National Abstract Tutorial

=National Abstract=
The National Abstract is the character sheet for your nation, and helps you understand what your nation looks like in practice. It is to help bridge the gap between the roleplay and gameplay considerations on Post World Powers. This page will help you get started, explain the basics of the Abstract, and help you write it for yourself for the first time, in an easy to understand, step by step way. The pictures on the sidebar correspond to steps. Click on them to make them larger. 
==Part One: Population== 
 Open the link to the national abstract and make a copy. Before you get started editing you national abstract, make sure to link your national abstract into the Master Control Sheet, which can be found on the sidebar of r/postworldpowers. If you do not do this step, literally nothing else will work as intended. Now, we can move on to the national abstract itself. It looks daunting, but we don't need to worry about everything in front of us quite yet. You should be looking at something similar to the image on the left. Ignore everything, and focus your eyes toward the bottom of the page, outlined in red on the image. Our first step will be to determine your national population. This guide will focus on the National Abstract and Population Calculator tabs, the bare minimum you need to complete to participate in /r/postworldpowers. Click on the tab marked "Population Calculator". You'll notice 11 cells in total- National Abstract, BehindtheScenes, Population Calculator, Population, instabilitycalc, Military Manager, Unit Creator, Help, Graphs, National Rankings and Event Tracker. The only cells that will require your attention for this tutorial are National Abstract and Population Calculator. 
 When you click on that, you should see a page similar to the one on the left. You will see a table with six columns. The first column, Region, helps determined your base population figure. The second column modifies this figure based on data about your province. The third column requires that you input the in game year in which the [CLAIM] or [EXPANSION] occurred. The fourth column will give you your population per province. The fifth column is for a link to where you get ownership of that province - either [CLAIM] or [EXPANSION]. The final column is for you to name your province, or leave notes about infrastructure in that specific province. 
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 For now what we want to do is set up the initial provinces in your claim. Consult the Region Map available on the sidebar of /r/postworldpowers and find out what region your province are in, then use the drop down menu to select the correct province. See the image 2a on the left for an example. Be sure to enter the year in which your [CLAIM] took place.
 Fill out your information and attach a link to your CLAIM post for the initial provinces. Set one province as a Capital City province. When you finish, it should look a little like the image 2b on the left.
==Part Two: General Abstract==
 Go back to the bottom of the tabs, and click on National Abstract to bring back the initial page you saw. We're going to start filling that out. You should only input information into cells which are the color green. Blue, yellow and red cells are derived statistics from your initial inputs. Purple is given by mods. For a more detailed look at what each category means, visit our National Abstract Definitions page. For now, let's focus on that first sections, and fill in your nation's name, your username, your military %, your tail to tooth ratio, and your tax rate. Your seed and player number should be input in the two purple cells. These will be given to you by a mod when you first claim. Your population will change after you input this, this is expected. Another cell you might notice is "NPC?" As this is your Primary nation's national abstract, you will leave this set to "FALSE." The only time you should have that set to "TRUE" is in the National Abstract of a Client State. Also, in the yellow cell, set the current year, visible on the /r/postworldpowers subreddit. 
 When you finish, it might look like this.
==Part Three: Development Points==
 Development points are the meat of the game for most players, outside of the military. You start the game with 201 Development Points. Each category is an abstraction of part of your nation. Each day you may either expand via an [EXPANSION] post, or post a [DEVELOPMENT] to gain 3 Development Points to be spent as you wish. You must link your abstract in all events. Development Points will affect the development of your nation. For information on each category, please visit the National Abstract Definitions page.'''
 When you fill it out it might look like this. (Note that the graph present in image 4a will not be present in the current version of the national abstract)
 Your Development Points and Population affect your nation. You can view the effects it had here. If you don't know what a particular category means, check our National Abstract Definitions page. An important figure to keep an eye on is your instability rating. This rating is between 0-100. Low is good. Right now, it might be high - we haven't set any policies yet. In general, try to keep that number below 75 as much as possible, or you may invite rebellion.
==Part Four: Policies==
 At this point, we can set our national policies. national policies are a small selection of your nation's law code that we have decided have sufficient mechanical effect to merit inclusion in the National Abstract. You can select form a variety of different policies here - as long as your budget is in the green by the time you finish tinkering with your abstract, you may have as many policies as you wish, but any change beyond the initial choice requires an event.
 This is an example of one nation's policy sheet.
At this point, we're almost finished!
==Part Five: Misc. Income/Expenditures & Your Budget==
 Your nation may have additional expenses or income, such as war reperations, trade agreements, loans, etc. This is where you record that. You must record a number, the source of that income (nation name) and a link to the relevant post. Any nation giving you money must record the money they give you as a debt. This will be incorporated into your national budget directly.
 In addition to loans from other nations, it is possible to acquire private loans. These loans can be taken via an [EVENT] post. When taking out a private loan you have three green fields which require your attention. The rest is automated, and will add and subtract money from your budget automatically. For the "Loan amount" and "Repayment period" sections you will have a pull down menu from which to choose your options. The options available to you will be determined by you Development Point allocation. After this you only need to input the current in game year into the "Year Take Out" cell, and from there everything will be calculated automatically until the loan is paid off. 
 This is the final part of the NA. It tells you about the demographics of your nation's population and gives you the size of your labor force. Tax revenue is derived from the labor force. Policies play a significant role in the size of your labor force.
==Finished==
At this point, you will have finished the minimum required to participate in /r/postworldpowers - but wait, what about the military tabs? That's only necessary for conflict. Please read more about that at our Building a Military Tutorial.