NationStates Jolt Archive

The NationStates Economy - Reasons why the whole "frightening" bit doesn't cut it.

As said in Knootoss' excellent and in-dept thread called "On power and wank" he states several important facts. I would like to redefine and add several points to this theory, because the whole economic model roleplayed in NationStates, and especially International Incidents is completely flawed. Now, what have we learned from Knootoss' writings:

1) Every player can become a frightening economy on the condition of choosing the right issues. How you start as a nation doesn't matter (age does to a certain degree) you can always become frightening. However, the older your nation gets, the tougher it becomes to make radical jumps on the economic, civil and political freedoms field. But by no means it is impossible.

2) Every player can reach page 1 of the world on the condition of choosing the right issues and this time, having the right type of nation to start as helps a lot. A Corporate Police State gives you a head start compared to a Left Wing Utopia or a Psychotic Dictatorship.

Both of these points are logical to explain and are quite rational compared to real life if you place everything in the right context. Now, the difficult things comes around the corner just about now: roleplaying and game mechanics cannot work together. To make a it more clear, this is a list of all economic levels. A small description is added, like ThirdGeek I placed the levels in three zones. Because they're not very different from each other I made it a less nuanced but you'll get the picture.

15 to 11) Frightening, All-Consuming, Powerhouse, Thriving, Very Strong.
The very best economic level available on NationStates. Your nation prides itself in a strong, robust economic system and every nation who has attained this form of economic policy's may be rich and able to pack quite a punch, it is not indestructible. Your production capacity is high above average, you have the money finance complex military projects and to survive when economic times are hard.

10 to 6) Strong, Good, Fair, Reasonable, Developing
In the orange zone you have money, but it's a tight fit. Such economies are the result of lack of care or a government not very willing to allow too many foreign syndicates or corporations into their nation. However, it doesn't mean the orange zone is bad. It's just, you have less money.

05) Struggling, Weak, Fragile, Basket Case, Imploded
Economic mismanagement, civil war, outbreaks... Whatever you can think of that harms your economy is present here. OR - you don't care about your economy and spend the money you have on extensive eductation or the environment. You have little money but again: spend it right. North Korea, though a RL example shows that even the most authoritarian economic systems can have nuclear tests and a standing army of over a million. These projects have a pretty pricetag though: either your population is starving to death or your whole infrastructure is non-existant.

The bottom line is:
Every economy can be harmed severely or even totally ruined. Though it has RPed only twice (by me once as Sirens of Titan) the success rate you yield is practically zero. The excuse to ignore such RPs are too common: I am frightening, so take your best shot. Well with this thread, I'm not going to leave a single bit in one piece about the so called frightening immunity. It's not about the amount of money you have, it's where you spend it.

Imploded doesn't mean you can only send men with matchlocks into the battlefield no questions asked.

Frightening doesn't mean you automaticly have the very best of everything available in an instant.

Tax

Don't pay attention to it. It's meaningless and only leads to more meaningless discussions. 100% Isn't entirely impossible, but it's damn impractical if you ask me. Just assume a reasonable percentage and take it that nation has more money because of whatever reason.

The RP idea will follow later, first I want people to read this. It's time the holy shrine of the frightening economy is being torned down, because it ruins lots of RPs. Everybody is frightening, it doesn't add anything to the game.

I've always considered 'The Economy' not to be a measure of economic strength but economic growth. Why? Because that's what the UN survey on economic growth says it is. So, nations that are roleplayed as developing - 'third world', if you like - can have frightening economies. You only have to look at China. The problem with game economics is that there is no way of measuring a nation's economic strength. Well, that and the ludicrous population growth.

Seems to me that the best thing to do is pre-agree your economic status and population and go from there.

That would be a good solution, but people like to see their economy as the strongest. I have yet to see someone who RPs a nation that has a truely lacking economy and acts upon it. In NS, frightening means your economy is the best, there are several gradations between the size of public sectors, but it is all the same.

Whenever I see someone saying: your military budget is 0% according to calculator X or Y I really feel like saying: This is freeform RP, you decide on which depts you spend your money. Yeah right, my defence budget is 52% and climbing is that 'realistic'? No. Do you hear them about such a percentage which is way off the mark? Absolutely not, because they like to have 52% as well regardless of 'realism'.

This is a nice thought, but what you are wanting to do will never happen. The majority of the players here have little to no clue on how the economy works outside of supply and demand. Thus, instead of taking the hard way around the problem by researching and actually learning about the different economies of the world, they are much more content to follow the easy route, which is to follow what the front page of their nation is.

And Im not saying that this is wrong, in fact I am sure that near everyone who has role played as their nation has taken the easy way out and just used their front page stats, myself included.

Myself, I have not used the front page stats of my nation for about a month now. Instead I have limited my population to around 200 million and for my economy, well its still a work in progress, and when I see people on the forums who follow their nation's "Official" stats and GDP calculators like thirdgeek, I want to reach through the computer and strangle them for being so dense. But, I will end here as any further typing will most likely lead to rantings and I don't really think the world is ready for my thoughts on everything.

I ignore those statistics anyway, simply because they fail miserably to take into account any circumstances at all (I do roleplay FT though, so I get more leeway :P)

I mean, what about hive races such as Skiss (did I get the name right?) that have no concept of money? Or communistic nations such as my own, that once again don't even use money? How the hell are we supposed to take that into account?

"Omfg I can't have a fleet this big and an army this big because my economy calculator doesn't support it, despite the fact I've made custom desigsan by my own nation that uses state run industries and roleplayed the useage of the device and development, balanced the budget in roleplays, made a factbook concerning my army and training, and given a thorough, logical and reasonable explanation as to why my army is how it is, all the while avoiding total godmodding and You don't like it because my economy calculator says so?"

well, you can go and bite me, because that shows no respect for roleplay mechanics at all.

Just be reasonable in your army is all anyone can ask. There's a line between goddmodding and otherwise and that line has never been defined by a game mechanic. It's defined by a nation developing hydrogen bombs at day one and having a 4 million man military, or stating your fellow roleplayers casulaties. If you keep it reasonable, then I can't see how one can bother with economy calculators in the first place, except to list economic growth. It's statswanking essentially.

/rant/

I think that we should make a nation control page were there are more options for your nation e.g. the type of government you use it could also have a calculator were your military numbers etc are stored which will of course be affected by your choices

(but I think that would be one big headache for whoever makes it)

CtP, I honestly think you need to read The Rejected Idea's list (see signature). Technical aspects of the NationStates economic scales will NEVER BE CHANGED. So everything that's coded on the mainpage will stay the way it is.

There are no written rules about what percentage is acceptable for an army for nations at population size a, b or c. It's a totally non-static number and it largely depends on how you roleplay your nation, how militarized you are and what your personal preferences are. This doesn't mean you may godmod like there's no tomorrow simply because there are no rules. Percentages should be taken with a grain of salt, it's plain ol' common sense and the general opinion. How you roleplay it matters as well, but there are borders.

Eh.

This strikes me, no offense, as the lazy way out. Simply writing off the game side is easier than trying to actually make both work, and is no fun at all.

Of course there's some crazy nonsense. My colony on Mercury ranks in the low 1000's for Trout Fishing. Absurd, obviously. Granted, I turned that into a joke thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=324718), but there are certain things you can ignore.

However, writing off Economy and all rankings is just silly.

I answer issues based on the personality my nation has developed. Issues that don't apply I dismiss. Conversely, I shape my nation based on what the game tells me.

When my nation unexpectedly went from Capitalizt to Anarchy, I used it (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=368622).

When my crime rates were in the lowest 1% for the world, as was my police spending, I invented G.E.O.R.G.E. (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=388755) Kinda silly, but still...

When I got my pathetic Automobile Manufactoring ranking (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=314528)

Pathetic Arms Manufactoring (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=326063)

And there's been other threads that the forum purges have killed. Now, I'll admit that some of these are silly threads, as are this (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=289810) and this (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=291369), but most of my nations major developments have been directly caused by what the game has told me.

The prime example is in my pretitle, in fact. "The Semi-Autonomous..." is there because I noticed that I ranked very well with raw materials (mining, agriculture, etc.), but very poorly with finished goods (arms, auto, generic manufactor, etc.) I also noticed that my major trading partner was the exact opposite (ie: shitty mining, world class auto).

We had already established close ties between us (military and economic). Looking at the UN rankings, we started joking about how we were in the classic Power / Colony dichotomy. After the laughter ended, we actually started thinking about it seriously. It's been over a year and a half since I became a protectorate, and game rankings drove that.

The other major change is mentioned above, when I became an anarchy. To a lesser extent, the current coup plot I'm working on is because I've slipped back to Capitalizt.

Half the fun is finding a way to make both work together, and watching them feed off each other. It was RP'ing based on rankings, and answering issues based on RP'ing that lead my nation to its current shape (IT whore with a pathetic army).

Again, the stats aren't perfect (I tend to ignore "Most Compassionate", for instance), but out-right ignoring them seems a little... munchkinesque to me. Sure, we can all get Frightening Economies if we want, but if we answer issues based on the nation, the stats will largely balance out.

On the other hand, calculator-wavers are the other extreme, and the 'You can't do that look at your $103 dollar shortfall' mentality is just as bad for RP. Play with some respect for the game stats, without obsessing over them, seems to work best.

Meh, I tried to incorporate my front page things into my role plays with another nation I used to role play with, but I found that I always have atleast three different conflicting views on the way I want to go with my nation. So one week Ill wanna be a hardline military dictatorship no matter what, and then the next week Ill want to change into a peace loving democracy, and then I want to be communist, and I cannot manage three different nations and role play with all of them at the same time, simply because I do have a life outside of my room (contrary to popular belief) and therefore I just decided that keeping a small population of around 200 million people (in NS standards 200 million is small), and then just try to keep my military spending to about what it should be for that population and so forth would be a lot easier for me to manage than having to follow even the loosest of guidelines (I like my free-form writing). That way I have more freedom to shape my nation as I see fit.

For example, since I came back to nationstates in april or late march, I have changed my national leader four times and my system of government once, soon to be twice. So I only do what you consider to be lazy out of neccesity, because otherwise I would get bored and quit.

Edit: If anyone besides myself undersands what I just wrote, I will be thoroughly surprised.

An interesting thread Guffingford. I look forward to your updates. :)

I agree with your bottom line: no matter what economic strength you have, you can still be defeated. Also, having the best tanks and ships and soldiers doesn't always make you better. Suppose some small nation embarks upon guerilla warfare. Now, I don't mean saying "my soldiers are guerillas and are better." I mean, the small nations lets you take them over. The guerillas, having recuited new followers during the invasion, then rise up and strike from all directions at once. There is no front line, no one area to deploy troops. And with the Internet, a high level of coordination can be achieved in even the poorest country. Even a straw boat full of bombs can achieve a mission kill on high-tech military warships. Stealthy, and cheap, diesal submarines can sink aircraft carriers when RP'd correctly. Now imagine the enemy's surpise when that poor-ass nation has sunk his leader's flagship with what amounts to a fishing boat!

I meant making a new web page like third geek only you can control some factors

basically older nations will always win e.g. the strongest economy of 5 mil won't stand a chance against a basket case of 5 bil

I personally think the old system were new guys had a hard time worked best due to the fact that an older nation will know what it is doing and won’t kill all those months of work with nukes

On the other hand, calculator-wavers are the other extreme, and the 'You can't do that look at your $103 dollar shortfall' mentality is just as bad for RP. Play with some respect for the game stats, without obsessing over them, seems to work best.Hits the nail on its head. I find it cool that people RP around the statistics, something done rarely. Though, I haven't read everything and I base this on my II experiences.

When I say frightening doesn't cut it, does not mean frightening and imploded are equal. The differences between the green-orange-red zones are large, but frightening/all-consuming are just nil. And if people start about the biggest private sector of x (saying when nation A has the largest private sector of X means he's better) let's take it to the extreme and take crime, corruption and other negative UN rankings into account too.

Large nations, in terms of population, have certain hindrances and weaknesses. Far flung empires especially suffer from such magnified problems. Being a frightening economic power certainly alleviates these, but only up to a point. Economic power depends upon many factors, the right economic policies in addition to advanced and developed and maintained infrastructures. Sure, these countries have a lot more money to spend, but they also have a lot more to spend upon. Anyone can play an economic power, I know I do, I just keep it as being far more fragile than it truly is - a war that starts going south is going to devestate investor and consumer confidence, and as a post-industrial nation there goes a great amount of economic production.

So what do I do about the statistics, I fudge them and alter them to suit my needs. The mainpage says I'm a "father knows best state", but it's been like that or something like that since my founding back... over two years ago... the problem is, i've changed my philosophical beliefs on government in two years, and I've RPed the change into a far more democratic state... so that's way off mark. For the economy, I use the "frightening" description as a basis from which I derive numbers for my GDP and GDP per capita. The facts on the mainpage are a skeleton upon which I flesh out a host of characters and the stage upon which they act, they assist me in telling a story, which is what this game is ultimately all about.

On the other hand, calculator-wavers are the other extreme, and the 'You can't do that look at your $103 dollar shortfall' mentality is just as bad for RP. Play with some respect for the game stats, without obsessing over them, seems to work best.I think this is a good idea. I use ThirdGeek to figure out a nation's budget when I confirm or reject orders on my storefronts, but if a player makes an effort toward realism, I'm inclined to give some benefit of the doubt and will work to accomodate a player who does so.

basically older nations will always win e.g. the strongest economy of 5 mil won't stand a chance against a basket case of 5 bil

Right, so you support arbitarily penalising players for finding the site later than other players, and Japan's Navy defeating Russia's, America defeating the British Empire and other such examples of a small nation defeating a large nation or even alliance of nations were impossible.

'Bigger = Better Than' popwank is unrealistic and puts off newer players. Put it away.

And if people start about the biggest private sector of x (saying when nation A has the largest private sector of X means he's better) Well, yes.

I constantly tease Der Angst about his IT ranking, even though we're something like 30 ranks apart. I realise that when considering 130k nations, 30 ranks is nothing, but screwing with him is fun. When it comes to RP, however, I don't try to weasel out of it, because the 30 ranks is nothing.

The point is that wholesale ignoring of everything is kinda wanky.

let's take it to the extreme and take crime, corruption and other negative UN rankings into account too.A lot of us use those rankings too...

I think this idea would be a great idea. It certainly is ambitious; trying to close up the holes the economics question creates. Being interested in economics, I would most assuredly want to keep tabs on it (despite our normative differences.)

The NS economics system is extremely flawed. Even though a nation maybe a "free-market paradise" with a frightening economy doesn't mean the people are automatically well off (i.e. 1920's America.) IN RL, it depends on the GDP per capita, the value of the currency, what the production possibilities are, the financing of the public sector, surpluses deficits and debts, the rate of inflation vs. the rate of unemployment (as demonstrated via the Phillips curve) and the value of the capital stock. If a nation has a "frightening" economy, yet has these things low, (or high in the case of unemployment or inflation), or misallocated, then their economy isn't all frightening.

Though impossible to incorporate that all into NationStates, the RP economy is too arbitrary.

In all honesty, I don't use my nation's "front-page" stats, because it has no customization at all.

I can't customize my nation's description, UN category name, government type (Omni-present, Large, Medium, Small, or Tiny), etc. The only customizable things is national motto, national flag, and national title (The Republic of X, The Communist States of X, etc.) as well as the "favorite animal" and "currency".


If NS's front page had a customizable option, it'd match people's RP's much better. The only things left unchanged would be issues and population stats. For example... I'd change the following...

1. My UN Government Category from "Civil Rights Lovefest" to a "Technocracy"

2. My Government to "A medium group of Intellectuals and Scientists head the goverment of Sharina"

3. Change my nation name to "The Sharina Technocracy" instead of "The Technocracy of Sharina"

4. Create my own description of Sharina such as "Sharina is a massive technologcal nation of 1.7 billion widely known for its automation factories." instead of "Sharina is a massive economically powerful nation of 1.7 billion widely known for its inhospitable landscapes."

And so on.


The NS "front-page" needs a lot new options.

1. Add an option for additional description of your nation, like "Nation X is an island nation covered by an enormous city" or "Nation X is currently undergoing a Civil War".

2. Allow custom "nation-title" to be placed after the nation's name. Right now it only allows you to add the "nation-title" before your nation's name.

3. Option to edit your governmental description, "Nation X's famous thing" description, etc.

4. Ability to edit your populace's description. In other words, able to edit the "Hard-nosed, Hard-Working, Compassionate" populace to "Intelligent, Nationalistic, and Fanatic" populace for example.



There could be some more enhancements I can't think of right now, but with the ability to do all these, you can ACTUALLY match your nation's front-page TO what you've been RP'ing, instead of the other way around.

This would mean a true nation-states game, as you'd be able to effectively describe your nation according to your own ideals as the site says, instead of having the NS site "force" your ideals / descriptions upon you.

<snip>
If NS's front page had a customizable option, it'd match people's RP's much better. The only things left unchanged would be issues and population stats. For example... I'd change the following...

1. My UN Government Category from "Civil Rights Lovefest" to a "Technocracy"

2. My Government to "A medium group of Intellectuals and Scientists head the goverment of Sharina"

3. Change my nation name to "The Sharina Technocracy" instead of "The Technocracy of Sharina"

4. Create my own description of Sharina such as "Sharina is a massive technologcal nation of 1.7 billion widely known for its automation factories." instead of "Sharina is a massive economically powerful nation of 1.7 billion widely known for its inhospitable landscapes."

And so on.


The NS "front-page" needs a lot new options.

1. Add an option for additional description of your nation, like "Nation X is an island nation covered by an enormous city" or "Nation X is currently undergoing a Civil War".

2. Allow custom "nation-title" to be placed after the nation's name. Right now it only allows you to add the "nation-title" before your nation's name.

3. Option to edit your governmental description, "Nation X's famous thing" description, etc.

4. Ability to edit your populace's description. In other words, able to edit the "Hard-nosed, Hard-Working, Compassionate" populace to "Intelligent, Nationalistic, and Fanatic" populace for example.<snip>

It's never going to happen, at least not in NS1. I'm fairly sure dozens and dozens of people have asked for it and been told to wait for NS2.

However, NSWiki is your best option for getting your idea of what your nation is like RP wise, rather than what the front-page says. So if your nation page claimed that (I'll use a personal example here) "Private enterprise is illegal), you can still say that your nation is profoundly capitalist. NSWiki is definitely your best bet for such like. I use it to look up people I'm RPing with (Their character in a character RP, for example, or their nation's description if it's a war).

NSWiki (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

In all honesty, I don't use my nation's "front-page" stats, because it has no customization at all. Sure it does. Click on the "issues" link.

1. My UN Government Category from "Civil Rights Lovefest" to a "Technocracy"Technocracy is a pretitle, as it should be. Technocracy simple describes who's in charge, it makes no claims to your economy, civil rights or political freedoms.

2. My Government to "A medium group of Intellectuals and Scientists head the goverment of Sharina"Cut government (via issues), increase education (via issues) and you'll pretty much have this. It wouldn't say "scientists", but you'd get close. For instance, I have "[t]here is no government in the normal sense of the word; however, a small group of community-minded, liberal, pro-business individuals[...]" That's all from how I've answered issues.

3. Change my nation name to "The Sharina Technocracy" instead of "The Technocracy of Sharina"That's simple cosmetics. It has no bearing on game stats or RP. Go ahead and call it that for RP. People do that sort of thing all the time.

4. Create my own description of Sharina such as "Sharina is a massive technologcal nation of 1.7 billion widely known for its automation factories." instead of "Sharina is a massive economically powerful nation of 1.7 billion widely known for its inhospitable landscapes."Mostly just cosmetics here. My nation is known for its IT sector. That's not listed in my first paragraph, but is nicely represented later: "A powerhouse of a private sector is dominated by the Information Technology industry."

1. Add an option for additional description of your nation, like "Nation X is an island nation covered by an enormous city" or "Nation X is currently undergoing a Civil War".This is all RP. It doesn't need to be on the front page. The two don't need to mirror each other exactly.

2. Allow custom "nation-title" to be placed after the nation's name. Right now it only allows you to add the "nation-title" before your nation's name.If wishes were horses...

3. Option to edit your governmental description, "Nation X's famous thing" description, etc.Not to beat a dead horse, but you can: Issues.

4. Ability to edit your populace's description. In other words, able to edit the "Hard-nosed, Hard-Working, Compassionate" populace to "Intelligent, Nationalistic, and Fanatic" populace for example.The first part would be nice, yes. Actually, a few of us kicked around a model for having an "effective population" that was lower (only) than the given. That got backburnered because of more pressing issues. The rest of it, well, issues.

There could be some more enhancements I can't think of right now, but with the ability to do all these, you can ACTUALLY match your nation's front-page TO what you've been RP'ing, instead of the other way around.As I stated in my first post, you can form a type of synergy with your nation page. Adjust your front page by answering issues that match your RP. Adjust your RP to match the front page. If nothing else, it can form an enjoyable challenge ("Gee, I role-play only one city... where are all these people going to fit?").

Besides, if we allowed full front page customization, you'd have two major affects, neither good. 1) Game side would become utterly pointless. Why answer issues if you can just pick everything. It's like D&D. Why roll stats? It's more "fun" to just but 18's everywhere. 2) Wankers would be even more obnoxious. Granted, you might be sane about it, but some dork is going to put "The population is fanatically loyal to their Beloved Leader and enjoy working 16 hours a day in the nation's many arms manufactoring plants."

This would mean a true nation-states game, as you'd be able to effectively describe your nation according to your own ideals as the site says, instead of having the NS site "force" your ideals / descriptions upon you.Again. Answer the issues and you can force back.

Of course it's not immediate. Sometimes it takes awhile to get things where you want them (I've been trying to get back to Anarchy for about a month now), but you can get pretty close. Also, once you have an idea of how issues work, you've got a good idea of what answers will to what. Perhaps not to the degree they'll change things, but you can move in the right direction.

I would beg to differ that in-game statistics are completely irrelevant. I find that sure sometimes I would like my in-game statistics to show certain things verses others - I have been working on my nation's GDP per Capita on Thirdgeek for some time now. I imagine what is important, that if you really want to have the best military is you answer issues so that they are more favorable. Your military budget will increase, and so as you go along it can provide some interesting roleplay on how you government is doing so. Ultimately once has control over these factors through the issues themselves, so why not answer them to reflect your RPed nation as best as possible. Then use the statistics which come as a result, as a sort of guide on how the nation occurs. Naturally if one was to include a civil war which completely changes your nation, then there will be some major indescrepincies. However I think as you go along, its fun to work the in-game stats to what you would like. I know at least I get some good enjoyment from answering the issues and watching the results. Use a calculator like Thirdgeek, and you can find some great information which uses the XML stats from Nationstates.net anyway.

Yes, I am aware the issues do play a vital part of NS.

However, the problem is that issues may not be available to create the proper image or national identity that someone desires to match their RP. Or you'd have to go through 100's of issues just to find the right combo. In addition, the bigger a nation is, the lesser impact issues have.

Finally, you can't seem to get the right issues or right amount of issues to "force" a change to your ideal nation's description / stats. You could go for a year or 5 years before you get it right, or you might only need 1 week. Its too random and unpredictable.


This aside, I must reinteriate that I won't RP by my nations "front-page" stats and descriptions. The only things I will be using / following would be my nation's name, title, flag, and population. Everything else won't be used by me, like UN description, issue descriptions, government size description, and so forth.

15 to 11) Frightening, All-Consuming, Powerhouse, Thriving, Very Strong.
The very best economic level available on NationStates. Your nation prides itself in a strong, robust economic system and every nation who has attained this form of economic policy's may be rich and able to pack quite a punch, it is not indestructible. Your production capacity is high above average, you have the money finance complex military projects and to survive when economic times are hard.
And given that the high CR & PF rankings tell us comparatively negative things, a frightening/ all consuming economy also tends to have mildly annoying effects... lack of worker's rights, 12 hour working days, the likes.

At least I don't see why only the economic scale should be positive the higher it gets, while CR & PF are clearly suffering negative side effects when you get especially high. especially givent hat 'frightening' and 'all consuming' suggest exactly that...

I ignore those statistics anyway, simply because they fail miserably to take into account any circumstances at all (I do roleplay FT though, so I get more leeway :P)

I mean, what about hive races such as Skiss (did I get the name right?) that have no concept of money? Or communistic nations such as my own, that once again don't even use money? How the hell are we supposed to take that into account?Money != economy. The economy ranking means your overall industrial capacity, and the presence or lack of presence of money is irrelevant. If you want to declare an imploded economy a masterpiece of communism with unmatched production capacities, well, as far as I am concerned: Go away.

And yes, several players kind of suffered mass ignores when they tried to push such an idea through. The Snel Race and The Emperor Fenix come to mind (Both on the Mars boards).

Mind, using the player created and inherently biased calculators is a bit silly... hence why i don't use them (Or even the XML feed, as using it would mean that I have an unworkable nation. 41% defence? 45% education? No public transport or administration? Fuck off).

Oh, and if I was calculator wanking, i would run with a ludicrous 75 trillion defence budget, so, yeah, ignoring them doesn't exactly make me stronger...

I constantly tease Der Angst about his IT ranking, even though we're something like 30 ranks apart. I realise that when considering 130k nations, 30 ranks is nothing, but screwing with him is fun. When it comes to RP, however, I don't try to weasel out of it, because the 30 ranks is nothing.
1. 18 ranks :P 2. Given the way you RP it I'm assuming that the difference is greater than the ranking suggests. Can't really be on par when doing tons of other things, too (Or, say, having a civil war).

And if people start about the biggest private sector of x (saying when nation A has the largest private sector of X means he's better) let's take it to the extreme and take crime, corruption and other negative UN rankings into account too.Hummm... Well, I admit being guilty of ranking-ignoring, here. my corruption is 116k, but I RP it as being rather high (I.e. several instances in which foreign espionage simply managed to buy information from me). Same for crime. The UN claims that I don't have any crime. The thing is, zero crime in my society is kinda... silly. So I have vstly higher crime than the UN says I have. Granted, this crime is almost entirely white collar crime (Resulting in my 100% inflation), but still.

However, the problem is that issues may not be available to create the proper image or national identity that someone desires to match their RP. [...] Finally, you can't seem to get the right issues or right amount of issues to "force" a change to your ideal nation's description / stats.Because the ideal nation isn't possible? A landlocked nation can't have a mighty navy, no matter how much they might wish for it. It's included in the concept of issues, really. There are no right choices. You will always have to deal with negative effects you didn't want.

(Or even the XML feed, as using it would mean that I have an unworkable nation. 41% defence? 45% education? No public transport or administration? Fuck off).So adjust how you answer your issues, you lazy bastard.

Oh, and if I was calculator wanking, i would run with a ludicrous 75 trillion defence budget, so, yeah, ignoring them doesn't exactly make me stronger...Fair enough, I do understate my military spending. I mean... 3%? That's so much!

1. 18 ranks :P You aren't on the first page, you don't exist to me.

2. Given the way you RP it I'm assuming that the difference is greater than the ranking suggests. Can't really be on par when doing tons of other things, too (Or, say, having a civil war).True, but it's not like I put it towards the most... practical uses...