Issues/Nation Management Tech Development

[Dabarastan]

Maybe we could query the number of issues answered first - that'd reward issues-answerers, and the rest would be split by DBID as before. Thoughts on that?

I think that's an excellent suggestion for tie-breaking and much better than the current ID-based tie-breaking system. I can't remember who, but someone on the forums once told me that Authoritarianism can't be maxed out from nation creation anymore anyway, because Pol Freedoms can no longer reach 100 just from the nation creation screen alone (now a max of 98 instead), so I presume the opposite applies in regards to getting the scores all to 0, but I'm not sure. But the tied number 1 authoritarianism spots seem to be occupied by very old accounts from before this apparent change was made, so your suggestion is probably the most practical and universal.

[Trotterdam]

One possible kind of tiebreaker would be to implement rankings as a stable sort, so if two nations have the same score, the one that got there first is #1. This is 100% foolproof in that you never need a tiebreaker for the tiebreaker (well, unless two nations answer an issue at the exact same time): all nations can always be ordered in a deterministic manner based on meaningful gameplay actions rather than essentially-random values like DBID. However, this can't be applied retroactively if the relevant data hasn't existed before, so it's not really a solution right now.

Using number of issues answered as a tiebreaker sounds like a pretty good solution. Of course, there are 150 times more nations than issues, so there are going to be a lot of nations that have the same number of issues answered as each other, and not just at the very low values. However, the probability of two nations with a high number of issues answered having the exact same amount and the exact same score that needs to be tiebroken is fairly low.

Also, if we can get that tweak done on starting questions, most of those "never answered issues" nations would be somewhere less significant in the rankings, rather than at the top/bottom ends.

Even if we change the starting questions, what of those that already exist? Sure, you couldn't make more of them, but the people who have them might not want to give up their positions.

[Bears Armed]

The only super large ties in censuses of nations that do regularly answer issues are when the site imposes a hard limit on a stat that is too low, like how the black market used to be before it was fixed.

'Most World Assembly Endorsements' ?

[Trotterdam]

'Most World Assembly Endorsements' ?

Oh right. Those aren't related to the issues game (and so it probably doesn't make sense to tiebreak them according to the number of issues answered), but we probably still want some sort of tiebreaker.

[Haganham]

'Most World Assembly Endorsements' ?

Oh right. Those aren't related to the issues game (and so it probably doesn't make sense to tiebreak them according to the number of issues answered), but we probably still want some sort of tiebreaker.

Isn't the it currently tiebroken by how long the nation has has that number of endorsements? That at least is how it works with the delegacy.

[The Blaatschapen]

Oh right. Those aren't related to the issues game (and so it probably doesn't make sense to tiebreak them according to the number of issues answered), but we probably still want some sort of tiebreaker.

Isn't the it currently tiebroken by how long the nation has has that number of endorsements? That at least is how it works with the delegacy.

I don't think we keep track of how long a nation was having exactly 3 endorsements.

And even if:
what if a nation dropped from 4 to 3, should they be ranked higher or lower than one that a week earlier went from 2 to 3?

[Haganham]

The concept of adding industries has problems, though, which is part of what's held us back. One is how to present this information on nation pages - if we hadd 30 industries, for example, the industry badges overwhelm regular ones - so do we need those displayed separately? And the other is how we translate existing industry "scores" into new ones. We do not want to undo years of hard work from players, but also want to ensure that all the new rankings are not just dominated by the same nations. I imagine that we'd look to consult on these details, as well as ideas for the new industries themselves, as part of the process.

Perhaps industries could be consolidated into sectors for the purpose of badges. You wouldn't have a separate badge for beekeeping, beef agriculture and cheese exports. You'd just have sector: agriculture, and would have to look in the actual rankings to see individual industries.

Though the badges for each industry could be displayed on the economy tab for people who really want them.

alternatively, list industry badges separately.

Isn't the it currently tiebroken by how long the nation has has that number of endorsements? That at least is how it works with the delegacy.

I don't think we keep track of how long a nation was having exactly 3 endorsements.

And even if:
what if a nation dropped from 4 to 3, should they be ranked higher or lower than one that a week earlier went from 2 to 3?

well for a delegate the nation that dropped an endo would be higher, but I wasn't suggesting that it should be handled that way.

I'm going to raise "Regional Issues" as an idea here. It's something that gets occasionally mentioned, and that I've had thoughts on for years, but it's not an idea that's ever been developed much. Is it desirable? How would it work?

I had a couple of visions for it, both based around opting-in in some way - i.e. I do not think a system that obligated all regions to decide on issues would be a good idea. The first was a simple situation whereby a region could opt in to receive regional issues; the results then applied to all member nations. The second was to have a regional body - e.g. an "EU" type organisation, nations in that region can choose to join this - if they do then they are affected by the regional issues; kind of a localised WA. In either case, there's the potential for a few ways of making decisions, whether imposed by the regional leadership or through some sort of voting (member nations? WA member nations?).

Regional issues would provide some scope for addressing topics that don't work so well at the national level.

This would tie in well with the overhaul of polls

[Trotterdam]

'Most World Assembly Endorsements' ?

Oh right. Those aren't related to the issues game (and so it probably doesn't make sense to tiebreak them according to the number of issues answered), but we probably still want some sort of tiebreaker.

Come to think of it, it might be a good idea to at least tiebreak between WA nations with zero endorsements vs nations that don't have endorsements because they're not in the WA.

Isn't the it currently tiebroken by how long the nation has has that number of endorsements? That at least is how it works with the delegacy.

I don't think we keep track of how long a nation was having exactly 3 endorsements.

And even if:
what if a nation dropped from 4 to 3, should they be ranked higher or lower than one that a week earlier went from 2 to 3?

Going by stable sort rules, if a nation that had 2 endorsements rises to 3, it's placed below all other nations with 3 endorsements, while if a nation that had 4 endorsements falls to 3, it's placed above all other nations with 3 endorsements. Basically, you keep your position unless something actively warrants otherwise, rather than just a tie.

[Galiantus III]

I'm going to raise "Regional Issues" as an idea here. It's something that gets occasionally mentioned, and that I've had thoughts on for years, but it's not an idea that's ever been developed much. Is it desirable? How would it work?

I had a couple of visions for it, both based around opting-in in some way - i.e. I do not think a system that obligated all regions to decide on issues would be a good idea. The first was a simple situation whereby a region could opt in to receive regional issues; the results then applied to all member nations. The second was to have a regional body - e.g. an "EU" type organisation, nations in that region can choose to join this - if they do then they are affected by the regional issues; kind of a localised WA. In either case, there's the potential for a few ways of making decisions, whether imposed by the regional leadership or through some sort of voting (member nations? WA member nations?).

Regional issues would provide some scope for addressing topics that don't work so well at the national level.

Instead of having regional issues work by imposing changes on the nation, what if regions have their own modifier for each statistic, and regional issues only modify that?

• Current formula: Regional Statistic = Average National Statistic
• New Formula: Regional Statistic = Average National Statistic + Regional Modifier

Each region would start out with a modifier of zero for all stats. Regional issues would change the regional modifier, similar to how normal issues change national statistics.

The point of this is to decouple the actions of other people from your national statistics while allowing regional issues to have a meaningful impact. This makes opting out trivial: nations could just ignore or dismiss the issue. And since national statistics are unaffected, it isn't possible to use them to gain an advantage in national census rankings. Yet at the same time, the way nations answer issues will continue to affect the regional census.

[Merni]

Oh right. Those aren't related to the issues game (and so it probably doesn't make sense to tiebreak them according to the number of issues answered), but we probably still want some sort of tiebreaker.

Come to think of it, it might be a good idea to at least tiebreak between WA nations with zero endorsements vs nations that don't have endorsements because they're not in the WA.

Totally agree. The current system that mixes 0-endorsement WA members with non-members in the WA endorsements census ranking also makes it very difficult to get a list of WA members in your region without clicking through a number of pages containing mostly non-members.

[Fhaengshia]

Just found this thread, it's been inactive for a bit, so hopefully this isn't gravedigging.

Additional detail on the "People" tab of the nation page would be good. Yes, we know how everyone dies, but how do they live?

Something that makes sense to me would be to have a graph of "highest level of education completed" much like it is tracked by the OECD IRL. This could be a pie chart like the ones for deaths/etc. The OECD uses "below upper secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary".
Why this and not other stats? Well it's one of few measures that will always add to 100% which fits the pie chart theme, and it can be a pretty large factor on how people live.
Maybe another idea is breaking down what percentage of people work in each industry?

---

Also just gonna throw in a couple stat ideas cos why not (the wording is just to give an idea):

-Family size - Persons per household - WA Census experts counted the number of family members crammed into each legal or illegal dwelling.
I imagine this could have some funny high level numbers in some nations.

-Suppression - Books banned per day - WA Census experts interviewed local authors on their book sales.
There's probably a funny way to reference Max here, but it also might be a bit of an opposite to Political Freedom though.

---

Just lastly based on the discussion around Regional Issues, the 2nd idea where there's a "regional body" like the EU sounds like it could mirror the factions in N-Day. A regional officer could create a "bloc" or essentially pin another region's "bloc" to the region page where nations can join.

[Flanderlion]

Just found this thread, it's been inactive for a bit, so hopefully this isn't gravedigging.

Additional detail on the "People" tab of the nation page would be good. Yes, we know how everyone dies, but how do they live?

Something that makes sense to me would be to have a graph of "highest level of education completed" much like it is tracked by the OECD IRL. This could be a pie chart like the ones for deaths/etc. The OECD uses "below upper secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary".
Why this and not other stats? Well it's one of few measures that will always add to 100% which fits the pie chart theme, and it can be a pretty large factor on how people live.
Maybe another idea is breaking down what percentage of people work in each industry?

---

Also just gonna throw in a couple stat ideas cos why not (the wording is just to give an idea):

-Family size - Persons per household - WA Census experts counted the number of family members crammed into each legal or illegal dwelling.
I imagine this could have some funny high level numbers in some nations.

-Suppression - Books banned per day - WA Census experts interviewed local authors on their book sales.
There's probably a funny way to reference Max here, but it also might be a bit of an opposite to Political Freedom though.

---

Just lastly based on the discussion around Regional Issues, the 2nd idea where there's a "regional body" like the EU sounds like it could mirror the factions in N-Day. A regional officer could create a "bloc" or essentially pin another region's "bloc" to the region page where nations can join.

I like all of this. Especially the person per dwelling, as there can be housing crisis stuff based on it.

[All Wild Things]

Just found this thread, it's been inactive for a bit, so hopefully this isn't gravedigging.

Something that makes sense to me would be to have a graph of "highest level of education completed" much like it is tracked by the OECD IRL. This could be a pie chart like the ones for deaths/etc. The OECD uses "below upper secondary, upper secondary, and tertiary".
Why this and not other stats? Well it's one of few measures that will always add to 100% which fits the pie chart theme, and it can be a pretty large factor on how people live.
Maybe another idea is breaking down what percentage of people work in each industry?

---

Also just gonna throw in a couple stat ideas cos why not (the wording is just to give an idea):

-Family size - Persons per household - WA Census experts counted the number of family members crammed into each legal or illegal dwelling.
I imagine this could have some funny high level numbers in some nations.

-Suppression - Books banned per day - WA Census experts interviewed local authors on their book sales.
There's probably a funny way to reference Max here, but it also might be a bit of an opposite to Political Freedom though.

---

Just lastly based on the discussion around Regional Issues, the 2nd idea where there's a "regional body" like the EU sounds like it could mirror the factions in N-Day. A regional officer could create a "bloc" or essentially pin another region's "bloc" to the region page where nations can join.

I like all of this. Especially the person per dwelling, as there can be housing crisis stuff based on it.

Yeah, this is good stuff. I'm imagining education levels.
"Can find arse with both hands"
"Can tell arse from elbow"
"Can tie own shoelaces"
"Knows how to use capital letters"
"Can hack school attendance record"
"Blew up science lab"
"Mad scientist"

"Muppet"
"Jock"
"Cheerleader"
"Nerd"
"Egghead"
"Boffin"

[Sedgistan]

It's taken longer than anticipated, but there is progress on adding new Banners - we have a finalised list, and will be doing a last set of checks on our test version of NS. Once we're happy they're all ready, they should be implemented soon.

[Land Without Shrimp]

It's taken longer than anticipated, but there is progress on adding new Banners - we have a finalised list, and will be doing a last set of checks on our test version of NS. Once we're happy they're all ready, they should be implemented soon.

Excited to see these. Thanks for update!

[Pangurstan]

We've seen some betas go live recently, but there are plenty more ideas for world census rankings in the works. There are aspects of the text that goes into nation pages that could do with some sprucing up, particularly to make use of some new stats we've introduced since changes were last made to this. Additional detail on the "People" tab of the nation page would be good. Yes, we know how everyone dies, but how do they live?

How about adding an "industry" counterpart to the "government" pie chart that shows the percentage of non-governmental GDP that comes from each industry/sector? Also, I think it would make sense to add population/lifespan/death rate to the top of the "people" pie chart like how GDP/Average Income/etc. are at the top of the "economy" pie chart.

[Wintermoot]

It was suggested that I post this idea here.

What if there was something like this for a new type of interactive issue chain involving multiple nations?

Say, some kind of diplomatic incident with an active nation in your region. Your nation receives an issue on how to address it, and then based on your response their nation received an issue on how they would respond to it. The chain could go on for as long as the author(s) felt was appropriate, and the resulting stat changes would depend on how both nations responded over the course of the issue chain.

I know it's a little more complicated than what Kiddian was suggesting, but it would allow for actual interactions between nations when it came to the issues. In turn, it would make that end of the game feel a bit less like you're in a silo by yourself and some imaginary nations (even more imaginary than the ones we're running, in any case).

[SherpDaWerp]

It was suggested that I post this idea here.

I recommended it as this thread has hosted some discussion about "regional issues" before, which would be quite related.

I think "multiplayer" issues and chains could be a fantastic concept; the only problem is starting whatever conflict happens between the two players. (And, you'd want to restrict it to reasonably active nations, so a player holding down the fort in a near-dead region doesn't start the chain only to be blocked by their regionmates' inactivity)

Like, in order for Nation A to justify doing <thing> to Nation B, they have to have an internally legitimate whinge - which is hard to create without violating Player B's autonomy. Nations don't tend to just up and start conflict for no reason; they have a claim on land, or religious differences, or disagreement on some policy or another, so finding those arguments without making stuff up about Player B is crucial.

Not impossible, though - I can think of an example off the top of my head; that the "regional community" has approached Player A as a mediator in a dispute, which you can then stat for Player B - there's long-standing disagreements between @@name@@ and East Lebatuck/United Federation based on capitalism/socialism, as demonstrated in MADness.

The final problem is deciding who "wins" the conflict - players "losing" is something to avoid all the time (well, except for that one effect line about the chess tournament). So you'd have to either come to a compromise solution every time, or clearly signpost the outcome along a multiple-issue chain so that a player who "loses" can see it coming and avoid it if they want.

[Old Hope]

I had this idea in the past but we really need to have some "disaster" issues that cannot be dismissed and have a "do nothing" button instead. These issues would usually (but not always) greatly reduce many stats due to their nature.
E.g. "Volcanic Eruption", "Earthquake", etc. etc.
Disaster issues would have a special slot, would come in every 100 issues or every two years(whichever is faster) and would auto-resolve themselves as "do nothing" after 70 days.

This is a solution to multiple problems: Unreachable stats. Lack of real challenges.

I envision these issues to be mostly repeatable issue chains that are about which stats you want to save to an extent.
Yes, I know, the leader is always right, but that's not about that. The issues would frame the core of these issues as unavoidable and unpreventable.

[Panagouge]

I had this idea in the past but we really need to have some "disaster" issues that cannot be dismissed and have a "do nothing" button instead. These issues would usually (but not always) greatly reduce many stats due to their nature.
E.g. "Volcanic Eruption", "Earthquake", etc. etc.
Disaster issues would have a special slot, would come in every 100 issues or every two years(whichever is faster) and would auto-resolve themselves as "do nothing" after 70 days.

This is a solution to multiple problems: Unreachable stats. Lack of real challenges.

I envision these issues to be mostly repeatable issue chains that are about which stats you want to save to an extent.
Yes, I know, the leader is always right, but that's not about that. The issues would frame the core of these issues as unavoidable and unpreventable.

Not being outlawed to dismiss an issue is an outright violation of player autonomy. Forcing players to "accept" stats they do not wish for goes against the very core of what issues are about. Forcing a player to wait 70 days to have five proper issues is also outright stomping on autonomy. Although the idea of generated "disaster" issues may be appealing, the way it is currently presented cannot be implemented.

[Pogaria]

What if there was something like this for a new type of interactive issue chain involving multiple nations?

Say, some kind of diplomatic incident with an active nation in your region. Your nation receives an issue on how to address it, and then based on your response their nation received an issue on how they would respond to it. The chain could go on for as long as the author(s) felt was appropriate, and the resulting stat changes would depend on how both nations responded over the course of the issue chain.

I know it's a little more complicated than what Kiddian was suggesting, but it would allow for actual interactions between nations when it came to the issues. In turn, it would make that end of the game feel a bit less like you're in a silo by yourself and some imaginary nations (even more imaginary than the ones we're running, in any case).

All of that sounds fun, but I don't think it's feasible in the near future. This would require a substantial amount of admin time (which is very limited), and a large amount of writing and editing to account for the amount of variation within each issue, depending on the previous decision of each nation.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

I had this idea in the past but we really need to have some "disaster" issues that cannot be dismissed

It's very unlikely that any future issues would not have the dismiss button. Being able to dismiss issues is practically sacrosanct - aside from a special issue about that topic.

[Daarwyrth]

Hello! I wanted to post a suggestion here for a new policy, namely City-State. The idea is explained in detail in this thread. Basically, the idea is the introduction of a new policy that allows nations to identify as city-states, which would in turn allow for new issues to be written specifically catered to city-states. This is of course merely a suggestion, and if it's not a workable idea then it was at least a fun thought experiment in the Got Issues? Discord server

[Flanderlion]

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=533878

Briefly mentioned earlier in this thread, but created a new thread for it.

[Osheiga]

I don’t want to make a separate thread since this is a super minor suggestion, but I noticed that the ‘Vat-Produced Infants’ policy and the ‘Maternity Leave’ policy are worded as if they’re mutually exclusive even though you can have them both at the same time (which I do currently - https://www.nationstates.net/nation=osh ... l=policies ).

The vat policy says that ‘biological reproduction is prohibited’ in my nation, but then the maternity leave policy goes and says that maternity leave is given specifically for childbirth (even though that’s illegal).

I think this is just a wording issue, since some real-world countries allow maternity leave for reasons other than childbirth (like adoption, for example). I wonder if the Maternity Leave policy could have a slight rewording so it doesn’t have to specify ‘for childbirth’? Maybe something like ‘to care for their children’ could work.

[Trotterdam]

Funnily enough, Maternity Leave already needed to get tweaked once... but that was for a clash with the Child Self-Rearing policy, not the Vat-Produced Infants policy. It was explained as:

Maternity Leave & Child Self-Rearing aren't considered to be mutually exclusive, since the leave can begin well before birth, and be aimed at allowing the mother to recuperate, regardless of whether she's also caring for a child.

In that case, the description, "Mothers of newborn children received paid leave from employment.", should be amended.

Make sure you don't reintroduce the old problem in the process of fixing the new one!