[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[[violet]]

If gun ownership is compulsory, then just about everyone is well-armed. Not just the criminals. So the decrease in the number of criminals shouldn't have significant effect on Weaponization.

As mentioned above, it's not a simple binary where people are either armed or not. Criminals will always attempt to arm themselves at a higher rate than the general populace.

[Belinos]

Sorry to be a bother, but could someone explain the effects of 264.2?

"You think too small," sighs Foreign Secretary @@RANDOMNAME@@, between sips from a sparkling bottle of gourmet dihydrogen monoxide. "@@NAME@@ may be short on water, but the rest of @@REGION@@ has water to spare! Why not just import the water from abroad? Sure, it'll cost money, but what's worth more to the people of @@NAME@@, a little tax money or their most basic physical needs? Our neighbors wouldn't dream of cutting off the water, right?"

Result: "Almost all of Belinos's water is piped into the country from abroad for exorbitant prices."

The choice implied that the taxes will have to be raised. But instead, it resulted in a large decrease in Taxation (-4.9%), large increase in Employment (+5.0%) and Black Market (+4.4%), and even ruined some of the industries. Such as Book Publishing, which went down by 100%.

It also lowered Sector: Agriculture. I'm not sure how or why more water equals less agriculture.

[Ceretis]

Tourists On Death Row - Option 1
Oddly this increases welfare by a noticeable amount, and somehow business subsidization and compliance as well as public education. Why? Why any of these? What do those have to do with foreign relations. What subsidization and welfare? Is Maxtopia one of my corporations? If so please boost my economy by adding in a whole additional economy please.

Also, how would diplomatic negotiations which MAY OR MAY NOT include a THREAT of sanctions lead to a noticeable decrease in: Arms mfg, Beverages, Cars, Retail, Trout, Basket weaving, Furniture restoration, Manufacturing, Economic output, Pizza delivery, Wood chipping, Huge decrease in Mining, and a drop in all income categories??

Going to war probably would have been less harmful to my stats and economy.

[Lioniel]

Name of Issue : Hush Hush Sweeet Charlotte

I choose option 3 where i just admit that i have an affair. and instead of showing me unusual effects it didn't even made any changes at all.The newspaper headline read: "Special Edition the history of newspapers"

[Trotterdam]

I guess your leader is so promiscious that him having an affair isn't even news anymore?

[Bears Armed]

viewtopic.php?p=28064996#p28064996

[Menta Lee-IL]

Just chose the add more police option for the graffiti artist issue, and the resulting stats showed a decrease in law enforcement spending and defense? Seems illogical to me? Apologies if this is the wrong thread.

Further to my post above, i received the issue "Where have all the flowers gone?" and chose the option which results in dissidents being executed. The result? Increased civil rights. There have been quite a few issues which result in contradictory effects, such as this and the one mentioned above. I have no clue how killing off dissidents could possibly lead to better civil rights.

[Wallenburg]

This nation chose 364.1 and Weather conditions improved Weather by 1.7%.

[Trotterdam]

This nation chose 364.1 and Weather conditions improved Weather by 1.7%.

Common superstition associates rain with crying.

Therefore, a reduction in crying babies means a reduction in rain.

[Bedetopia]

Issue 32: One Wife Is Never Enough, Say Polygamists

I chose option 2, which forbids anything that isn't traditional marriage.



Explain why banning things increases civil rights. There was also an increase in drug use and nudity, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen... I'm having a hard time going back into the Outlawed ranking because of these weird effects.

[Sanctaria]

Issue 32: One Wife Is Never Enough, Say Polygamists

I chose option 2, which forbids anything that isn't traditional marriage.

(Image)

Explain why banning things increases civil rights. There was also an increase in drug use and nudity, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen... I'm having a hard time going back into the Outlawed ranking because of these weird effects.

You had previously banned marriage in your nation - you've now legalised it.

[Svothlore]

Issue #380: Farmers seeding discontent (Issue brought to Svothlore)

Farmers throughout the country are threatening a nationwide strike, because their domestic produce cannot compete with cheap foreign imports. They demand that the government step in and protect the agricultural sector.

I chose solution #3:

"Are these people serious?" scoffs @@RANDOMNAME@@, owner of A Whole Shipload, LLC. "Subsidies, tariffs, what is all that about? You're messing with the free market here! If foreign produce is cheaper, then that means they're better at doing their jobs. These ungrateful peasants just want government coddling, because they can't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. It's time that @@NAME@@ promote personal responsibility instead of pandering to the weak. Crush the strike by abolishing all foodstuff tariffs, and then we can import as much as we like."


The effects were:



Let's look at these one by one.

Taxation shouldn't have gone up. I DECREASED taxes by removing tariffs on foreign foodstuffs.

Death rate doesn't exactly make sense since people wouldn't willingly buy foreign food if they knew it was killing them, but I'll let that pass because my people are actually incredibly stupid for some reason.

Employment makes sense, since local farmers found themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Business subsidization doesn't make a lot of sense since it has nothing to do with trade regulation, but I won't complain because I want that to go down anyway.

Human Development Index certainly shouldn't go down for me, and it seems that every single choice I make decreases this no matter what. But if lifespan is going down along with unemployment, then it makes sense that this would follow.

Beverages, pizza sales, furniture restoration, manufacturing, and retail should all either remain about the same or increase, because the farmers that are displaced from the market will eventually need to find a niche in a different market through the process of specialization.

Economic output should go up, not down. People now don't need to pay as much for food, now that costs went down. That's money that they can spend on other things, which is a stimulant to the economy.

Average income should also increase, not decrease, once again for the same reason mentioned above.

The economy should be increasing a lot, not decreasing. I know free trade is a bit of a controversial topic in the political field, but not in terms of economics. Every country under free trade has a more prosperous economy as a result; almost every economist agrees with that notion.

Cheese exports and agriculture should be going down: that's correct. We're terrible at making cheese and farming; it's just the competitive process that causes that.

[Eahland]

This nation chose 158.1, allowing homeowners to shoot burglars on sight, which decreased Weaponization and Civil Rights (as well as all the related items), while increasing Pacifism.

An interesting one! Normally this issue option will increase Weaponization. However, since your populace is already extremely well-armed, and compulsorially so, most of the effects made no difference. But with burglars being more fearful of being shot, crime decreased, and fewer criminals meant fewer weapons, and thus you came out with a net decrease in weapons per citizen overall.

I just had the same one, and the same complaint about it. But also, while lowering Weaponization by 0.27%, it increased my Arms Manufacturing industry by 0.16%. So... we're making more guns, but somehow have fewer?

Also, allowing private citizens to take the law into their own hands somehow increased Authoritarianism by 16.7%, when it seems to me like it should do the opposite.

And despite a result blurb ("Nervous homeowners have been blamed for rising death rates amongst carol singers and locksmiths.") that suggests that innocent people are getting killed because of this, Safety increased by 0.42%. I guess that's just mirroring the drop in Crime?

And Nudity dropped? This seems to be a general result of any decrease in Civil Rights whether it has anything to do with clothing or not.

[The City-State of Knossos]

Issue 41 option 2 increases income inequality despite it being the government helps smaller business and aims to break up big business. So…why would it?

[Bedetopia]

Issue 32: One Wife Is Never Enough, Say Polygamists

I chose option 2, which forbids anything that isn't traditional marriage.

(Image)

Explain why banning things increases civil rights. There was also an increase in drug use and nudity, which is the exact opposite of what's supposed to happen... I'm having a hard time going back into the Outlawed ranking because of these weird effects.

You had previously banned marriage in your nation - you've now legalised it.

That... is a very probable possibility. But then I shouldn't get an issue about different kinds of marriage if I previously banned it, I should be getting an issue that only focuses on leagalizing it again. Issue requirements need to be tweaked so it accounts more for banned things.

[Sanctaria]

You had previously banned marriage in your nation - you've now legalised it.

That... is a very probable possibility. But then I shouldn't get an issue about different kinds of marriage if I previously banned it, I should be getting an issue that only focuses on leagalizing it again. Issue requirements need to be tweaked so it accounts more for banned things.

This is an issue to legalise marriage again.

The text/premise of the issue says

"A small religious group is lobbying the government to allow them to take multiple wives."

This works whether or not marriage is legal in your nation.

There's no bug or unusual effect here.

[The Sinistress]

This isn't a big thing, but I'm still wondering. Issue 190.2, this nation -- Compassion went up, Niceness went up, Inclusiveness went up, Pacifism went up, Compliance went up, Death Rate went down, Rudeness went down, Crime went down -- and yet Safety also went down? Maybe I just don't understand how Safety is calculated.

[Svothlore]

I've got another one that came to me.

Issue #27: Cash for Colons.

I went with solution #1:

"We remain critically short of blood plasma and various organs," says @@NAME@@ One hospital administrator @@RANDOMNAME@@. "Especially hearts. A good heart is hard to find. But if we were allowed to pay for donations, we'd get more of them and could save more lives. Plus the donor takes home a few hundred @@CURRENCY@@s in compensation. Unless it's a post-mortem donation, of course. In that case we'd pay the family."


My economy went down as a result of this, and crime rates went up. Um...why? I'd think the opposite would happen.

[The Candy Of Bottles]

I've got another one that came to me.

Issue #27: Cash for Colons.

I went with solution #1:

"We remain critically short of blood plasma and various organs," says @@NAME@@ One hospital administrator @@RANDOMNAME@@. "Especially hearts. A good heart is hard to find. But if we were allowed to pay for donations, we'd get more of them and could save more lives. Plus the donor takes home a few hundred @@CURRENCY@@s in compensation. Unless it's a post-mortem donation, of course. In that case we'd pay the family."


My economy went down as a result of this, and crime rates went up. Um...why? I'd think the opposite would happen.

I'd expect the crime rates to result from people committing murders to harvest the victims organs and sell them to the hospitals. Not sure on the economy though.

[Svothlore]

I'd expect the crime rates to result from people committing murders to harvest the victims organs and sell them to the hospitals. Not sure on the economy though.

Well, I mean, if we're being pedantic, murder isn't illegal in my nation (as a matter of fact, nothing's illegal), which has led me to wonder why crime rates are so high when we don't even recognize crime. But I guess that's a possibility.

I've looked around, and apparently the economy should have gone up. That's what happened with other people. I'm quite agitated; this game really seems to want my economy to suffer, no matter what I do.

[[violet]]

Further to my post above, i received the issue "Where have all the flowers gone?" and chose the option which results in dissidents being executed. The result? Increased civil rights. There have been quite a few issues which result in contradictory effects, such as this and the one mentioned above. I have no clue how killing off dissidents could possibly lead to better civil rights.

I swear I posted a long reply to this and now I can't find it. That's annoying. Anyway, the answer is that this issue option restricts a whole bunch of freedoms, but in Menta Lee-IL, all those freedoms were already completely extinguished. But the issue does slightly loosen one particular type of personal freedom: gun control. This allowed your nation to rise ever-so-slightly in Civil Rights (which measure personal freedoms).

Civil Rights rose from 1.46 to 1.54 on a scale that goes to 100, so they are still practically non-existent; they're just slightly more existent than before.

[Trotterdam]

Well, I mean, if we're being pedantic, murder isn't illegal in my nation (as a matter of fact, nothing's illegal), which has led me to wonder why crime rates are so high when we don't even recognize crime. But I guess that's a possibility.

The evidence suggests that "crime" in NationStates isn't actually about breaking the law. Rather, the game has a list of things, such as murder and theft, that it thinks should be outlawed, whether or not they actually are in your nation, and crime rate measures those. Thus, if you legalize things like terrorism or piracy, it causes crime to go up because people are now committing more terrorism or piracy, even though it's not recognized as a crime by your nation (but it is by the World Census). While if you outlaw things that the game doesn't consider "crimes", such as driving cars or wearing clothes, then this will not necessarily raise crime despite there now being more laws people might want to break, and may even lower crime due to the reduced civil freedoms making it harder to get away with crimes (no cars = no drunk driving, no clothes = harder to conceal illegal weapons). In fact, 100% of your population will obey the new law without question, because the game doesn't model a "disobediance rate" for every law you can pass, only for those things it explicitly considers crimes (and maybe a few specific other things, like drug use and black market - which is also separate, it is possible to have a huge black market in a nation where crime is "totally unknown").

Come to think of it, this makes the name "Compliance" for Safety from Crime sound even less reasonable.

This may sound perverse, but it does make for a useful metric. If you want to know "how likely am I to get mugged if I take a trip to this nation?", this number tells you. Crime data wouldn't be very reliable if nations could arbitrarily "fix" their crime problem by legalizing all the stuff the criminals were doing. (I'll cite, once again, Italy's 2014 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics for "fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants". Not quite the same thing, but similar idea.)

I swear I posted a long reply to this and now I can't find it. That's annoying.

You posted it in another thread. Menta Lee-IL originally posted his question there, then reposted it on being informed that this thread is a more appropiate location for it.

[Mostrov]

Whoops, I did look at the wrong nation. When I saw .17, I figured you just misread it.

I see that 17% drop, let me look over that option and see if we need to adjust it.

Option 2 of issue #490 caused a 21% dip in my nations economy and practically every other statistical change possible. I understand why this happened, nevertheless it is quite drastic for what would intuitively seem a relatively minor change. I had guessed that this option would have reduced corruption, the reason I chose it, but apparently not. The most bizarre effect I find is that taxation is only reduced very slightly. How exactly is the 'revenue' generated and government and hence the broader economy expanded if taxation is ultimately capped? Unless someone is really into socialist ideas of economics and its some abstract point about units of account, something which I very much doubt this is intended. As it stands it would seem that when expanding the economy for a socialist style economy the increase is generated from the ether with no detrimental effect and that any contraction of the government is bad and similarly disappears into nothingness.

[Skappola]

"Water Supply Problems Becoming A Major Drain"
Picking option one, siding with the farmers, causes crime to increase by a ~4%. Water rationing is annoying, but it doesn't cause crime jumps.

[Luna Amore]

"Water Supply Problems Becoming A Major Drain"
Picking option one, siding with the farmers, causes crime to increase by a ~4%. Water rationing is annoying, but it doesn't cause crime jumps.

It caused a raise from 16.22 → 16.78 in Crimes Per Hour or 3.5% for you personally. Overall negligible.

If you tell people, 'Hey, stop watering your lawns or else' at least a few people are going to say 'Or else what?' and keep doing it. That accounts for the minor crime bump.