[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[Candlewhisper Archive]

2 day ago, I had the opportunity to strengthen my social safety net. I took the opportunity to do just that. It managed to LOWER inclusiveness. How did that happen?

You mean Issue 24, option 3.

Next time, please note the issue number or name, it will make the detective work a lot easier.

Anyway, here's the stat:

Mandela-Wollstonecraft Non-Discrimination Index 420.49 → 420.27 -0.05%

-0.05%. A drop of 0.22 where the current range of values in the world is between 3 and 722.

You really thought this was worth raising?

[Cresenthia]

Option 1 of Issue 670 decreased my civil rights. Shouldn't the effect if any be the opposite?

[Drasnia]

Option 1 of Issue 670 decreased my civil rights. Shouldn't the effect if any be the opposite?

If you had previously allowed unrestricted immigration, you're now restricting it to having to get screened first. Thus civil rights decrease.

[Ransium]

Option 1 of Issue 670 decreased my civil rights. Shouldn't the effect if any be the opposite?

If you had previously allowed unrestricted immigration, you're now restricting it to having to get screened first. Thus civil rights decrease.

This is correct. The assumed background state is no structured restriction, afterwards your doing extensive background checks on refugees. Extensive background checks on potential immigrants is a tiny bit invasive of their privacy. Nothing major though.

[The Hundred Colors]

38.1

Having the government sponsor a space program caused my taxes to go down. It wasn't a gigantic drop, but the logic behind it escapes me.

[Ransium]

38.1

Having the government sponsor a space program caused my taxes to go down. It wasn't a gigantic drop, but the logic behind it escapes me.

New to this whole effects analysis game, but recall taxes are derived from both your economy's size as well as your government's size. If a choice were, for your particular nation's set up, to grow your economy more than your government size (even if it grew both), the net effect would be a lower overall rate of taxation.

[Prosophobia]

The response to my last post here resigned me to the fact that reflection upon these effects is virtually useless but I will try one last time.

Issue 570

The description was "the clergy of darkness remains a single sex institution"

I chose the traditional option of making religion single sex and saw my scientific advancement increase while my primitiveness decreased. Is this the proper effect for this choice? I think not but perhaps I don't understand what primitive means.

[Ransium]

The response to my last post here resigned me to the fact that reflection upon these effects is virtually useless but I will try one last time.

You get that we put a lot of time and thought into coding these effect, right? Are you surprised that posts that simultaneously treat us like idiots and ask us for help don't get the best reaction?

Issue 570

The description was "the clergy of darkness remains a single sex institution"

I chose the traditional option of making religion single sex and saw my scientific advancement increase while my primitiveness decreased. Is this the proper effect for this choice? I think not but perhaps I don't understand what primitive means.

Your choice forced religion to take a side on an issue that was unpopular among some adherents and popular among others. The net effect is certainly to make your religion more conservative, but it may have lost your religion some adherents as well. From there, secondary effects caused the change your seeing.

[Venetoland]

His comments weren't nearly as combative as you took them IMHO.

[Golden State Warriorz]

On issue 281, "Free Internet for Golden State Warriorz", I chose option 1: government provides free internet for everybody. After that, my nation's primitiveness rating went way, way up (-60 to +20 something), and scientific advancement went down considerably from +90 to +65. Seriously, do the last 2 effects make any sense at all? Giving everyone free access to the internet should LOWER primitiveness and RAISE scientific advancement, not the other way around and certainly not by such absurd amounts.

[Ransium]

On issue 281, "Free Internet for Golden State Warriorz", I chose option 1: government provides free internet for everybody. After that, my nation's primitiveness rating went way, way up (-60 to +20 something), and scientific advancement went down considerably from +90 to +65. Seriously, do the last 2 effects make any sense at all? Giving everyone free access to the internet should LOWER primitiveness and RAISE scientific advancement, not the other way around and certainly not by such absurd amounts.

You just put a lot of tech companies out of business by nationalizing the internet. From there, secondary effects.

[Tzhakistan]

Option 1 on issue 171 raised pacifism a bit. I know it was a mild increase, but a lowering of pacifism should probably be coded in.

[Merni]

Issue 623: option 1: selected it and Furniture Restoration industry jumped 688%. I know the numerical jump was only -4 to +27, but still it's huge.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Option 1 on issue 171 raised pacifism a bit. I know it was a mild increase, but a lowering of pacifism should probably be coded in.

This is a secondary effect of programmed stat changes, and the assigned stat changes look appropriate to me. While the pacifism change doesn't necessarily fit the narrative perfectly, its part of the broader modelling inputs of the game engine, and editing the issue here would give greater unexpected effects. Pacifism is an emergent stat, and I can't change the direction of the change without screwing up more important effects.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Issue 623: option 1: selected it and Furniture Restoration industry jumped 688%. I know the numerical jump was only -4 to +27, but still it's huge.

Industry changes are normally coded to be additive rather than % increases, so what you're actually examining is a +31 change. Given that the biggest furniture restoration industry score in the game is (currently) 62812.6, a change of 31 is pretty small in the grand scheme of things. Not the smallest change possible, but appropriate to the issue.

More explanation:
https://www.nationstates.net/nation=can ... /id=743331

[Sierra Lyricalia]

Issue 601, option 1:

Law Enforcement
Orwell Orderliness Index -3.16 → 56.16 1,877%

Jaysis Chroist! Seems a bit excessive for an option advertising a beef-up of district attorney budgets, whose effect line talks about the subsequent behavior of lawyers, to suddenly give me massive police funding.

(This is no kind of 122-bitching, but I've never spent money on law and order before. Alas, all good things must come to an end. )

[Ransium]

Issue 601, option 1:

Law Enforcement
Orwell Orderliness Index -3.16 → 56.16 1,877%

Jaysis Chroist! Seems a bit excessive for an option advertising a beef-up of district attorney budgets, whose effect line talks about the subsequent behavior of lawyers, to suddenly give me massive police funding.

(This is no kind of 122-bitching, but I've never spent money on law and order before. Alas, all good things must come to an end. )

Find "Trade of Endangered Species" legal and I might consider doing something about this

I'm kidding. Seriously though the same doesn't work in percentages. The issue is coded to change police spending appropriately (IMHO), but because your nation is just on the border between positive and negative spending on the category it caused an enormous percentage shift, but not all that large of a real shift. Consider the number 1 nation in the game in this category spends 87,153.86 and 56.16 seems like a very small expenditure indeed.

[Sierra Lyricalia]

Issue 601, option 1:




Jaysis Chroist! Seems a bit excessive for an option advertising a beef-up of district attorney budgets, whose effect line talks about the subsequent behavior of lawyers, to suddenly give me massive police funding.

(This is no kind of 122-bitching, but I've never spent money on law and order before. Alas, all good things must come to an end. )

Find "Trade of Endangered Species" legal and I might consider doing something about this

I'm kidding. Seriously though the same doesn't work in percentages. The issue is coded to change police spending appropriately (IMHO), but because your nation is just on the border between positive and negative spending on the category it caused an enormous percentage shift, but not all that large of a real shift. Consider the number 1 nation in the game in this category spends 87,153.86 and 56.16 seems like a very small expenditure indeed.

Ah, law enforcement isn't measured on a -100 to +100 scale, got it. I'm not suddenly at 56% of the entire possible budgetary allocation. Thanks for responding

[Ransium]

Right! It's on the same scale as other government spending categories like public health care or ecofriendliness.

[The Sinistress]

Issue 613, option 3 ("You have no right to censor art, and photo-manipulation is art.") -- Social Conservatism up 3.65 points, Authoritarianism also up? (only .01 point there, if a high percentage.) Nudity down, even though the stated result is "T-shirts displaying a photo of @@LEADER@@ performing the Full-Monty are selling out"? Seems a little backwards to me, any explanation?

[Lawyer suicide]

Issue number 308

“More government involvement isn’t what we need,” says Yolanda Yeats, the CEO of Ferry Nice. “We’re in this mess because the government can’t keep up with the times. Let the private sector run these docks, and watch how quickly it turns around. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to raise the limit of how many passengers each boat can take.”

It's pretty usual for me to chose such pro-business options while being pure state-planned economy all the time. But this time something went wrong and this option fully restored capitalism in my nation.

I even tried to use my another issue 152, namely its second option, in hope to cancel the effect.

“This is outrageous!” cries armchair revolutionary Cassandra Garak. “The government must maintain the principles of equality and socialism that we fought so hard for, and not sell the country to corrupt and greedy corporations. We must eject these shameful capitalists from our great nation at once!”

the words 'private' and 'enterprise' must never appear in the same sentence.

But it didn't help me. I have now zero state-owned industry.

Was it an error or everything worked as expected? If this was an error, can I have my state-planned economy back?

[4stan]

Issue 649. I chose to raise tariffs, and my taxes somehow went down?!?

[Noahs Second Country]

“The military is a stain on the peace-loving nature of our nation!” cries Rodrigo Stromburg, while sporting a Rastafarian hat. “People should be allowed to choose what they do for a living! Conscription is wrong and I don’t see why our tax second best currencies should go to such a despicable cause! The money should be going to more important places - like our pockets!”

Effective Tax Rate -0.51 → -0.49 3.9%

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Issue 613, option 3 ("You have no right to censor art, and photo-manipulation is art.") -- Social Conservatism up 3.65 points, Authoritarianism also up? (only .01 point there, if a high percentage.) Nudity down, even though the stated result is "T-shirts displaying a photo of @@LEADER@@ performing the Full-Monty are selling out"? Seems a little backwards to me, any explanation?

Common observation, that one. Enough to be able to point you to my prepared response.

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

Note privacy is the thing here.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Issue number 308

“More government involvement isn’t what we need,” says Yolanda Yeats, the CEO of Ferry Nice. “We’re in this mess because the government can’t keep up with the times. Let the private sector run these docks, and watch how quickly it turns around. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to raise the limit of how many passengers each boat can take.”

It's pretty usual for me to chose such pro-business options while being pure state-planned economy all the time. But this time something went wrong and this option fully restored capitalism in my nation.

It says "Let the private sector run these docks".

The game treats planned economy as a binary state - either you allow private industry or you don't.

I even tried to use my another issue 152, namely its second option, in hope to cancel the effect.

“This is outrageous!” cries armchair revolutionary Cassandra Garak. “The government must maintain the principles of equality and socialism that we fought so hard for, and not sell the country to corrupt and greedy corporations. We must eject these shameful capitalists from our great nation at once!”

the words 'private' and 'enterprise' must never appear in the same sentence.

But it didn't help me. I have now zero state-owned industry.

Was it an error or everything worked as expected? If this was an error, can I have my state-planned economy back?

Funny thing is, you can't get 152 unless you're already a state-planned economy, so the code assumes you are already state-planned and doesn't change you to that with the option.

What must have happened is that you received both issues while state-planned, and though you were valid for #152 at the time you received it, you weren't by the time you answered it.

That can happen unfortunately - ideally the game would remove from your folder any issues you are no longer eligible for, but I think the server load of monitoring that would not be well spent.

Don't worry though, lots of opportunities for you to get rid of capitalism again. You'll get the chance sooner or later.