Issues/Nation Management Tech Development

by **Verdant Haven** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 5:52 am

Hello all! Wondering what happened to the original version of this post by Sedge? Check the spoiler below! Otherwise, read on.

As of January 18, 2024, I've taken up the mantle of "Director of Content" and Issues Development Manager. The post about that is located here, and the original news blurb about Development Managers can be found here.

What's probably more interesting to everyone than some title changes is what exactly that means for the community. In short, it means I'll be doing my darndest to help translate ideas for cool improvements to Issues and Nation Management (things like stats, data visualization, etc) from idea stage, to a working proposal, and finally to a request for the tech and admin staff to code. Some of this stuff (ok, a great deal of it) may be fairly invisible on the front end unless and until it reaches release, but thankfully there is a dedicated team of awesome Issues Editors who volunteer a bunch of time and effort to bring these ideas closer to reality. All that, and they're editing every new issue as well!

First and foremost, the rules about Bad Faith posting apply to this thread. This is a place for us to collaborate towards a shared goal of making NationStates a better, more fun, more immersive place. With that in mind, this is a place to share your ideas for types of improvements, and where I will occasionally try to put announcements or updates should we have reached the point of bringing something to the public.

The basics:

Keep posts here relatively brief. We're not here to go back and forth on all the details of a given idea, other than perhaps asking some relevant questions. If you have a concept you want to have a full discussion with on, give it its own thread, and post a link here directing attention to it. If you've got a straightforward idea you just want to put in my ear or ask about, go ahead and post it.

Some ideas simply can't be realistically executed, or wouldn't work, no matter how cool they are, and we may not always be at liberty to explain the details of why. Please understand that if we decline an idea, it isn't a judgement about you or your playstyle – it's probably just the reality of what we can pull off.

Finally, if your ideas are about adding specific Issues to the game, those belong over in the Got Issues forum. This is for technical stuff.

Major things currently on my radar:

- As Sedge had mentioned in the previous version of the post, we are looking at ways to present more information to players about their nations – especially information about the people in their nations. This continues to be true, and we've made significant backstage progress towards this goal since the original post! I can't say more than that right now, but know that several ideas posted in this thread, as well as others developed by the team, are now "under construction."

- I've seen some comments in Technical suggesting new stats recently, and various editors have been working on betas for exactly that! I saw some suggestions in this thread that also look good, and will go on my radar for potential future beta development.

- Modifications to how existing information is presented, for example, there's a fair amount of discussion in this thread and its linked topics about how economic information is presented on the nation page. To be honest, this is probably a lower priority at present, as it would be entirely dependent on the availability of admins to fundamentally alter how existing content is presented, rather than presenting new content for players, but that doesn't mean it isn't a valid possibility. I hear what's being said, and will keep it in mind.

by **Minskiev** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:09 am

Adding new industries would be interesting, yeah. But I think it'd be important to make sure that the industries we add wouldn't all be dominated by, say, Bright Angel. Industries that wouldn't be controlled by an industrial powerhouse (strange, right) might be more beneficial than the boring Pharmaceuticals. Things like Real Estate maybe, or Architecture, Banking, Waste Management. Stuff like that, perhaps.

by **Bears Armed** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:32 am

Sedgistan wrote:Finally, the dreaded industry reform topic - it's been discussed for years, but needs to be addressed at some point. NS's range of issues are unrealistic and limiting. We'd like to see a more comprehensive range of industries in-game, but ones that continue to recognise NS's quirks, with niche industries such as Beekeeping added alongside the more predictable big ones like Pharmaceuticals.

Hooray, you remembered your earlier comment (from back when I was pushing through a GA resolution on the topic?) that Bee-keeping would be an interesting addition: Thank you.

by **Valentine Z** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 6:51 am

Oooh, hi there! This is certainly very interesting news. So yes, I have read through the News section, and also your OP, so... I suppose that I could make a few suggestions based on stats.

So earlier this year, Ransium talked about how the 0.05% cutoff is harsh for extreme nations. I would personally like to see this as well, maybe in the form of settings of sort that allows users to view stat changes with more precision. That is, we already have "Show more stats", so perhaps an option to "Show every change in the stats". The ability to choose is solely because there will be times when a younger nation might not need it, but the older nations do, or simply for those who does not want to see more stats.

As for the Industries, I am okay with it for the most parts - as far as my knowledge goes, there are 18 Industries that exist: 15 Industries, 2 Sectors, and then Tourism. I picked Tourism because it is counted as so in overviews like "The industrial sector, which is highly specialized, is mostly made up of the Information Technology industry, with significant contributions from Tourism and Book Publishing." I am also in favor of having more Industrial statistics added, maybe something about "Social Programs" because I think there is a slight difference between Welfare and Social Programs. Again, I think.

------

Then comes my personal suggestion: Would it be feasible and doable to have stats on Music or Movies? I know it could be said as being under Culture, but Culture as a stats is a little too huge of a blanket, in my opinion. It could have been a combination of: Movies, Music, Literature (that's under Book Publishing, so okay), Opera, Theaters, and so on. Culture is the blanket term for all the Arts people have done, so I was wondering if this could be reflected in more precise details in the form of other stats? I suppose this falls under Industries up there.

Lastly, I am not in favor of having Industry stats being separate from the rest. It could be an option like how you click on the Globe/Flag to show World/Regional stats, so maybe another option beside to separate Industries or not. In short, I don't mind if it is an option, but I don't want the separation to be a default.

This one is more of a small suggestion and food for thought: So API call for stats have precise value for four particular stats: hdi-economy hdi-smart hdi-health hdi-precise, these actually run on much more precise values than HDI you see on stats page, for example. For instance, the API call shows 99.909113504809 instead of 99.91. Is this only for HDI-based stats, or will we see other stats in more precision?

EDIT: Oh, one more thing, and perhaps the most controversial, at least in my eyes. Is there a way to perhaps make it so that other nations are catching up quickly for some of the "hard stats" - ones that involved time or a lot of issue-answering? It's obvious that the early bird gets the gold worm, so even after 5 years, for example, it's hard to break through Inclusiveness, for example. Have been stuck on 15th for a good while, even with my small increments. I know Population, Residency, and Influence are tougher to change, but what about those players who were out of luck because they were not there since the days of Antiquity?

Thanks! ♥

by **Comfed** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 7:08 am

Minskiev wrote:Adding new industries would be interesting, yeah. But I think it'd be important to make sure that the industries we add wouldn't all be dominated by, say, Bright Angel. Industries that wouldn't be controlled by an industrial powerhouse (strange, right) might be more beneficial than the boring Pharmaceuticals. Things like Real Estate maybe, or Architecture, Banking, Waste Management. Stuff like that, perhaps.

I agree with this. And Valentine Z’s last idea.

by **Bormiar** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 8:04 am

Like Valentine Z, I’m interested in making issues less depressingly gerontocratic. If you look at the slope of a stat increase of one issues player and another, you’ll see that they’re roughly the same— it’s virtually impossible to catch up in the stats. Furthermore, those stats have become so dominant with their badges and immediate results shown after answering in issue.

Does anyone have any idea how to solve this?

One idea is to add new Easter eggs for players who do really special things with their nations, like move it through every government type or get a really high percentage of bungee cord deaths.

by **Bormiar** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 8:11 am

Oh here’s an idea!

I figured that old people get pushed out of other subcultures of the game whenever they’re no longer contributing. How about stats atrophy due to a lack of leader participation?

by **Sanctaria** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 8:28 am

Thank you for all the comments re industry reform. Sedge didn't originally post this as he wasn't sure if I, as designated PM/point Editor on the team for this, wanted to disclose current status, but I also think it's important people know where we're at.

You'll all be very happy to know that we've (the Editing Team) identified a whole host of new industries, and how industries are built/structured, and we're closing to finalising this and the conceptualisation/basic architectural stage. I am hopeful we'll move on to the start of what will be the implementation stage in the next few weeks. Many of the ideas mentioned here thus far re new industries will be reflected in some way in the new make-up.

That's not to say to expect the industry reform any time soon (#sorrynotsorry) but this update is just to let you all know that we're much further along than we have been before and it's an actual "project" now, and not just an "idea".

*insert Ron Paul "It's Happening" gif here*

P.S. please keep ideas coming (though I think penalising people for not being active in answering issues may be a bit of a non-runner, as that's a little mean :blush:

)

by **Valentine Z** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 8:59 am

Just to add a bit of an addendum, case in point of some of the stats being a little too much in favor for those who are around longer:

Of course, I am not suggesting that all these should not rely on age, but rather a balancing act of sorts - give those who are here longer an advantage, but perhaps not that big of an advantage. The idea of a stats decaying for not answering issues is also good with me.

by **Bormiar** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:03 am

Valentine Z wrote:Just to add a bit of an addendum, case in point of some of the stats being a little too much in favor for those who are around longer:

(Image)
(Image)

Of course, I am not suggesting that all these should not rely on age, but rather a balancing act of sorts - give those who are here longer an advantage, but perhaps not that big of an advantage. The idea of a stats decaying for not answering issues is also good with me.

Those graphs are actually a bit misleading in this case, because they include nations that don’t answer issues. If you isolate the top 1000 in certain stats and graph using that, you’ll probably see a much more profound correlation, showing that the situation is even worse than it looks.

by **Bormiar** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:03 am

I also don’t imagine that active players like Kindjal or Borland would be really effected by this.

by **Valentine Z** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:18 am

Ohh whoops. Let me add more in, so sorry to litter this place with graphs. ^^;

by **Trotterdam** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:27 am

I posted some minor issues with the census score units here. I think that fits more closely with this role than any of the others? Whatever it takes to get it looked at.

Valentine Z wrote:Then comes my personal suggestion: Would it be feasible and doable to have stats on Music or Movies? I know it could be said as being under Culture, but Culture as a stats is a little too huge of a blanket, in my opinion. It could have been a combination of: Movies, Music, Literature (that's under Book Publishing, so okay), Opera, Theaters, and so on. Culture is the blanket term for all the Arts people have done, so I was wondering if this could be reflected in more precise details in the form of other stats? I suppose this falls under Industries up there.

Book Publishing isn't necessarily literature. It also covers all sorts of nonfiction books with no artistic merit. Having lots of science textbooks wouldn't make a nation cultured, I think.

Bormiar wrote:Like Valentine Z, I’m interested in making issues less depressingly gerontocratic. If you look at the slope of a stat increase of one issues player and another, you’ll see that they’re roughly the same— it’s virtually impossible to catch up in the stats. Furthermore, those stats have become so dominant with their badges and immediate results shown after answering in issue.

The problem is, either old nations have an advantage, or no-one has an advantage and thousands of nations end up tied for first place, which is what currently happens with the "capped" stats like Civil Rights (1272 nations). Especially bad since the game doesn't currently even pretend to have a fair tiebreaker mechanism (if I recall correctly it's based on DBID).

by **Valentine Z** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:29 am

Trotterdam wrote:Book Publishing isn't necessarily literature. It also covers all sorts of nonfiction books with no artistic merit. Having lots of science textbooks wouldn't make a nation cultured, I think.

Oh yes, we actually went through this before in my stats thread. My apologies, haha! ^^;

by **Bormiar** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:31 am

Trotterdam wrote:
Bormiar wrote:Like Valentine Z, I’m interested in making issues less depressingly gerontocratic. If you look at the slope of a stat increase of one issues player and another, you’ll see that they’re roughly the same— it’s virtually impossible to catch up in the stats. Furthermore, those stats have become so dominant with their badges and immediate results shown after answering in issue.
The problem is, either old nations have an advantage, or no-one has an advantage and thousands of nations end up tied for first place, which is what currently happens with the "capped" stats like Civil Rights (1272 nations). Especially bad since the game doesn't currently even pretend to have a fair tiebreaker mechanism (if I recall correctly it's based on DBID).

I don’t see how that’s the case at all. My atrophy idea would plenty advantage old nations.

by **Lord Dominator** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 9:37 am

Stats atrophying for lack of participation wouldn’t help with catching up really, given that it’d just be a more obvious version of them not answering issues. I agree with Trotterdam that a mechanism for decay (or anything really to remove the advantage of time) would probably result in what are pretty close to gigantic ties.

by **Bormiar** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 12:19 pm

Lord Dominator wrote:Stats atrophying for lack of participation wouldn’t help with catching up really, given that it’d just be a more obvious version of them not answering issues. I agree with Trotterdam that a mechanism for decay (or anything really to remove the advantage of time) would probably result in what are pretty close to gigantic ties.

I don’t think you can say that it already exists and then proceed to say that it would lead to gigantic ties.

by **Lord Dominator** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:13 pm

Bormiar wrote:
Lord Dominator wrote:Stats atrophying for lack of participation wouldn’t help with catching up really, given that it’d just be a more obvious version of them not answering issues. I agree with Trotterdam that a mechanism for decay (or anything really to remove the advantage of time) would probably result in what are pretty close to gigantic ties.

I don’t think you can say that it already exists and then proceed to say that it would lead to gigantic ties.

Applying it only to the inactive is the former, applying it to all (I’m aware you didn’t propose that) is the latter.

by **USS Monitor** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:50 pm

Bormiar wrote:Oh here’s an idea!

I figured that old people get pushed out of other subcultures of the game whenever they’re no longer contributing. How about stats atrophy due to a lack of leader participation?

If someone is not answering issues, their stats are not rising and it is possible for other players to gain ground (even if slowly).

by **Bormiar** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 2:05 pm

USS Monitor wrote:
Bormiar wrote:Oh here’s an idea!

I figured that old people get pushed out of other subcultures of the game whenever they’re no longer contributing. How about stats atrophy due to a lack of leader participation?

If someone is not answering issues, their stats are not rising and it is possible for other players to gain ground (even if slowly).

The idea is to speed it up.

Edit: regardless, if I want to push the idea, I’ll start a dedicated thread.

by **Flanderlion** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 4:43 pm

I have a bit to say, but will try to keep brief (sentence) for each point. Written more elsewhere on them - and spoilered below.

by **Trotterdam** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 7:27 pm

Flanderlion wrote:As an older player, I like the current way how big nations have bigger industries. I would be fine with per capita etc. stats as long as we keep the old ones,

The industry scores are already per capita stats. The factors that cause them to be bigger for older nations are completely separate from the factors that cause older nations to have bigger population.

The only current census score that needs a per capita equivalent is the Black Market score (hint, hint).

by **Flanderlion** » Sat Jun 19, 2021 7:35 pm

Trotterdam wrote:
Flanderlion wrote:As an older player, I like the current way how big nations have bigger industries. I would be fine with per capita etc. stats as long as we keep the old ones,
The industry scores are already per capita stats. The factors that cause them to be bigger for older nations are completely separate from the factors that cause older nations to have bigger population.

The only current census score that needs a per capita equivalent is the Black Market score (hint, hint).

Oh really? Then I agree that they probably need rebalancing, but I also would like a total stat rather than per capita for it. In a perfect world we'd be able to on the graphs toggle between total, per capita/specialisation and region/world ranking over time.

by **Krusavich** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:51 am

I would like to bring back an old suggestion Candlewhisper wrote up some years ago regarding a nation's front page description of crime. While Candle's suggestion includes a rework of the Crime stat itself, I feel like a readjusting of the linked descriptions would suffice.

This description has been in need of a rebalance for some time to more accurately reflect how the Crime stat actually trends in-game. Many front page descriptions are like this frankly, but crime is the most egregious.

by **Sedgistan** » Sun Jun 20, 2021 8:48 am

Replying to a few:

Flanderlion wrote:Issues based on census ranks - e.g. if I'm in the top/bottom X% in world I become eligible for certain issues.

Why is this different from checking against whatever value there is for that ranking?

Flanderlion wrote:Issue history/stats - what issue options I picked in the past, what % players have picked each option (not immediately visible) and a census for issues addressed.

Cards make this less than useless, annoyingly. The game does record what issues you have had previously, but it's a lot more data to record the options you've picked previously.

Flanderlion wrote:More love towards Newspaper headlines - they're alright, but I feel like they could be explored more.

That's on our internal to-do list to get done at some point. We did add a few a month or two ago, for when your issue decision doesn't actually change anything (what I call "slow news day headlines").

Krusavich wrote:I would like to bring back an old suggestion Candlewhisper wrote up some years ago regarding a nation's front page description of crime. While Candle's suggestion includes a rework of the Crime stat itself, I feel like a readjusting of the linked descriptions would suffice.

That should be relatively easy for us to do, without admin involvement. It's worth posting a thread for any other bits of text you think aren't right.

Issues/Nation Management Tech Development

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