What are the differences between zombies and normal sims?

[Sleepycat]

I think that's been changed with FT.  Sims now seem to stop automatically at 6AM.

I think it has been changed also. I had a sim stop stargazing at 6am on his own when I was playing last night, his motives and stuff were fine.   

"Summon Aliens' appears to be available at all hours of the day & night for those sims with that benefit.

[kemowery]

Also, same question for aliens. I haven't had an alien before and plan on having one. I do know they marry and breed and pass down genetics, but other than that is there anything I should watch out for?

As noted, aliens behave exactly the same as other sims.  The downside--the only downside--is that you get horrible freak babies until some of the less-attractive genetics (like hugely oversized eyes and no noses) breed out.  Me, I made sure my alien families had cosmetic surgery machine career rewards (and a spare in the dorm I use in University), so that they could shrink their eyes down and get some sort of nose.

As far as getting a sim abducted without hacks, I wouldn't count on it.  With FT, knowledge sims can gain the ability to summon aliens, but that greatly reduces the chance of pregnancy (I've had one sim get abducted 5 or 6 times now, and he's never come back pregnant yet).  The only sure-fire ways to get aliens into your neighborhood are to play the Curious family in Strangetown or attach La Fiesta University to your neighborhood and play Stella Terrano, then graduate her. 

[jolrei]

I now use a replacement, less fugly, pollination technician template to reduce freaky looking aliens.  It is entirely possible that, if this were to happen in real life, the alienspawn would be freaky looking.  However, where I have the option, I don't see why I should have to look at that in game.  Somebody posted a template here somewhere.

[kemowery]

I now use a replacement, less fugly, pollination technician template to reduce freaky looking aliens.  It is entirely possible that, if this were to happen in real life, the alienspawn would be freaky looking.  However, where I have the option, I don't see why I should have to look at that in game.  Somebody posted a template here somewhere.

I need to get one of those, yeah.  It would probably be impractical at best (and likely impossible) to change the way genetics worked just for human-alien hybrids so that it wasn't possible to get human coloration with alien features.

[jolrei]

I need to get one of those, yeah.  It would probably be impractical at best (and likely impossible) to change the way genetics worked just for human-alien hybrids so that it wasn't possible to get human coloration with alien features.

I used the one available via this thread:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10129.msg304165.html#msg304165

The thread also discusses other templates available as well.  I am not sure it is possible to avoid getting alien-coloured sims with normal human features, or human-coloured sims with alien features, due to the genetics.  I like my aliens to look somewhat alien, but not so much that I find them ugly.

[kemowery]

I used the one available via this thread:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10129.msg304165.html#msg304165

The thread also discusses other templates available as well.  I am not sure it is possible to avoid getting alien-coloured sims with normal human features, or human-coloured sims with alien features, due to the genetics.  I like my aliens to look somewhat alien, but not so much that I find them ugly.

Thanks!

And alien color with human features is actually pretty cool.  It's the reverse I don't like--normal human skintones with no nose and gigantic human eyes.  It's like the neighborhood is being invaded by black velvet paintings of Third World orphans from the 1970s.

[cwykes]

Been done. Three years ago, in fact.

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=&threadID=566428f752bcf91a1b2928a82c9640c3&directoryID=25&startRow=1#b02bfecb39c8bd80bdb459500d00dfa5

It also says the odds of abduction are 5% which casts doubt on the other conclusions despite all the work that obviously went into the study.

Actually you can never get an abduction from the cheap telescope because the abduction code specifically checks for the expensive telescope's guid and will not run otherwise, unless of course they changed the code in FT to accommodate the knowledge aspiration reward thing.

That's more convincing. 

Shame Pescado didn't mention the telescope type in "Myths and Legends"  An update of that exploding some new myths would be really great.

[seelindarun]

Been done. Three years ago, in fact.

http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?&openItemID=&threadID=566428f752bcf91a1b2928a82c9640c3&directoryID=25&startRow=1#b02bfecb39c8bd80bdb459500d00dfa5

It also says the odds of abduction are 5% which casts doubt on the other conclusions despite all the work that obviously went into the study.

It's been a while since I read that whole thread, but what makes you think that figure is wrong?  Except for the addition of Freetime, I don't think abduction odds have been modified since base game.

[notovny]

It also says the odds of abduction are 5% which casts doubt on the other conclusions despite all the work that obviously went into the study.

The study says 5% per night.

Pescado's Myths and Apocrypha article says 0.05% per Stargazing cycle   This is the 5-6 minute  loop of the Stargaze animation.  Back when that was posted  at Variousimmers,  I worked out the cumulative chance of experiencing at  least one abduction, assuming  you Stargaze from 7PM to 4AM, and that the Stargaze Animation was exactly 5.5 minutes long, checking once per animation at the 0.05% (1 in 2000) chance.

This works out to just under 4.8% per night.

[cwykes]

So does stop/starting stargazing increase the abduction chances?   I thought that was another myth, but I guess it's a "yes" if you can actually break into the stargazing cycle and "no" if not. 

Thank you for explaining what a stargazing cycle is.  I've been quoting Pescado's Myth post for years without understanding the key parameter.  So how would you describe the odds of getting abducted after stargazing for a whole night?  This clearly describes the odds for any one stargazing cycle:

...0.05% ... is somewhat worse than your odds of becoming a road waffle if you dash across the street without looking.

[seelindarun]

So does stop/starting stargazing increase the abduction chances?   I thought that was another myth, but I guess it's a "yes" if you can actually break into the stargazing cycle and "no" if not. 

Thank you for explaining what a stargazing cycle is.  I've been quoting Pescado's Myth post for years without understanding the key parameter.  So how would you describe the odds of getting abducted after stargazing for a whole night?

Notovny describes the odds of stargazing as 4.8% per night (7pm - 4am), in contrast to TreyNutz's 5% figure.  He notes that he empirically (by experimenting within the game) found his odds to vary between 4.5% and 5.1%.  With all due respect cwykes, throwing out TreyNutz's findings because he doesn't know how to do error analysis seems like a pretty high bar for the sims. 

Pescado's colorful characterization of the odds is descriptive but if you knew someone who didn't bother looking every single time they cross you'd have to suspect they have a death wish.  Even very low odds can add up if you perpetually expose yourself to those risks.  As a comparison, the odds of a sim being abducted in one single night of stargazing is about 5x greater than the odds of having your car stolen this year.  Ask yourself how long you'd be willing to go without theft insurance on your car.

[cwykes]

I don't deserve any respect for being stupid Seelindarum    I spend a lot of time posting for newbies and forgot where I was.  When I see or have quoted at me empirical research from the exchange, I'm sceptical especially if the research is old.  I've tried examining how things work in game and it sucks as a method  (food prep. btw).  OK empirical evidence is important for IDing problems, but reading at the code tells you how it really works and it's sometimes not at all what you were expecting. 

I had it firmly in my head that Pescado had debunked the 5% everyone non-awesome quotes and the true odds of getting abducted were 0.5%.  I never engaged my brain to think about it, never mind research it.  So discovering that there is a very short stargazing cycle and that the cumulative odds take you back up to something like the debunked 5% is a serious "head desk***" for me.  Now you've all explained that the Prima guide 5% turns out to be right for the wrong reasons, I'll go back and read the rest of TreyNutz research.  Then I can go post for the people I've been misleading for a long time.......

So what colourful phrase can we apply to the overall odds of getting abducted for a sim who spends night after night glued to that scope? This isn't colourful, but is it true?

"Your sim would have to spend every night of his adult life stargazing for the entire night to have a high chance of getting abducted and if you want him to get alien pregnant you'll probably have to resort to elixir of life as near-elders can't get pregnant."

[notovny]

Yep.  Cumulative chance of achieving at least one abduction with 28 nights of 7PM to 4AM stargazing under the same assumptions is 74.1%.

[seelindarun]

"High chance" is qualitative, obviously.   Sometimes it's useful to think about odds in the reverse: if you have one particular sim you want to be abducted for a storyline, there's a 95% chance your story won't go as planned the first night.  By the time he approaches elder, there's still a 25% chance that your story won't get made.  That seems like a pretty significant chance of failure to me, so I'd be making other plans.

However, I mostly don't care which sims get probed.  I'm just after some local colour in my 'hood.  In that case, my tolerance for failure is pretty high, so a 25% chance that I won't have any aliens born in the first generation is fine.  I'll just make sure my sim has a son, and he'll quite likely be the lucky one.

In truth, I play 4 or more houses in rotation all the time.  If I send some random sim to the telescope most nights in each household I play,  I get at least one alien born every generation, and some useless abductions.  But then, I'm amused by that.   Big developed 'hoods will have more aliens, and a bigger normal population, so the proportion stays roughly the same.

As for respect, it's sort of a holistic thing.  People accumulate it slowly for others based on the totality of their words and work, not just a single declaration or post.

[Garnet Avi]

Yep.  Cumulative chance of achieving at least one abduction with 28 nights of 7PM to 4AM stargazing under the same assumptions is 74.1%.

Isn't this "gambler's fallacy"? The way I understand it, the odds do not increase the more you stargaze:

Alien abduction occurs with a straight 0.05% (NOT 5%) chance per cycle of stargazing.

According to this, each cycle independently has a .05% chance, not a cumulative effect that increases the odds over time. No matter how many times you flip a coin, the odds are still 50% either way and do not change depending on the past results. Even if you randomly flip 10 heads in a row, the next flip has the same chances of being heads as the last 10 trials.
I'm not very good with probability math, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the chances of abduction over 28 days are quite a bit lower than 74.1%. In fact, I'd say they're .05%.
Looking at it this way, you probably do need a hack or cheat if you ever want aliens in the neighborhood.

(Note: I'll reiterate that this statement is based on non-cumulative odds. If it increases over time, it's obviously going to be greater the more you try.)

[notovny]

Yep.  Cumulative chance of achieving at least one abduction with 28 nights of 7PM to 4AM stargazing under the same assumptions is 74.1%.

Isn't this "gambler's fallacy"? The way I understand it, the odds do not increase the more you stargaze:

No, it is not the gambler's fallacy.

If what I was doing was figuring the odds over one stargazing cycle after having spent 28 days stargazing, you would be correct. But that's not the question I'm answering there.

The question I'm answering is "What is the chance of achieving at least one abduction, during 28 nights of stargazing."


If I flip a coin once, I've got two options H and T. The chance of getting heads 1 or more timesis 50%.  If I flip a coin twice, or use two coins, there are four results possible: HH HT TH TT.  The chance of getting heads at least once is 75%. For three coins, it's 87.5%, and so on.  For each individual flip, the odds remain the same, but the more  times  you flip the coin, the more likely you are to have a rare result show up in the string of all the results you get.

I'm not looking at any individual roll of 0.05%, I'm looking at the chances of succeeding one or more times when I roll against 0.05% odds 2749 times.

n = (28 days * 9 stargazing hours / day * 60 minutes/hour ) / (5.5 minutes/stargazing cycle) = 2749.09 cycles.

The probability p of getting an abduction in one cycle is p = 0.0005. 
The probability q of not getting an abduction in one cycle is q = 1-p = 0.9995.


The potential results can be grouped into two categories: No Abductions at All,  and One or More Abductions.

The probability Q of getting No Abductions At All in 2749 cycles is Q = q^n  =  0.2529.

The probability P of getting One or More Abductiions  in 2749 cycles is consequently P = 1-Q = 0.7471, or 74.71%.

[cwykes]

That coin toss stuff brings back lots of memories of maths and stats lessons!

Another question, if you don't mind...
Why choose to quote odds for 7pm-4am rather than 7pm-6am?  Is the chance of getting abducted really lower after 4am or is it just that sims don't have the stamina for more than 9 hours of stargazing?  I guess active sims can manage longer than lazy sims.

TreyNutz2 says "TIME: The earliest I had an abduction in my testing was 8:56pm, and the latest was 4:16am.... I have read reports of abductions as late as 4:30am."

I agree, btw, that Free Time changed something for sims who are stargazing at 6am.  They used to keep "stargazing" in their queue until they stopped, but as of Free Time "stargazing changes to "look through the telescope" at 6am.  Sims used to go on earning logic points after 6am, but I guess they were no longer "at risk" of abduction or we'd have heard about 10am abductions by now surely!

[gjam]

n = (28 days * 9 stargazing hours / day * 60 minutes/hour ) / (5.5 minutes/stargazing cycle) = 2749.09 cycles.

Aha! That's why I'm getting slightly different results than you for the 28 day odds. (The difference isn't enough to matter for gameplay purposes. It's only relevant to math geeks.  )

There are either 2744 or 2772 cycles in 28 days.  Not 2749. This is why:

(9 stargazing hours / night * 60 minutes/hour ) / (5.5 minutes/stargazing cycle) = 98.18 cycles/night
0.18 cycle * 5.5 minutes/cycle = 1 minute

The end of the 98th cycle occurs at 3:59AM. The following night, the stargazing starts over at the beginning of a new cycle, so the extra 1 minute is lost.  OTOH, if the abduction check is made at the very beginning of the cycle, or if the complete cycle is executed once it's begun, it's possible for that 1 minute to effectively become a 99th cycle. But there are an integral number of cycles per night; either 98 or 99. No fractional cycles are carried forward to the next night, which your calculation is doing.

[notovny]

True. However In the long-gone Varioussimmers thread twoJeffs mentioned that the stargaze animation was 5-6 minutes long,  so I just went with 5.5 as a reasonable estimation, though having not timed a lot of them myself, I don't know whether the true time is closer to 5 or to 6 minutes (or even, come to think of it now, whether twoJeffs just pulled the number out of thin air.).  Given how important that number winds up being over thousands of repetitions, though, I suppose there's a case for just throwing the raw number in there.

That coin toss stuff brings back lots of memories of maths and stats lessons!

Another question, if you don't mind...
Why choose to quote odds for 7pm-4am rather than 7pm-6am?  Is the chance of getting abducted really lower after 4am or is it just that sims don't have the stamina for more than 9 hours of stargazing?  I guess active sims can manage longer than lazy sims.

TreyNutz2 says "TIME: The earliest I had an abduction in my testing was 8:56pm, and the latest was 4:16am.... I have read reports of abductions as late as 4:30am."

I blame treacherous memory.I might have had a reason to just do  7PM to 4AM, based on vague recollection of a long-gone thread at varioussimmers.  But going with 7PM to 4:30AM results in numbers even closer to 5% with the 5.5 minute assupmtion I'd been using.  So at this point, I'll retreat a bit from probably unwarranted precision and call the odds of getting abducted once or more times in a full night of 7PM-4:30 AM stargazing to  "about 1 in 20" and  the odds of  getting abducted once or more times in a full adult lifetime of such stargazing to "about 3 in 4."

[gjam]

I'd been wondering how exact the 5.5 minutes was.

I just enjoy playing with the numbers. Looking at the range of possibilities, I get:

Assuming 4:00AM to be the latest possible abduction time
    5 min/cycle --> 5.3% per night; 78% per adult lifetime
    6 min/cycle --> 4.4% per night; 72% per adult lifetime
 
Assuming 6:00AM to be the latest possible abduction time
    5 min/cycle --> 6.4% per night; 84% per adult lifetime
    6 min/cycle --> 5.4% per night; 79% per adult lifetime

Meh. So the answer is somewhere between 4.4% and 6.4% for one full night, and between 72% and 84% for 28 nights. I can't quarrel with "about 1 in 20"  and "about 3 in 4". That's close enough, and easier for most simmers to understand.

[Garnet Avi]

*shrugs* Like I said, I'm bad at probability math. I'm really good at algebra, but I could not follow that proof you did at all. For some reason, calculating odds wars with my intuition, just confusing me. Anyway, I stand by my conclusion: you're better off using a hack or cheat if you want aliens.

[seelindarun]

Your intuition should help more with probability than algebra.

Think of betting on a single 6-sided die.  Betting on any given number for a single roll gives 1 in 6 odds.  Suppose now that you are allowed 10 rolls to pay back on your bet, that is, if your number comes up in any of the 10 rolls, you win.  All of a sudden these odds are much better, no?  It is certainly possible that your number will not come up in any of the 10 rolls, since randomness is at play, but intuitively you know that your chances are much better if you're allowed 10 rolls as opposed to just one.

This is because it doesn't matter which of the rolls produces your number.  We're not asked to predict which roll will produce a win.  We're asking a different question: will we win on any of our rolls?  Novotny's proof answers the question: how probable is it that all 10 rolls consecutively fail to produce our number?

Your intuition says that if you roll 20 times, it will be even less likely that you'll fail all of the 20 rolls.

If you're willing to have a sim stargaze every night of his adult life, you'll most likely get some poor sim probed by the second generation, if not sooner.  No hacks necessary.

[gjam]

*shrugs* Like I said, I'm bad at probability math. I'm really good at algebra, but I could not follow that proof you did at all. For some reason, calculating odds wars with my intuition, just confusing me.

If you have already flipped a coin twice, and it came up tails both times, and you ask what the probability is that you will get heads on the next flip, the answer is 50%. It doesn't matter if you just got 10 tails in a row, or 100, or none.  The odds for any single flip are always the same: 50%. You are right about that.

But if you are going to flip a coin multiple times, and ask what the probability is that you will get heads at least once during those multiple flips, you are asking a completely different question.
   - If you flip a coin once, there are two possible outcomes: H or T. One of those includes one or more heads, so the probability with one flip is 1 in 2, or 50%
   - If you flip a coin twice, there are four possible outcomes: HH, HT, TH, or TT. Three of those include one or more heads, so the probability with two flips is 3 in 4, or 75%
   - If you flip a coin three times, there are eight possible outcomes: HHH, HHT, HTH, HTT, THH, THT, TTH, TTT. Seven of those include one or more heads, so the probability with three flips is 7 in 8, or 87.5%.
   - If you flip a coin four times, there are 16 possible outcomes: HHHH, HHHT, HHTH, ... (you try listing the rest). 15 of those  include one or more heads, so the probability with four flips is 15 in 16, or 93.5%.

See how it keeps getting larger? This is why the overall chances for success are greater with multiple tries, even though the chances for any single try never change.

Anyway, I stand by my conclusion: you're better off using a hack or cheat if you want aliens.

Yes. But not as much better off as you think.

[Ellatrue]

Depends on how you feel about your sim wasting their entire fertile life stargazing from 9 to 4 with less than 100% odds. If I want my sim to have an alien baby, I generally want it near the beginning of the adult stage with the other children. So for storyline purposes, I'd still use a cheat. I'm very partial to the higher odds telescopes.

[cwykes]

True. However In the long-gone Varioussimmers thread twoJeffs mentioned that the stargaze animation was 5-6 minutes long,  so I just went with 5.5 as a reasonable estimation, though having not timed a lot of them myself, I don't know whether the true time is closer to 5 or to 6 minutes (or even, come to think of it now, whether twoJeffs just pulled the number out of thin air.).  Given how important that number winds up being over thousands of repetitions, though, I suppose there's a case for just throwing the raw number in there.

I blame treacherous memory.I might have had a reason to just do  7PM to 4AM, based on vague recollection of a long-gone thread at varioussimmers.  But going with 7PM to 4:30AM results in numbers even closer to 5% with the 5.5 minute assupmtion I'd been using.  So at this point, I'll retreat a bit from probably unwarranted precision and call the odds of getting abducted once or more times in a full night of 7PM-4:30 AM stargazing to  "about 1 in 20" and  the odds of  getting abducted once or more times in a full adult lifetime of such stargazing to "about 3 in 4."

Memory and assumptions get you every time...  This is getting closer, but I'm still reaching on the window of opportunity...... what do you think?

"The odds of abduction are 0.05% in any stargazing cycle (1 in 2,000 every 5-6 mins).  That's from stargazing with the expensive telescope (the cheaper scope doesn't have the code for abduction on it).  Your sim can probably only manage about 9 hours of stargazing a night (7pm-6am) before collapsing from needs failure, so his chances of getting abducted are about 5% or 1 in 20 per night.  Even if your sim spends every night of his adult life stargazing until he collapses from exhaustion, he has only about a 3 in 4 chance of getting abducted, so if you want him to get alien pregnant you'll probably have to resort to elixir of life.  Remember near-elders can't get pregnant."

1. Yes it would be good to stick the exact length of the stargazing cycle into the math - you can't argue sensibly about the exact answer if you are doing the maths with approximate numbers. 

2. Incomplete cycles - it's probably correct to include incomplete cycles as the dice is rolled at the start of the cycle. That's not going to make a big difference to the overall answer though.

3. What's still bugging me is the window of opportunity for abduction because it makes a big difference to the answer and because it's a basic fact about abduction.  If a sim could do 11 hours of stargazing instead of 9 you'd be closer to 90% than 74% over the long term.

I came across posts about abductions from the electro dance sphere the other day.  Is that for real or was there some long fixed bug causing sims to disappear from the dance sphere?