The Missing Spending Trendlines

[[violet]]

I apologise for posting two threads in the Technical forum at the same time, but I have a bug fix / feature request that relates to the same project of making sense of NS figures!

Unless I have been seriously nearsighted, the the information for two categories of government spending is not included in the games' rankings system. This seems a curious omission since rankings and trendlines for most government spending is included as well as rankings and trendlines on fun-and-frivolous information like obesity units and the like!

Here is the table I drew up. Column A lists all the government departments. Column B lists the rankings that I found which would seem to correspond with spending on those government departments:

Government Departments	Ranking (indicating spending in @CURRENCY@)
Social Welfare	Welfare
Healthcare	Public Healthcare
Education	Public Education
Religion & Spirituality	???
Defense	Defense Forces
Law & Order	Law Enforcement
Commerce	Business Subsidisation
Public Transport	Public Transport
The Environment	Eco-friendliness
Social Equality	???
International Aid	Foreign Aid

Seeing how the game tracks spending on these three items for the purpose of drawing up pie charts and "impact reports" after issues options have been selected, might it be possible to also add them tot he games' rankings? Not only would it be nice-to-have for completionists and people who like to track their progress on different aspects of the game, it would also allow me and others to draw up more accurate reports on government spending.

EDIT: Fixed because eco-friendliness IS about money!

[Phydios]

I apologise for posting two threads in the Technical forum at the same time, but I have a bug fix / feature request that relates to the same project of making sense of NS figures!

Unless I have been seriously nearsighted, the the information for three categories of government spending is not included in the games' rankings system. This seems a curious omission since rankings and trendlines for most government spending is included as well as rankings and trendlines on fun-and-frivolous information like obesity units and the like!

Here is the table I drew up. Column A lists all the government departments. Column B lists the rankings that I found which would seem to correspond with spending on those government departments:

Government Departments	Ranking (indicating spending in @CURRENCY@)
Social Welfare	Welfare
Healthcare	Public Healthcare
Education	Public Education
Religion & Spirituality	Religiousness
Defense	Defense Forces
Law & Order	Law Enforcement
Commerce	Business Subsidisation
Public Transport	Public Transport
The Environment	Eco-Friendliness/Environmental Beauty
Social Equality	Inclusiveness
International Aid	Foreign Aid

Seeing how the game tracks spending on these three items for the purpose of drawing up pie charts and "impact reports" after issues options have been selected, might it be possible to also add them tot he games' rankings? Not only would it be nice-to-have for completionists and people who like to track their progress on different aspects of the game, it would also allow me and others to draw up more accurate reports on government spending.

In the quote above, I filled in what I believe to be the rankings you seek. Tell me if this is what you were looking for.

[Knootoss]

Partially! Eco-friendliness is actually a somewhat misleadingly named one that uses @@CURRENCY@@, and it is one that I missed. Editing the OP!

However, Inclusiveness, Religiousness (and Environmental Beauty) provide information regarding outcomes and not spending in @@Currency@@.

For example Knootoss spends @@CURRENCY@@ on Public Healthcare, but the outcome (health) is still shit due to other factors. And there are issues that can make a country more religious, for example, without increasing spending on the "Ministry for Religion & Spirituality".

[Trotterdam]

Let me improve that table a little.

Government Department	Spending Stat	Effectiveness Stat
Commerce / Industry	Business Subsidisation	Average Income, industries, etc.
Defense	Defense Forces	-
Education	Public Education	Intelligence
Environment	Eco-Friendliness	Environmental Beauty
Healthcare	Public Healthcare	Health
International Aid	Foreign Aid	-
Law & Order	Law Enforcement	Compliance
Public Transport	Public Transport	-
Religion & Spirituality	-	Religiousness
Social Policy / Equality	-	Inclusiveness?
Social Welfare	Welfare	Average Income of Poor?

[Knootoss]

Trotterdam: I like your thinking but I'm not going to add that table to the OP for a few reasons:

1) Some of the outcomes are the result of multiple factors. For example I'm pretty sure that health outcomes are influenced by environment as well as public health spending. If it was so simple that spending on a government department would lead to a certain outcome, the lines between spending and outcomes would just correlate perfectly. This is not the case.
2) It would hugely expand the request. Right now I'm just asking for data that the game is clearly already generating to be put on display as its own rank table. The only extra effort, I suppose, would be the creation of a few icons for top tier religious and social equality spending. (Tithes per hour and Social Justice Warrior Rating? Maybe? But with the y axis in @Currency@.) Asking for the mods to have outcome stats that more directly match every government department would probably necessitate the writing of new mechanics, seeing how existing issues influence them, etc. Not gonna happen, I think. Even a smallish request like this one is probably not going to be done any time soon but expanding it is kinda the same as killing it!

[Trotterdam]

1) Some of the outcomes are the result of multiple factors. For example I'm pretty sure that health outcomes are influenced by environment as well as public health spending. If it was so simple that spending on a government department would lead to a certain outcome, the lines between spending and outcomes would just correlate perfectly. This is not the case.

That's my point. With some things, there is a separate stat for how well you're accomplishing stuff that includes factors beyond just how much money the government is throwing at it (such as how efficiently the government is spending its money, and how government policies besides brute-force spending are affecting the matter), whereas for others, there is not (we are simply led to assume that nations with high spending on Defense Forces have more fearsome militaries, which would in fact not be the case if, say, a lot of your military funding goes to five-star barracks rather than training, or if your military refuses to use the most cost-efficient weapons because it considers them inhumane).

2) It would hugely expand the request. Right now I'm just asking for data that the game is clearly already generating to be put on display as its own rank table. The only extra effort, I suppose, would be the creation of a few icons for top tier religious and social equality spending. (Tithes per hour and Social Justice Warrior Rating? Maybe? But with the y axis in @Currency@.) Asking for the mods to have outcome stats that more directly match every government department would probably necessitate the writing of new mechanics, seeing how existing issues influence them, etc. Not gonna happen, I think. Even a smallish request like this one is probably not going to be done any time soon but expanding it is kinda the same as killing it!

Fair enough, but it's still something that I felt was worth pointing out, even if nothing gets done with it.

It also serves as a counterpoint to the "Religiousness and Inclusiveness have this covered" argument by Phydios above, by pointing out that most areas have both stats. Intelligence existed before Public Education, but that was not an argument against introducing the latter. (In fact, Public Education now uses the trophy image that used to be assigned to Intelligence.)

[Phydios]

Partially! Eco-friendliness is actually a somewhat misleadingly named one that uses @@CURRENCY@@, and it is one that I missed. Editing the OP!

However, Inclusiveness, Religiousness (and Environmental Beauty) provide information regarding outcomes and not spending in @@Currency@@.

For example Knootoss spends @@CURRENCY@@ on Public Healthcare, but the outcome (health) is still *bleep* due to other factors. And there are issues that can make a country more religious, for example, without increasing spending on the "Ministry for Religion & Spirituality".

Ah, my bad. I get what you mean now. Glad I could help.

[Bears Armed]

You didn't mention 'Culture' spending, but that seems to fall into Education' s slice of the budget.

[[violet]]

Trott is correct.

[Knootoss]

Trott is correct.

He absolutely is! But what are the implications for the missing spending trend lines?

[Trotterdam]

Yeah. I supplied some supplementary information, but it was in no way intended to discredit the point of the original post, which still stands. As much as I like being "correct", how exactly is that relevant and what'll be done about it?

[[violet]]

Well, it's correct that two government departments (actually three, including Administration) don't have an associated WA ranking for their spending, and about half don't have an associated World Census ranking for their effectiveness.

Similarly, not all industries have an associated World Census ranking for their output, and I think only one has a ranking for effectiveness (Tourism).

It's never been considered before that World Census rankings must cover every stat, so it's not a bug. There would be an awful lot of new rankings if that were the case. But we will always consider suggestions.

[Trotterdam]

two government departments (actually three, including Administration)

I tend to ignore that one because it never appears on the "primarily concerned with" list on the nation page, regardless of size.

What does it even do? Given that it's sometimes possible to see very large, effective governments with little Administration (I recall once having none at all, and it's only 1.4% now), I at one point imagined that it's a euphemism for "embezzlement", tax money that's pocketed by bureaucrats without doing anything useful. But it can still appear even in nations with high Integrity (since I later redeveloped some even though Integrity keeps going up), so it's not quite that.

Similarly, not all industries have an associated World Census ranking for their output, and I think only one has a ranking for effectiveness (Tourism).

I discussed industries here.

It's kind of the reverse situation of government departments. Instead of "spending" in money that hopefully leads to "effectiveness" in department-dependent measures, there's "industry size" in industry-dependent measures that hopefully leads to "profit" in money. Currently, only "profit" is visible for most industries and only "industry size" for Tourism. (There are other times it could be relevant, for example Timber Woodchipping should damage the environment in proportion with how many trees you're cutting down, regardless of how much money you're making off those trees - though that number doesn't need to be directly displayed to players.)

It's never been considered before that World Census rankings must cover every stat, so it's not a bug. There would be an awful lot of new rankings if that were the case. But we will always consider suggestions.

I understand that you don't want to display absolutely everything the game ever calculates to players. But I think that stats like these (government spending, industry) where there is explicitly a family of stats of the same "type", which players already directly encounter elsewhere (the percentage charts, the main nation description page), and many of which are already represented in the census with compatible scales, the census should aim for a "Gotta catch 'em all!" policy for consistency.

Adding the two spending stats for Religion & Spirituality and Social Policy seems both highly desirable (almost all equivalent stats are already in the census, and players like those), and easy to do (the numbers are clearly already in the game, the hardest part would be drawing some new trophy icons - who makes those things anyway?), so I think it would be a good idea to implement.

Effectiveness stats are harder, since it's hard to imagine how you'd even calculate effectiveness stats for some departments. (Public Transport, for example, doesn't tie into anything else in the game, we don't even have a stat for privately-owned bus/train/taxi services, and while cars can be legalized or banned there's nothing measuring how many are being driven. And how can you measure effectiveness for International Aid when other nations don't even exist in the simulation? A "Popularity" / "International Opinion" stat for how much the international community likes/respects your nation?) Though at least having an effectiveness stat for Defense would be nice, but not top priority. (Besides military spending, other factors that would go in would include Scientific Advancement, morale, and willingness to commit war crimes.)

[[violet]]

two government departments (actually three, including Administration)

I tend to ignore that one because it never appears on the "primarily concerned with" list on the nation page, regardless of size.

FYI this has recently changed. And by "recently" I mean about four hours ago.

What does it even do? Given that it's sometimes possible to see very large, effective governments with little Administration (I recall once having none at all, and it's only 1.4% now), I at one point imagined that it's a euphemism for "embezzlement", tax money that's pocketed by bureaucrats without doing anything useful.

It's overhead, or bloat: the spending that goes into running a government at all, before it starts to do things. It will rise in nations that support across-the-board government spending and fall in nations that only support targeted government spending or else oppose all government spending.

As of recent changes, I believe it will also start to be used for spending on elections, diplomacy, and other miscellaneous government business that doesn't fall into any other department.

Adding the two spending stats for Religion & Spirituality and Social Policy seems both highly desirable (almost all equivalent stats are already in the census, and players like those), and easy to do (the numbers are clearly already in the game, the hardest part would be drawing some new trophy icons - who makes those things anyway?), so I think it would be a good idea to implement.

These do seem like prime candidates. (Along with Administration.) Especially post-refactoring, which reduced the problem of nations being Top 500 for government size also tending to be Top 500 for every single government department. We ideally want World Census rankings to be distributed widely to all different types of nations, not in tight clumps like big-government, big-industry, etc.

Industries are a little different. I don't expect that we will be restricted to the same fairly small set of industries forever, and at that point it will become impractical to have trophies for them all.

[Knootoss]

Adding Administration, Religion & Spirituality and Social Policy would make me a very happy bunny indeed!