Sustainably Simming

[floopyboo]

Required: Seasons

Premise: As a result of "climate change", most of the country's traditionally useable faming regions have disappeared. The economy is sunk, and unemployment has hit an all-time low. In an effort to address these three issues, the government has offered long-term unemployed sims the chance to start a new life.

Your sim is to be given a government grant of $20,000 with which to start a new life farming for the country's starving masses. However, being the government, conditions apply.

Provisions: The government will provide $20,000 to your sim with which they may purchase: 1 block of farmable land of any size, and 1 food storage device with what the government believes is enough food to survive the first winter.

Advisory: Your sim is warned that amenities are basic. There is no access to running water, but free-standing water may be considered safe for consumption.

Game rules:

Apartment Life: No rental properties.
Seasons: There are only two. Summer & Winter. You may interpet this however you wish, however, the challenge must start in winter.
Land: No pre-existing buildings or structures.
Water: Only one type of water. If you choose ocean, you forfeit the access to fresh water. You must have fresh water in order to have toilets, tubs, basins.
Food: One fridge only. There are no shops. It may only be restocked with fresh produce or fish.
Astro: You may buy the most expensive telescope only.
School: Children must stay home & help with the farm if you have a hack that disables SS abduction for truancy, etc. Teens must stay home & help with the farm.
Work: You & your kin have a job. The farm. It is a 24/7 job, producing food for the nation. The government will kindly allow you to keep up to 50% of the food you produce for the household.
Stuff: Nothing that requires electricity.  Nothing that uses radio or television transmissions. No communication devices. Nothing that requires running water. A fresh, free-standing water supply must be available in order to use tubs, toilets & basins.
Music: Once a sim has a mechanical skill of 7, they may purchase musical instruments as if they have crafted them.
Relationships: Sims may only join the household by birth.
Kids: May stay or leave at the onset of adulthood/go to college. Those leaving may only take those they have a 90/90 or higher relationship with, excluding the owner of the farm. Ownership of the farm passes down to the eldest child, and that child may not be moved out before the transfer of ownership at their parent's death.
Hired Help: Sims may not hire help for any reason.
Breeding: Directed try for baby/produce spore may only be used to satisfy a want or fear.

End of Challenge: When the current heir dies without an heir to replace them. If the eldest child dies before their parent does, the game ends at the death of their parent.

Keeping Score:

+10 for each generation born into game, excluding the last.
+10 for each $100,000 less the $20,000 you started with.
+10 for each abduction baby.
-10 for each electrocution death
-10 for each hunger death
-10 for each reposession visit

[J. M. Pescado]

Problem: This challenge has indefinite duration and open-ended scoring, so maximum score is infinite. Fail.

[floopyboo]

That's the best bit.

I came up with the idea because I've been wracking my brains trying to come up with a plausible reason to bother having plant babies.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, the main reason to have plantbabies is that they skip all the boring 6/12 stuff. Although you miss out on Uni, and therefore, any legitimate shot of getting full want slottage. Other than that, not much real pressing reason.

[Kyna]

Relationships: Sims may only join the household by birth.

No marrying sims in?  I take it part of the idea is that we'll have multiple generations of single parent sims.

Breeding: Directed try for baby/produce spore may only be used to satisfy a want or fear.

Is ACR acceptable?  What about directing sims to use the telescope?

[floopyboo]

No marrying sims in, as they would not have been born on the lot. Single parenting isn't necessarily the only way to get through the challenge, but you'd need to be very clever about it. It's doable without creepy hacks, just not in the first few gens.

I don't care what hacks you have, as I find that restricting hacks just pisses me off, and it's easy enough to make something challenging without removing the things you downloaded to make your game playable. So yes, what a sim does on autonomy is it's own business.

[J. M. Pescado]

Water: Only one type of water. If you choose ocean, you forfeit the access to fresh water. You must have fresh water in order to have toilets, tubs, basins.

That's not actually true, terlets do not need to use fresh or even clean water. I didn't realize people even USED fresh water for terlets, my systems are all configured to use used water for that.

[floopyboo]

Obviously you've never cleaned said toilets. The rule stands.

[J. M. Pescado]

Obviously you've never cleaned said toilets. The rule stands.

Actually, it's quite easy to clean: You just apply the plasma torch until it reaches a nice cherry-red glow, and voila, clean.

[spaceface]

I will try this when I am done with my Apocalypse.

Questions:

No shops = no community lots? Or may there be some basic entertainment lots?

May the eldest child go to college and come back?

[floopyboo]

Basic entertainment lots are fine so long as they meet the requirements above (no electricity, no communications, no television/radio)

So long as it doesn't contradict the rules above, it's fine.

[nekonoai]

My clowncar lot was a lot like this, for the most part. cept the kids went to school and got jerbs. Most of the money was made from the farm, and all of the food came from the farm.

I'm playing a stricter, more end of the world, incestuous clowncar now. No electrics. No indoor plumbing. Only an empty pantry. Gas stove. Fish'n hole. No schoolin', cept what you learns at home (locked gate keeps them in and the pesky world out). Marry yer sister, etc. It's quite fun, actually. LOL

[crunk]

I really like the idea of this - a nice cross between farming style play and an apocalypse. I do think that limits on plantsim spawn mght not be a bad idea. I've played my sim for one winter and almost an entire summer season, farming 14 plots, and I have a plantsim already. She has one skill point, two friends, and a blooming garden.

[Callista]

It looks really too easy... it doesn't restrict snapdragons, and once you have those, the rest of the restrictions go *poof* too.

I agree it's too open-ended. If I played this one I'd score it for one or two generations.

[floopyboo]

It looks really too easy... it doesn't restrict snapdragons, and once you have those, the rest of the restrictions go *poof* too.

I agree it's too open-ended. If I played this one I'd score it for one or two generations.

If you've got time to cram flower arranging, you aren't playing to the rules of the game. Either your sim is going to starve from lack of food production (remember, you must sell a MINIMUM of 50% of it) or you're cheating, by which stage bitching about being "allowed" to have snapdragons is a mute point.

[J. M. Pescado]

If you've got time to cram flower arranging, you aren't playing to the rules of the game. Either your sim is going to starve from lack of food production (remember, you must sell a MINIMUM of 50% of it) or you're cheating, by which stage bitching about being "allowed" to have snapdragons is a mute point.

Well, few points you've missed:
1. 50% of 0 is still 0.
2. You stipulated the challenge begins in "winter". Assuming ONE winter, that is 5 days. If you have TWO consecutive winters (you did not specify), that is 10 days. 3 consecutive winters is 15 days!
3. Even at 5 consecutive days, you can grind flower arranging to gold easily, to say nothing of 10 or 15.
4. The single fridge you start with will last a single sim a LONG time. A fridge holds 300 fudz. A standard issue pork chop platter consumes 28 points of fudz. This means your fridge is good for 10 platters. A sim consumes an average of one meal a day, for a total of about 60 days of fudz. There are, of course, plenty of ways to reduce food intake further.

[Kyna]

If you've got time to cram flower arranging, you aren't playing to the rules of the game. Either your sim is going to starve from lack of food production (remember, you must sell a MINIMUM of 50% of it) or you're cheating, by which stage bitching about being "allowed" to have snapdragons is a mute point.

How many gardening plots do you think it takes to feed a single sim?  All your founding sim has to do is have twice that many plots, which leaves plenty of time to grind out the flower badge quickly.  There's plenty of fertile life-stage left over to befriend walkbys for some ACR action (if your founder is female) or to use the knowledge perk to summon aliens (if your founder is male).

[Avalikia]

Pfft.  You call this a challenge?  My stone age style neighborhood is more restrictive than this including, but not limited to: no plumbing whatsoever, building restrictions, no reading material, no skilling items, no crafted items, no college, no sprinklers, no greenhouses, and so forth.  Aside from the only fridge on the first lot I purposely waste all the food points in a new fridge.  Granted, I allow sims to move in for marriage and all children and teens go to school.  Of course, the fact that everyone is full and accident free on weekends should be proof enough that I'm not using the latter as a crutch.  Did I mention that I've never had to actually use any of the food they've grown or fish they caught?  Or sold them?  Or that this neighborhood has over 75 playables and nobody's ever been close to dying prematurely?  And they have plenty of money?

No, this isn't challenging at all.

[rufio]

What on earth do your sims actually do, Avalikia?  Aside from meditate and go on Dream Dates, that is.

[Avalikia]

In their free time they enjoy jumping rope, tossing footballs, making friends or enemies with the people who walk by, training the dogs they bred from wolves, stargazing, grooming eachother like monkeys, etc.  A few of them are shaman and they get to be witches and spend their time doing that (though they don't get a spellbook).  And I do make them fish and farm even though they don't need to - I plan to eventually recreate human history by changing the rules to make it more like the bronze age, then on from there until they reach modern times or the neighborhood implodes, whichever's first.  They'll probably want the extra food at some point.  They don't meditate much because, aside from a few move-ins that came with them, there's no way for them to get the three required logic points.  And they don't dream date much either because I find that whole process tedious and boring.

[Yecats]

Avalikia, have you checked out the Simstones set from MTS2?  It's got things like an elephant shower and turtle-shell dressers. 

[Avalikia]

Yes, I did check them out, mostly so that I could P&L.  Allowing them to have laughably unrealistic things just because they appear to be period defeats one of the main purposes of that neighborhood: to give me something hard enough to do that it's worth playing the Sims 2 at all.  Besides, outside of cartoons cavemen didn't have running water or enough clothes to require a dresser, and if they did I'd happily allow them to have modern-looking ones - this is about making them live like they're in the stone ages, not about making them look like they live in the stone ages.

[jolrei]

If you've got time to cram flower arranging, you aren't playing to the rules of the game. Either your sim is going to starve from lack of food production (remember, you must sell a MINIMUM of 50% of it) or you're cheating, by which stage bitching about being "allowed" to have snapdragons is a mute point.

How many gardening plots do you think it takes to feed a single sim? 

How many gardening plots does it take to feed a sim?  I have one house where there are six 3-square plots, all growing different veg.  There is also one of each (apple, orange, lemon) fruit tree.  I have a shitload of fruit, tomatoes, etc in that house.  Seriously, the sim could run a greengrocer business.

[Callista]

I don't know, but I do know one of my sims spent a couple of semesters growing tomatoes in college and is still eating the grilled cheese she cooked (full cooking, mouthwatering tomatoes) on the day she turned Elder. There's Energizer use and dating screwing up the numbers, though.

You know what would be interesting, though--make it a contest scored by how much food you have in your sim's inventory after a set amount of time, maybe two sim years or something of that sort.

[J. M. Pescado]

How many gardening plots does it take to feed a sim?

Well, it's entirely possible to create and play a sim that NEVER EATS, as demonstrated in the Ethiopian Challenge, which had stricter restrictions. As such, the answer to this can quite easily be "0", and you can combine this with techniques from the E-Mail and Emma challenges to create a sim-oxygenarian.