NationStates Jolt Archive

I have heard some disputes over the acuracy of the calculators, (like the NSEconomy and Sunset) and I was wondering if someone could tell me what is the primary reason for NOT believing them. I understand they arent perfect, nor are they exact but I would assume that even if they are imperfect they could still be used as a 'standard calculator' for RP right? :confused: Tell me what you all think.

Well, the calcs provide a good rough guide as to how nations stand economically and militarily to eachother. You've got to keep in mind that NS has evolved far more than anyone really anticipated. So, issues are whacky and throw things off which can be annoying.

The problem is there is not enough data from NS alone to form reliable numbers on economy. So the calculators have to guess parts of the calculations. They do a good job of it...but it doesn't mean they're infallible, and they are based on assumptions, not fact.

I don't believe calculators are accurate or can show any accurate picture of a nation. For example, my military budget is listed as $8 trillion USD (the last time I saw it anyway), but NSEconomy or NSTracker fails to take into account that the police and military budgets are combined, so basically I actually spend my military and law enforcement budgets on the army (Law Enforcement on the army at home obviously and military on the offensive army). Plus, the money we spend subsidizing industry is with the return promise of the military aid of those corporations... :p

So in your opinions should either or any of the cals be used as a standard form of information in a RP game?

I mean, if they are all wrong, at least they are equally wrong right? They may not be realisitc but can they be used for the game?

Thanks for the comments!

People will be happy if use NSEconomy, Sunset, Pipian, or whatever. Some people make them up. I haven't seen anyone ignore calc stats, so long as you RP them realistically, so using any one of them would be an accepted source.

See the NSwiki article on calculators (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Calculators), especially the talk page (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Talk:Calculators). Sunset freely admits to being biased towards capitalist nations. Commerce Heights has a set of forums (http://terranordalis.thirdgeek.com/login.php?redirect=./index.php&f=15) on Thirdgeek where forumlas are discussed. (Since my last visit there, he's made it members only, so I don't know if the material is still there).

In short, anyone who wants to can research the calculators to their heart's content, but they will always be unofficial and based on 'best guess'. Max and the admins haven't ever released the game formulas, and that's not going to change.

Personally I put absolutely no stock in the calculators, so to speak, since the ones I've seen don't even recognise alternative economic types and seem to assume we're all part of the free market to one degree or another. Heck, some of them think that there's one or two percent unemployment in Beth Gellert.... there's no such thing as employment in our (socialist) economy!

But that doesn't mean you can't use any one as the base of your nation's economy, so long as you accept that I don't, y'know? The main problem with them is when somebody bursts into an RP thread saying, "you can't do that, look! [link to calculator page]" as if a calcuator made by Jim has anything to do with Sally's thread.

That's what's wrong with the calculators, if you ask me... which maybe you didn't, so carry on, eh.