MechiWiki version 2

[Standica]

You may or may not have come across my NationStates toolkit, MechiWiki. I'm currently working on a new version, partly to improve the calculation algorithms, and partly to add new features. This is where I would like your input.

At the moment I'm really keen on incorporating some sort of military stats into the toolkit (armed forces man-power, etc), and I'm also toying with the idea of a "Political Compass"-esque feature.

So I'd like you to suggest new features, improvements to current ones, etc, etc.

Edit: I've also had the idea of allowing people to build their own military, so you could chose exactly how you spend your defence budget. I'd like some feedback on this idea though- is it something worth doing, and if so, do you have any suggestions or pointers?

[Of the Quendi]

Well last I checked MechiWiki makes nations with Powerhouse have a greater economy then nations with Freightening. That you will have to correct if it is to be taken seriously. Which I believe it deserves as it is otherwise a really good calculator.

[Lurlop]

GREAT! I have just heard of it

[Of the Quendi]

Oh and I love that your calculator makes nations richer then the rest. For instance my nation has a no taxes policy and I follow an extremely pro business policy yet most calculators only let me have a GDP per capita about the size of RL US. Ridiculous.

[Lurlop]

Improvement:Allow nations to read a region's RMB

[Standica]

Well last I checked MechiWiki makes nations with Powerhouse have a greater economy then nations with Freightening. That you will have to correct if it is to be taken seriously. Which I believe it deserves as it is otherwise a really good calculator.

This is my main priority- to sort out the numbers a bit. Rest assured that by time I'm done with it, the calculations will be a lot better.

[Sedgistan]

Might be worth adding in a "Government budget as a % of GDP" stat, as that's a useful way of comparing nations.

[Of the Quendi]

Oh, and I also like that you can see how much per capita you spend on different sectors. Thumbs up for that.

[Gahaldu]

I really like the calculator, but I do have one criticism. It seems that the quality of life and human development scores are a bit high for some nations. Even compulsory consumerist states or corporate police states have fairly commendable rankings. For example, A Corporate Regime, a puppet nation of mine that has a terrible environment and virtually no freedoms at all, gets a higher quality of life score than Switzerland. and a higher HDI score than the United States.

[Standica]

Improvement:Allow nations to read a region's RMB

Sorry Lurlop, could you expand on that please? It's probably me being thick, but not sure what RMB stands for :S

Might be worth adding in a "Government budget as a % of GDP" stat, as that's a useful way of comparing nations.

Great idea- will definitely add that. Thanks Sedgistan

I really like the calculator, but I do have one criticism. It seems that the quality of life and human development scores are a bit high for some nations. Even compulsory consumerist states or corporate police states have fairly commendable rankings. For example, A Corporate Regime, a puppet nation of mine that has a terrible environment and virtually no freedoms at all, gets a higher quality of life score than Switzerland. and a higher HDI score than the United States.

I'll re-work the algorithm and make sure that's fixed for the new version.

[Wamitoria]

Improvement:Allow nations to read a region's RMB

Sorry Lurlop, could you expand on that please? It's probably me being thick, but not sure what RMB stands for :S

Regional Message Board

[Standica]

Thanks Wamitoria for the translation

Improvement:Allow nations to read a region's RMB

That's beyond the scope of the toolkit. Sorry.

[Alevuss]

At the moment I'm really keen on incorporating some sort of military stats into the toolkit (armed forces man-power, etc).

I'm not sure how you do this, but perhaps you could find the military by somehow basing it off of a nation's government type, along with their freedoms.

[Wamitoria]

At the moment I'm really keen on incorporating some sort of military stats into the toolkit (armed forces man-power, etc).

I'm not sure how you do this, but perhaps you could find the military by somehow basing it off of a nation's government type, along with their freedoms.

%percent of Gov't Military spending, economic condition, and population would make more sense.

[Zwangzug]

Oh, so you're the force behind that! Very nice tool, thanks for making it.

I know a lot of the mechanics are kept deliberately hidden, but could you make things like labels and scales for the less familiar values a little less obscure? Right now, unless there's some mouseover trick I'm missing (mouseover doesn't do anything for me, even though it looks like it maybe should), I have to View Page Source in order to learn what the GPI, for instance, is...and there's no scale for that, just color-coding. Maybe that's deliberate, but at least tweak the mouseover functions in some way...?

And then there are some numbers that I don't quite understand. Should dividing "Education Spending per Capita" by "Funding Per Pupil" yield the percentage of pupils in the population? I'm getting a rather low number there...although maybe that's to be expected if the life expectancy is 103.3...

And as a general question, I'm no economist; if the government expenditure per capita outstrips the GDP and/or production per capita, does that mean the government is running a deficit?

But still, this is a cool tool, so thanks once again.

[Standica]

Oh, so you're the force behind that! Very nice tool, thanks for making it.

I know a lot of the mechanics are kept deliberately hidden, but could you make things like labels and scales for the less familiar values a little less obscure? Right now, unless there's some mouseover trick I'm missing (mouseover doesn't do anything for me, even though it looks like it maybe should), I have to View Page Source in order to learn what the GPI, for instance, is...and there's no scale for that, just color-coding. Maybe that's deliberate, but at least tweak the mouseover functions in some way...?

And then there are some numbers that I don't quite understand. Should dividing "Education Spending per Capita" by "Funding Per Pupil" yield the percentage of pupils in the population? I'm getting a rather low number there...although maybe that's to be expected if the life expectancy is 103.3...

And as a general question, I'm no economist; if the government expenditure per capita outstrips the GDP and/or production per capita, does that mean the government is running a deficit?

But still, this is a cool tool, so thanks once again.

I had to disable to mouseover because there were some problems with it. It's one of the things on the list to put right and make better.

As for your education question, the short answer is "no" What I've tried to do is model the birth rate for a nation, and from there, and taking into account other factors, what percentage of the population is of school age. But there are some problems with the calculations here, which is why version 2 is on it's way.

And if govt expenditure is greater than GDP, yes, the government is running a deficit. I'm looking at your nation now, and your economy is "imploded"

Hope that answers your question, and thanks for the support- it's much appreciated =)

[Zwangzug]

I'm looking at your nation now, and your economy is "imploded"

Yeah, I caught on, sigh. Thanks for clearing that up, the government likes to know which statistics to brag about and which to spin...

And yeah, extrapolating birth rates seems like a clever idea, and I'm guessing Zwangzug's would be rather low. Just not sure how low, is all. Good luck with version 2!

[Atheists Led by Chris]

I like the Social Statistics feature. That's a first I've seen.

[Flemish Cities]

The GDP seems a bit high. Right now it says I have $249,216 per capita GDP for a grand total of slightly over $41 trillion. And while this gives me an extraordinarily powerful economy I think the NSEconomy's page has it at what seems better at just over $4 trillion, around a tenth of what yours seems to calculate. While I'd love for this to be true if I decided to roleplay it just doesn't feel right to have a GDP at ~3 times the USA's GDP with around half the population. Unless, of course, my nation is really just that industrious.

[Zoerb]

It would seem that "administration" and "social equality" are the same color in the graph and merge together so it appears that there is just one big piece. Other than that it looks pretty good.

[Standica]

The GDP seems a bit high. Right now it says I have $249,216 per capita GDP for a grand total of slightly over $41 trillion. And while this gives me an extraordinarily powerful economy I think the NSEconomy's page has it at what seems better at just over $4 trillion, around a tenth of what yours seems to calculate. While I'd love for this to be true if I decided to roleplay it just doesn't feel right to have a GDP at ~3 times the USA's GDP with around half the population. Unless, of course, my nation is really just that industrious.

GDP is one of my main priorities to have a look at. I'm actually re-writing it at the moment

It would seem that "administration" and "social equality" are the same color in the graph and merge together so it appears that there is just one big piece. Other than that it looks pretty good.

Thanks- you're the first to notice that I'll have it fixed for v2.

[Flemish Cities]

The GDP seems a bit high. Right now it says I have $249,216 per capita GDP for a grand total of slightly over $41 trillion. And while this gives me an extraordinarily powerful economy I think the NSEconomy's page has it at what seems better at just over $4 trillion, around a tenth of what yours seems to calculate. While I'd love for this to be true if I decided to roleplay it just doesn't feel right to have a GDP at ~3 times the USA's GDP with around half the population. Unless, of course, my nation is really just that industrious.

GDP is one of my main priorities to have a look at. I'm actually re-writing it at the moment

Glad to hear it, yours looks much nicer IMO than the other calculators out there and loads much quicker as well (for me at least).

[Coletra]

It is pretty good, but the social statistics are greatly excaggerated

[The New Gaula Reich]

GPI should be fixed, 180 could mean 1.8, or 180, one of which is extremely peaceful, about as peaceful as France, and the other is a war mongering nation declaring nuclear war like there's no tomorrow.

[Aksun]

WOW this is cool! Keep it up I love seeing my nations stats.