Donut Farming Newbie, Advice please

"alapalme;1561717" wrote:
That works out to a ratio of 50.2k per donut for the stop at 2 strategy.
If I play always to 3 donuts, as demonstrated by earlier posters, the average cost is 50k on top of your investment, so 159k, working out to 53K per donut.

SO: Stopping at 2, for me gives me 1 donut for every 50.2K spent, and stopping at 3 donuts gives me 1 donut for every 53K spent. My math shows it, the simulator shows it-- so if I'm wrong, where did I go wrong?

I haven't given full consideration to your maths, but would (as previously mentioned) be more concerned with the fine details of how you've broken down and modelled the problem. In short, you might have got your sums right yet still slightly misapplied your economics.

In my analysis, I think the circumstances and costs of getting to play a round of bonuts need to be treated separately to the bonuts gameplay itself. The price paid to play is a historic sunk cost once the game pops up, it doesn't influence the game, so shouldn't affect playing strategy IMHO. It is, moreover, the opportunity cost that should be given due consideration whilst playing the game - the future, not the past; that is, if you don't spend an extra $50K on another box, what would you do with that same $50K instead? If your answer is (like mine) that you'd want to invest it in generating as many other donuts as efficiently as possible, then the problem feeds back into itself... making it difficult to calculate (and hence why I agree that simulation is an interesting idea here). I do, however, believe that treating all KEMs as fixed price is an oversimplification that significantly affects the outcome -- less so the more KEMs you buy in each batch, I agree, but nevertheless still an important factor for a batch of 70 KEMs.