NationStates Jolt Archive

I want to turn off compulsory military service and vegetarianism, but these two issues never show up anymore. (I voted on these issues months ago.) I figure they would if I acted differently on some of the other issues, but then I would have to vote on those issues in ways I do not want to vote, and then I might not be able to see those issues anymore, either.

Could you design "issue amnesty day" in which players would be given a shot, perhaps once every few weeks, to change all the issues at the same time to what they want the issues to be at that time? ~ Michael.

i've submitted issues to fix those! :D

i've submitted issues to fix those! :DThanks! :) ~ Michael.

Are you sure they won't come up again? I've just gotten a third shot at the "eat your animal"-issue after selecting the option "protect it" at the first time and at the second time "eat it" (both of which I expected to be permanent) so I believe there's a random time, maybe augmented by a relative probability and / or minimum timeframe (the latter two might differ greatly for each issue).

Are you sure they won't come up again? I've just gotten a third shot at the "eat your animal"-issue after selecting the option "protect it" at the first time and at the second time "eat it" (both of which I expected to be permanent) so I believe there's a random time, maybe augmented by a relative probability and / or minimum timeframe (the latter two might differ greatly for each issue).I rarely get some issues anymore. The bicyclists issue hardly ever comes up. The tariffs issue hardly ever comes up. And the eat your animal issue? I can hardly remember the last time that came up! ~ Michael.

One time, I purposefully let the issues grow to five to see if new issues would come up, since I was tired of doing the same issues, and I wanted to change some of the other issues (like compulsory military service). The five issues which came up were the same issues I always did. So I voted on one of these issues and let the other four stay undecided so I could see what issue would take the fifth spot. Well, the next day, it was the same issue I had voted on the day before!!!!! :evil: ~ Michael.

Your observations seem to back up the theory. You got at least two groups of issues: common and rare.

There will be a system of randomness, say, 1 out of 10. In 9 out of 10 cases, you get one of the common issues and only in 1 single case you get one of the rare issues. The issues that are elected are then checked agaist the ones already piling on your table and a new issue is picked from the same group. That's probably (partially) why there can be 5 issues at most: the "rare" group might only consist of about 5 issues. Also, the improbability factor might be much higher, or the issues might even be fixedly associated with number-ranges from 1 to 1000, with great non-uniformity.

I want to turn off compulsory military service and vegetarianism, but these two issues never show up anymore. (I voted on these issues months ago.)

Which issue would that be? I know there's a military service question when a nation is created, but that's not a real issue which players get while playing. Those initial settings are the starting point for your nation, and cannot be changed.

Could you design "issue amnesty day" in which players would be given a shot, perhaps once every few weeks, to change all the issues at the same time to what they want the issues to be at that time? ~ Michael.

My understanding of the way the system works is that each nation has a bunch of hidden statistics attached to them. Each time an issue is decided upon, these stats are modified in accordance to reflect the nature of the decision made. This means ones stats are cumulative over all the decisions made, not just the last ones made for each issue. So, if you decide to legalize euthanasia your civil rights will go up. Then later when you make the same decision again, your civil rights will rise yet again. The consequence is that your nation will end up hovering around the 'average' of all decisions you make for as long as you keep making those same decisions. When you decide to change your answers to one or more issues, your stats will converge towards a new equilibrium.

So, if my understanding of the system is correct, your suggestion wouldn't actually work out as you may think it will.

Ballotonia

I haven't received "Reclaim the Streets!" since November. :cry:

So, if you decide to legalize euthanasia your civil rights will go up. Then later when you make the same decision again, your civil rights will rise yet again. The consequence is that your nation will end up hovering around the 'average' of all decisions you make for as long as you keep making those same decisions. When you decide to change your answers to one or more issues, your stats will converge towards a new equilibrium.

So, if my understanding of the system is correct, your suggestion wouldn't actually work out as you may think it will.

BallotoniaThe first paragraph of my nation's description says this when I clicked on it just now:

"The Holy Republic of Love Poetry is a massive, economically powerful nation, renowned for its compulsory vegetarianism. Its hard-nosed, hard-working population of 1.251 billion are highly moralistic and fiercely conservative, in the sense that they tend to believe most things should be outlawed. People who have good jobs and work quietly at them are lauded; others are viewed with suspicion."

I do want my civil rights/political freedoms to go up by allowing people to eat meat again, but I am also tired of my nation's description saying this. That is the chief reason I want to decide on this issue and the military issue again. ~ Michael.

There is one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. There are some things that, when you decide, you can't undecide by way of the same issue. For example, banning elections (and the two issues you mentioned) make it so that these things are there forever. There is an issue to re-allow elections, but it is not the same issue as the one that outlaws them. I guess that if there are issues to undo the compulsory vegitarianism and military service, you are the wrong type of nation (by UN categories) to get those issues (since some issues are only available to certain types of nations).

There is one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet. There are some things that, when you decide, you can't undecide by way of the same issue. For example, banning elections (and the two issues you mentioned) make it so that these things are there forever. There is an issue to re-allow elections, but it is not the same issue as the one that outlaws them. I guess that if there are issues to undo the compulsory vegitarianism and military service, you are the wrong type of nation (by UN categories) to get those issues (since some issues are only available to certain types of nations).

That might as well be it! So maybe the issues are linked to a certain threshold of the base stats (from which the UN rankings are also calculated). This I believe because there are some issues that turn up only very seldomly but my nations category doesn't change on these occurences (or didn't change prior to them, it actually changed only one single time at all). The base values will, however, always vary ever so slightly (based upon the decidions you make), which means that if one happens to scrape the threshold for certain issues, these will then be available for election, whereby these certain issues will automatically become rare. The system will therefore automatically adjust to any given nation without needing special rules. I must admit that this is an elegant way of dealing with this. 100 Points for Max.

I do want my civil rights/political freedoms to go up by allowing people to eat meat again, but I am also tired of my nation's description saying this. That is the chief reason I want to decide on this issue and the military issue again. ~ Michael.

The basic outline for that part of your nation's description is determined by the UN Category your nation is in. In your case a Moralistic Democracy. All Moralistic Democracies will have that kind of text for the first paragraph of their nation's description.

As long as you have that category, your description will talk about "conservative", and "most things outlawed". The "remarkable for ..." part within that outline is based on decisions you've made. I'm afraid I don't know how to change that part easily (or whether it's possible at all).

Ballotonia