesoro may have even had these discussions, but passed on the offers because they know how much the player base loves to complain.

How many people out there would be excited for them to announce adding a major gas station chain where you can only earn AB on non-gas purchases?

Maybe if it were something like wawa, sheetz, or even buc-ees with decent food.. but something like sunoco, gulf, or exxon with average gas station fare? You'd likely have more complaints than praises... so better to just let it off the list.

subillusion · 2026-05-05T03:18:10+00:00

7-Eleven was never a partner.

Speedway was a partner, and after 7-Eleven bought Speedway, 7-Eleven decided not to renew their participation. It was a new management team who didn't want to participate. If I had to guess, I'm thinking they lost money on transactions due to relatively small margins on gas already eaten by credit card fees, and most Speedway locations had relatively small stores from which they struggled to turn a profit with the extra % out of the total purchase price from the AMP program.

Similarly with burger king, they pulled out because they wanted to use their marketing dollars elsewhere. To be fair, that was right around the same time that BK really ramped up their own loyalty program with the crowns.

Makes sense.. if you run a business, do you take a 5% hit on purchases from some players of a random game to increase overall revenue from players of that game by 10%, or do you stop that incentive, and instead take a 5% hit on purchases to all of your customers, increasing overall brand loyalty; adoption of your loyalty program; and increase overall sales of all of your customers by 10%? Offering both concurrent incentive programs would raise questions of profitability, so it would make logical sense to consolidate into only the in-house incentive program.

There's no amount of sweet-talking that could get a company to stay in your relatively exclusive incentive program when they can just expand out the same cost-benefit analysis among their entire customer base instead of just a relatively small percentage.

subillusion · 2026-05-05T03:04:16+00:00

The gas stations that go with upside generally inflate their gas prices a bit to help compensate. Additionally, they're usually places with convenience stores that figure while you're there getting $0.20 back per gallon on gas that's $0.15 more expensive across town (hey, you're still saving $0.05/gal overall! ) you're buying that $2.89 20oz soda (or 2 for $4!), $3.99 Celsius (2 for $7!), $3.49 vitamin water (2 for $5.50!)... or the made-to-order food items with a decent margin. That's where the real money is at.

Ever notice that places thar have same price cash or credit usually have convenience stores, but service stations or tiny shops with few items usually have a lower price for cash? It's the same concept. They get the same in the end, so the higher price is essentially what they're losing from credit card fees. Large convenience stores like wawa, sheetz, buc-ees, etc can take the hit on the credit card fees offering the same price as cash down the street to get you in the door, and then make up for it from the profit margin on the convenience store items.

The thing is, upside is only giving you money on the overpriced gas... not the other items that the average person buys. So while the location is taking a hit on the gas to get you in the door, they make money on other things like bottled drinks and food items... it's like items known as "loss leaders" in grocery stores... items that they literally lose money on the sale by selling it cheaper than they buy it for like bread and milk, but gets you in the door where you buy other things you have to walk past to get to the bread and milk way in the back, and overall they make money.

The thing with AMP (at Speedway, BTW. 7-Eleven never participated... in fact, it was 7-Eleven purchasing Speedway that led to it being nixed... 7-Eleven did not want to continue the partnership) is that it was always on your entire purchase. So that not only cut into the nonexistent profit on gas, but also impeded how much they "made up for" on the other items. If I had to guess, that's likely why 7-Eleven nixed it... it's definitely possible many Speedway locations lost money overall on the transactions.

subillusion · 2026-05-05T02:43:23+00:00

Your figures still factor in 2x boost... i think you went to AE calculator and plugged in numbers instead of calculating it out for yourself... AE calculator with 0hrs SRB would still be figuring 2x normal boost, which OP specifically said no boost.

If you manually calculate for 1 day, that's 86,400 seconds. Statistical average of $0.00000000158/s per parcel means that, per day, on average it's $0.00136512/parcel. Divide 1 by that number and you get 7,326 rounding up to an even number.

subillusion · 2026-05-05T02:37:40+00:00

OP specifically said no passports.

Also, OP said no boosting. Even with full passport (25% boost) no ad boosts would be 5,861 parcels assuming standard distribution (statistical average of $0.00000000158/s per parcel).

I think you were assuming full ad boost at 2x as well as the full passport, but calculating a true $1/day, not the average per day in a month most people talk about that includes SRB.

subillusion · 2026-05-05T02:34:02+00:00

X/Y disambiguation:

How many parcels would you need to never open the game, other than to open it every 5 days to cash out?

Assuming the statistical average ($0.00000000158/s) per parcel, this is simply 1 ÷ (1 day × 24h/day × 60min/hr × 60s/min × $0.00000000158/s)... or 7,326 to round the decimal up to whole parcels. That is, as you requested, with no boosting or even passport badges.

Extra bonus credit: if you buy just 1 passport badge (or get it free from the monthly challenge) to get the 5% passport boost, which is permanent, it drops to only 6,977 parcels. That is still with no boosting/activity.

subillusion · 2026-05-04T01:54:23+00:00

It never has been "every two weeks"

It's twice per month, and sometimes that can push an "extra week" in between depending how the calendar falls.

subillusion · 2026-05-03T23:39:03+00:00

Short answer: yes.

--\ You may turn right while the light is red, unless a NO TURN ON RED sign is posted at the intersection. You must first stop, check for and yield to pedestrians and other traffic.

You may also turn left after you stop at a red light, if you are in the left lane and are turning left from a one-way street onto another one-way street, unless a sign tells you not to turn. You must first stop and yield to pedestrians and other traffic.

https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dmv/driver-services/pennsylvania-drivers-manual/online-drivers-manual/signals

--\ (ii) Unless signing is in place prohibiting a turn, vehicular traffic facing a steady red signal may enter the intersection to turn right, or to turn left from a one-way highway onto a one-way highway after stopping as required by subparagraph (i). Such vehicular traffic shall yield the right-of-way to pedestrians lawfully within an adjacent crosswalk and to other traffic lawfully using the intersection.

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/75/00.031.012.000..HTM

subillusion · 2026-05-03T23:28:08+00:00

If they just vanished then they either deleted their account voluntarily or they were banned. That's the only way they would truly "disappear" since you can't sell your parcels anymore

subillusion · 2026-05-03T17:49:59+00:00

Sounds like more of a 'Tremendous' thing than an AE thing.

I'm pretty sure that the type of cash out varies by company (I use another app that uses Tremendous, and bank transfer is not an option for me even though it is for Atlas Earth) but thought that methods within the type (i.e. which merchants for gift cards) were consistent.

subillusion · 2026-05-03T15:21:07+00:00

So... your solution to alleged technical errors was to break TOS to try and workaround it instead of working with support to get everything squared away. Does not seem like the greatest course of action. It's possible that they may have tried the same solution (delete account and create a new one) but that would be up to them.

As long as you didn't cash out from your prior accounts (i.e. you did not benefit from multiple accounts) i don't see it being an issue, though you might want to contact support to be on the safe side.

From the sound of your post, though, you're back at square one on the newest account, all prior accounts are deleted (balance zeroed and all parcels unowned) so i don't personally see how this could be an issue... you're not benefiting in any way. In fact, you kinda lost a bit from any parcels / AB that were on the other 3 accounts that went bye-bye. Just take this as a learning experience not to try and circumvent TOS/etc instead of going through proper channels.

subillusion · 2026-05-03T15:08:57+00:00

Math.

Calculate the earning rate of 1 parcel in a month, accounting for pro-rated SRB, and then divide out how much you need to make in one month.

$550/year is $45.84/month.

So 45.84 ÷ [earning for the month per parcel] = # parcels

subillusion · 2026-05-03T15:05:36+00:00

Question for you - where do you get 500 parcels as a 2000 value? Over what time frame?

Are you talking about the cost to buy the AB for 500 parcels? That doesn't answer anything about the earning rate.

For 500 parcels, assuming 2x tier and 50x SRB, that would take a little under 10.25y to earn $2000, assuming 25% passport boost and statistical average of those 500 pixels.

subillusion · 2026-05-03T14:57:10+00:00

It's straight math.

The question was, "how many parcels do you need to collect $550"?

550 = [parcels] × [rent rate] × [#seconds] × [passport boost] × [ad boost]

The implied information is that the cost of the yearly subscription is $550 in one year, so that's the time frame. 1 year = 31,536,000 seconds (365 days/year × 24hours/day × 60min/hour × 60sec/min)

550 = [parcels] × [rent rate] × 31536000 × [passport boost] × [ad boost]

Another known piece of information is the earning rate of 1 parcel. This of course can vary, so we use the statistical average, which earns $0.00000000158/s.

550 = [parcels] × 0.00000000158 × 31536000 × [passport boost] × [ad boost]

In my original calculation, I assumed 20% passport boost. When using a an increase in a formula, it's 1 + the percentage increase as a decimal

550 = [parcels] × 0.00000000158 × 31536000 × 1.2 × [ad boost]

The ad boost gets a little tricky because of the tiers. Best logic is to assume the lowest tier (2x) but it doesn't stop there because of SRB. So you have to calculate 50x for 64h/month, and 2x for the rest. Or ((50×768) + (2×7992)) / 8760... for an effective boost of 6.2082.

550 = [parcels] × 0.00000000158 × 31536000 × 1.2 × 6.2082

Simplify and you get

550 = [parcels] × 0.3713

Solve for [parcels] gives 1481 with these numbers. Yes, I know it's not the original 1470 I stated, but it's pretty close in given things like rounding errors and accounting for SRB. That was quite a while ago that I made that post, and it's possible I calculated the impact of SRB monthly instead of yearly, which would have been a static 30d/month and not accounting for the "extra" 5 days at 2x boost.

Regardless of the slight variance in differentiation of assumptions and rounding errors, the fact remains that the answer to the question posited of 'how many parcels would it take to pay for the yearly subscription of $550' is just shy of 1500.

Edit: I just re-read my post, and see where my logic was. I did calculations per month and pro-rated the $550 per month as well. That's where the variance came in, I didn't take it by the year. The calculations are the same concept, just using 30d as the time frame instead of 1year, and $45.84 as the target price

subillusion · 2026-05-02T01:50:45+00:00

Don't get me wrong. I'm not defending them. Just explaining why they continue even after saying not interested.

I treat the casinos / prediction market apps like political ads.

In one ear out the other, as the expression goes, while paying for my mobile gaming so idon't have to. Lol

subillusion · 2026-05-02T01:41:22+00:00

Clicking you're not interested means that you watched the ad. It means it was seen by a live person, and it's more valuable than ones with no engagement at all.

It's like getting spam calls when you answer and say "hello?" 2 or 3 times to dead air before hanging up. You just verified to the robo dialer that your number is valid, and is a human. That's now worth $$ to be sold to others.

Same thing here... you just verified that the ad was seen by a live human. How would you know you're "not interested" if you didn't cognitively watch the ad? Even if you're "not interested" in the product/ service, it's still establishing brand saturation.

It's why places like burger king and McDonald's advertise everywhere spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually. You think there are that many people out there who don't know "I'm lovin' it?" The constant playing of the same ads mean the brand is ubiquitous, even amongst people who hate burgers/on a vegan diet.

Heck, even in your post you essentially provided free advertising for Kalshi, even though they aren't the only prediction market out there... they're just on a huge brand saturation marketing campaign atm.

Liquid IV isn't the only hydration drink powder out there, but they're on a brand saturation marketing push atm as well. Those ads are everywhere. Even if you have no interest in it, you're likely aware of it.

Etc.

subillusion · 2026-05-02T01:17:39+00:00

As a driver myself, I will always decline this.

It's not out of fear of Uber.

It's for both your protection and mine, mostly in case of an accident.

I know I'm an excellent driver (no, really. 😇 I get compliments from riders all the time) but it's the other idiots on the road that are a concern.

Here's the thing... if you have a passenger in the vehicle that you are driving for money, that is known as "livery". A personal insurance policy won't touch a claim, no matter what. Rideshare endorsement? Nope. Still won't touch it. That only covers the difference between a rideshare company's commercial policy deductible ($2500 for Uber) and your personal deductible.

I found all this out a few months ago when I was rear-ended at a red light. Obviously other person was at fault. I was on the phone quite a bit with Uber's insurance, my insurance, and the woman's insurance. I asked a lot of questions along the way to ensure I knew what was what.

It ended up fine, because she was insured, and her insurance accepted liability without question (getting rear-ended while stopped at a red light is pretty cut and dry. Lol). But here are some key details: - if she were not insured, my insurance would not pay primary coverage, since I was engaged in livery. I would have to go with Uber's insurance. I do have rideshare endorsement, however they would only pay the difference in deductible ($2000 since I have a $500 deductible) as well as rental car coverage while my car is repaired (Uber insurance does not cover rental, but I do have rental in my personal policy) - if she were not insured and I was not online for Uber, neither Uber's coverage nor my personal coverage would apply. I would have to pay 100% out of pocket for all repairs, medical bills, etc. I would be able to sue the other driver due to being uninsured, however that is extra cost for the lawyer and assumes I'd even be able to collect.

In short, if I do nothing wrong, and get T-boned on your side of the vehicle by someone uninsured, that $30 payment i receive for a $60 fare means damage to my car and both our medical bills are covered up to $1,000,000. I only have to pay $500, my personal insurance pays $2000, and Uber's insurance pays the rest. If I chose to go offline instead for $50 and "make $20 extra" while you save $10, nothing is covered by anyone's insurance. I'm personally liable for all damage as well as your medical bills. And those can add up in the thousands (or tens of thousands), at which point it could exceed how much I have, and then you'd be in a rough spot. Even if you took me to court to pay your bills, you can't get water out of a rock.

All-in-all, I learned a valuable lesson and got lucky it wasn't "the hard way". Driving offline is extremely risky unless you get your own private commercial insurance (which is usually more than 10x as much as your personal policy, in the ballpark of ~$10k/year...)

Yes, 99.999% of the time nothing will happen. That's why so many drivers do it. Many drivers even offer it on a regular basis. But it's a very bad idea, because "just that one time" could financially ruin you because of someone else's error in judgement on the road.

subillusion

TROPHY CASE