[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[TolerastiaUnlimited]

A person can demand a specific type of car even if cars aren't banned.

Did you mean "even if cars aren't legal"?

[Drasnia]

A person can demand a specific type of car even if cars aren't banned.

Did you mean "even if cars aren't legal"?

Aye. Boy have I been messing up with my writing recently. I blame holiday break!

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I don't know if this is usual or this happened only to me:
In an issue No. 443 called "Five Years Plans and New Deals", I chose the opinion no. 3 (free market can handle it itself, ofc) and this happened to me:

Economy 78,44 > 53,93
Average Income 130k > 110k
IT Industry 39,5k > 32,8k
Economic Output 138 074B > 116 970 B
Business Subsidisation 190,43 > -11,83
Defense Forces 2237,57 > 1968,29
Economic Freedom 72,67 > 75,44
HDI 62,33 > 54,43

Surprising is, that things related to foodstuffs (Retail, Agriculture etc.) didn't budge at all. I expected that poor will be poorer, and industries will go slightly down. Does this happen usually, or it's only my problem? Because this issue looks like a communist revenge to free market capitalists.

The option does what it says it does - reduce subsidisation, and make for a freer market generally. It doesn't specifically deal with food crises, but rather just adopts a system-wide economic approach of encouraging economic freedom. The resulting stat shift anf game effects are handled by the simulation.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Option 2 on issue 466 lowered by public transport alot... which makes no sense and annoyed me a bit considering it's so high.

You call -1.1% a lot? Actually it's about as small a change as the granularity of the game allows direct coding for.

Don't waste my time please.

Don't argue with this reply please.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

“This man has done no wrong!” says Ben Spirit, who also happens to be the head writer of The Really stateless nation City Times Magazine. “The people have a right to transparency of government. El Denunciante is a hero who has revolutionized my magazine sale-er-Freedom of Speech for this country. No state action must be committed that would infringe upon our right to disclose government information, regardless of the effects on diplomatic relations. Besides, it isn’t as though you’ve got anything to hide... do you?”

For an unknown reason it decreased my economic freedom from 94 to 90. O_o

Yep, I can see the coding for that. There's a logic to it, but I'm not sure I agree with the chosen interpretation. I'll raise it backstage.

[Godular]

Issue "A nude day, a nude awakening"

I chose option three, which comes down to not censoring nude photos on the basis of it being art/satire...

And my civil rights went down with a commensurate increase in authoritarianism. Da hell?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Issue "A nude day, a nude awakening"

I chose option three, which comes down to not censoring nude photos on the basis of it being art/satire...

And my civil rights went down with a commensurate increase in authoritarianism. Da hell?

I answered Issue 613 with Option 3, which basically states: "let artists do what they wish, politicians can't expect privacy given their line of work."

My result was a decrease in Civil rights from 82.08 to 79.54 (lowering my ranking from World Benchmark to Superb). I also gained the Banner "Listening in", despite the fact that the Issue makes no mention of government surveillance, and the option I chose was basically the opposite of taking "a keen interest in what my citizens are doing"

Social Conservatism also increased from 17.92 to 21.69, which doesn't exactly make sense given the context of the Issue and my choice (my government being perfectly fine with fake "leaked nude photos" and not making any attempt to censor the arts).

The results of the option I took seem to reflect that I took a punitive action against the artists in question, given the increase is SC and decrease in civil rights, and the out of place banner I gained. To me it seems that the results may be reversed. (The loss of my "superb" civil rights also makes me a sad panda). The change in numbers may not seem substantial but they do seem incorrect given the Option I chose.

This is a complex issue, with complex stats, and the result you got is reflective of the starting position of your nation combined with the emergent complexities.

Broadly, on an average nation, this issue would cause considerable improvements in civil rights.

However, in a super-liberal nation like yours, the improvements in civil rights don't register, as you're already maxed out on those categories. Increased freedom of expression, decreased censorship, decreased government interference and so on: your nation didn't notice those movements, as it couldn't get any higher.
Meanwhile the small infringements on civil rights (the right to sovereignty over your own body image, the right to freedom from harassment) were civil rights that you were previously strong on, which just got a bit weaker.

Net effect is that for you, civil rights worsens.

This is not an issue with the issue coding, which is entirely appropriate. Rather, its the underlying structure of the game engine.

I see this a lot at the opposite end with my maxed-out Authoritarianism puppet DoNoHarm. I can select options that are broadly hyper-authoritarian, but see a decrease in authoritarianism because there's a few tiny liberties being snuck in somewhere in the option.

This is a game feature, not a bug, in my opinion. Once you hit the extremes of a stance, there's a tendency to unintentionally drift back towards the norm. If you get to a perfect extreme, the only safe way to maintain the status quo is to never answer an issue again. If you do keep answering issues, then you've got to start working out how the game makes its calculations, and manipulate the numbers game to some extent. Either that, or you can just let the stats do what the stats do. That's good too!

Also, may be useful to you:

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=can ... /id=743343

[Really stateless nation]

For an unknown reason it decreased my economic freedom from 94 to 90. O_o

Yep, I can see the coding for that. There's a logic to it, but I'm not sure I agree with the chosen interpretation. I'll raise it backstage.

Can you tell us more about logic behind this? Because I don't see any logic at all.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Yep, I can see the coding for that. There's a logic to it, but I'm not sure I agree with the chosen interpretation. I'll raise it backstage.

Can you tell us more about logic behind this? Because I don't see any logic at all.

You're new to this thread, so I'll explain this:

The reply you're given is all the reply I'm able to give. It's not within my power or remit to discuss game mechanics that the powers-that-be have deemed non-transparent to the player base. If I wanted or was able to tell you more, then I would have done so.

Also, because of previous near-burnout from engaging with certain people this thread, I have absolutely no intention of engaging in conversation over the answers I give. Though it's no fault of yours, you've caught me at a time in my editing where I'm not going to give you the explanations you want to.

It's been flagged to be looked into. That's all you get.

[Really stateless nation]

If you can't explain this without breaking the omerta, then OK. I didn't expect that it's so complex and mechanic-specific.

[Luddvenia]

https://nsindex.net/wiki/NationStates_Issue_No._017

The effects of choosing option 2 in this issue (getting rid of money in politics) make no sense to me. I just chose this option, and my nation took a huge dive in economy (ok) and... political freedom? Plus, if you read the effect of it, choosing to get rid of money in politics also increases corruption! It also reduces lifespan.

This issue seems to have been authored with a strong political bias. Or, can someone explain how the effects are accurate?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

https://nsindex.net/wiki/NationStates_Issue_No._017

The effects of choosing option 2 in this issue (getting rid of money in politics) make no sense to me. I just chose this option, and my nation took a huge dive in economy (ok) and... political freedom? Plus, if you read the effect of it, choosing to get rid of money in politics also increases corruption! It also reduces lifespan.

Yes, this is an age-old bugbear which has been discussed many a time. The issue here is that there is a type of political freedom tracked labelled as the freedom to influence politics with money. This freedom is what is changing, and affecting your aggregate political freedom.

The corruption changes are then coming from the secondary effect of overall political freedom changes.

This means that as you increase the freedom to bribe politicians with money, corruption decreases, and vice versa.

I'm aware this makes no bloody sense. I raised it with the technical team when I first gained access to the game code about six months ago. It's on their to-do list, along with a whole bunch of other simulation oddities that I flagged.

This issue seems to have been authored with a strong political bias.

Don't make assumptions like this, please.

[East Luddvenia]

https://nsindex.net/wiki/NationStates_Issue_No._017

The effects of choosing option 2 in this issue (getting rid of money in politics) make no sense to me. I just chose this option, and my nation took a huge dive in economy (ok) and... political freedom? Plus, if you read the effect of it, choosing to get rid of money in politics also increases corruption! It also reduces lifespan.

Yes, this is an age-old bugbear which has been discussed many a time. The issue here is that there is a type of political freedom tracked labelled as the freedom to influence politics with money. This freedom is what is changing, and affecting your aggregate political freedom.

The corruption changes are then coming from the secondary effect of overall political freedom changes.

This means that as you increase the freedom to bribe politicians with money, corruption decreases, and vice versa.

I'm aware this makes no bloody sense. I raised it with the technical team when I first gained access to the game code about six months ago. It's on their to-do list, along with a whole bunch of other simulation oddities that I flagged.

This issue seems to have been authored with a strong political bias.

Don't make assumptions like this, please.

OK, thanks for the explanation. Good to know I'm going crazy here.

Similar thing happened just recently for a puppet nation, East Luddvenia, with issue 162 "Animal Experimentation Laws Under Scrutiny" https://nsindex.net/wiki/NationStates_Issue_No._162. I chose to allow animal experimentation, and my Income Equality index dove from 98 to 51, and my Economy index rose from 1 to 30. Pretty sure animal experimentation wouldn't be quite as drastic.

[Christian Democrats]

Why did Option 229.2 cause an 11.5% drop in Economic Freedom and a 0.92% drop in Political Freedom?

[Luna Amore]

Why did Option 229.2 cause an 11.5% drop in Economic Freedom and a 0.92% drop in Political Freedom?

It depends on the nation, but essentially you are lessening people's abilities to influence politics with money which affects their ability to dictate economic policies. The economic freedom is a bit more tangental, but it's still logically consistent with the rest of the issue base.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Similar thing happened just recently for a puppet nation, East Luddvenia, with issue 162 "Animal Experimentation Laws Under Scrutiny" https://nsindex.net/wiki/NationStates_Issue_No._162. I chose to allow animal experimentation, and my Income Equality index dove from 98 to 51, and my Economy index rose from 1 to 30. Pretty sure animal experimentation wouldn't be quite as drastic.

Good flag on that.

A lot of the older issues have seriously heavy handed stats. Like this one, which shifted you from almost no economic freedom to very high economic freedom. I'll propose a change on it, as it's not right.

I caught a lot of these when a few months ago I did a review on all the issues that set things to 0, a lot of which could undo years of work with a single click. That problem is pretty much sorted now, but there's still a whole slew of options which order heavy-handed changes to freedom scores off fairly minor things.

To be fair, this isn't the fault of the editing team. It's just that at the time those issues were added, only heavy-handed tools existed, so the subtler code choices we'd opt for now basically weren't available at the time.

It's on my long term to-do list, just as soon as Iv'e finished this big review on policy flags. In the meantime, I'll see if I can fix this single issue.

Maybe something like 5... 10 years from now, we'll have a workable simulation.

[East Luddvenia]

It's on my long term to-do list, just as soon as Iv'e finished this big review on policy flags. In the meantime, I'll see if I can fix this single issue.

Maybe something like 5... 10 years from now, we'll have a workable simulation.

Thanks for all the hard work!

[Umeria]

559.1 lowered employment again.

Although that probably doesn't need to be restated.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

559.1 lowered employment again.

Although that probably doesn't need to be restated.

It did need restating. I thought I caught and fixed that one on my last review of unemployment changes. Was flagged for a fix, but I missed it off when implementing the fixes.

Should be sorted now.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Similar thing happened just recently for a puppet nation, East Luddvenia, with issue 162 "Animal Experimentation Laws Under Scrutiny" https://nsindex.net/wiki/NationStates_Issue_No._162. I chose to allow animal experimentation, and my Income Equality index dove from 98 to 51, and my Economy index rose from 1 to 30. Pretty sure animal experimentation wouldn't be quite as drastic.

Good flag on that.

A lot of the older issues have seriously heavy handed stats. Like this one, which shifted you from almost no economic freedom to very high economic freedom. I'll propose a change on it, as it's not right.

I caught a lot of these when a few months ago I did a review on all the issues that set things to 0, a lot of which could undo years of work with a single click. That problem is pretty much sorted now, but there's still a whole slew of options which order heavy-handed changes to freedom scores off fairly minor things.

To be fair, this isn't the fault of the editing team. It's just that at the time those issues were added, only heavy-handed tools existed, so the subtler code choices we'd opt for now basically weren't available at the time.

It's on my long term to-do list, just as soon as Iv'e finished this big review on policy flags. In the meantime, I'll see if I can fix this single issue.

Maybe something like 5... 10 years from now, we'll have a workable simulation.

Okay, this issue now has fixed stats.

[Lawyer suicide]

This decrease recently happened in my nation.

"I'm not giving any of my hard-earned wages to a bunch of old fossils," says @@RANDOMNAME@@, a devout taxpayer. "If they weren't smart enough to save enough money for their later years, then why should the government pay out for them now? They had their chance and they didn't take it. If they really want money so bad, they can go out and work for it like everyone else."

I understand that such option is cruel, but I don't understand why it lowered inclusiveness. My point is that pension system is about discrimination, old people get the privilege to stop working at expense of younger workers. In other words, there is a state-enforced discrimination between old people and younger people. I'm NOT saying that it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a discrimination. And if we abolish such privilege, then (considering absence of complicated side-effects decreasing "inclusiveness") our "inclusiveness" stat must increase because there is less discrimination in our society (the same logic will work in case of legalisation of child labour, for example).

[TolerastiyaUnlimited]

“We pay our employees very generous wages,” says employer representative Jazz Parke. “Especially when you consider that without us, they’d be OUT ON THE STREET. Hear that, you scumbags? OUT ON THE STREET! Anyway, my point is, if you cave in, you make our entire industry uncompetitive. You can’t do that in the global marketplace. It’ll hurt the whole country. The best solution, economically speaking, would be to relax industrial laws and allow us to fire troublemakers on the spot.”

The effect: "Employers may fire workers without giving any reason."

Income Equality: From 0.05 to 0.34 (580% increase).

I have no idea how giving the employers right to fire workers on the spot can increase the Income Equality stat so much. Especially considering that there wasn't any increase of the Employment.

[Aclion]

“We pay our employees very generous wages,” says employer representative Jazz Parke. “Especially when you consider that without us, they’d be OUT ON THE STREET. Hear that, you scumbags? OUT ON THE STREET! Anyway, my point is, if you cave in, you make our entire industry uncompetitive. You can’t do that in the global marketplace. It’ll hurt the whole country. The best solution, economically speaking, would be to relax industrial laws and allow us to fire troublemakers on the spot.”

The effect: "Employers may fire workers without giving any reason."

Income Equality: From 0.05 to 0.34 (580% increase).

I have no idea how giving the employers right to fire workers on the spot can increase the Income Equality stat so much. Especially considering that there wasn't any increase of the Employment.

Your income equality was already very low, so even a tiny change appears massive in terms of percentages.
You should see what happens when stats go across zero.

[Bears Armed]

Issue 613, option 3, allowing people to photoshop images (including nude ones) of celebrities increased 'Social Conservatism' for this nation. I don't see why...

[Aclion]

Issue 613, option 3, allowing people to photoshop images (including nude ones) of celebrities increased 'Social Conservatism' for this nation. I don't see why...

Social Conservatism is the inverse of civil rights. So when an option reduces civil rights it will increase social conservatism, even if the policy is one social conservatives would oppose.