#443: Five Year Plans And New Deals needs revised or removed

[Lenyo]

The code of #443-3 was fixed. Thank you for bringing up the problem.

[PurgatoryHell]

That's great. I'm glad. However, can anything be done about my stats?

[Kingdinium]

The code of #443-3 was fixed. Thank you for bringing up the problem.

Great work, chaps. That's what I call quick service!

I do concur with PurgatoryHell though, is there anything that can be done about our poor old economic rating. I shed a single tear every time I see that hated word "imploded". It is somewhat frustrating to have spent the last decade building up my nation's economy only to see it fall in one fell swoop thanks to one poor choice.

[Torsiedelle]

I was also pretty much screwed over by this.

I've been building my economy back up since then. It's painfully slow, but I'm sure I can get it back up with time.

You've never received issue #443.

I could've sworn I did. I remember getting some issue involving cutting subsidies, and my economy went from a green "frightening" to "Imploded."

No worries, anyways. I was wondering.

[PurgatoryHell]

I just want something to be clear here.

So because my nation and a handful of others were ruined by a coding problem with an issue, due to no fault of our own, nothing is going to be done to restore our nations?

I really need to know. Because I need to know how I'm going to have to handle issues from this point forward. I'm not a mod and I can't see the results of issues before I answer them. So I can't endless run my nation to perfection. But due to someone else screwing something up I'm having trouble with this. It doesn't sit right with me.

I've been playing for a very long time and have purchased every one of Max's books (not that I expect preferential treatment because of this) but I do expect someone to right the wrong.

Congratulations, the issue is fixed. I'm glad. However, someone needs to be professional and make things right.

I code PLCs and Automation systems for a living and if I make a coding mistake and it causes someone undue damage I'm responsible for it. I don't just get to fix the code and say 'I'm sorry about the tens of thousands of dollars in damages, but I fixed the code. Good luck.'

Even if this is just a nation Sim, there needs to be some standard of responsibility for problems like this.

[Luna Amore]

Sorry there hasn't been any public discussion, but I assure you, we've been hashing it out in private.

We're looking for less of a band-aid fix and more of a reconsideration of how some stats work which takes a little longer.

[PurgatoryHell]

Thanks Luna. It's just highly frustrating.

[The Planet of Oceanis]

Of course when I complained about it (on a separate account, mind you) everyone told me to shut up and take it.

Yeah, because fuck me, right?

[The Planet of Oceanis]

The code of #443-3 was fixed. Thank you for bringing up the problem.

Great work, chaps. That's what I call quick service!

I do concur with PurgatoryHell though, is there anything that can be done about our poor old economic rating. I shed a single tear every time I see that hated word "imploded". It is somewhat frustrating to have spent the last decade building up my nation's economy only to see it fall in one fell swoop thanks to one poor choice.

Also, this please.

[Mackintosh]

They won't do anything about it. They never do. I'm still waiting on a fix for the population bug they promised, oh, I don't know, 12 years ago? You play this game until a bugged or intentionally malevolent issue obliterates your nation and then move on. I'm on the verge of packing it in after their analytics adjustements. It's just not worth putting in an effort any more.

[PurgatoryHell]

I know how you feel Mackintosh. I had an account about a year before I made this one. DeYoung I think it was named that I abandoned because of the population bug.
I rarely ever post anything in these forums and if I do its because of a question about how something works.
I play the game for the game not the whole WA, RP, Raid/Defend part of it.

But I do become vocal about something like this that is game breaking. It does take quite literally a decade or more to get economies to the heights that I have lost. And they know that. One thing that strikes me is why they wont or do not fix these kinds of things for whom they effect.

I understand that they can go and fix the algorithms and change the way things interact in the future. And good for them. I am more than thrilled they are rethinking the way things work because of an way issues can tear a nation down like this.

But if you want to change course with your nation you should have to do it painstakingly slowly just like you need to do to get it where you are at now. Otherwise you'd have to be fair about it and make an issue that instantly gives you 100 ratings on your three trend graphs.

I've looked at hundreds, perhaps a thousand or better nations with frightening economies and I have not seen one build it up from zero. I don't believe it's possible. (Unless I see it I can't believe it, so if someone want's to point one out I'll gladly strike this statement).

As others, or a few others, have said, they point bugged issues out and get the cold shoulder and the 'its working as it's intended' routine. And I'm beginning to doubt the validity of the mod/admin giving that answer. Most of the time these are reported it's from people who have had a relatively young nation, say less than five years old. So they have not had the in game time and issue volume to be able to accurately gauge weather an issue is working properly or not.

I'm beginning to wonder if there are test accounts the mods can assign values to and see if an issue works fairly or not. And then run it through a computer generated sim a few hundred thousand times and see if it still holds true. It seems like an important QA feature and I would be dumbfounded if something like this did not exist.

I love NationStates, and I always have. I'm willing to bet that I have visited NS more times than any other webpage or website in existence, including Google. I am glad to see that there is at least some seriousness taken to try to smooth out the game code but at times it feels too little too late. I know you guys aren't paid. And I know it's donated time this site runs off of. But what we are asking for doesn't even register on the difficulty scale. A simple nation roll back to before the issue gutted our economies. You'ge got the data, and you've got the technology.

[Kingdinium]

Sorry there hasn't been any public discussion, but I assure you, we've been hashing it out in private.

We're looking for less of a band-aid fix and more of a reconsideration of how some stats work which takes a little longer.

Thank you for keeping us up to date, it is much appreciated.

However, as PurgatoryHell asked, is a rollback of stats possible? I too am worried about being unable to rebuild back up to 100/100 - I've never seen anyone climb from such depths either. At the moment my economy is up to 4/100 and that's taken a couple of days.

[Luna Amore]

Also note this issue will completely ruin your nation. Nobody can take a 0 economy to 100. It is not possible the way the game works.

This is not true. Depending on how bad the economy is, it could take a while, but nations have brought their economies back from Imploded/Near Imploded: http://www.nationstates.net/nation=gig_ ... tail=trend and http://www.nationstates.net/nation=kazt ... tail=trend
There's also a nation who has answered issue 221 (which can have similar effects) multiple times, bringing it back up each time. Though I can't recall his name...

They won't do anything about it. They never do. I'm still waiting on a fix for the population bug they promised, oh, I don't know, 12 years ago? You play this game until a bugged or intentionally malevolent issue obliterates your nation and then move on. I'm on the verge of packing it in after their analytics adjustements. It's just not worth putting in an effort any more.

This isn't helpful or true. The population bug (caused some nations to gain double population) was fixed before* I even started playing the game over 12 years ago. As I replied to PH, we are discussing it, including the possibility of reversing the effects.

*it looks like it was fixed after I started, but the point still stands: http://www.nationstates.net/page=news/2 ... index.html

[Mackintosh]

This isn't helpful or true. The population bug (caused some nations to gain double population) was fixed before* I even started playing the game over 12 years ago. As I replied to PH, we are discussing it, including the possibility of reversing the effects.

*it looks like it was fixed after I started, but the point still stands: http://www.nationstates.net/page=news/2 ... index.html

If by fixed you mean it stopped giving unfair advantage to affected nations, then yes, it was fixed. But the promise was to roll back those nations to pre-bug values. That never happened. If you think it's fun to ruin people's nations that have been built up for over a decade through outrageously skewed issues, then I don't know what to tell you other than that I see no point in playing this game any more. Maybe you should take a really hard look at yourselves, because quite clearly you've gone off the rails somewhere. Goodbye.

[PurgatoryHell]

There is something I want to know.

[violet] said my economy SHOULD BE 73.

I know it says -0-, but what is it actually at? It's got to be a hugely negative (oxymoron?) number.

I still have top 200 in the world industries but no economy. How does this even work given that I still have a largely private sector driven economy? Are everyone, including the CEO's working for nothing? The companies shouldn't even be able to afford the raw materials needed to produce anything.

I don't trust the average wage and top 10% wage. There's something very fish about how these numbers work.

[Valrifell]

There is something I want to know.

[violet] said my economy SHOULD BE 73.

I know it says -0-, but what is it actually at? It's got to be a hugely negative (oxymoron?) number.

I still have top 200 in the world industries but no economy. How does this even work given that I still have a largely private sector driven economy? Are everyone, including the CEO's working for nothing? The companies shouldn't even be able to afford the raw materials needed to produce anything.

I don't trust the average wage and top 10% wage. There's something very fish about how these numbers work.

Well, the economy may be down, but that doesn't mean it's non-existent. People still have money which they can spend and maintain industry (albeit in a very reduced form relative to before a crash-type thingy)

[Zinate]

So has this issue been altered yet or no?

[PurgatoryHell]

Yes. It has been fixed. But there is ongoing discussion about how things are going to interact in the future. We're just awaiting moderator and admin comments

[Holy Marsh]

This reminds me of the tax issue where my nation went from being an economic power to being...meh. Still working my way back- military expenditure is not anywhere where it used to be. I fear the day that Holy Marsh is sent back up for defence force analysis globally because I fear I'll lose my top #1 percent rank. That sucks.

Maybe some sort of confirmation if an issue decision will have incredibly deep impacts? Ruins some of the surprise of decisions, but I've seen people quit after a decision was made based off very little information- a paragraph in support of each- that turned out to have outrageously bombastic results.

Glad to see this issue was worked on. I hope you get it resolved totally, Purgatory.

[[violet]]

So because my nation and a handful of others were ruined by a coding problem with an issue, due to no fault of our own, nothing is going to be done to restore our nations?

I think what we can do now is reverse the issue for anyone who chose that issue option and wants it backed out. Just post here and we'll take care of it. PH, I will do your nation after I post.

What I've been looking at since this came to light is modifying the NS economic model to perform better in this particular situation (abolishing all government support off a high base), so that instead of having to manually reverse issue effects, we could just model it for everyone more realistically. I have a bunch of exciting spreadsheets and graphs as a result, some of which seemed promising, but as we've discussed, we've discovered new corner cases that would also perform counter-intuitively.

So instead of hurrying to fix this corner case by creating new ones for someone else, we'll need more time on that.

[Red Star Union]

I'd like it fixed.

[[violet]]

I'd like it fixed.

I don't believe you've had this issue.

[Trotterdam]

Honestly, even though there are clearly flaws in NationStates's current economic model, I kind of dread any change because my nation in particular seems to have ended up on the good side of any bugs that exist, with a maxed-out economy that seems pretty much immune to any amount of anti-business legislation I pass

[PurgatoryHell]

Thank you Violet. I appreciate your diligence in this matter and I want you to know that I do appreciate what you are doing as far as making changes to the backbone of the game. Nothing will ever be perfect but as long as there's progress and confidence in the system I'm sure there can eventually be a middle ground that satisfies the vast majority of any statistical calculations.

Thanks again for the help.

EDIT: If you would like to remove my most recent banners that I received as a result of the issue I wouldn't blame you. In the interest of fairness I didn't earn them.

[Kingdinium]

Thank you Violet. I appreciate your diligence in this matter and I want you to know that I do appreciate what you are doing as far as making changes to the backbone of the game. Nothing will ever be perfect but as long as there's progress and confidence in the system I'm sure there can eventually be a middle ground that satisfies the vast majority of any statistical calculations.

Thanks again for the help.

EDIT: If you would like to remove my most recent banners that I received as a result of the issue I wouldn't blame you. In the interest of fairness I didn't earn them.

Yes, thank you very much Violet for listening to our moaning and taking the time to fix the issue.

Your hard work is much appreciated.

Thanks again.