New Beta Available (Version 0.3)

[Verlumino]

A new Beta version of the game is now available.

If you want to participate in the beta, you can right click on the game, click properties, and then click the beta tab. There should be an option called v030beta. If you click on that, it should start automatically downloading the beta version. If you want to revert back to the normal version, you can go back to this menu and choose to Opt out of any beta version - which should cause the default version to start downloading. (Note: any game saved while playing the beta version will not be compatible if you revert back to the default version).

If you encounter any bugs while testing this beta, please start a new discussion in the Bug Reports forum: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1184770/discussions/2/
(I check the bug reports forum more frequently than other forums, so that is the quickest way to bring a bug report to my attention.)

ADDITIONS
-Adjusted the legislation creation process. You can now create complex legislation - legislation with multiple proposals. You can also name your legislation.
-Added a Support Analysis Menu to the legislation creation process. This will allow you to learn why a politician supports or opposes your legislation. You can use this information to adjust your legislation before submitting it.
-Legislation can be temporarily saved so that you can come back to it later. It does not have to be finished within one sitting. Once you submit saved legislation, it will be removed from the saved legislation list.
-Added an option to create legislation on behalf of a protege (in any district/jurisdiction).
-Added an option to directly influence a politicians legislative vote using relationship points. The number of points needed to influence the vote can be changed in the advanced options (under the Politicians tab).
-Added “real time” legislative votes. You can now watch every politician vote on a bill in “real time”. You can adjust how quick the process is and you can skip to the end of the vote if you don’t want to watch the process.
-Added an Active Legislation menu which will show all active legislation in all jurisdictions. Clicking on an active legislation will bring up a Summary menu that shows the sponsor, bill proposals, bill history (including votes), and any relevant testimony for the bill.
-Added a Legislation Archive menu which will show all legislation that is no longer active. By default this menu only stores archived legislation for one in-game year. You can change this in the advanced options. The option is called Legislation Archive Storage Length and can be found in the Nation tab of the Advanced Options Menu.
-Party leaders automatically influence the legislative votes of politicians under their leadership. The amount of influence is not enough to automatically switch their vote, but it can sway politicians who are indecisive about how to vote. The amount of influence that party leaders have can be changed in the advanced options, under the Politicians tab.
-Proteges will automatically vote for legislation based on whether the player has indicated support or opposition for the legislation. This applies to all jurisdictions. If the player has not indicated any support/opposition, proteges will decide on their own how to vote.
-Adjusted the senate legislative process. Bills must now receive a cloture vote to end debate. This vote typically requires support from 60 senators. This feature can be turned off in the advanced options by unchecking the box for “Allow Senate Filibusters”. This option is under the Nation tab in the Advanced Options Menu. The number of votes required to end debate (cloture votes) can also be found in this section. The cloture vote happens in the background (to avoid repetitive votes). If the player is a senator, the game automatically votes for the player based on whether they have indicated support or opposition for the bill at an earlier process. There is an advanced option to change this behavior (so that your character will support cloture votes even if they oppose the legislation). This advanced option can be found in the same area as the Senate Filibuster option. You can read more about the filibuster and cloture vote process in the Concepts page (under the Legislation section).
-Added "legislation" to change senate rules regarding the filibuster and cloture votes. Generally, politicians are only willing to support this type of legislation under specific (advantageous) circumstances.
-Added two new variables to the Universal Health Care bill: a tax deduction variable and a maximum taxable income variable. The tax deduction variable will reduce the amount of taxable income used for this program. If a taxpayer’s income is less than the deduction amount, they will not have to pay any taxes for the program. (This is one strategy for paying for the program without adding to the tax burden of low-income workers). Tax payers will not be taxed on any income above the maximum taxable income amount. It is also possible to set the payroll tax rate to 0% (previously the minimum was 2%).
-Added significantly more options to the abortion legislation.
-If there is a tied vote in the senate chamber, the vice president will cast the tie-breaking vote.
-Voting for or against a politician’s legislation impacts your relationship score with them.
-Adjusted the process that NPCs (Non-Player Characters) use to create legislation. Legislation should appear more often and be less predictable. The frequency that NPCs create new legislation can be adjusted in the advanced options (under the politicians tab).
-Legislative votes now influence approval rating with voters. Currently this is only applicable for major legislation (and does not include tax legislation). How much approval is influenced can be modified in the advanced options (under the politicians tab) – these variables are divided into executive branch influence, party leader influence, and regular politician influence.
-Added modifiers that influence how likely a politician from each party is to belong to a specific Ancestry. These modifiers can be changed in the advanced options, under the Nation tab, below the area where Politician Gender Ratios can be changed.
-Added new entries to the Concepts documentation, under the Legislation category. These entries explain some of the new mechanisms in the update. To view the Concepts documentation, click the Concepts button under the portrait of your Chief of Staff (in the Office tab).

FIXES
-Fixed an issue where adjusting the donation modifier for Hard Mode difficulty would actually update the turnout modifier.
-Tied legislative votes no longer pass.
-Reduced the likelihood that the sponsor of a bill will vote against their own bill.
-Likely fixed an issue where custom active events would not be deleted after being triggered (if the player did not engage with the active event). This could have created situations where the active event would appear multiple times.
-Fixed an issue where political points would not increase for some director positions.
-Likely fixed an issue where a senator could be placed into the wrong senate class if they were appointed to the position.

-Known Issue: in the “real time” legislative vote menu, during committee votes, it’s possible that the NV section of the table will display -1. The actual vote results will be correct, but the display is incorrect. This specifically occurred in a house committee vote. I did not investigate when this first happened, so I do not have access to a file that recreates the problem. If anyone else encounters this problem and wants to send a save file that recreates it, that would be helpful. But, the only way to get that type of save file is to save the game before you encounter the problem (before you vote on the problematic legislation). That is difficult because you won’t know when problematic legislation might occur, so essentially you will have to use autosave or quick save every turn.

[Verlumino]

Questions for the Community:
A lot of these questions won't make sense until you have played the beta, but I will put them here so you can think about them once you have played the beta.
- Should Senate Filibusters be on or off by default? My concern is that filibusters will make the game too difficult for casual players (they won't be able to pass any federal legislation and the game might feel pointless). Advanced players would easily be able to figure out how to turn on the filibuster (if they want to use it), but new/casual players may just use the default settings. That being the case, it might be better to turn off the filibuster by default and then allow players to opt-in if they want to use it. Any thoughts?
-By default, it requires 20 relationship points for the player to change 1 legislation point (when directly influencing how politicians vote on legislation). Do you think the default value of 20 should be increased or decreased? This represents how easy or difficult it is to change a politician's vote.
-Party leaders automatically influence politicians under their leadership (when the politician is deciding how to vote for legislation). Do you think the default amount of influence should increase or decrease or stay the same? You can see the effects of party leader influence by looking at a politician's score analysis.
-How frequently do you think NPCs should create new legislation at the federal, state, city, and school levels. By default, there is a 25% chance that NPCs will create legislation at the federal level each turn. This is approximately 10 pieces of legislation per year (plus any legislation created due to the budget resolution). As more legislation is added to the game, this number should increase. But, given the current amount of legislation, 25% might be a good value.
-Currently the News tab is the default open tab in the Legislation Menu. Should it stay that way or would it be better to have one of the other tabs be the default open tab (such as the Active Legislation tab)?

[Erich Bui]

Buddy, you didn't seem to understand why I asked for a full control for proteges.
Yes I like the new mechanic, but it still doesn't solve the problem. Because I still cannot control how my protege will vote on Budget Resolution, that's the most important part. I need to control how they vote on it, so that they won't mess it up even when I'm not in office.

If I want $69 for Dept of Education, I want them to retain it by voting against any bill that suggest a different amount.

For short, let players indicate their support for Budget Res as well, please.

[Erich Bui]

Let me break it down like this for an example:

I am the president, I set the budget for the Dept of Education at $69.

When I left office, someone else (same party) will take my seat, and they will set $10 for the Dept of Education.

I don't want that, I want that amount to be $69.

So I want my proteges to vote against that $10 bill. But since the game doesn't allow me to indicate my support or opposition for Budget Resolutions. Those stupid proteges will automatically vote in favor of that $10 resolution.

I don't want that, I want my proteges to listen to me in all cases (which is why they are my proteges in the first place), which they don't listen to me in this case because I couldn't indicate my stance on that.

[Erich Bui]

Further more, for some reasons, I made a legislation as the president, that legislation passed both chambers, but it just stopped there for the whole time and it didn't go to the president table, then just vanished forever in the next year.

[marionick123]

Hey didn’t get the chance to play but hope it will be fun!

[Erich Bui]

But don't get me wrong please, the new mechanic and the format look absolutely great and innovative. But it surely needs more works to get more mature.

[Madden8021]

Yeah, don't play as the School Board until that's actually fixed, I keep on passing my laws but by the time it comes to make Amendments and the new year that it doesn't become active. And no, it doesn't show in the Archive either.

Btw, you may want to save each time as Mayor, I guess Governor and President since the new bills just freeze once you click "Next Turn" so make sure to save if you want to continue

[Tigermaster499]

Hey verm so i discovered anytime I make an amendment to a bill it comes up as undefined.

[marionick123]

Yeah having issues when passing laws.. not being active

[marionick123]

only for mayor and school board postions on my end....

[marionick123]

Originally posted by Madden8021:

Yeah, don't play as the School Board until that's actually fixed, I keep on passing my laws but by the time it comes to make Amendments and the new year that it doesn't become active. And no, it doesn't show in the Archive either.

Dont be mayor either till he fixes it too cause i legit cant pass legislation on the city level even if the city council passes it...

[Delorean John]

After testing it out a bit here are two main bugs I've found:

- President is unable to sign/veto legislation. (Clicking approve or reject will close the voting window but it will still show the legislation in your schedule as if it wasn't voted on yet, and it will repeat infinitely every week)

- Mayor does not get a prompt to vote when legislation is passed by the City Council. (I've introduced legislation that the Council passed but I did not receive a prompt to sign/veto it, same with NPC generated legislation)

Both executives can still sign and veto their respective budgets/appropriations bills.

I tested this multiple times and got the same result for each new save.

[Adamus]

When I make an amendment to a bill, when we vote about that amendment the whole voting breaks and like one or two politicians vote for many many times and sometimes there are hundreds of more votes than should be (maybe thousands, one of the votes' result was 3301-0).

[Adamus]

If I'm the chair of a committee, I don't know what legislation they want to submit there because the game only says complex bill. It also shows the id of the bill but only on the interface where I can no longer check what the bill is about. So i have no idea if I should give a hearing or not.

[Tigermaster499]

So I found some more bugs.

1. I was in the U.S House of Representatives I was trying to run for the senate but every time that I got to voting day for the primaries the game froze.

2. I saw some other reports with this problem but I was president and I couldn't sign any bills. I was able to sign appropriation bills but not legislation bills.

3. I made a amendment to a bill and I got to vote on it but after voting was done the game didn't let me vote on the amended bill in committee or in the full chamber.

4. I added an amendment to a bill and it got passed but the amendment never got added to the bill.

5. I've noticed at the federal level in the news section when legislation is purposed by the player the president says they oppose it but when you look at the support analysis it says the president does support it.