[MEGATHREAD] Unusual Issue Effects

[Jutsa]

I chose option #161.2, and my taxation went up. Does this somehow have to do with more people earning more, or did my economic output decrease by such a small amount that I can't see it in the effects?

[Ransium]

Issue 593, last option. Every industry decreased, except the arms manufacturing industry. Why did the arms manufacturing industry go up? Also, how did it give me the slavery policy?

I don't think there's any particular significance to arms industry not being listed (I didn't see it going up though FYI). Other factors must have modified the arms industry positively or the change (which was fairly minor across the board) was too minor for the arms industry to register. As for why the slavery policy:

“Since when have we let the women of this country determine its morality?” rages traditionalist Tarquin Duras, his wife and daughters standing behind him in fearful silence. “A woman’s nakedness is for her husband to behold, and for none other. All women should be forced to cover themselves head-to-toe while in public, and should not venture out of the home without permission. They should obey their husbands or male relatives in all things, including their clothing choices.”

The editor interpreted this as slavery for women, as demonstrated further by the effect line of:

fathers are free to sell their daughters to whomever they choose

I'm fairly indifferent as to whether this is indeed slavery or just something very much like slavery, but that was the editors choice and I see no benefit in second guessing it.

[Ransium]

I chose option #161.2, and my taxation went up. Does this somehow have to do with more people earning more, or did my economic output decrease by such a small amount that I can't see it in the effects?

Recall that taxation is interpreted by the staff to mean solely income tax. By abolishing another form of tax income tax was raised to compensate for it. Also, why wouldn't you answer 1? It leads to my favorite issue!

[Jutsa]

Because I didn't want my government to take everyone's hard earned money.
(though I have picked option 3 a couple times)

[Golden State Warriorz]

For issue 837, about donations to the World Assembly, I picked option 2 which (from my understanding at least) involves attempting to reform the WA's rules to reduce "mandatory" donations. If the gov't needs less money to donate to the WA, it can afford to tax its citizens less- but tax rate actually went up after I selected that option. No big deal, only 0.5 percent but I expected tax to go down quite significantly. And to add insult to injury, I selected that option mainly because I wanted to lower taxes.

[Trotterdam]

#069 3 caused a serious hit to Environmental Beauty (3191.00 -> 3179.57). I don't remember it ever doing this before, and the option purports to be pro-environment in its advocate's opinion. Has it been changed or am I misremembering?

[Ransium]

For issue 837, about donations to the World Assembly, I picked option 2 which (from my understanding at least) involves attempting to reform the WA's rules to reduce "mandatory" donations. If the gov't needs less money to donate to the WA, it can afford to tax its citizens less- but tax rate actually went up after I selected that option. No big deal, only 0.5 percent but I expected tax to go down quite significantly. And to add insult to injury, I selected that option mainly because I wanted to lower taxes.

It seems to me the WA law referring to mandatory donations is still in place, therefore you've hired extra staff to do the repealing but haven't achieved it yet. It's basically the smallest move to tax possible.

[Ransium]

#069 3 caused a serious hit to Environmental Beauty (3191.00 -> 3179.57). I don't remember it ever doing this before, and the option purports to be pro-environment in its advocate's opinion. Has it been changed or am I misremembering?

CWA recorded the stats a few months ago. It's actually a fairly minor hit to the environmental base stat, and I suppose it's due to the threat of nuclear meltdown / the problem of nuclear waste. I don't know if this is so environmentally friendly text-wise:

“Now the way I see it is that it’s either green, expensive, and sprawling; or compact, polluting and cheap. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the best of both worlds? Well, we can!” claims fission technician Harambe Harishchandra. “Nuclear power is reliable, clean, and although it isn’t cheap, it won’t break the bank. There is a risk of deadly meltdown, but this is relatively small, and the only people who could be against this are anti-nuclear protesters, but what do we care about those tree-hugging hippies?”

[Cekoviu]

On Issue #801, I chose option 3 and my Ideological Radicality went down by 0.69%, which doesn't really make sense, given that allowing kids' TV to broadcast shows featuring drugs and violence seems like the more radical choice out of the basic "allow/disallow" binary, though I suppose opinion could reasonably vary from person to person. Of course, choosing to go to war with Brancaland or subsidize porn production (???) would be more radical, but still, it going down because of my choice is strange, and it's not one of my usual stats that slightly fluctuates for no reason.

[Snurdly]

I just got an issue about a national day. There was a patriotic option, a military option, a nudism option, and a no-holiday option. Consistent with my leadership style, I selected the nudism option. It had some confusing impacts, but apparently no impact on my nudity ranking, which remains at an embarrassing 5% in the world, 6% in the region. If I can somehow get to the top 0.7% in foreign aid, and the top 1% in welfare, why can't I get my people naked?

Hiram Tweedle
President Snurdly

[Ransium]

I just got an issue about a national day. There was a patriotic option, a military option, a nudism option, and a no-holiday option. Consistent with my leadership style, I selected the nudism option. It had some confusing impacts, but apparently no impact on my nudity ranking, which remains at an embarrassing 5% in the world, 6% in the region. If I can somehow get to the top 0.7% in foreign aid, and the top 1% in welfare, why can't I get my people naked?

Hiram Tweedle
President Snurdly

People are already as free to get naked as they want in Snurdly. Either make nudism mandatory or focus on secondary effects related to nudism by raising other civil rights.

[He Qixin 2]

Nation: He Qixin 2
Issue: #177 (Power To The People?)
Date Received: Today
Option Chosen: 1

Description: How does enabling elections lower your industries?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

On Issue #801, I chose option 3 and my Ideological Radicality went down by 0.69%, which doesn't really make sense, given that allowing kids' TV to broadcast shows featuring drugs and violence seems like the more radical choice out of the basic "allow/disallow" binary, though I suppose opinion could reasonably vary from person to person. Of course, choosing to go to war with Brancaland or subsidize porn production (???) would be more radical, but still, it going down because of my choice is strange, and it's not one of my usual stats that slightly fluctuates for no reason.

Specific decisions don't have coding or editing decisions relating to radicality on them. Instead ideological radicality is a purely secondary stat indicating how far you are from a designated "average point" in the freedoms. For some nations, radicality will rise with this option, for some it will fall.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Nation: He Qixin 2
Issue: #177 (Power To The People?)
Date Received: Today
Option Chosen: 1

Description: How does enabling elections lower your industries?

It just does. Political freedom mildly suppresses industry.

Never quite understood that one myself, and have queried it in the past with the Technical team. However, I'm informed it's one of those things that is more complex than it seems on the surface, which I can surely believe. Someone like Violet might be able to explain the reasons behind it better.

[He Qixin 2]

Nation: He Qixin 2
Issue: #177 (Power To The People?)
Date Received: Today
Option Chosen: 1

Description: How does enabling elections lower your industries?

It just does. Political freedom mildly suppresses industry.

Never quite understood that one myself, and have queried it in the past with the Technical team. However, I'm informed it's one of those things that is more complex than it seems on the surface, which I can surely believe. Someone like Violet might be able to explain the reasons behind it better.

Thanks for the reply

[Loud Lawnmowers]

Why does issue 222 option 1 give no increase to the military.

[Fauxia]

Why does issue 222 option 1 give no increase to the military.

Believe we call this the Floogle Index?

You’ve basically hit a point where your Defense Forces stat is so high it’s extremely difficult to raise and very easy to make smaller. You’re at 365th in the world, so it makes sense.

Not an editor, but I think I know what’s going on here.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Why does issue 222 option 1 give no increase to the military.

Something squiffy going on here. Its directly coded to increase the military, yet yours decreased. I'll raise it with the technical bods.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Ok, turns out this has been discussed backstage before, and the explanation is pretty much as Fauxia intimated: it's a diminishing returns model that breaks down at the extremes. The normally sizeable increase to military spending represented only a tiny boost for you, so disappeared into that black hole of bureaucratic inefficiency that comes with huge departments. Meanwhile, the boost to arms manufacturing had knock on economic efffects throughout the economic model, which in turn led to a whole chain of small shifts that result in a slight downscaling of your defence force effectiveness. So even though you're spending more on the military, your defences became slightly less secure, and its basically down to butterfly effect style knock-ons.

In most nations those effects would be easily overwhelmed by your additional military expenditure, but for you, that extra expenditure was almost meaningless.

I guess if we're looking for an in-narrative explanation, it seems likely that your armed forces simply can't grow any larger despite extra funding because of hard-cap logistical limitations, and committing to another front has left you relatively over-extended.

It's not possible to say whether that's a real life realistic outcome, as no real life nation spends 85% of their spending on the military (and 31% of your GDP). Even North Korea, the real life proportional over-spender on the military only hits 23.8% of GDP.

So basically, you're a weirdly extreme nation, and weird things happen when you make decisions. Its arguable that's design as intended, but its probably fairer to categorise it as stress-testing the system beyond its usual parameters, and getting weird results because of that.

[Land Without Shrimp]

Very complicated explanation was provided to me, but it's hard to know how much I'm allowed to transmit.

For now, all I can really say is that it is working as intended, and that a halving of government spending is NOT meant to equal to a halving of income tax. The simulation is way more complicated than that, and the factors that made your nation have a much larger tax cut than expected are based around multiple facets of your economy. Likewise, there are nations out there who might halve spending and barely see income tax change at all.

I don't think I can say much more than this without revealing more than I am allowed.

CWA - this is quite a late reply, but realised I never said thanks for your investigation and reply on this one! I know you mostly get saddled with problems and negative feedback, so I just wanted to thank you for all the work you do on these issues. Really is very much appreciated!!

[Jutsa]

Pardon my asking, but how does breaking apart monopolies increase the wealth of the rich and hurt the wealth of the poor? And increase rudeness?
(referring to 041.2 ftr)

[Christian Democrats]

Option 823.1 reduced my nation's Health.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Pardon my asking, but how does breaking apart monopolies increase the wealth of the rich and hurt the wealth of the poor? And increase rudeness?
(referring to 041.2 ftr)

Simulation limitations.

Wealth gaps are determined by economic freedoms, with economic freedoms relating directly to wages being weighted more heavily.

Option 2 trades off two different freedoms. The freedom of established corporations to dominate a market, and the freedom of new corporations to enter the market.

Because of the trade-off, total economic freedom could move up or down (see FAQ for more detailed explanation) depending on starting position for the nation.

Wage gaps then just read this overall position, and shift independently of the stated narrative. We don't decide that wage gaps should increase or decrease according to the option, we just identify which freedoms have changed and the sim does the rest.

This isn't necessarily a bug. For example, if you break apart a market dominated by monopolies, what I guess you're thinking what would happen is that being the only game in town lets the industry offer lower and lower wages, which would increase wealth gaps. However, equally what could happen is that a whole bunch of folk who would have been reasonably rich from running small businesses instead become driven folk on the shop floor level who demand higher wages. Or that a lack of competition drives up the price of goods, and knock on action has to be taken to help the poor be able to afford the basics. Or all sorts of economicky-womicky curly-wurly stuff that could lead to unexpected outcomes.

Actually of course, it's none of those things. It's just a blunt instrument sim giving blunt results. But you could make up a workable narrative for sure.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Option 823.1 reduced my nation's Health.

Yes.

It's an issue for nations with bad weather, and you're encouraging folk to do indoor work outside. If you're doing a data entry desk job, you're going to get unwell a lot more easily if you're sitting in the rain and wind.

[He Qixin 2]

How does option 1 of issue #000 (Should Democracy Be Compulsory?) decrease your tourism?

Edit: ignore this now