[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[Greater Hunnia]

993-1 cancelled my "All recreational drugs are prohibited" policy and made Recreational Drug Use skyrocket, I call BS on this, considering that the issue is explicitly about experimental cancer treatment.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

993-1 cancelled my "All recreational drugs are prohibited" policy and made Recreational Drug Use skyrocket, I call BS on this, considering that the issue is explicitly about experimental cancer treatment.

First post. Read it.

It's a known issue, relating to the pseudopolicies being added to the game years after the stats which they are based on being created, with hundreds of issues of precedent of how those stats are used in clever and nuanced ways, then a new game mechanic being added with no consideration of those years of precedent. The narrative disconnects this raises have been mentioned, and do need fixing.

[Slackertown]

My nation Slackertown. Got it today 1/8/19 a few minutes ago. The issue name was "Dammed Cold"

I chose to give mental help to the insane preacher instead of arresting him. Why did the drop my civil rights to below average? Boosting mental health in leau of prison should raise civil rights.

[The Free Joy State]

My nation Slackertown. Got it today 1/8/19 a few minutes ago. The issue name was "Dammed Cold"

I chose to give mental help to the insane preacher instead of arresting him. Why did the drop my civil rights to below average? Boosting mental health in leau of prison should raise civil rights.

Civil rights works according to a very specific metric: freedom from control:

--> You give people the right to marry whoever they want, you gain civil rights
--> You give people the right to ramble where they want, you gain civil rights
--> You give people the right to practise their religion how they choose, you gain civil rights.

Obviously, sometimes, people's individual stats mean individual results can vary.

By calling the preacher mad and compelling him to seek mental health treatment, you restricted his right to practise his faith as he saw fit, which lowers civil rights. This is explained in greater detail in the OP of this thread.

[Greater Hunnia]

463/2 decreased my Health stat. While it is arguable that "self-driving cars occasionally mowing down pedestrians to avoid inconveniencing passengers" is bad for the health of said pedestrians, I still think it should affect the Safety and Unexpected Death Rate stats, rather than Health.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

463/2 decreased my Health stat. While it is arguable that "self-driving cars occasionally mowing down pedestrians to avoid inconveniencing passengers" is bad for the health of said pedestrians, I still think it should affect the Safety and Unexpected Death Rate stats, rather than Health.

Health drop is intentional

Safety is a purely secondary stat, with a whole bunch of inputs that aren't entirely intuitive. We tend not to consider it's movements when selecting stats, as stat inputs to consciously move Safety would have a bunch of other even more unexpected effects.

Unexpected Death Rate does rise with this issue generally (or at least, it ought to from the numbers). For your nation the change may have been too small to notice.

[Balkothia]

225/1 increased the black market by over 300 billion SMU's. I fail to see how government-enforced prayer causes this, unless y'all think that atheists will turn to crime en masse.

[The Free Joy State]

225/1 increased the black market by over 300 billion SMU's. I fail to see how government-enforced prayer causes this, unless y'all think that atheists will turn to crime en masse.

The black market is a secondary stat and -- due to us having a limited economic simulation -- reacts somewhat unpredictably.

I suggest you read the OP of the thread, especially: "Why didn't tax / unemployment / black market do what I expected it to?"

[The Super Fork]

Issue #359, Got Democracy?

My friend chose option #1:

"We must crack down hard on all rebels who dare to betray our beloved nation!" roars @@RANDOMNAME@@, head of the @@NAME@@ State Police. "We must use whatever force is necessary to prevent these protests from happening here. Specifically that means roving death squads and informants monitoring all anti-government activity to shut them down before they revolt. So long as @@LEADER@@ is our ruler, treason shall never go unpunished!"

With this effect line:

pro-democracy protesters are shot on sight by state police

Why did pacifism go up? We are shooting protesters and have death squads. Me and my friend thought pacifism would go down.

(I also took a look at this issue with Trotterdam's issue result tracker, pacifism always went up)

[The Free Joy State]

We don't use Trotterdam's issue tracker. It's an off-site and unofficial resource, and NationStates is not responsible for its contents.

As for your query, we don't answer questions on behalf of friends, because we cannot look for or give out information on another person's statistics unless that person requests it.

Ask your friend to come to this thread and ask, giving the issue they answered, option they picked, and the date they answered (if not today). We will also need the name of the nation if they answered on a puppet.

[Anthalaka]

In this nation, Anthalaka, replying today to issue 125 ("Bring Back the Ballot?") with the second option (supress pro-democracy protests) did not lower my Freedoms. That's fine since they are already extremely low, but Ideological Radicality secretly dropped by 0.01. This is not registered on the graph since an issue earlier today had secretly increased the Ideological Radicality stat by the same amount (issue 1061, option 3: ban non-electric cars, I.R. increased by 0.01 as Economic Freedom lowered by 0.03), so the net change today is 0.

Probably, there's a rational explanation for this since Ideological Radicality seems to be a secondary stat, but I just can't figure it on my own. I know 0.01 isn't much but it's relevant considering I'm trying to hit the top and past a certain point this stat is incredibly difficult to raise further.

[The Free Joy State]

In this nation, Anthalaka, replying today to issue 125 ("Bring Back the Ballot?") with the second option (supress pro-democracy protests) did not lower my Freedoms. That's fine since they are already extremely low, but Ideological Radicality secretly dropped by 0.01. This is not registered on the graph since an issue earlier today had secretly increased the Ideological Radicality stat by the same amount (issue 1061, option 3: ban non-electric cars, I.R. increased by 0.01 as Economic Freedom lowered by 0.03), so the net change today is 0.

Probably, there's a rational explanation for this since Ideological Radicality seems to be a secondary stat, but I just can't figure it on my own. I know 0.01 isn't much but it's relevant considering I'm trying to hit the top and past a certain point this stat is incredibly difficult to raise further.

You've hit the nail on the head on both counts.

Ideological radicality is a secondary stat, impacted by a sizable list of stats. However, you are already really high on the list of Most Extreme nations and -- once you reach a certain point on any stat -- it gets harder to push them further.

Although, I assure you that "Bring Back the Ballot" did not lead to any drop in your Ideological Radicality. It hasn't altered at all since yesterday. None of your issues has impacted it.

It's working as intended.

EDIT: As for your freedoms, freedoms can only move so far. Your citizens were already as electorally restricted as they could get, so there was no change.

[Anthalaka]

In this nation, Anthalaka, replying today to issue 125 ("Bring Back the Ballot?") with the second option (supress pro-democracy protests) did not lower my Freedoms. That's fine since they are already extremely low, but Ideological Radicality secretly dropped by 0.01. This is not registered on the graph since an issue earlier today had secretly increased the Ideological Radicality stat by the same amount (issue 1061, option 3: ban non-electric cars, I.R. increased by 0.01 as Economic Freedom lowered by 0.03), so the net change today is 0.

Probably, there's a rational explanation for this since Ideological Radicality seems to be a secondary stat, but I just can't figure it on my own. I know 0.01 isn't much but it's relevant considering I'm trying to hit the top and past a certain point this stat is incredibly difficult to raise further.

You've hit the nail on the head on both counts.

Ideological radicality is a secondary stat, impacted by a sizable list of stats. However, you are already really high on the list of Most Extreme nations and -- once you reach a certain point on any stat -- it gets harder to push them further.

Although, I assure you that "Bring Back the Ballot" did not lead to any drop in your Ideological Radicality. It hasn't altered at all since yesterday. None of your issues has impacted it.

It's working as intended.

EDIT: As for your freedoms, freedoms can only move so far. Your citizens were already as electorally restricted as they could get, so there was no change.

As I said in my post earlier, it has been altered since yesterday - just that the net change is 0.
Replying to issue 1061.3 today, I.R. increased by 0.01 following a drop of 0.03 in Economic Freedoms.
Replying to issue 125.2, it reversed this drop, with no Freedoms change (which is the main force behing I.R., but which other stats are involved? there are more for sure)
So the net change is 0.

And going back to my post again, I'm fine with the lack of Freedoms drop - it's expected from a nation this close to the minimum, but it was to highlight that the I.R. change was not linked to any Freedoms change.

EDIT: Fixed typo

[Luna Amore]

You've hit the nail on the head on both counts.

Ideological radicality is a secondary stat, impacted by a sizable list of stats. However, you are already really high on the list of Most Extreme nations and -- once you reach a certain point on any stat -- it gets harder to push them further.

Although, I assure you that "Bring Back the Ballot" did not lead to any drop in your Ideological Radicality. It hasn't altered at all since yesterday. None of your issues has impacted it.

It's working as intended.

EDIT: As for your freedoms, freedoms can only move so far. Your citizens were already as electorally restricted as they could get, so there was no change.

As I said in my post earlier, it has been altered since yesterday - just that the net change is 0.
Replying to issue 1061.3 today, I.R. increased by 0.01 following a drop of 0.03 in Economic Freedoms.
Replying to issue 125.2, it reversed this drop, with no Freedoms change (which is the main force behing I.R., but which other stats are involved? there are more for sure)
So the net change is 0.

And going back to my post again, I'm fine with the lack of Freedoms drop - it's expected from a nation this close to the minimum, but it was to highlight that the I.R. change was not linked to any Freedoms change.

EDIT: Fixed typo

Neither 1061.3 or 125.2 impacted your nation's Ideological Radicality on our end.

The little quirk here is that the last state of you IR on our backend is 50.59 as of 1/25. However gameside shows you at 50.60 (and if I run tests on your nation backstage, it starts you at 50.60). Somewhere there's a missing gain of .01 IR. After looking it over, I'm supposing it's some sort of rounding error.

As for why that issue may have dropped your IR a fraction of a point, you are really really radical. When you get to that level of extreme ideological radicialization, secondary effects are going to be magnified more than they are intended to be normally. This may have been the case with these two issues.

[Ghost Land]

How did 543.1 on this nation decrease scientific advancement? Online ID tracking seems pretty high-tech to me.

On a related note, how can I increase scientific advancement while lowering intelligence? (Kind of a "keep them docile and subservient using high-tech means" kind of thing.)

[The Free Joy State]

How did 543.1 on this nation decrease scientific advancement? Online ID tracking seems pretty high-tech to me.

This issue seems to have some kinks. I've taken it backstage and we're looking into it.

EDIT: Further to backstage discussion, changes have been made to this issue.

On a related note, how can I increase scientific advancement while lowering intelligence? (Kind of a "keep them docile and subservient using high-tech means" kind of thing.)

That isn't the kind of help we offer on this thread. However, speaking in equally general terms, there's no magic pill but the old slow and steady method. I suggest you kneecap your people's intellect by picking options that make them objectively stupider while picking strong tech options in other issues. It may take awhile, but -- with patience and trial-and-error -- you can get the tech-savvy fools you seek.

[The Free Joy State]

Issue 1028 just hit me with a completely-out-of-left-field "Policy"

The issue text is:



The first option was to force people to have children a la Soviet Romania, the second was to ban contraceptives, and the third, which I selected, was to grow the extra children we need in vats. It had the following text:

The result of this was my Civil Rights falling, and a "No Sex" Policy stating that biological reproduction is banned. Huh?

This issue was asking about increasing the birth rate, not replacing the existing births. It also is completely illogical to suggest that an issue about increasing birth rate would have a decision that outlaws having children, without it very very clearly saying "We must ban biological reproduction!" The "nobody should be put through that" and "leave women out of it" portions of the quote in the option text logically comes in response to the previous options saying that women should be forced in to motherhood. It does not logically come from a position of "and ban people who DO want children from having them." It even says in the beginning, "some of us" don't want kids. She's clearly not speaking about a blanket policy or prohibition - just an alternative to universally expecting or requiring pregnancy.

Sorry - this one has me pretty cheesed off. The result is not reasonable, predictable, or logical, and despite being the most "civil rights" friendly of those initial three responses, it dropped my CR by nearly 10%. One could reasonably expect a result along the lines of "synthetic humans compete with biologics for dominance" - not "you have extinguished the human race as we know it."

"Pregnancy is hard work, too; nobody should be put through that" and "grow them in a lab and leave women out of it", taken as whole sentences, seems to clearly signpost that the law is intended for all women.

And, banning biological reproduction isn't actually good for civil rights. The law prevents those people who would choose to have children from having them.

FTR, I believe that this issue does not necessarily propose a synthetic or a different type of human, merely humans produced in a different way.

26 days late (the text was actually altered on the 2nd January 2019), but just a brief update to this. Following in-depth backstage discussion --we have added further clarification to the third option of #1028. It now reads:

"Excuse me, some of us don't want kids." cries well-known career-woman, @@RANDOMNAMEFEMALE@@. "I've worked hard to get to where I am in my life right now, and I will not sacrifice my career and my ambitions to breed some snotty-nosed kids. Pregnancy is hard work too; nobody should be put through that. I hear that new vat-technology is doing wonders in other places. If you desperately need new brats, why don't you just grow them all in a lab and leave us poor women out of it completely?"

Hopefully, this should further clarify the replacement of biological reproduction with vat-produced people (the "No Sex Policy") with this option.

Forgive the late update, Boss Llama.

[Boss Llama]

Hardly too late for an overhaul after backstage discussion! I appreciate the update.

[Bashiland]

About 5 minutes ago or something, I had some very strange stat outcomes in issue #613 "A Nude Day, a Nude Awakening... ". After taking option 2 which I thought would enable massive censorship, civil rights rose (by about 50%!) and authotarianism fell (by 13 %). From the description here I was sure that it would be the opposite.

[Sanctaria]

About 5 minutes ago or something, I had some very strange stat outcomes in issue #613 "A Nude Day, a Nude Awakening... ". After taking option 2 which I thought would enable massive censorship, civil rights rose (by about 50%!) and authotarianism fell (by 13 %). From the description here I was sure that it would be the opposite.

Sure, but what you're also doing is protecting the right to privacy to a crazy degree.

In your nation prior to this, you didn't grant many civil rights, so the change in censorship laws (or at least the effect it would have on people) was minimal. However, they also didn't have a right to privacy before this issue, and you gave them that right. Massively so.

Hence the significant bump in civil rights.

[Earthbound Immortal Squad]

Just answered the issue Womb Service, not sure of the number, I banned abortion but my civil rights went up?

[Sanctaria]

Just answered the issue Womb Service, not sure of the number, I banned abortion but my civil rights went up?

I would imagine it's because you have now enshrined in law the right to life, a civil right, but I'll double check with Joy as it were she who edited that one.

[Phydios]

Just answered the issue Womb Service, not sure of the number, I banned abortion but my civil rights went up?

I would imagine it's because you have now enshrined in law the right to life, a civil right, but I'll double check with Joy as it were she who edited that one.

I seem to remember hearing that the abortion issues were coded to raise civil rights for allowing or banning abortion. Probably to try to avoid getting screamed at by supporters of either side.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

I would imagine it's because you have now enshrined in law the right to life, a civil right, but I'll double check with Joy as it were she who edited that one.

I seem to remember hearing that the abortion issues were coded to raise civil rights for allowing or banning abortion. Probably to try to avoid getting screamed at by supporters of either side.

Something like that.

We had an extended discussion, which came down to four approaches:

1) Go with our own beliefs, and arbitrarily decide whether allowing abortion is pro- or anti- civil rights. Not helped by the fact that we don't all share the same beliefs on this.
2) Cop out and not have civil rights move.
3) Have it improve both ways.
4) Have it worsen both ways.

In the end, we opted for 3, by majority vote.

It's not a perfect solution, as it does open room for a mild exploit where you can improve rights by alternating banning and unbanning abortion, but I like to think that the rise in civil rights in this circumstance represents a nation that is open to discussing the issue, and thinking hard enough about the rights to life and to bodily autonomy enough to keep changing its mind.

Just as this is an extremely tough issue in real life, it's also a very tough issue for a sim like this, so we've ended up with a fudge of sorts.

[Valrifell]

542.3 gave Valrifell WMDs I was not expecting, I've reread the option a few times and I don't think it should be doing that.