[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[The Free Joy State]

Hi. Yellow Astoria here. I got "#63 Tykes With Tools?" today and I chose to ban child labor. This lead to a rise in civil rights. I'm not complaining, just wondering what the logic behind this rise is. Thanks.

Basically, the option explicitly gives children the right to a childhood, education and the chance to potentially have more life opportunities, as well as opening up the chance for adults to be employed, so those greater rights for opportunity and chance are why civil rights (often, depending on where your own individual stats are) rise with that option.

[Yellow Astoria]

Basically, the option explicitly gives children the right to a childhood, education and the chance to potentially have more life opportunities, as well as opening up the chance for adults to be employed, so those greater rights for opportunity and chance are why civil rights (often, depending on where your own individual stats are) rise with that option.

Oh, that makes sense, thank you for answering!

[Fauxia]

Have something to report on issue 690 (nice).

Option 3 reduced civil rights on this nation. I realize it reinforces saying the pledge of allegiance, but that was already happening, so shouldn't that already be baked into the stats? As for the rest of it, the pledge is made more inclusive [towards minorities], which should increase civil rights, and allows for people to modify it a bit if they wish, which should increase civil rights.

What am I missing?

[The Free Joy State]

Have something to report on issue 690 (nice).

Option 3 reduced civil rights on this nation. I realize it reinforces saying the pledge of allegiance, but that was already happening, so shouldn't that already be baked into the stats? As for the rest of it, the pledge is made more inclusive [towards minorities], which should increase civil rights, and allows for people to modify it a bit if they wish, which should increase civil rights.

What am I missing?

Yeah, I see what that is. I think there's a little tweak needed there.

[Fauxia]

Have something to report on issue 690 (nice).

Option 3 reduced civil rights on this nation. I realize it reinforces saying the pledge of allegiance, but that was already happening, so shouldn't that already be baked into the stats? As for the rest of it, the pledge is made more inclusive [towards minorities], which should increase civil rights, and allows for people to modify it a bit if they wish, which should increase civil rights.

What am I missing?

Yeah, I see what that is. I think there's a little tweak needed there.

Thanks! *leaves cookies*

[West Svenlandia]

I (West Svenlandia) was confronted with issue 206 ("West Svenlandia Narrowly Misses Nuclear Accident", https://nsindex.net/wiki/NationStates_Issue_No._206) the other day (I made my selection today, April 15th, but the issue arrived on April 13th) and selected the option to allow other nations to pay to place their nuclear power plants in my country. The issue specifically said "if you're in need of cash..." and seemed to imply that another government would be paying ours—yet it raised my taxation by 0.66%. That's not a huge number, but given that I specifically chose that option to increase the amount of money flowing into West Svenlandia from foreign countries and thereby reducing the tax rate my own citizens need to maintain the same standard of living, I was certainly very surprised to see taxation increase anyway despite the inflow of foreign money. I am just wondering if anyone could explain why this option would increase taxation, when it certainly didn't sound as though my government was paying anything to allow it, and, in fact, I was under the impression that we were getting paid. Did Mrs. Gratwick just lie and scam me ?

[Jim the Baptist]

I just had issue 1174 and chose option 3, which removed my policy of "State Press". What I find odd is that my political freedoms didn't go up, neither did my civil rights.

[Frei-Harz]

Heyo so I am playing an Isolationist peaceful libertarian militaristic communist Society YOU KNOW THE USUAL
In the Event "Whips, Chains, and Leather, Oh My!" I gave my people the option to publically display and perform out their kinks
as a Result my state planned economy was privatised
I fail to see the connection and if the connection is that I allowed private manufactory of BDSM gear then that is not mentioned in the Flavourtext of Option 2 it merely mentions "the children" and going for walkies in the park, nothing of privatising the entire economy.

[Trotterdam]

as a Result my state planned economy was privatised

How so? Your policy page still lists you as having Socialism.

[Electrum]

I just had issue 1174 and chose option 3, which removed my policy of "State Press". What I find odd is that my political freedoms didn't go up, neither did my civil rights.

Nothing wrong with the issue - it just means your political freedoms/civil rights were already lower than what we expect a nation to have if it just legalised the state press.

[Frei-Harz]

as a Result my state planned economy was privatised

How so? Your policy page still lists you as having Socialism.

So it only TOLD me I switched to a private industry?
Well that sounds like a bug.

[Appendia]

Nations of NationStates,

I am The Art Museum of Appendia.

I encountered the issue "A Sport Retort" yesterday (Monday, April 26th, 2021) which has the issue number of 1041.

The choice I selected was the third down, which words exactly: “Look, I was cheering for our team as much as everyone else,” states your Minister of Cost-Cutting and Harsh Realities, using a red pen to cross out large sections from the latest national budget. “But we only got through to the final because Maxtopia’s star player got a violet card in the first quintile and had to wear a blindfold for the rest of the match. Before that, Marche Blanc’s team was penalized ten wickets for being unable to sing their national anthem backwards. Let’s be realistic: our success was just a fluke. I recommend that we slash funding for all of this sporting nonsense and give our citizens a nice tax cut.”

My taxes went up .7% and my disposable income went down $800.00 (out of about $13,000) and my retail industry went down by about 40%. I believe this issue ought to be erased or revised because my MAIN goal for the past couple of weeks has been to reduce taxes, so when there is an issue that word for word says i'll get a tax cut, I expect a tax cut.

YES, I do understand that the point of the game is to be a little bit funny in how unexpected some of the impacts are. I just think doing the exact OPPOSITE of what the selection says it will do is a little bit unfair and beyond the scope of how tricky the issues ought to be.

Humbly Submitted,

The Benjamin Patrick of The Art Museum of Appendia

[Fauxia]

Nations of NationStates,

I am The Art Museum of Appendia.

I encountered the issue "A Sport Retort" yesterday (Monday, April 26th, 2021) which has the issue number of 1041.

The choice I selected was the third down, which words exactly: “Look, I was cheering for our team as much as everyone else,” states your Minister of Cost-Cutting and Harsh Realities, using a red pen to cross out large sections from the latest national budget. “But we only got through to the final because Maxtopia’s star player got a violet card in the first quintile and had to wear a blindfold for the rest of the match. Before that, Marche Blanc’s team was penalized ten wickets for being unable to sing their national anthem backwards. Let’s be realistic: our success was just a fluke. I recommend that we slash funding for all of this sporting nonsense and give our citizens a nice tax cut.”

My taxes went up .7% and my disposable income went down $800.00 (out of about $13,000) and my retail industry went down by about 40%. I believe this issue ought to be erased or revised because my MAIN goal for the past couple of weeks has been to reduce taxes, so when there is an issue that word for word says i'll get a tax cut, I expect a tax cut.

YES, I do understand that the point of the game is to be a little bit funny in how unexpected some of the impacts are. I just think doing the exact OPPOSITE of what the selection says it will do is a little bit unfair and beyond the scope of how tricky the issues ought to be.

Humbly Submitted,

The Benjamin Patrick of The Art Museum of Appendia

Please read the OP before using this thread.

"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.

Unexpected results are realistic. Leaders do not have all the answers, and sometimes makes mistakes. So it makes sense that some options have unexpected results. Anyway, 0.7% is not much of an increase.

[Minskiev]

Picked #780.2 which claims to be a -2.87 to +0.7 taxation (mean -1.51) change, yet my tax rates increased from 35.77 to 45.90...

On Belovezhskaya btw

[Phydios]

Picked #780.2 which claims to be a -2.87 to +0.7 taxation (mean -1.51) change, yet my tax rates increased from 35.77 to 45.90...

On Belovezhskaya btw

Trotterdam's issue results site is not official. The Issue Editors are not responsible for its inaccuracies, either perceived or real.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Picked #780.2 which claims to be a -2.87 to +0.7 taxation (mean -1.51) change, yet my tax rates increased from 35.77 to 45.90...

On Belovezhskaya btw

Trotterdam's issue results site is not official. The Issue Editors are not responsible for its inaccuracies, either perceived or real.

I wouldn't say its inaccurate as such, I'd say that Minskiev is misinterpreting what the data represents.

Though Phydios is right, its not official. It IS awesome, though. I actually use it a lot myself to see what effect issues have "in vitro" as opposed to the test lab conditions of our backstage software.

[Trotterdam]

Also, for what it's worth, Belovezhskaya's issue answer has been recognized and parsed, and the data has since been updated to say "-2.87 to +10.13 Taxation (mean -1.5056)", exactly the change that that nation got.

It's definitely rare for a nation to get a result that's so far outside the more-than-a-thousand previous data points, which suggests that either Belovezhskaya had some very weird preexisting conditions, or that the effects of the issue have recently been changed. However, it's not impossible, and there's nothing I can do to completely rule out such flukes.

[Minskiev]

Very interesting. Thanks for all the responses.

[Minskiev]

Aaaand another wonky taxation change for Belovezhskaya! At this point it's mostly for Trott

Picked #881.3, -1.43 to +1.15 Taxation (mean +0.1025) listed, instead tax rates went from 47.83 to 39.19

I realize that Trott's list isn't official.

[The Free Joy State]

Aaaand another wonky taxation change for Belovezhskaya! At this point it's mostly for Trott

Picked #881.3, -1.43 to +1.15 Taxation (mean +0.1025) listed, instead tax rates went from 47.83 to 39.19

I realize that Trott's list isn't official.

(emphasis mine)

If you want to raise outliers in Trotterdam's programme, but do not think you have received an incorrect issue effect, kindly use the thread for Trotterdam's programme.

If you want to report an actual unusual issue effect, because you think it may be incorrect, kindly use this thread.

As I -- or another member of the issue team -- have probably told you, taxation is a known weakness in our simulation, measuring only income taxation. As for the size of the effect, the newness of the nation will be most likely be something to do with it. All of this is explained in this OP of the thread.

[Trotterdam]

If you want to raise outliers in Trotterdam's programme, but do not think you have received an incorrect issue effect, kindly use the thread for Trotterdam's programme.

Seconded.

EDIT: I went ahead and followed my own advice.

[Minskiev]

Aaaand another wonky taxation change for Belovezhskaya! At this point it's mostly for Trott

Picked #881.3, -1.43 to +1.15 Taxation (mean +0.1025) listed, instead tax rates went from 47.83 to 39.19

I realize that Trott's list isn't official.

(emphasis mine)

If you want to raise outliers in Trotterdam's programme, but do not think you have received an incorrect issue effect, kindly use the thread for Trotterdam's programme.

If you want to report an actual unusual issue effect, because you think it may be incorrect, kindly use this thread.

As I -- or another member of the issue team -- have probably told you, taxation is a known weakness in our simulation, measuring only income taxation. As for the size of the effect, the newness of the nation will be most likely be something to do with it. All of this is explained in this OP of the thread.

Thank you for the redirect. I figured there was probably a thread for that but wasn't able to find it.

[The Axis of Death]

I picked option 2 for issue #326 and got the “No Dissent” policy. Shouldn’t the opposite effect happen?

[Aheahe Makani]

I picked option #2 of "The Forbidden Fruit", where I decline the fruit basket gift and clamp down on bribery.

Not only did my levels of corruption INCREASE, but my nation was reclassified to a "Scandinavian Liberal Paradise", specifically because of the corruption.

I am familiar with this issue as this nation is a province/puppet of Aguaria Major, and every single time I have picked this option before, corruption decreased. WTF.

[The Free Joy State]

I picked option 2 for issue #326 and got the “No Dissent” policy. Shouldn’t the opposite effect happen?

Basically, No Dissent is what we call a pseudo-policy (i.e. rather than an on/off policy, it's one that turns on or off when certain thresholds are passed). The direction of the stat is correct, however it looks like the particular stat has not been activated by your nation before, so the change still put you above the threshold. This is explained in more detail in the OP under: "Why did THIS policy switch on or turn off out of line with the issue's story?"

If you keep making pro-protest choices, it should go eventually.

I picked option #2 of "The Forbidden Fruit", where I decline the fruit basket gift and clamp down on bribery.

Not only did my levels of corruption INCREASE, but my nation was reclassified to a "Scandinavian Liberal Paradise", specifically because of the corruption.

I am familiar with this issue as this nation is a province/puppet of Aguaria Major, and every single time I have picked this option before, corruption decreased. WTF.

Your nation classification is extrapolated from various freedom levels, not corruption levels. Omigodtheykilledkenny posted a useful graph on nation classifications.

The difference in change in corruption (reduced last time, a tiny boost from 0.79 to 0.94 this time) is because corruption is a secondary stat. It takes in a large number of backstage stats that are correctly present and interacts with your own stats to provide the output. Because each nations stats are slightly different, each nation may have a different response (with some nations receiving a small rise, some receiving a fall and other nations not changing).

It is working as expected.