Suggestion: Repealing Bills

[Peoples Soviet Democracy]

I personally believe that an ability to repeal any previously passed bills in your nation, of course there should be some kind of restriction to this whether it be how many bills can be repealed a day, week, month, ect. or you could add such ability to repeal bills at each milestone for population or even just when you earn a banner. Of course there would also have to be some way of organizing the bills such as an extra section simply labeled as "bills". As the bills should have options to be sorted such as alphabetical, Impact, and by which category its affects are the strongest (auto industry, crime, seclarism, culture). In the end such ability to repeal past bills would in turn help improve the accuracy of the game and also help plenty with allowing us to enjoy the game more.

[Menta Lee-IL]

As much as some of the impacts/results of the issues have pissed me off for being seemingly illogical, ridiculous, etc., being able to "undo" them via repeal would take away the element of surprise, so no, I'd be against this, personally speaking.

[Enfaru]

I think this could be interesting if Repealing came with side effects. I mean when you repeal a bill in real life the system never goes back to the way it was before, the situation changes and new things happen due to new behaviours. It's almost like having an entirely new bill in some respects.

Maybe random passed bills can be challenged once a month or so, with various commentators speaking up. I think it'd add another dynamic to the game.

[The Noble Thatcherites]

I'm sure that the mods have addressed this before, but the idea of undoing or repealing an issue is certainly against the fun and surprising aspect of issues. It's a fun thought, but it would require a lot of infrastructure to the game and has probably been addressed before.

[USS Monitor]

I'm sure that the mods have addressed this before, but the idea of undoing or repealing an issue is certainly against the fun and surprising aspect of issues. It's a fun thought, but it would require a lot of infrastructure to the game and has probably been addressed before.

It's usually editors rather than mods who field this one, since it relates to issues, but yeah, having an undo button would go against the spirit of the issues game. Dealing with the unintended side effects of decisions is part of the game.

Maybe random passed bills can be challenged once a month or so, with various commentators speaking up. I think it'd add another dynamic to the game.

If you have different commentators speaking up, someone has to write that dialogue. That sounds a lot like a policy reversal issue.

We already have some issues that come in pairs: One issue lets you ban something. Another issue let's you lift the ban. You just have to wait for the reversal issue to come around.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

If we're talking Issues,then we've got our own vocab for these things.

There's things called "policies" that flag your nation's status on various decisions, like banning cars, or making abortion illegal. These are activated in the appropriate decisions in issues. For example, Issue 136 can identify you as an "abortion illegal" nation.

Repealing these is done through what we call "policy reversals". These are also done through issues, often tailor-written for that purpose. For example issues 358 and 817 can reverse the decision to ban abortion.

I'd be strongly against having a button that let's you deactivate policies without recourse to issues,

Firstly, policy changes come with stat changes (of course), so you'd be adding buttons that change your nations stats with no context or story to them. Hell, that's one step away from adding a slider that let's you adjust your civil rights score, by which stage, what's the point of Issues again?

Secondly, it removes the narrative purpose of reversal issues, which are a great storytelling tool, showing that your decisions have consequences, and that those consequences create further story.

My fellow editor Nation of Quebec maintains a list of issues that need writing, and included on those are reversals of policies that currently don't have any reversal narrative. These include:

A specific reversal issue for nations that have abolished their upper house (see Bicameral Backlash)
A specific reversal issue for nations that have banned zoos
A specific reversal issue for nations who have chosen to adopt proportional representation
A specific reversal issue for nations that have legalised same sex marriage.
A specific reversal issue for nations that have established term limits (#54)
A specific reversal issue for nations that have banned circumcision (#467)
A specific reversal issue for nations that have allowed police to have cars while the rest of the populace does not have cars, and which reverts the situation to nobody being allowed cars.
A specific reversal on implementing subcutaneous identification microchips
A specific reversal issue for nations that have stopped foreigners from running for office (#427)
A specific reversal issue to ban torture for nations allowing it

I'm pretty sure that list is up to date, though not my role to maintain it, of course.

Anyone fancies getting into issue writing, this is a great place to start. Pop over to Got Issues and get drafting!