The Border Control policy seems to reduce immigration when I raise it. However the link between that and immigration is green.
Shouldn’t a policy that reduces something be indicated with a red link between the two? Mine is green.
Yes - but the ammount of green reduces as you increase the level border controls.
The default “no-action” level is maxed out controls. If you turn them down from full you are encouraging immigration by having weaker controls, hence it is green. Of course you could argue the complete opposite (no controls has no effect and turning them up discourages immigration). Both are really identical.
Ultimately it is simply caused by the equation in the background.
A little off topic, but surely border controls should help stop the brain drain crisis?
From it’s description I thought Brain Drain was more about the skilled and talented people leaving your country to seek their forture elsewhere - and since border controls are normally about keeping people out it might not fit the description properly?
But border controls could also represent restrictions on the right to travel generally.
That’s a good point, maybe only at the very extremes, but you could theoretically go all soviet-union on your people and prevent people leaving…
As an aside, the green and red bars are sometimes a bit confusing - eg. patriots seem to have a red link to military spending - does that mean military spending annoys patriots? That’s counterintuitive. Sometimes its not quite clear - green usually means ‘good’ but if there’s a green line from something to something bad (say, crime) does that mean that thing increases or reduces crime? Usually i can guess from the sort of thing it is (ie. poverty reducing crime seems improbable…).
I think Immigration needs to have something positive about it. At the moment, it seems to increase racial tension and unemployment (both bad). Maybe unemployment can have an optimal level with a shortage of skilled labour (like Australia has right now) if it goes too low? Or can there be programs that make immigration good for racial tension rather than bad?
Some effects, like patriots and military spending, can go both ways. So if spending is low, that does annoy them (red) if it goes higher it will turn green. You can see this by playing with the slider.
Some positive effects of immigration are being modelled. The supply of foreign workers does reduce the chances of teacher shortages, for example.
I think another problem with the sliders as the whole is that they are two dimensional - increases always have the same effects, and visa versa. For example, GDP always increases air travel and reduces air quality directly. Yet there is no real reason for a direct link - if you have a rich economy based upon computing or science, for example, it would have much less of an effect on air quality than one based upon manufacturing. Of course, to factor this in you would have to add different sliders for every industry, which would be a nightmare. Yet some could be added - e.g. manufacturing, science, and so on. This breakdown of your economy could add a whole new aspect to the game.
Sorry for going a bit off-topic there - got carried away.
Talking about splitting GDP into different stats I’ve been thinking crime would work like that as well.
Instead of simply Crime/Violent Crime you would have Violent/Fraud/Internet/Traffic/Anti-Social Behaviour/etc
This way you would need to target your policies more effectively as opposed to cranking up the crime-fighting. For example, the Fraud type would require a little bit more than simply a big and aggressive police force.
There’s no reason this (and the GDP adjustment you suggested) couldn’t be modded in - but balance would be an issue.
Thats a very interesting idea, but balance is ALWAYS the issue 
, that and general complexity. The game is scary to first time players as it is. Maybe an ‘advanced’ version of the game could model stuff like that.