[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[Concordant Opposition]

The dilemma makes no mention of censorship.

That's a different argument and you'll need a response from Editors on that one. I'm just the mechanic.

Hmm. Seems a bit passing the buck.

I can only conclude the engine is flawed. Monitoring the internet access of a citizen cannot possibly be a positive increase in civil rights.

Seems pointless to play now. I like the issues and avoid the WA so why handle an issue if the engine is flawed.

Please treat some other human as an idiot because I don't appreciate it.

[Christian Democrats]

I can only conclude the engine is flawed. Monitoring the internet access of a citizen cannot possibly be a positive increase in civil rights.

If Nation X bans the internet and, then, legalizes it with monitored access, that would certainly be an increase in Civil Rights. Alternatively, if Nation X censors the internet and, then, stops censorship and monitors it instead, that would also boost Civil Rights. The game's calculation of stats is relativistic. From the standpoint of this nation, is this an increase or decrease in a given stat?

[[violet]]

That's a different argument and you'll need a response from Editors on that one. I'm just the mechanic.

Hmm. Seems a bit passing the buck.

Issue Editors are responsible for the text of an issue as well as its effects (stats). I'm responsible for making sure the effects work properly.

This distinction often won't be clear to players, but it's why I can't usually say why the issue text is a certain way, or employs a certain stat, while it's harder for Editors to explain how some knock-on effects work (or don't).

[Trotterdam]

"Every pervert, terrorist, bomb-building maniac and anti-government idiot is currently online. I'm not saying that we should block citizens from seeing it, but let's also watch who's seeking it out."

Once again, the real problem here is an improper validity.

The issue is clearly written with the expectation that the internet is currently free, and therefore either snooping (option 1) or censorship (option 2) is a shift toward more government control, and that censorship is the "more extreme" approach while snooping is the "less extreme" approach. This is clearly evident from the speaker's wording, which is essentially "well, we don't need to go too far, but we do need some more control" - he's presenting himself as the less extreme speaker.

In a nation where censorship is currently being practiced, this is untrue. Here, keeping the censorship that already exists would be the less extreme option, while lifting the censorship and only snooping would be the more extreme option. People in such a nation, even if they have the same opinions as #037, wouldn't realistically use the same language to describe them.

The speaker of option 1 isn't actually asking to stop censoring anything, just saying that that might be going farther than necessary and he's willing to be satisfied with less. Censoring can't be "going too far" if it's not going anywhere because it's already government policy. Honestly, this speaker sounds like the kind of person who might secretly be hoping for censorship but thinks it would encounter too much political opposition to risk his career pushing for it.

The proper solution would be to make this issue not appear for nations that are censoring the internet, and create a new issue for those nations (perhaps about people using proxies to bypass the censorship).

That said, if you're really trying to go for minimal civil rights with your nation, you clearly should have picked option 2, regardless of the previous status of snooping/censorship. This isn't as big of a deal as the issues that only offer a less-extreme option without even having the more-extreme one (such as those ban-or-legalize-drugs issues, that have no reasonable option besides dismissing for nations that want to keep drug use compulsory).

[Luna Amore]

It's correct when the change in censorship is greater than the change in privacy. For example, a nation that monitors its citizens and censors what they can view: This choice wouldn't alter privacy rights but would reduce censorship, resulting in a Civil Rights gain.

The dilemma makes no mention of censorship. Logically you can't tag one to the other. I agree that civil rights would encompass many metrics but the dilemma targets internet usage specifically. Censorship embraces more than just internet; you know this. Censorship governs them all. So I still fail to see how civil rights could possibly go up.

Australia's recent data retention act of parliament is a good example. It's a passive (and limited) monitoring of internet usage but has nothing to do with censorship.

*shrug*

It does mention censorship, though not directly.

"“In these days of terror and uncertainty, it’s exactly what we need,” says May Barnes, signing an arrest warrant. “Every pervert, terrorist, bomb-building maniac and anti-government idiot is currently online. I’m not saying that we should block citizens from seeing it, but let’s also watch who’s seeking it out. This will give our law enforcement officers the chance to prevent crimes before they happen. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide.”"

The bolded line "I’m not saying that we should block citizens from seeing it" is referencing censorship. If your nation had already decided to censor information, this choice would be more 'liberal' at least as it pertains to censorship.

*edit*, Just saw CD's post:

I can only conclude the engine is flawed. Monitoring the internet access of a citizen cannot possibly be a positive increase in civil rights.

If Nation X bans the internet and, then, legalizes it with monitored access, that would certainly be an increase in Civil Rights. Alternatively, if Nation X censors the internet and, then, stops censorship and monitors it instead, that would also boost Civil Rights. The game's calculation of stats is relativistic. From the standpoint of this nation, is this an increase or decrease in a given stat?

^this

[Manhat]

Answered Issue Issue No. 544 Object-Oriented Programming, picked option 3 and my civil rights dropped 5 points, I thought a board of uncensorship would be you know, raising my civil rights.

[Saveyou Island]

Answered Issue Issue No. 544 Object-Oriented Programming, picked option 3 and my civil rights dropped 5 points, I thought a board of uncensorship would be you know, raising my civil rights.

I'm going to assume you mean the fourth option, which I don't believe they have added to the issues thread yet. Arguably, forcing everyone to include a sex scene would lower civil rights.

[Archipelago Bay]

My civil rights dropped by 6% after I made hard drugs legal for adults, but not children.

[Bears Armed Mission]

My civil rights dropped by 6% after I made hard drugs legal for adults, but not children.

Are you sure that they weren't, due to an earlier decision, previously legal for everybody?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Answered Issue Issue No. 544 Object-Oriented Programming, picked option 3 and my civil rights dropped 5 points, I thought a board of uncensorship would be you know, raising my civil rights.

Nope. You're forcing graphic content on everyone, whether they want it or not. This is just as bad as denying access to it.

Look at it this way: you just want to play Tetris right? You just want the version of Tetris that doesn't have the pulsating dildo thrusting in the background. Government says no.

[Umeria]

Issue 115, option 1:

With so many nations in the world, I do insist that we increase government funding in these areas and make it a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Public Education
Edu-tellignce® Test Score 12,004.35 → 11,983.85 (-0.17%)

Taxation
Effective Tax Rate 90.53 → 90.39 (-0.15%)

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Picked option 1 of the Big fat wedding issue (felt bad for the niece).

I got literally no good stats for doing so: I got an increase in Black Market (16%!), Corruption (obviously, this one I was expecting something like the 3.6% increase I got), Taxation (another obvious one), Political Apathy and the Death Rate.

The decreases were in Ideological Radically (which is odd because surely state-sponsored weddings are more radical in modern settings?), Lifespan, Integrity, Employment (even though surely a big state-sponsored wedding should be employing a small army of people), safety (why? Are there pick-pockets in this wedding or something?) and Freedom from Taxation (correlating with the increase in taxes).

No happiness increase at the bare minimum? Because at the moment there is every incentive not to pick this option. There are literally no desirable results from picking this option (in the opinion of most people) except possibly that decrease in radicality. If you could please reconsider it, that would be lovely.

There are no good or bad stats, just stats. This isn't a game with a win condition.

As to incentive to pick this issue, I've got a puppet nation that I hope to make the most corrupt in region. This is a good option for that.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Issue 115, option 1:

With so many nations in the world, I do insist that we increase government funding in these areas and make it a compulsory part of the curriculum.

Public Education
Edu-tellignce® Test Score 12,004.35 → 11,983.85 (-0.17%)

Taxation
Effective Tax Rate 90.53 → 90.39 (-0.15%)

Weird situation, but your spending on education was asked to increase, but knock on effects had your economy grow significantly so less tax was required to pay for that.

As to why your edu-telligence test score went down, the stats do weird things when there's multiple changes affecting nations with very large existing spending numbers. Broadly, the ordered increase in education spending took place, but the shape of your nation meant that other changes to distantly related stats had enough secondary or tertiary effect to overwhelm that increase. Sometimes, options won't have the same outcome for everyone. Generally if you see a change of less than 0.5% in the wrong direction, its due to an emergent weirdness between the shape of your nation and the secondary and tertiary effects of stat changes.

Consider that part of the simulation: the chaos factor that makes NS more of a game than just "press this button to raise your education spending".

If it's any consolation, for a lower tax rate, you now seem to have a larger economic output, a smarter populace (+1.2% quips per hour) and overall industrial growth.

The stats programmed in are, oddly, all working as intended, and test well on balanced medium sized nations. Extreme

[Candlewhisper Archive]

That's a different argument and you'll need a response from Editors on that one. I'm just the mechanic.

Hmm. Seems a bit passing the buck.

I can only conclude the engine is flawed. Monitoring the internet access of a citizen cannot possibly be a positive increase in civil rights.

Seems pointless to play now. I like the issues and avoid the WA so why handle an issue if the engine is flawed.

Please treat some other human as an idiot because I don't appreciate it.

Agree with Violet, this is an editing issue, not a technical one. Would have got to it sooner, but we've all been busy.

As he has said, it affects freedoms in two ways, reducing the right to privacy and increasing the right to avoid censorship.

The thinking, to my mind, that the option is anti-censorship is the line "I’m not saying that we should block citizens from seeing it".

This may or may not be enough to justify and increase in the right to avoid censorship. We'll discuss this backstage.

However, on a broader point, I agree, this freely-provided, hard-built, volunteer-driven, ever-evolving game doesn't seem right for you. You're taking it all way too personally and expecting perfection that's never going to be attained. NS is what it is. Take it or leave it.

[Umeria]

Broadly, the ordered increase in education spending took place, but the shape of your nation meant that other changes to distantly related stats had enough secondary or tertiary effect to overwhelm that increase.

So, maybe the income increase resulted in more people donating more to schools, decreasing the overall budget. I suppose that makes sense.

[Trotterdam]

Look at it this way: you just want to play Tetris right? You just want the version of Tetris that doesn't have the pulsating dildo thrusting in the background. Government says no.

Background? It doesn't take much imagination to figure out how to incorporate that into Tetris's foreground.

Now explain what reason anyone could possibly have to enforce such a thing? (That isn't "I clicked on the wrong option due to misreading."?)

[Concordant Opposition]

Agree with Violet, this is an editing issue, not a technical one. Would have got to it sooner, but we've all been busy.

As he has said, it affects freedoms in two ways, reducing the right to privacy and increasing the right to avoid censorship.

The thinking, to my mind, that the option is anti-censorship is the line "I’m not saying that we should block citizens from seeing it".

This may or may not be enough to justify and increase in the right to avoid censorship. We'll discuss this backstage.

However, on a broader point, I agree, this freely-provided, hard-built, volunteer-driven, ever-evolving game doesn't seem right for you. You're taking it all way too personally and expecting perfection that's never going to be attained. NS is what it is. Take it or leave it.

I've read the other posts.

"I’m not saying that we should block citizens from seeing it"

Even though the character is "not saying" anything about censorship, it has to do with censorship. Got it.

I agree

With who? Or was that your gentle technique for introducing a personal opinion that I shouldn't take personally. Got it.

Anyway, this reminds me of working in the public service. So I'll apologize for wasting everyone's time and get back to my corner. Thank you for contributing.

[Trotterdam]

#017 option 1, political freedoms go up.
#234 option 2, political freedoms go down?

[Mushet]

Issue 105 Compensation Culture Mus End option 3 raised taxes by a whopping 22.9%, seems high.

[Bedetopia]

I thought this was worth its own thread, but since I didn't get an answer, I will post it here:

Gynostan has received gigantic boosts to almost all government departments, while education was eliminated. Their already huge economic output DOUBLED, and their black market got maxed out.
Of course, the removal of the education budget is because they made homeschooling mandatory, but how in the world can you get such big boosts to economic output and black market?
They have also destroyed pretty much every industry, although I don't think it matters.

Considering the national happenings at that time, one of these issues caused the bump:

#023.2 Uranium Deposit Promises To Enrich @@NAME@@
#064.4 Put The "Board" Back In Board Of Education
#097.4 Landfills Filling Up
#225.1 Prayer In Public Schools?

You can't have more unusual effects than that. This may even be a gamebreaking glitch.

[Luna Amore]

I thought this was worth its own thread, but since I didn't get an answer, I will post it here:

Gynostan has received gigantic boosts to almost all government departments, while education was eliminated. Their already huge economic output DOUBLED, and their black market got maxed out.
Of course, the removal of the education budget is because they made homeschooling mandatory, but how in the world can you get such big boosts to economic output and black market?
They have also destroyed pretty much every industry, although I don't think it matters.

Considering the national happenings at that time, one of these issues caused the bump:

#023.2 Uranium Deposit Promises To Enrich @@NAME@@
#064.4 Put The "Board" Back In Board Of Education
#097.4 Landfills Filling Up
#225.1 Prayer In Public Schools?

You can't have more unusual effects than that. This may even be a gamebreaking glitch.

Something is definitely off. I've flagged it for [v] to take a look.

[[violet]]

It's the result of a known bug in the Black Market algorithm, affecting a small number of nations (with low crime + low corruption + high cheerfulness + low economic freedom), fixed in the next big Rankings patch.

[Venetoland]

Why would needing explicit permission lead to an abolition of eminent domain?

[Luna Amore]

Why would needing explicit permission lead to an abolition of eminent domain?

If you require permission, it's no longer eminent domain.

It's in the issue's description: "A furious debate over eminent domain, or compulsory purchase, the government’s right to take a citizen’s private property without permission,"

[Bedetopia]

It's the result of a known bug in the Black Market algorithm, affecting a small number of nations (with low crime + low corruption + high cheerfulness + low economic freedom), fixed in the next big Rankings patch.

Gynostan has extreme corruption and low cheerfulness though.