NationStates

One issue I've found in NationStates is constantly having to go back and edit my factbook to keep it up to date with the statistics of my nation. I'm updating the population, GDP, per capita income, largest industry etc. daily and although a small issue, the solution is already present in the game.

Macros are available for issues, so that population and largest industries are available for issue writers whenever needed, and it would be great if the usage of these could be applied into factbooks. Many nations use wikipedia-style layouts, which could be adorned with these macros to provide easy usage. Rather than having to modify our factbooks daily, we could instead use the macros and be able to leave them alone.

What are your thoughts, @@NAME@@?

EDIT: Turns out this is already a thing, it was just hidden. Thanks to "NoahS SeconD CountrY": https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=744890

I like this. Support.

@@NAME@@ supports this
-@@RANDOMMALENAME@@, representing @@POPULATION@@ @@DENONYMPLURAL@@

South Tasmania wrote:One issue I've found in NationStates is constantly having to go back and edit my factbook to keep it up to date with the statistics of my nation. I'm updating the population, GDP, per capita income, largest industry etc. daily and although a small issue, the solution is already present in the game.

What are your thoughts, @@NAME@@?

We think that you're missing the point of factbooks. Factbooks exists so you don't have to follow the game stats and use your own.

Troperia wrote:We think that you're missing the point of factbooks. Factbooks exists so you don't have to follow the game stats and use your own.

Factbooks are used to achieve a wide variety of goals in NationStates, there are no fixed answers. Although you personally might not use the suggested feature, who's to say others won't? I'm using a Wikipedia-style facebook to display the details of my nation, and although I don't agree with some of the resolutions of the issues I'm happy to use and deal with the impacts. Where else can I outline all I want to about my nation, and what could help make this easier? Macros. Besides, they're already implemented into NationStates in a slightly different area, would extending it into factbooks be anything other than helpful?
Also, who's "we" here?

Ah, okay, that is your opinion on the subject matter and I respect that you use factbooks for your own thing. Oh, the 'we' is a habit I picked up from using Forum 7.

Ah, fair enough. Apologies if that came across as an attack.

Troperia wrote:

South Tasmania wrote:One issue I've found in NationStates is constantly having to go back and edit my factbook to keep it up to date with the statistics of my nation. I'm updating the population, GDP, per capita income, largest industry etc. daily and although a small issue, the solution is already present in the game.

What are your thoughts, @@NAME@@?

We think that you're missing the point of factbooks. Factbooks exists so you don't have to follow the game stats and use your own.

For example, while gameside Nation A might have 900 million people, has an average income of 50,000, and Cheese Exports as the largest industry; factbooks can be utilized so that nation A could say "Hey! I have way less people than this, oh, and Book Publishing is actually the biggest industry!"

The point of fact-books is to allow us the opportunity to create a more detailed description of our nation the is available through the world factbook. Many of us use our nations stats as the basis for our factbooks. There's no obligation to do so(and many of us pick and choose which stats are canon and which are not) but the fact remains that the vast majority of people playing this game are playing the stat game and it would be nice to be able to incorporate the stats into our factbooks automatically so we don't have to update them every time we answer a few issues. (For example I've not filled out my economy section because I'm waiting for those stats to... congeal)

On a slightly related topic I'd appreciate it if the file location for our flags stayed consistent even if the flag gets changed.(yes I know that's not the sort of macroing he's talking about, but I use it as such)

There's an existing topic for this suggestion somewhere. It will probably get implemented sooner or later.

Aclion wrote:On a slightly related topic I'd appreciate it if the file location for our flags stayed consistent even if the flag gets changed.

This isn't possible as many browsers would display an obsolete image they have cached locally instead of the updated image.

I think this works
Try putting [data:population] in a dispatch and see if it works.

I totally forgot I already implemented this:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=385192&p=29573864

People are supposed to be testing and providing suggestions for more tags.

[violet] wrote:I totally forgot I already implemented this:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=385192&p=29573864

People are supposed to be testing and providing suggestions for more tags.

I thought that dispatch meant something.
I wouldn't think that you would hide anything like that...