Idea for a challenge -subsistence farming

[angelyne]

This is an idea I have kicking around my brain.  Do you think this could be interesting or just boring and stupid.

I'm envisioning a version of the poverty challenge.  You start with a singe sim on a large empty lot.  You start the game in spring.  You reduce your money to 100 Simoleans.  You or whatever sim you end up marrying is not allowed to get a job.  You are allowed to buy  a fridge when you can afford it, but once empty, you can't buy groceries ever.  All your food and money must come from farming and fishing.   I'm toying with a rule that doesn't allow you to use fertilizer, only compost.  And maybe you're not allowed to use pesticide.  This would have to be tested however since I am not sure what the impact of that would be, having never tried playing without it.  You'd be allowed to use ladybugs.  You'd be allowed to join the garden club if you qualify.  You are not allowed to use any gardening hacks, or any hacks that would give you an advantage.

You can start a business but you're not allowed to hire employees.  You can only use your children for cheap labor.  I'm toying with the idea of permitting jfade packing stations, but not the employee controllers.  Or allowing food to be baked and sold.  I think baked goods do come from the fridge right? I am not sure.

So what do you guys think.  Fun or trivial?

[kutto]

Sounds similar to how I'm playing my hood right now. So far, it's worked. It's challenging and entertaining.

[GayJohnScarritt]

   For my main hood, i have 2 Farming families who supply the food for 19 other families.  All food must come from them.  And still, there's way too much food out there, everyone's Fruitbowls of Awesomeness and their Juicers are getting full.  And this is with no Fishing, no energizers, no Snapdragons.
   If i could find a way to remove the 'Freshness' points from fresh food, i'd be happier. 

[Strangel]

I'm getting ready to do a dry-run legacy with similar rules. It's going to be a bit.. severe. Definitely hard to take pics in, as everything will be underground.

[LFox]

You want it interesting?  That's WAY too easy, seriously it is.  I have done farming and your practically rolling in money after only a a week or two.  If you want a challenge you need some super strict rules.  How about something like this.

All the other stuff but instead of a fridge you get 2 group meals that you can toss in your inventory meaning you get farming or you get dead.  No career/aspiration rewards, no compost, no fertilizer, no bug spray, no garden club, no greenhouses and no talking to plants because your not a crazy freak.  No employees EVAR, all farm hands must be of the farming bloodline so only sims who marry into the family or are blood related are allowed to work.

You can build a maximum of 1 additional farming plot a day and you can start with as many as 9 plots.  Also all food must be sold via OFB (assuming you got it) at the cheapest price possible (assuming the cheapest actually pays for the seeds which it should if you don't suck at gardening) and you can use packing stations because by fruit is sheer insanity and would take you a week to sell all your stuff.  The challenge ends when/if you finish with lets say 100,000 cash in hand, could make it 500,000 or 1 mil for extra insanity.

That should make for an insane enough challenge.  You might need to throw in a free counter and stove though i dunno.

[hedgekat]

A bare lot and $100 and can't get a job? He could plant 5 plots of tomatos but how would he eat until they were harvested?  He would have to have a way to cook the fish.   I guess he could go downtown to use the toilet and shower but he would have to sleep on the ground.  Sounds like a quick way to starve to death.

I have tried playing a farming family but even without limiting their starting funds they had to work in order to eat until they got the garden established. Even after they had a greenhouse in addtion to outdoor gardern (50 plots in all) and one family member with a gold badge they still were barely breaking even. They had enough to feed everyone if they didn't sell anything so still had to have an outside job in order to pay bills and improve the house and provide starting funds for grown children who moved out. (No 20k handouts)

How about a few more details as to starting mode?  Best way to decide what you would need would be to playtest it a couple of times yourself maybe.

LFox:  how can you be rolling in money in a week when it takes 5 days to harvest? Especially with no fertilizer and no spray and zero gardening skills?  Then when you harvest do you eat or sell and use the proceeds to expand?  I would really like to know what your strategy is. 

[LFox]

A bare lot and $100 and can't get a job? He could plant 5 plots of tomatos but how would he eat until they were harvested?  He would have to have a way to cook the fish.   I guess he could go downtown to use the toilet and shower but he would have to sleep on the ground.  Sounds like a quick way to starve to death.

I have tried playing a farming family but even without limiting their starting funds they had to work in order to eat until they got the garden established. Even after they had a greenhouse in addtion to outdoor gardern (50 plots in all) and one family member with a gold badge they still were barely breaking even. They had enough to feed everyone if they didn't sell anything so still had to have an outside job in order to pay bills and improve the house and provide starting funds for grown children who moved out. (No 20k handouts)

How about a few more details as to starting mode?  Best way to decide what you would need would be to playtest it a couple of times yourself maybe.

LFox:  how can you be rolling in money in a week when it takes 5 days to harvest? Especially with no fertilizer and no spray and zero gardening skills?  Then when you harvest do you eat or sell and use the proceeds to expand?  I would really like to know what your strategy is. 

I said a week or two.  I am however apparently a very very good gardener.  Normal gardening i can make thousands in no time.  I rarely have any plants below mouthwatering.  My sims toil in the fields all day if they aren't gardening they should be sleeping or eating.  Whenever a weed springs up i tell them to kill it, same with the pest spraying.  The first batch of produce should produce a couple thousand even if your just plain selling from the plant.

From there you should use all the money or almost all on extra garden plots and more plants.  Everytime you harvest you should more or less double the size of your farm with the money.  Plus after the first harvest you should have enough badge points to plant other stuff.  When you hit gold if you want full cash you should only be planting eggplants since their worth the most.  Selling from 1 mouthwatering eggplant plant i think you get about 350 or 400.  Have 30 plots and you make around 10,000 dollars in one farming session.  I had a farm where i had about 150 plots so i made about 50,000 a harvest.  Productivity is further enhanced if you have plant sims since they don't need sleep or food.  The farm with 150+ plots was a plan sim family of 4 although they spent the majority of their time fishing since in the green house the plants needed practically 0 care.

The only gardening hack i use is a hack to make the talk to plants quicker since taking 2 sim hours for 1 plant is sheer insanity.  That coupled with JM's gardening macro.  However even before those it was still quite easy to get the plants to mouthwatering.  The stuff i wrote above was intended for people like me who find gardening too easy, a really this will never ever work or be complete hell kind of challenge.  Btw you don't use beds or toilets in such a challenge.  Your sims pee themselves repeatedly and they sleep on the floor whenever their not being barked at to look at plants and yes they are supposed to be on the verge of starving on the start.

[angelyne]

Right, this needs a few dry run to see if it's too easy.  I've done the poverty challenge and it's not especially easy. At first you need to depend on community lots to wash and eat.

But I would rather do without the community lots.  This is subsistence farming, there ain't any food banks around.  I'm thinking that with a cheap grill and a fishing hole, you could feed yourself easily enough before the crops came in.  Maybe too easily.  That remains to be tested.

A toilet isn't strictly necessary and neither is a shower.   

One problem I foresee is the money you'll get if you marry. We'd have to see if that would make the game too easy after that.

I agree that the money will start rolling in eventually, so this should be a short challenge.  Like maybe until your second generation turns elder.  Then it could be scored on how many kids you raised and what is your total worth, and maybe how many squares of garden and how many fruit trees you successfully managed to garden.


Good points LFox.  I'd say no pesticides (which also eliminates plan sims) and no talking to plants, no gardening macros.  No fertilizer, only compost. 

[LFox]

Obviously any money from marriage should be subtracted from your household since getting a free 20k is like saying hey i can buy a whole farm.  Fishing in my opinion is wayyyyyy too easy.  Doing fishing alone from 1 sim you could probably feed 8 other sims and still pull a profit from selling any leftovers.  If you want a hellish farm challenge i think you need to disallow fishing.

I'd say allow gardening macros cause lets face it guys the can do without them but the only thing your really doing is annoying yourself.  Your not making it harder for your sims.  As for sprinklers i completely forgot to address that issue.  I've never run a garden without one so i don't know how time consuming it is to water them.  Should sprinklers be allowed or disallowed?  I vote for allowed since i hate watering a billion plants by hand plus it would give you one single tiny luxery in the whole challenge lol.

[Buchignani]

You can live a long while on 2 group meals in inventory. You only need to eat once a day and that's 12 meals.

Fishing for food is dead easy as it's all overly nutritious. One bitty fish will grill a glowy group meal keeping sims fed and happy for 6 days. You can sell extras, the expensive fish. I had a dad and small daughter that lived off a fishing hole and outdoor grill (no fridge, no kitchen) with no problem at all. (He fed her in the high chair when she was a toddler, the nanny hated it though.)

Oh and if you don't disallow it, digging for treasure will make good amounts of money in the beginning.

[LFox]

You can live a long while on 2 group meals in inventory. You only need to eat once a day and that's 12 meals.

Fishing for food is dead easy as it's all overly nutritious. One bitty fish will grill a glowy group meal keeping sims fed and happy for 6 days. You can sell extras, the expensive fish. I had a dad and small daughter that lived off a fishing hole and outdoor grill (no fridge, no kitchen) with no problem at all. (He fed her in the high chair when she was a toddler, the nanny hated it though.)

Oh and if you don't disallow it, digging for treasure will make good amounts of money in the beginning.

I said 2 group meals because he/she had listed a whole fridge which would last like 30+ days.  Although i suppose 1 group meal is enough anyway especially if rationed.

This is a farming challenge you shouldn't BE digging for treasure.  So obviously that shouldn't be allowed.

As for fishing like i said WAY TOO EASY.  I suppose you could limit the amount of fish but i think just plain removing it is better.

btw if anyone thinks my suggestions for this challenge are insane you should see the other challenge idea i had.  The idea was for a sim to survive in the snow at -100 with ONE plant.  And i had a system for keeping them from freezing to death.

[Buchignani]

I was agreeing with you. Someone said how would they keep from starving - you gave them 2 group meals, they'd be fine.

PS: I was agreeing about fishing also. And if nobody mentions something, it gets allowed by default. So I'm mentioning digging for treasure. Shouldn't this be in the challenges forum anyway?

[LFox]

I know, sorry probably shoulda worded it better.  I was trying to say that 2 group meals is definitely enough.  If those 2 will last about 12 days like you said just imagine how long a full fridge would last.  But you could probably knock it down to 1 group meal too.

Yeah again sorry probably bad wording.  I was agreeing again that the fishing was too easy.  Although its apparently worse than i thought.

I forgot that stuff would be enabled my default, there anything else that needs listing to be cut?  I can't think of any at the moment.

[Buchignani]

Well if you have 2 sims, it's only 6 days - I'd rather have 2 group meals so you could go ahead and start and family and get somebody pregnant just to chance over-working him/her and having the heir apparent and mother die. But you could do it on one - then I just wouldn't have the founder get married until after the first harvest.

Yeah, fishing is way too easy - a small fish makes a group meal just as well as a big fish and there's no difference in nutrition between the kinds. So it matters not at all what you catch as long as it isn't all boots.

Yeah, there's bound to be other stuff that needs disallowed, but I've no idea what all. Going to community lots and snarfing food from the townies? Deciding what to do with the inventory of the married-in sim if you have one? Read through the challenges in the challenges forum for other ideas.

Oh also, don't the ladybugs cause overload and crashes if you use too many of them? Could be a problem if that's all you have available when the garden gets bigger.

[LFox]

Well if you have 2 sims, it's only 6 days - I'd rather have 2 group meals so you could go ahead and start and family and get somebody pregnant just to chance over-working him/her and having the heir apparent and mother die. But you could do it on one - then I just wouldn't have the founder get married until after the first harvest.

Yeah, fishing is way too easy - a small fish makes a group meal just as well as a big fish and there's no difference in nutrition between the kinds. So it matters not at all what you catch as long as it isn't all boots.

Yeah, there's bound to be other stuff that needs disallowed, but I've no idea what all. Going to community lots and snarfing food from the townies? Deciding what to do with the inventory of the married-in sim if you have one? Read through the challenges in the challenges forum for other ideas.

Oh also, don't the ladybugs cause overload and crashes if you use too many of them? Could be a problem if that's all you have available when the garden gets bigger.

Oh that's right good point its not so much that they crash the lot its that they lag it to holy hell.  Completely forgot about that, i had only a small farm and most of them got infested so it was quite slow.  I had the same thing happen with plates, i wanted to make a messy dump like house and it was a really small lot but after a dozen or two stacks of plates the lot really started to crawl.  I suppose sprays should be enabled then as a performance fix, it downgrades plant quality anyway so i suppose its not so bad to allow it.

I guess visiting community lots should be out or at least to get food or do showers, toilet, sleep ect.  As for married in sims inventory i usually just completely ignore it if its got items.  Although i suppose if you need to use it, you should empty it and get rid of the money.  I think its best to get your farm running slightly before you marry, not to mention it'd take at least a few days to friendly up for that anyway so the food ration shouldn't really be cut into by another sim.

[Emma]

Great idea, but I think no inventory food and just a cheap grill to cook fish until the harvest comes in. I also think a greenhouse should be acceptable because of the bug lag but no sprinklers.

[hedgekat]

How do you give them group meals?

[cenoura]

Sounds like a good challenge. Dates need to be disallowed - even at home dates - as they make it too easy to max the aspiration metre and therefore making your Sims less whiny. I think a good way around the no food / fishing issue is to allow fishing once a day - one Sim is the fisherman and they stop once they've caught their first thing. Even if it's a boot. That should sort out some problems for fishing making the challenge too easy. Also, supernatural Sims (plant Sims, vampires, warewolves etc) should be disallowed due to them being easier to play. In the same vain, so should all aspiration rewards, bon voyage bonus items (dont have that EP so don't exactly know what they are), love potions and other mood modifiers be disallowed too.

Perhaps bonus points should be added for starting with a Sim with an aspiration which doesn't give gardening or fishing wants. I think that is Romance, possibly Popularity?

I hope that helps in pinning down the things that need to be restricted!

[angelyne]

I'm not too keen on the group meal in inventory, as I want to keep it somewhat plausible in the context of subsistence farming.  So, plucking ideas from this thread, fishing is allowed, but only once per day.  You're not allowed to sell fish, only eat it. You're not allowed to store leftovers.  How about this, only children are allowed to fish, as it's considered light work and adults are too busy taking care of the farm. An exception would be at the very beginning before any children are born.  This should remove the gold badge advantage.  By the time all the children are grown, there should be enough food from the farm not to require fishing.

Any yes you're right jemjie, no dating.  Subsistence farmers are too busy to date.   No nannies or any service pc's.  You are too poor to afford that.  And of course no downtown or outings.  Too busy.  Although you can take the kiddies to the park or something.  Let's not be completely cruel.

No money making scheme of any sort, apart from selling anything but food grown on the farm.  No painting (no time), no book writing (no time, no computer). No electricity, except for candles.  (So no electronics).  The fridge is an old fashioned cold box.  You can download one here and there.  Download Numeror's Fully animated multi-purpose Coal Stove http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=131507.  You have to still be able to afford it, but luckily it's cheap.  (it's optional of course). 

In fact if you want to carry this rustic theme, I can provide all sorts of links, because I love that stuff.  Outhouses, half barrels bathtubs, old walls and floors.  Old beddings, worn furniture, barrel end tables, kitchen table on cinder blocks etc.  Maybe I should provide a lot hmmm.

So subsistence.  No skill building stuff (you won't need skills anyway), except for the cheapest bookcase, nothing that runs on electricity. Toilet out back.  No running water (we got to pretend for that one).  I'm still debating sprinklers.  We don't want to make the challenge overly annoying.  Although Pfox is right that macros that simply automate what you would have to do anyway wouldn't be so bad.

What do you guys think

[Ellatrue]

If they can't have a fridge, then how can they eat any of the food from farming? I thought they could only make meals using the produce with the refrigerator, not from their inventory. Doesn't that only work with fish? Or am I missing something here?

[angelyne]

Sorry I wasn't being clear.  I was trying to reconcile having a fridge and stove with no electricity.  So I am calling it an ice box and a coal stove.  There are some custom content out there that makes a fridge look like an old-fashioned ice box and there is of course Numenor excellent coal stove.

Actually I just realized that there is a challenge that is exactly how I envisioned this

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8552.0.html

[Zazazu]

Isn't there some hack to empty a fridge? That way all you could store in it would be fresh food. Otherwise, you're stuck eating nothing but fish, which honestly makes no sense to me. A subsistence farmer's primary food should be from crops with supliments from fishing.

[Wedgetail]

It also sounds a little like TreyNutz's "Land Rich, Cash Poor" challenge, if you want to try it you can find it here http://www.thesporum.net/smf/index.php?topic=1539.0

[LFox]

Sorry I wasn't being clear.  I was trying to reconcile having a fridge and stove with no electricity.  So I am calling it an ice box and a coal stove.  There are some custom content out there that makes a fridge look like an old-fashioned ice box and there is of course Numenor excellent coal stove.

Actually I just realized that there is a challenge that is exactly how I envisioned this

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8552.0.html

Heh completely forgot about that challenge.  I started to remember it when i was reading you talking about no running water and such.

[Emma]

Isn't there some hack to empty a fridge? That way all you could store in it would be fresh food. Otherwise, you're stuck eating nothing but fish, which honestly makes no sense to me. A subsistence farmer's primary food should be from crops with supliments from fishing.

To empty a fridge, buy one and change the colour immediately with the colour-change tool. Voila-empty fridge.

I don't think there should be restrictions to fishing really. Don't forget you can't fish for nearly 2 seasons if it is really cold. Nothing wrong with stockpiling! Fish shouldn't ever be stocked into the fridge though.