How can I calculate the cost of a business upgrade in Adventure Capitalist?

I have been using the coefficients at the Adventure Capitalist Wikia site page on businesses to plan my strategy, but either the coefficients are just approximations, I am calculating something incorrectly or possibly both.
For instance, I currently have 400 Giant Lasers on the moon. In the game, it says that x100 more will cost 6.68 Untrigintillion (6.68e96) but my spreadsheet (using the coefficient of 1.5) calculates it as 22.22 Duotrigintillion (22.22e99), which is quite a difference.
I can get it to calculate 6.68e96 if I replace the coefficient of 1.5 with 1.47572, but then my calculations for +1 and +10 are out. Ditto if I goal seek the value of the coefficient for other known values:
Giant Lasers Actual Cost Predicted cost
Bought Wanted in game Coef=1.50 Coef=1.4699 Coef=1.47041855 Coef=1.47572
400 401 8.22e78 27.32e81 8.22e78 9.47e78 39.96e78
400 410 931.16e78 3.10e84 931.16e78 931.16r78 4.03e81
400 500 6.68e96 22.22e99 937.32e93 1.12r96 6.68e96
The way I calculate the cost of the upgrade is as follows:
InitialLaserCost*(1-LaserCostCoef^LasersWanted)/(1-LaserCostCoef)
- InitialLaserCost*(1-LaserCostCoef^LasersBought)/(1-LaserCostCoef)
Sadly we don't have MathJax here on Arqade
I.e. The total cost of the number of Giant Lasers I want, minus the total cost I've already paid for the current ones.
As the difference between Wanted and Bought increases, the second term becomes insignificant, but it is good to confirm that when you want to buy just 1 Laser, the above matches up with the single term cost:
LaserInitialCost*LaserCostCoef^(LasersBought)
So, what (if anything) am I doing wrong, and how can I accurately predict the total cost of a multiple business upgrade?
Best Answer
[E]ither the coefficients are just approximations, I am calculating something incorrectly or possibly both.
The latter for sure.
All of your calculated amounts with a coefficient of 1.5 are off by a factor of 3,326±3. This makes me wonder if you put in the right parameters.
However, even more convincing is that this number is within 0.1% of 1.520—the ratio that you would see from 20 additional Giant Lasers.
So: triple-check your spreadsheet, and if you can’t find anything wrong, post it here for further examination.
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What is the max upgrade in Adventure Capitalist?
There are 464 Cash Upgrades, 40 Mega Bucks Upgrades, and 194 Angel Upgrades for a total of 698 upgrades.How do you upgrade in Adventure Capitalist?
Upgrades increase your profits by adding income multipliers to your buildings. They come in three categories: Cash Upgrades, which are bought with money, Angel Upgrades, which are bought by sacrificing Angel Investors, and Gold Upgrades, which are bought with Gold (real money).Are Angel upgrades worth it adventure capitalist?
They are very much worth it if you buy them at the right time. Be careful, because you will lose the profit bonus from the angels you spend and you'll lose angel upgrades and have to re-buy them after resetting, but you don't get the Angels you spent back.How long does it take to max out adventure capitalist?
SteamSingle-PlayerPolledAverageMain Story2748h 22mMain + Extras18126h 36mCompletionists120301h 48mAll PlayStyles165241h 13mThis SECRET Will Make You RICH! (Adventure Capitalist)
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Answer 2
From the same Wiki as you are referring to:
Calculating the total cost of N number of buildings: (Initial Cost * (1 - Coefficent^N)) / (1 - Coefficient)
Using your terms, this becomes:
InitialCost * (1-CostCoef^NewBusinesses) / (1 - CostCoef)
That is exactly the first part of your formula, how ever you are subtracting something from it, namely the cost of the buildings you have bought so far. That is probably because you use InitialCost as the InitialCost of the very first building (1 trillion for the Giant Laser).
However, I think that you should use above formula, with InitialCost calculated by
InitialCost = VeryFirstInitialCost * CostCoef^(CurrentBusinesses - 1)
This will make sure the InitialCost is calculated right, by the rules of the Wiki:
Initial cost is pretty self-explanatory, it indicates the cost of the first investment in that business. Is multiplied by the coefficient for each subsequent buy (see below)
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