[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects Since New Update

[Concordant Opposition]

So in this case civil rights are better because the government can monitor the citizen's internet usage.

I'm sorry, but that will never be correct.

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*

[Drasnia]

358.2 lowering age of consent raised religiousness drastically 51.21 --> 427.66 (735%). I'm wondering if this put me just barely over the line as that stat has fluctuated quite a bit. My welfare went up BUT my taxation went down oddly. I was expecting both to increase.

[[violet]]

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.

[[violet]]

358.2 lowering age of consent raised religiousness drastically 51.21 --> 427.66 (735%). I'm wondering if this put me just barely over the line as that stat has fluctuated quite a bit. My welfare went up BUT my taxation went down oddly. I was expecting both to increase.

The Religiousness jump is a result of that general model flaw that can cause big swings around a midpoint, yes. This should be addressed in the next big Rankings patch.

Normally tax would increase with more Welfare spending, but this specific issue choice also mentions a small tax cut for families.

[Drasnia]

358.2 lowering age of consent raised religiousness drastically 51.21 --> 427.66 (735%). I'm wondering if this put me just barely over the line as that stat has fluctuated quite a bit. My welfare went up BUT my taxation went down oddly. I was expecting both to increase.

The Religiousness jump is a result of that general model flaw that can cause big swings around a midpoint, yes. This should be addressed in the next big Rankings patch.

Normally tax would increase with more Welfare spending, but this specific issue choice also mentions a small tax cut for families.

Thanks [v]!

[The Ursine Northlands]

#319, option 2: favouring the use of traditional systems of measurement increases Crime?!?

Crime Crimes Per Hour 7.19 → 7.45 3.6%

[Trotterdam]

People getting scammed at shops due to confusion between troy pounds and avoirdupois pounds.

[Bears Armed]

People getting scammed at shops due to confusion between troy pounds and avoirdupois pounds.

Didn't happen significantly in RL, because the laws were clear about which goods could be sold using Troy weight (medicinal materials, when actually sold by weight rather than by number of doses, and precious metals) and which by Avoirdupois weight (everything else), so why should it happen in NS? An increase by over 3% in crime rates here seems excessive even by NS standards...

[Greater Hunnia]

Is 17-2 still bugged? It used to raise corruption and decrease integrity, and some people including myself reported the issue quite long ago. Did it get fixed?

Got the answer. Yes, it's still bugged.

[Gnejs]

Is 17-2 still bugged? It used to raise corruption and decrease integrity, and some people including myself reported the issue quite long ago. Did it get fixed?

Got the answer. Yes, it's still bugged.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that option. Your minuscule rise in corruption is a derived effect from the major changes. And this will always be contingent on how your stats looked beforehand. In my nation, picking that option would likely reduce corruption, whereas I have several puppets that would probably get a result more similar to yours. So, in short, while I get the frustration, not a bug and working as intended as far as I can tell.

[Frenequesta]

People getting scammed at shops due to confusion between troy pounds and avoirdupois pounds.

Didn't happen significantly in RL, because the laws were clear about which goods could be sold using Troy weight (medicinal materials, when actually sold by weight rather than by number of doses, and precious metals) and which by Avoirdupois weight (everything else), so why should it happen in NS? An increase by over 3% in crime rates here seems excessive even by NS standards...

I think that response also decreased public education, which I'm pretty sure is usually inversely correlated with the crime rate. So it's more of a side effect of the idea to "ignore the eggheads."

[Drasnia]

330.2 lowered economic freedom by about 2.5 points?

[A Humanist Science]

330.2 lowered economic freedom by about 2.5 points?

From some perspectives, allowing specific legally defined entities (I.e. entities that exist by government action/intervention) to crush Mom 'n Pop would constitute a significant reduction in Mom 'n Pop's economic freedom. This option's speaker would probably prefer that you think corporations are a naturally occuring phenominon, but ...

The bigger problem with that option is (what I think is) the misuse of "gouge." It's the customer that is gouged, not the prices.

[Greater Hunnia]

Is 17-2 still bugged? It used to raise corruption and decrease integrity, and some people including myself reported the issue quite long ago. Did it get fixed?

Got the answer. Yes, it's still bugged.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that option. Your minuscule rise in corruption is a derived effect from the major changes. And this will always be contingent on how your stats looked beforehand. In my nation, picking that option would likely reduce corruption, whereas I have several puppets that would probably get a result more similar to yours. So, in short, while I get the frustration, not a bug and working as intended as far as I can tell.

Can you please detach yourself from the game for a moment and realise how retarded it is that not allowing corporations to finance (buy) politicians is actually raising corruption under ANY circumstances? I assume that by "major changes" you mean that as usual, the major drop in Political Freedom dragged down Integrity. It is still bullshit nevertheless.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that option. Your minuscule rise in corruption is a derived effect from the major changes. And this will always be contingent on how your stats looked beforehand. In my nation, picking that option would likely reduce corruption, whereas I have several puppets that would probably get a result more similar to yours. So, in short, while I get the frustration, not a bug and working as intended as far as I can tell.

Can you please detach yourself from the game for a moment and realise how retarded it is that not allowing corporations to finance (buy) politicians is actually raising corruption under ANY circumstances? I assume that by "major changes" you mean that as usual, the major drop in Political Freedom dragged down Integrity. It is still bullshit nevertheless.

Don't be rude.

Have checked again for you, and from the editorial side of things the assigned stat changes are all appropriate and correct. The odd changes you see are a result of the sometimes paradoxical nature of the game engine, and outside our remit.

Mostly though, please refrain from making attacks on my fellow editor.

[Greater Hunnia]

Can you please detach yourself from the game for a moment and realise how retarded it is that not allowing corporations to finance (buy) politicians is actually raising corruption under ANY circumstances? I assume that by "major changes" you mean that as usual, the major drop in Political Freedom dragged down Integrity. It is still bullshit nevertheless.

Don't be rude.

Have checked again for you, and from the editorial side of things the assigned stat changes are all appropriate and correct. The odd changes you see are a result of the sometimes paradoxical nature of the game engine, and outside our remit.

Mostly though, please refrain from making attacks on my fellow editor.

I had no intention to attack him, but the fact that some people are willing to defend obviously illiogical and unrealistic results is beyond irritating. He could have answered like you did, and told me that the issue is beyond your scope, and that it stems from the game engine itself. That is ok. But saying that something so clearly broken is "working as intended" is not ok.

[[violet]]

Can you please detach yourself from the game for a moment and realise how retarded it is that not allowing corporations to finance (buy) politicians is actually raising corruption under ANY circumstances? I assume that by "major changes" you mean that as usual, the major drop in Political Freedom dragged down Integrity. It is still bullshit nevertheless.

Hmm, you are probably right. The Integrity ranking measures how frequently government officials can be "financially induced to break the rules," so the current logic is that when there are no laws limiting money in politics, there can be no corruption. But this is probably counter-intuitive to how people usually understand the concept.

[Greater Hunnia]

Can you please detach yourself from the game for a moment and realise how retarded it is that not allowing corporations to finance (buy) politicians is actually raising corruption under ANY circumstances? I assume that by "major changes" you mean that as usual, the major drop in Political Freedom dragged down Integrity. It is still bullshit nevertheless.

Hmm, you are probably right. The Integrity ranking measures how frequently government officials can be "financially induced to break the rules," so the current logic is that when there are no laws limiting money in politics, there can be no corruption. But this is probably counter-intuitive to how people usually understand the concept.

Thanks for the response. I think that it's clear that corporations don't give away large sums of money to support persons of influence just for nothing. They always ask for something in return, sooner or later. In other words, even if the money transfer was legal, to return the favor, the politicians will inevitably have to abuse their power in favor of their "donators". I believe that it is the very definition of corruption.

[Bears Armed Mission]

For issue #312, earlier today, this nation took the diplomatic [second] option.... and its rating for 'Rudeness' increased. That seems slightly incongruous to me...

[Candlewhisper Archive]

For issue #312, earlier today, this nation took the diplomatic [second] option.... and its rating for 'Rudeness' increased. That seems slightly incongruous to me...

Fair point.

It's a side effect change, unavoidable knocking on the changes that are coded in, and which would be conspicuous in their absence.

Rudeness was a personal project of mine in the last month, as I was trying to convince the powers that be that it was changing without much logic on a lot of issues. Many of the unexpected secondary rudeness changes remain, but now a LOT more issues have narrative-driven rudeness changes hard coded into them, which we couldn't do before.

I (and others) spent a lot of time on this, and hopefully you'll start to see some differences in how that stat is represented in different nations: no longer will horrifying dictatorships be the most polite places on the planet. Of course, there's no retroactive changes, so it'll take a long time for this change to be visible, but progress is progress!

I don't think this option reaches the threshold for over-riding the secondary changes with a hard rudeness reduction. Essentially, I think the effects are small enough that they'll be overwhelmed by more solid rudeness changes on issues where rudeness is addressed directly in the narrative.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Can you please detach yourself from the game for a moment and realise how retarded it is that not allowing corporations to finance (buy) politicians is actually raising corruption under ANY circumstances? I assume that by "major changes" you mean that as usual, the major drop in Political Freedom dragged down Integrity. It is still bullshit nevertheless.

Hmm, you are probably right. The Integrity ranking measures how frequently government officials can be "financially induced to break the rules," so the current logic is that when there are no laws limiting money in politics, there can be no corruption. But this is probably counter-intuitive to how people usually understand the concept.

Violet, I've started a thread on this in the editing room that you may not have seen. I've suggested some game engine fixes, would be grateful if you join the discussion.

[Trotterdam]

no longer will horrifying dictatorships be the most polite places on the planet.

But that makes sense: nobody would dare critize the dictator when the consequence is horrible death!

The nations where brawls break out in parliament are the ones where the democratically-elected parliament has enough power that it's worth fighting over.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

no longer will horrifying dictatorships be the most polite places on the planet.

But that makes sense: nobody would dare critize the dictator when the consequence is horrible death!

The nations where brawls break out in parliament are the ones where the democratically-elected parliament has enough power that it's worth fighting over.

Sure, not looking to reverse that, just looking to make other decisions and factors that should have an impact also make it impact. Obviously I'm not going to tell you what the exact inputs are on rudeness, but basically in the last month its gotten a lot more realistic.

[Maljaratas]

Nation Answered On: Thinking Machines
Issue Answered: Issue 254
Option Selected: Option 3

I feel like an increase of 1,000 points is a little ridiculous:
http://imgur.com/a/cLecc
The increase I am speaking of is the one for the soda industry

[Jamalistan]

On issue 316 I decided to builds walls around the ghettos. Apparently that made charmlessness go down? How does oppressing the poor make a country charmful?
Note: The decisions I make on this country aren't my actual views.