The 1/2 in steem is calculated at the current market price. As steem drops, you actually get more steem tokens.
That's exactly where your misconception lies - it's the SBD which are "converted" based on the STEEM-USD-pricefeed.
a 15k vested STEEM vote results in a total of 1SP rewards. If the 50/50 option is chosen the liquid reward payout (0.5SP) will be converted to SBD based on STEEM/USD rate and under the assumption of SBD being pegged to 1USD worth of steem.
It's the SBD payout that fluctuates - SP only fluctuates base on reward-pool-balance and RShares distribution
I actually wrote about all that in more depth concerning the liquid STEEM rewards that were briefly issued due to the dropping STEEM price and resulting loss in market cap.
OK, I will need to investigate this further. I have started to read your article.
Did you play with the sliders on the calculator? Are these not accurate?
they are fairly accurate... but the shown $-values (that's also displayed under posts) is calculated in the same way and also fluctuates based on the price-feed, thus it is equally inaccurate due to the "broken" peg.
OK, I'm going to do more digging, I really want to make sure I understand this fully. I am going to review the white paper and the code itself until I get a total grasp on the entire self balancing and payout algorithms.
Thank you again for your input, I really appreciate it. I'm only a few months on the platform, so I am learning plenty still.