[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[Ransium]

The first option of issue 61 causes a drop in religion.

A drop of 0.18% for your nation when you choose it. The drop is tiny is entirely secondary effects of the model that I don’t wish to untangle.

[Ransium]

Choosing option #2 in issue #714 Milky Way (with market economy) seems to lower, among other things, Lifespan, Health, Environmental Beauty and Eco Friendliness. The reduction is relatively small (0.2-1.3%), but still, why would supporting synthetic proteins do that? Synthetic bovine proteins wouldn't be any different than bovine proteins obtained from cows, and that would presumably lead to less cows on farms, and less polution / methane emissions, which would improve environment, and by extension lifespan and health.

Working as CWA intended, I’ll flag it where CWA will see it so he can respond if he chooses to.

[Drasnia]

Minor quibble here. Just answered 277.1 and got a very minor decrease in civil rights. I know why it's coded to do so (@@LEADER has lost their privacy), I would argue that there should be no CR drop since your decision affects you and only you. You had the freedom to choose and so you have lost no freedom.

[New Mushroom Kingdom]

So I got the healthcare issue from the Enemy Within chain and chose not to provide assistance, however doing this wiped out the entire public healthcare establishment in one fell swoop. While the effect is obviously intended, the magnitude and power seems to be too high unless the intention of really is to entirely abolish it. Additionally, it has weird negative impacts on the income of rich and the black market. Shouldn't it result in a minor increase of the latter as more people go for that over legitimate methods?

[Ransium]

So I got the healthcare issue from the Enemy Within chain and chose not to provide assistance, however doing this wiped out the entire public healthcare establishment in one fell swoop. While the effect is obviously intended, the magnitude and power seems to be too high unless the intention of really is to entirely abolish it. Additionally, it has weird negative impacts on the income of rich and the black market. Shouldn't it result in a minor increase of the latter as more people go for that over legitimate methods?

“That’s communist claptrap! It’s not for you to spend MY taxes on other people’s health,” says Tim Matsenjwa, CEO of Panacea Private Medical Services. “Look, I will help these people out of my own pocket, for no reason other than that because I’m super-duper charitable and a really great person! See? No government intervention needed, just free individuals in a free market helping each other out without the nanny state getting in the way. Three cheers for the free market!” He starts writing a cheque for 10 @@CURRENCY@@ for the cancer victim.

I think that's fairly clear that it's going to cut health care out of your budget, but I can flag it for CWA. As for the other impacts, secondary effects of the model. Not quite sure why they happened but I don't care to go digging into the particulars ATM.

[Ransium]

Minor quibble here. Just answered 277.1 and got a very minor decrease in civil rights. I know why it's coded to do so (@@LEADER has lost their privacy), I would argue that there should be no CR drop since your decision affects you and only you. You had the freedom to choose and so you have lost no freedom.

Yeah I donno, what's being decided here could be extended to your family, neighbors, other prominent politicians, etc. I'll raise it back stage but personally I think it's alright.

[UtilityLand]

Issue #641, option 1.

“Legislation is the answer,” declares tatty-suited progressive Cleveland Golightly in the middle of a two-hour slideshow on rainfall. “Crack down on air pollution, regulate vehicle emissions, and heavily tax polluting industry and power generation. The economy may experience a short-term loss, but that sacrifice is worth it for our children’s long-term cognitive function.”

Yet my statistics showed that taxation decreased, from 6.71 to 6.35 Despite that my "Economy", "Economic Output" and "Average Income" decreased.

[Venetoland]

Declining to pick a national religion (NOT declaring religion woo) sent religiosity through the roof. I would expect that if I picked a religion.

[Merconitonitopia]

Declining to pick a national religion (NOT declaring religion woo) sent religiosity through the roof. I would expect that if I picked a religion.

were you suppressing religion before? choosing the secular option may have undone that, causing your religiousness to rise as a result.
a speculation.

[Little Tralfamadore]

This has been happining for quite some time. My "employment" rating will go up or down for reasons that make no sense from the expected results of the issues. Yes, the key word is "expected" but even taking into account the mystery and complexity of the issues the results seem almost random for good or bad. Amost always in small amounts.

The effect has kept my employment very low. The odd thing is look at my chart for empoyment. It shows how the rating has been going up and down often on a daily scale

Is this normal? The changes seem too rapid and to up and down

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=little_tralfamadore/detail=trend?censusid=56

Not a big problem, just seems odd that the rating jumps so much

[Phydios]

This has been happining for quite some time. My "employment" rating will go up or down for reasons that make no sense from the expected results of the issues. Yes, the key word is "expected" but even taking into account the mystery and complexity of the issues the results seem almost random for good or bad. Amost always in small amounts.

The effect has kept my employment very low. The odd thing is look at my chart for empoyment. It shows how the rating has been going up and down often on a daily scale

Is this normal? The changes seem too rapid and to up and down

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=little_tralfamadore/detail=trend?censusid=56

Not a big problem, just seems odd that the rating jumps so much

I dimly remember seeing [violet] talk about a bug like this... This beta might be related to the problem.

[Fauxia]

This has been happining for quite some time. My "employment" rating will go up or down for reasons that make no sense from the expected results of the issues. Yes, the key word is "expected" but even taking into account the mystery and complexity of the issues the results seem almost random for good or bad. Amost always in small amounts.

The effect has kept my employment very low. The odd thing is look at my chart for empoyment. It shows how the rating has been going up and down often on a daily scale

Is this normal? The changes seem too rapid and to up and down

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=little_tralfamadore/detail=trend?censusid=56

Not a big problem, just seems odd that the rating jumps so much

Do you have any specific issues?

[Fauxia]

Issue #641, option 1.

“Legislation is the answer,” declares tatty-suited progressive Cleveland Golightly in the middle of a two-hour slideshow on rainfall. “Crack down on air pollution, regulate vehicle emissions, and heavily tax polluting industry and power generation. The economy may experience a short-term loss, but that sacrifice is worth it for our children’s long-term cognitive function.”

Yet my statistics showed that taxation decreased, from 6.71 to 6.35 Despite that my "Economy", "Economic Output" and "Average Income" decreased.

As it’s a statistical effect, it belongs on this megathread: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=424650

I’m not an Issue Editor, but I believe that this is because the taxation stat is actually just personal income tax, not anything else, so the emissions don’t count. If you’re getting tax money from somewhere else, however- you can level it off by cutting taxes a bit. Because your income tax doesn’t need to be as high, it was lowered.

[The Harambe Gorillas]

Issue number 538. Chose option 3 (to remove the gender assignment on washrooms and let everyone go in). Decreased Civil Rights and raised Social Conservatism (I am a dipshit and didn't grab how much). How would letting everyone use every bathroom decrease their civil rights? And how would removing gender assignment raise Social Conservatism? I dunno.

[Ransium]

Issue #641, option 1.

“Legislation is the answer,” declares tatty-suited progressive Cleveland Golightly in the middle of a two-hour slideshow on rainfall. “Crack down on air pollution, regulate vehicle emissions, and heavily tax polluting industry and power generation. The economy may experience a short-term loss, but that sacrifice is worth it for our children’s long-term cognitive function.”

Yet my statistics showed that taxation decreased, from 6.71 to 6.35 Despite that my "Economy", "Economic Output" and "Average Income" decreased.

Hmmm... tax is usually applied to the individual, but perhaps this option does need a bit of tweaking. I'll raise it back stage.

[Ransium]

Declining to pick a national religion (NOT declaring religion woo) sent religiosity through the roof. I would expect that if I picked a religion.

were you suppressing religion before? choosing the secular option may have undone that, causing your religiousness to rise as a result.
a speculation.

This is correct! You were actively enforcing atheism previously and this option made you do so less stringently.

[Ransium]

This has been happining for quite some time. My "employment" rating will go up or down for reasons that make no sense from the expected results of the issues. Yes, the key word is "expected" but even taking into account the mystery and complexity of the issues the results seem almost random for good or bad. Amost always in small amounts.

The effect has kept my employment very low. The odd thing is look at my chart for empoyment. It shows how the rating has been going up and down often on a daily scale

Is this normal? The changes seem too rapid and to up and down

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=little_tralfamadore/detail=trend?censusid=56

Not a big problem, just seems odd that the rating jumps so much

See OP:

"Why didn't tax / unemployment / black market do what I expected it to?"

NS uses a complex model to calculate a lot of things, which can lead to counter-intuitive results.

- Why didn't tax fall when spending was described as reducing (or why didn't it rise when spending was described as rising)?

The answer usually lies in your economic output.
The more economic output you have, the less %tax you need to support your spending.

Bear in mind that economic output is dependent on a lot of interacting factors. Sometimes an option will cause you to shrink your economy by more than you proportionally shrank your spending, causing a tax rise to support the same spending. Sometimes it won't. Often different things will happen to different nations faced with the same issue choice.

- Why didn't tax fall when an option described a corporation tax cut / sales tax cut?

The tax model of the game is very simplistic, and it basically abstracts all spending as income tax and doesn't take into account any idea of government borrowing, deficit spending or tax from sources other than income tax.

That gives us limited tools for simulation.

Corporation tax is rolled into business subsidisation, with lowering of corporate tax representing an effective business subsidisation, and a shifting of tax burden onto the income taxpayer.

Sales tax and VAT, meanwhile, move income tax inversely, as raising more revenue from these forms of taxation decreases the burden on income tax, and vice versa.

This isn't entirely satisfactory, of course, as it means that the descriptions of "Freedom From Taxation" on the graphs aren't accurate, but it's reflective of how the game engine is written and of the simulation's limitations. It basically isn't possible to have burden of taxation and income tax move in opposite directions, as in the simulation all measured tax = income tax.

- Why didn't employment rise/fall when it said we were creating / destroying jobs?

Often, the described effect has taken place, but other changes to your economy could have affected employment elsewhere.
For example, if you create a load of artificial jobs to employ the homeless, you might also weaken your private sector economy through the public sector taking its market share in certain industries. Your economy might shrink, and your net employment could fall, even though you created the jobs you said you would.

- Why didn't black market / state industry / private sector fall or rise like the option said it would?

Again, think whole economy. An option that reduces the market share that goes to the black market but which grows the economy as a whole could result in the absolute market size of the black market increasing, even as you decrease the black market's proportional prominence int he economy.

Finally, remember that issues effects vary according to the nation they effect. The effect it has on your nation is almost certainly not the same effect you'll see on another nation.

Also as someone else pointed out model adjustments are being made.

[Ransium]

Issue number 538. Chose option 3 (to remove the gender assignment on washrooms and let everyone go in). Decreased Civil Rights and raised Social Conservatism (I am a dipshit and didn't grab how much). How would letting everyone use every bathroom decrease their civil rights? And how would removing gender assignment raise Social Conservatism? I dunno.

See the first post, in particular, the spoiler with regard to freedoms. In this case, privacy decreased whereas other rights that would have increased to more than balance this out were more or less already maxed.

[Venetoland]

were you suppressing religion before? choosing the secular option may have undone that, causing your religiousness to rise as a result.
a speculation.

This is correct! You were actively enforcing atheism previously and this option made you do so less stringently.

Thanks Ransium! That makes perfect sense!

[-Death and Destruction-]

Issue 565 option 4, the anti-school option, decreased my ignorance stat.

[Ransium]

Issue 565 option 4, the anti-school option, decreased my ignorance stat.

“Why have exams at all? Everyone knows that they’re a waste of everybody’s time,” admits visibly stressed out teacher Edna Crandall, who is on her tenth cigarette of the day. “In fact, do we really need a proper curriculum to follow? Schools and teachers should be able to teach whatever they think is relevant. This can be learning a new language or the intricacies of soap opera love triangles. The schools would save some cash, and it would make my job much easier too.”

It's pro-academic exploration and intellectualism though.

[Merconitonitopia]

836:2 doesn't seem to yield religiousness, unless I'm really that far off the deep end

[Enfaru]

https://www.nationstates.net/page=enact ... ilemma=739

Is it me or do two of those options yield the same result. I.e. a minimum age bracket. Clearly option three should scrap the idea of age limits in this scenario surely?

I would have expected option three to take it to a logical extreme, not to be as "reasonable" as it is or for example to re-introduce testing thereby excluding some grandparents from child care responsibilities and such.

[Little Tralfamadore]

This has been happining for quite some time. My "employment" rating will go up or down for reasons that make no sense from the expected results of the issues. Yes, the key word is "expected" but even taking into account the mystery and complexity of the issues the results seem almost random for good or bad. Amost always in small amounts.

The effect has kept my employment very low. The odd thing is look at my chart for empoyment. It shows how the rating has been going up and down often on a daily scale

Is this normal? The changes seem too rapid and to up and down

https://www.nationstates.net/nation=little_tralfamadore/detail=trend?censusid=56

Not a big problem, just seems odd that the rating jumps so much

Do you have any specific issues?

NOt a specific issue. It is just that the displayed results are up and down do much. Look at my chart it is like its reading my heart or breathing. UP, then DOWN. Could gather a list of a few conditions showing each one. The quesiton wasn't really why issue x caused my employment to rise/fall but why does it fluctuate so radically.

Maybe the bug has something to do with it. It isn't a big concern. Looking at my chart it has been happening for a very very long time and I'm only now asking about it. More curiosity that concern.

[Cekoviu]

Do you have any specific issues?

NOt a specific issue. It is just that the displayed results are up and down do much. Look at my chart it is like its reading my heart or breathing. UP, then DOWN. Could gather a list of a few conditions showing each one. The quesiton wasn't really why issue x caused my employment to rise/fall but why does it fluctuate so radically.

Maybe the bug has something to do with it. It isn't a big concern. Looking at my chart it has been happening for a very very long time and I'm only now asking about it. More curiosity that concern.

Each issue has some random "side effects" to your largest industries and stats even if they're unrelated. For example, everything I do affects the Trout Fishing industry even when it makes no logical sense. That's just the way it works, but usually it's a lot smaller of a drop than what you're seeing there.