[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[Araneidae]

801.4:

"“I think we’re ignoring a broader issue here,” bemoans frustrated animator Parker Stonetrey, “which is that animated art forms are never taken seriously enough to be considered anything more than kiddie fare. I say that we develop Araneidae’s artistic vision and creativity by subsidising adult animation. When people think Araneidae, they should think Hentai!”"

Supporting adult animation caused a major drop in Nudity - https://www.nationstates.net/nation=ara ... censusid=9

What's the reasoning behind that?

[Jutsa]

I think I've spotted a pretty strange controversy that sounds kinda ridiculous, and I could be wrong in my logic here, but... well, here it is.

I answered #515: Little Green Men (which tbh is pretty similar to #466 and #067, so it might not hurt to take a gander at them as well) with option 4,
which basically said that they can become an independent nation (and, I might add, was literally the most pro-freedom option in the entire issue),
but as such I wouldn't be giving them our supplies, which... why would I? They wouldn't be an independent nation if I did.

The result was my losing my policy on free protest and going from 86.86 to 76.57 points in political freedom.

So then I got issue #691, which basically gave me a choice to either bring home the nations, keep the nations afloat, or bring back all of them by force if necessary.
Admittedly, I probably should have chosen option 1, but I figured that supplying them with free trade and whatnots would still let them split away while still having total access to my supplies,
and... I not only didn't get my policy back, but I didn't get any political freedom whatsoever.

Am I missing something? I'd be delighted to know if I am.

[Trotterdam]

Looking at the effect line, I think the idea is that, in the spirit of NS exaggeration, you're cutting services from everyone who expresses dissident political opinions, not just people who explicitly declare they are seceding... even though the option itself says nothing to hint at this. I agree that this isn't really appropiate.

[East green Israel]

name: east green Israel
date: today
issue: 059 - drunk driving on the rise.
More and more, citizens are drinking before getting behind the wheel. A group of concerned citizens wants something done
chosen option:
3. "All of those plans attack the symptoms, not the disease," says Minister of Transportation @@RANDOMNAME@@, "Alcohol is a curse, a poison sent by the Devil to tempt mankind. We cannot trust people to make decisions for themselves. The only answer is prohibition. Ban alcohol completely.
effect: all alcohol is banned.

I don't really understand why this issue has reduced primitiveness and religiousness. However, my main concern is that I didn't get the 'prohibition' policy.

[Merconitonitopia]

name: east green Israel
date: today
issue: 059 - drunk driving on the rise.
More and more, citizens are drinking before getting behind the wheel. A group of concerned citizens wants something done
chosen option:
3. "All of those plans attack the symptoms, not the disease," says Minister of Transportation @@RANDOMNAME@@, "Alcohol is a curse, a poison sent by the Devil to tempt mankind. We cannot trust people to make decisions for themselves. The only answer is prohibition. Ban alcohol completely.
effect: all alcohol is banned.

I don't really understand why this issue has reduced primitiveness and religiousness. However, my main concern is that I didn't get the 'prohibition' policy.

Yeah, you not having prohibition from that is certainly not correct. Hopefully our editors will fix that.

As for the stat changes

Alcohol is a curse, a poison sent by the Devil to tempt mankind.

This is more than a little religious, don't you think? Even if the option is not a necessarily religious one, the motivation as detailed in the dialogue is of a religious nature. It is also worth noting that enforced morality will generally increase religiousness regardless.

As for primitiveness, it is known that stat is derivative of religiousness, which is something that will likely soon be removed. There may be other causes at play but I am guessing that is the main one.

[East green Israel]

As for the stat changes

This is more than a little religious, don't you think? Even if the option is not a necessarily religious one, the motivation as detailed in the dialogue is of a religious nature. It is also worth noting that enforced morality will generally increase religiousness regardless.

As for primitiveness, it is known that stat is derivative of religiousness, which is something that will likely soon be removed. There may be other causes at play but I am guessing that is the main one.

That what I was thinking, but both stats were decreased instead.

[Bedetopia]

Just answered issue 861 Out With the Old.

Option 2 reversed the drug ban which makes sense as the water is now full of it, but why did it also reverse alcohol prohibition?

[Jutsa]

They must be alcoholic drugs...

[Enfaru]

https://www.nationstates.net/page=enact ... ilemma=856

Outcome: Stone wrist watches that weigh 20lb are the latest trend.

Now the results...seem... surprising since I said, "Do whatever you like with the leftovers". (Pretty much)

Taxation up 0.19%... that's actually quite a bit, significantly more than other issues. Yet so far as I can tell, we're just giving the left over sculptures away.
Government size up 0.6% I mean seriously. It's come and collect. No one is exactly keeping an eye on them.
Culture DOWN 0.43%. Bearing in mind literally more people are adding art and art is being integrated into more things. I find this shocking.
Freedom from Taxation is also down. No clue why.

I'm not exactly sure why Eco-Friendliness has gone up but I've no reason to doubt it.

All in all it looks like it needs...revising.

[Ransium]

name: east green Israel
date: today
issue: 059 - drunk driving on the rise.
More and more, citizens are drinking before getting behind the wheel. A group of concerned citizens wants something done
chosen option:
3. "All of those plans attack the symptoms, not the disease," says Minister of Transportation @@RANDOMNAME@@, "Alcohol is a curse, a poison sent by the Devil to tempt mankind. We cannot trust people to make decisions for themselves. The only answer is prohibition. Ban alcohol completely.
effect: all alcohol is banned.

I don't really understand why this issue has reduced primitiveness and religiousness. However, my main concern is that I didn't get the 'prohibition' policy.

Just answered issue 861 Out With the Old.

Option 2 reversed the drug ban which makes sense as the water is now full of it, but why did it also reverse alcohol prohibition?

Okay for both of these the problem is the same. We only have one freedom measure with regards to drug and alcohol. So when a nation puts drugs in the water it is hard to know what to with regards to alcohol, because it means from the freedom variables perspective your nation has made drugs so not prohibited that it is now forcing it on its citizens, and alcohol is a drug so surely this means alcohol is not illegal still too. I get that a nation may want to both drug its citizens through the water and ban drugs otherwise, but as of right now we can't do that.

Before you suggest obvious fixes, it's probably not helpful. We've considered a lot of different things before and have never been able to come to agreement about the best way to go.

TLDR, alcohol and putting drugs in the water are linked in NS logic. Various editors (including myself) have suggested fixes in the past but thus far we've yet to come to an agreement about the best way to fix this.

[-Death and Destruction-]

Issue 319 and I picked option 3, and it caused a small decrease in death rate.

[Ransium]

https://www.nationstates.net/page=enact_dilemma/dilemma=856

Outcome: Stone wrist watches that weigh 20lb are the latest trend.

Now the results...seem... surprising since I said, "Do whatever you like with the leftovers". (Pretty much)

Taxation up 0.19%... that's actually quite a bit, significantly more than other issues. Yet so far as I can tell, we're just giving the left over sculptures away.
Government size up 0.6% I mean seriously. It's come and collect. No one is exactly keeping an eye on them.
Culture DOWN 0.43%. Bearing in mind literally more people are adding art and art is being integrated into more things. I find this shocking.
Freedom from Taxation is also down. No clue why.

I'm not exactly sure why Eco-Friendliness has gone up but I've no reason to doubt it.

All in all it looks like it needs...revising.

Besides culture, it's all due to a very small movement in your government's environmental department. I will allow that it could have been made more explicit that your government was going to do this, but there you have it. As for culture, you're destroying the statues to recycle them for other uses, a small reduction in culture doesn't seem out of left field.

[Ransium]

Issue 319 and I picked option 3, and it caused a small decrease in death rate.

With death rate, the answer is always secondary effects from the model.

[Ransium]

801.4:

"“I think we’re ignoring a broader issue here,” bemoans frustrated animator Parker Stonetrey, “which is that animated art forms are never taken seriously enough to be considered anything more than kiddie fare. I say that we develop Araneidae’s artistic vision and creativity by subsidising adult animation. When people think Araneidae, they should think Hentai!”"

Supporting adult animation caused a major drop in Nudity - https://www.nationstates.net/nation=ara ... censusid=9

What's the reasoning behind that?

Ah, thanks for this report the issue was slightly miscoded, fixed now.

[Ransium]

Picking 138.2 ("environmental protestors are being rounded up and taken away in sinister black vans as a massive land development campaign gets underway") on this nation (Tyrantes) lowered Authoritarianism from 10.04 -> 9.41. This happened yesterday. Why? Does it have something to do with my Authoritarianism already being sky-high or the other effects of that issue?

Well, you are increasing economic freedom, though I agree it’s imbalanced

Basically, Fauxia is correct. Authoritarian is the lack of all three freedoms. Because your nation is already so not free, rounding up protesters in vans didn't have a big chance in political or personal freedoms, but you did make your nation freer economically. For your nation, the economic freedom gains outweighed any small political/personal freedom loss.

EDIT: THere are are a few more inquiries on the previous page. I'll hopefully get to those later today, but I'm out of time for now.

[Jutsa]

Say Ransium, got anything on my #515 report near the top of the page?

[Enfaru]

https://www.nationstates.net/page=enact_dilemma/dilemma=856

Outcome: Stone wrist watches that weigh 20lb are the latest trend.

Now the results...seem... surprising since I said, "Do whatever you like with the leftovers". (Pretty much)

Taxation up 0.19%... that's actually quite a bit, significantly more than other issues. Yet so far as I can tell, we're just giving the left over sculptures away.
Government size up 0.6% I mean seriously. It's come and collect. No one is exactly keeping an eye on them.
Culture DOWN 0.43%. Bearing in mind literally more people are adding art and art is being integrated into more things. I find this shocking.
Freedom from Taxation is also down. No clue why.

I'm not exactly sure why Eco-Friendliness has gone up but I've no reason to doubt it.

All in all it looks like it needs...revising.

Besides culture, it's all due to a very small movement in your government's environmental department. I will allow that it could have been made more explicit that your government was going to do this, but there you have it. As for culture, you're destroying the statues to recycle them for other uses, a small reduction in culture doesn't seem out of left field.

We're destroying rejected statues (not the ones that the people liked) to recycle them into other items that are apparently culturally worthy. Rolex watches just as an example here. If anything there should have been a rise as the culture is not actually being destroyed, broken down perhaps and used in other ways...

I'm not sure it's less culture if you take off the head of a greek statue and plant it in the garden as a new artwork or whether you use the stone fists as a rather heavy pendant.

A better example would be, if a potter destroys an item he created to make another item out of it, is he destroying or creating culture? Is his subsequent item worth less?

[Trotterdam]

I get that a nation may want to both drug its citizens through the water and ban drugs otherwise, but as of right now we can't do that.

We don't need that much. We just need to recognize that there are multiple types of drugs, and you can ban one drug and legalize another (especially since having different policies for alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs is actually very common in real life).

If an issue says "legalize all recreational drugs", then I could see that automatically legalizing alcohol, even if the player wasn't expecting it. If an issue says "put out favorite recreational drug in the drinking water" (and these issues generally make it pretty clear that the drug they're talking about is not alcohol), there's no reason that would affect alcohol laws.

Meanwhile, a poison designed to kill people who don't take the antidote is in no way a "recreational drug" and has no business using that flag.

Also... while this is applicable to Bedetopia's report, I really don't see how it's relevant to East green Israel's. East green Israel had chosen an option which specifically says to ban alcohol (not drugs), and complained about specifically not getting the policy for having banned alcohol (not drugs). Your explanation would be meaningful if the report had been about a choice to ban alcohol unexpectedly also banning drugs or cancelling mandatory drug use, but nothing of that sort is mentioned in the post (and even if something like this did happen, I don't see how it would be relevant to the other mentioned anomaly, the decrease in Religiousness).

Before you suggest obvious fixes, it's probably not helpful. We've considered a lot of different things before and have never been able to come to agreement about the best way to go.

Why not? Is there any reason the obvious fix wouldn't work?

[Ransium]

I get that a nation may want to both drug its citizens through the water and ban drugs otherwise, but as of right now we can't do that.

We don't need that much. We just need to recognize that there are multiple types of drugs, and you can ban one drug and legalize another (especially since having different policies for alcohol and hallucinogenic drugs is actually very common in real life).

If an issue says "legalize all recreational drugs", then I could see that automatically legalizing alcohol, even if the player wasn't expecting it. If an issue says "put out favorite recreational drug in the drinking water" (and these issues generally make it pretty clear that the drug they're talking about is not alcohol), there's no reason that would affect alcohol laws.

Meanwhile, a poison designed to kill people who don't take the antidote is in no way a "recreational drug" and has no business using that flag.

Also... while this is applicable to Bedetopia's report, I really don't see how it's relevant to East green Israel's. East green Israel had chosen an option which specifically says to ban alcohol (not drugs), and complained about specifically not getting the policy for having banned alcohol (not drugs). Your explanation would be meaningful if the report had been about a choice to ban alcohol unexpectedly also banning drugs or cancelling mandatory drug use, but nothing of that sort is mentioned in the post (and even if something like this did happen, I don't see how it would be relevant to the other mentioned anomaly, the decrease in Religiousness).

Before you suggest obvious fixes, it's probably not helpful. We've considered a lot of different things before and have never been able to come to agreement about the best way to go.

Why not? Is there any reason the obvious fix wouldn't work?

East green Isreal also has drugged the water so banning alcohol did not, in fact, ban alcohol. I've brought the issue back up again backstage maybe my fix will get more traction this time.

[Ransium]

Besides culture, it's all due to a very small movement in your government's environmental department. I will allow that it could have been made more explicit that your government was going to do this, but there you have it. As for culture, you're destroying the statues to recycle them for other uses, a small reduction in culture doesn't seem out of left field.

We're destroying rejected statues (not the ones that the people liked) to recycle them into other items that are apparently culturally worthy. Rolex watches just as an example here. If anything there should have been a rise as the culture is not actually being destroyed, broken down perhaps and used in other ways...

I'm not sure it's less culture if you take off the head of a greek statue and plant it in the garden as a new artwork or whether you use the stone fists as a rather heavy pendant.

A better example would be, if a potter destroys an item he created to make another item out of it, is he destroying or creating culture? Is his subsequent item worth less?

Alright, I've flagged your comment in somewhere I know CWA will see, perhaps, he'll jump in and discuss his issue stats choices.

[Ransium]

I just received 641 on Theokratiss, which is in the top 5% of the world for environmental beauty and top 4% for health and top 2% for weather. It doesn't make sense that I received that issue for a nation with such stats

Also, I got 730.4 (I think that's what it is and abolished debates on Liberated Anarchist Utopia. I don't agree with political freedom falling, but I understand that. But why did it fall by 21 points? That seems very extreme to me.

I moved this to this thread, where it probably should go. For the first, it has different choices for the validity which I think are adequate and I don't care to change.

For 760.4 (not 730) I'm not going to second guess Gnejs. They are maybe somewhat larger than I would do, but so be it. Also, because you started with a state of being so politically free, they had an extreme effect.

[Ransium]

Why does 597.2 decrease political freedom?

I'm not sure why that happened. It is not due to the coded effects of the issue. Perhaps WA effects although I see you're not in the WA. Perhaps some small adjustment in the baseline model.

[Ransium]

Nova Sodor

24th November

Government saturated in corruption


I opted to enact freedom of information and my corruption increased by 109%.

It's a known unfortunate effect of the way the model currently deals with political freedom and corruption. It assumes that less political freedom means more corruption and that option greatly decreases the freedom in politics with money. I know it's not logical, but the next model update should help fix the problem.

[Ransium]

I think I've spotted a pretty strange controversy that sounds kinda ridiculous, and I could be wrong in my logic here, but... well, here it is.

I answered #515: Little Green Men (which tbh is pretty similar to #466 and #067, so it might not hurt to take a gander at them as well) with option 4,
which basically said that they can become an independent nation (and, I might add, was literally the most pro-freedom option in the entire issue),
but as such I wouldn't be giving them our supplies, which... why would I? They wouldn't be an independent nation if I did.

The result was my losing my policy on free protest and going from 86.86 to 76.57 points in political freedom.

So then I got issue #691, which basically gave me a choice to either bring home the nations, keep the nations afloat, or bring back all of them by force if necessary.
Admittedly, I probably should have chosen option 1, but I figured that supplying them with free trade and whatnots would still let them split away while still having total access to my supplies,
and... I not only didn't get my policy back, but I didn't get any political freedom whatsoever.

Am I missing something? I'd be delighted to know if I am.

Multiple options trigger #691 we can't really know what specific options trigger which reversal issues and code the stats accordingly. We have to code each issue based on its own text. I think Trotterdam mostly explained why #691 decreased political freedoms effectively.

[Nova Sodor]

Nova Sodor

24th November

Government saturated in corruption


I opted to enact freedom of information and my corruption increased by 109%.

It's a known unfortunate effect of the way the model currently deals with political freedom and corruption. It assumes that less political freedom means more corruption and that option greatly decreases the freedom in politics with money. I know it's not logical, but the next model update should help fix the problem.

Cool - thanks for the reply.