Problem 1: Sims will not/cannot become impregnated by accident or without particular furniture.
That is just how it is in the game. The system is designed to follow the rules of the game as we know them.
I like the idea of shotgun weddings or of a young couple getting pregnant when it was not intended. This happens in the real world (more than half of my friends have a sibling who wasn't planned). I appreciate that safe sex can be pretty much a guarantee, but sometimes people think they can (and often do) get away with the rhythm method or some such.
There isn't any such event in the game. When people make shotguns, we will talk.
The crib requirement to actually have children requires a lot of set up, and even if you don't want every couple to have the option to procreate story mode boots people out of their houses to allow someone who randomly decided they did want to breed and now they need your house. The musical houses that occurs in a normal half cribbed town is strange to say the least.
Yeah, we'll look into the musical housing thing, perhaps attaching a drain to it so that it is less likely to occur back and forth.
I also like the idea of dead-beat dads after one of those Rabbit-Hole romances.
I haven't worked out new death types yet. When that happens, we can have more killing and eating.
Problem 2: The fact that sims will try to breed at random occurrences regardless of current family size/age.
Well, it's not quite random. It depends on funding and capacity. There is actually a rule which prevents this: The first two (replacement) kids have no fund requirement, each additional one requires that the fambly have sufficient fambly funds to kick them out into another house later.
This is the one that really kills me. Ancient sims with children out the wazoo deciding to go for another child. Watching sims in their sim 50s get pregnant with her 12th child after her eldest already have teenagers of their own is unsettling (not impossible, but should this be the norm?). The only current solution I can think of is making all old Sims sacred, because removing their cribs just has them relocate some young couple when they decide it's time to get busy.
I haven't actually seen this particular case, although I will consider adding some more clamps. At this point, though, the list of clamp conditions is becoming rather bloated.
Problem 3: May/December Romances
This isn't a PROBLEM. Throughout much of history, this was considered the NORM. Furthermore, based on the vast age ranges in the game and the fact that we're dealing with a very small population, it is also the most statistically probable outcome after all the purposeless outcomes are excluded.
They happen often enough IRL. But the constant pairing of YAs to elders (or even Adults) when their are sims available in their age group is also disquieting. It is almost the norm for a sim to graduate high school and end up with some ancient sim and starts making babies, (or supplanting some sim who has cribs and then making babies). Again this is possible, but not normal.
Actually, it *IS* normal.
Proposed Solutions:
1) Introduce an average family size limit. This would be the default that most sims would aspire for, say around 1.5 for North America. This could be modified by traits (more for Family Oriented, less for Dislikes children). If you want to get clever, maybe use a calculation based on probabilities so that it is still possible that a couple would try out side of the average. Of course there are families that have many offspring IRL, but they are not the norm (ie not NPCs) If you want 25 kids into your 50s, play the family manually.
I have considered hardcoding it, but this would result in some peculiar, stiff, inorganic behavior.
2) reduce the fertility for Adult sims, even if a 40+ person wants a baby the chances should be reduced. This is biology.
This is already in the game. But apparently, the game doesn't do so very MUCH.
3) Introduce an integer value in the config for unplanned pregnancies (default 0%) - (more valid than a NPCWorkUniformRemovalChance value in my mind)
This is sort of already abstracted into the background. Digging more into the issue involves more work than payoff.
4) Introduce some form of age affinity. Either a configurable value for "Sims won't date X years away from their own age" or some method that would make the romance interaction less potent (so there would be a preference for those more proximate in age).
This is noted, but made more complicated by the fact that people ALSO have introduced custom aging rules. I actually already have implemented natural selective preferences.
With these items in place the oft maligned crib requirement could be removed via an option in the config as well.
The crib issue is under review.
I can't imagine how frustrating it is to work as hard as you do only to get these kinds of posts. But these items do seem to come up. I am in perfect agreement with your desire to have actions and consequences without magic relationship advancements. But the current system does not seem real (even for a silly game with computer dolls) or very flexible.
The key here is trying to balance a functional system that OPERATES with a system that consumes too much CPU performing sanity checking. The EA system is presently on the side of "Not Enough" (read: None At All), while people have complained the present system features too much, and it is thus chewing up too much CPU. We are looking into how to reduce this problem.
I think these changes (or anything along these lines) are in the spirit of awesomemod as they aren't strange (male pregnancy), or frivolous (random outfits). Awesomemod made the game playable but every town I have ends up goofy with aunts and uncles 10+ years older than their nieces/nephews. Parents of now married chosen sims moving out only to start up a new family (or optionally sitting on their duff chosen but neglected).
We'll look into it. At this point, though, I'm more concerned with trying to reduce CPU load than adding more rules.
My request is to add death notifications to the InformOnStoryAction debug feature. I love all the current notifications, especially romances and moving. And now I have birth notifications from Buzzler's Birth Control Mirror. I'm just missing being able to know about and click to watch neighbourhood deaths.
Deaths are't really a part of Story Mode at all, except for the Kill Sim event. Since AwesomeStory rarely ever buskills a sim except when they have been total failures, there is simply nothing to notify you about.
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