Open relationship help

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I do eventually grow them all up, just don't grow them past adult!  I do keep the parents a couple of days older than their children, though.

[witch]

I've just started a new n'hood, I made three families and hope that's enough to populate the gene pool and provide some interesting crosses. I will time sync these, three's not too many to manage I think/hope.

[Oddysey]

Yeah, Knowledge sims can be kind of annoying. They tend to get obsessive about romances, and it really sort of annoys me that skills are the only sort of "knowledge" they can get. Their the only aspiration whose main wants are basically finite, or dependent on random events. Which is ironic, because knowledge is not finite. That, and they tend to get obsessive about things, and will act like retarded Romance or Family sims for long stretches of time.

Say, though . . . I think I may have thought of an actual use for those damn scissors. Suicide! Still rather random, but doesn't involve the long periods of whining involved with starving, the collateral damage of burning, or the inability to plead if they drown.

I keep my sims roughly time-synched, mostly because I only play them for a couple of days at a time anyway.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I think it's easier to time-sync in a neighbourhood you create from scratch, as you can place your houses in some kind of sequence and make it easier to play them in turn without making copious notes!

[Oddysey]

I just note the number of days in the description. If a family splits, I write the new family as (number of days the old house was at when they left) + (number of days they've lived as their own family). And sims have to be synched before I merge them.

[Brynne]

Well, I do eventually grow them all up, just don't grow them past adult!  I do keep the parents a couple of days older than their children, though.

That's what I do. But to look at them, the father looks the same age as his kids! I have some middle-age costume makeup to help fix that.
I had Beau Broke come home from school with his half-brother's grandchild. I had to age both him and Ben. It does get confusing not aging them all the way, but until (if!) there's a "middle aged" group, I'll keep doing it the way I am now.

[ZephyrZodiac]

It's a pity Maxis didn't include the "number of days in house" which was in sims1!

[Darkstormyeve]

I've just started a new n'hood, I made three families and hope that's enough to populate the gene pool and provide some interesting crosses. I will time sync these, three's not too many to manage I think/hope.

I have three families Witch and find them easy. I have just introduced two more families and its starting to become just a pain in the butt now.

[Oddysey]

I've got at least eight or nine. Time synch is fairly easy for me, mostly because I don't mind if the dates are off by a few days. Just enough to keep it reasonable.

[Darkstormyeve]

Perhaps I need to lighten up alittle with my families. As soon as a kid has a birthday, I literally race to the next house to grow up their friend or sibling.

I have a custom town where these families live, no townies, so its only them visiting each other. Thats when you really notice the time sync issue.

I found with just having three families who had alot of offspring, that I had to print their family trees as I was planning to hook one sim up with another, only to discover that they are in fact related .

[Oddysey]

There's no real harm in sims marrying second cousins. That's roughly the RL cutoff for major risks from inbreeding, and sims don't have genetic defects anyway. Though I'll bet someone has suggested them in the BBS.

[Darkstormyeve]

I couldn't help but think of "Cletus" from The Simpsons when reading your post Oddessy! Are you familiar with the "slack jaw yocal"? I think he married his second cousin and had 20 kids. This episode was on last night here (a repeat obviously).

[Oddysey]

I don't really watch the Simpsons, so no. It's probably not the greatest idea to marry your second cousin, but most cultural incest taboos start relaxing around that point.

[witch]

Perhaps I need to lighten up alittle with my families. As soon as a kid has a birthday, I literally race to the next house to grow up their friend or sibling.

I'm not quite that conscientious. I tend to grow sims in batches, maybe play for a few nights until there are some college ready kids, then the next house and so on. I don't mind if teenagers are friends with children, sooner or later they'll all be adults together and I'll want them to be friends anyway.

One thing I do find with 3 families is that there isn't always a decent choice of mates. With Inge's 'make me a townie' teleport bush I can add in characters I don't have to manage. I killed all the Maxis townies before I started with deleteAllCharacters. Worked a treat!

PS I had a family based on the Cletus model in sims 1, haven't done it yet in sims 2. Pity there aren't some recessive genetic abnormalities in the sims. 

[Darkstormyeve]

Or buck teeth...

[PresentTense]

I think it's easier to time-sync in a neighbourhood you create from scratch, as you can place your houses in some kind of sequence and make it easier to play them in turn without making copious notes!

I've always tried to play my houses in turn, as I like to time synch things as well, but sometimes you get a bit carried away, especially with a family you really like.     

[DaveFlew]

I keep details of all my households in a book, and devote a double page to a household. I list things like Aspiration, LTW and personality points for each person, and if someone moves out, I put something like "See Page 30".

I'm currently playing 5 days per household, and am nearing the end of one cycle through all the households. For my next cycle, I'm thinking of putting all the page numbers (from my book) into a hat, and doing a lucky draw to see which household I play next. For my next cycle, I plan to play three days per normal household, and two semesters per University household.

My biggest problem is that I don't bother playing the pre-made households (Curious, Beaker, Grunt etc.). I seriously couldn't be bothered with the likes of Vidcund, Loki and PT9. I should probably bite the bullet and do something with them after my current cycle. I managed my first (fireless) swimming pool pool simicide last night. It's whetted my appetite for destruction. This is bad news for you, Vidcund Curious! 

[ZephyrZodiac]

I just like creating new sims, so I have rather lost count of the households I have!  Don't think this hood will survive for very long if I start growing all the adults up and letting them die!  And since I get quite attached to my sims, I shall probably just leave the hood in limbo and go start another when it gets too full up!

[witch]

My sims never seem to die either, I get distracted with family offshoots and end up with bunches of elderly around that I never play. I think I've only ever seen two sims die naturally. My sims didn't even die unnaturally until I started listening to you people. 

[cyperangel]

Well, im one of those rare people who actually let my sims enjoy free will (as long as they dont do anything darnfold stupid while im control freaking on the rest of the household....)

Anyways, i play my hood in turns.
I do the same thing in all houses, first they are played through getting a mate, and getting preggers. Thent he next round of house visits are delivering the kids, and growing them through todlerhood, 'till the eldest kid becomes a child. The next round is growing childs in all households to just before they become teenagers, and then all turn teenagers, all grow thu that stage, all go to college, and then all go through getting a mate and getting preggers. Every house follows the same timeframe, so when im through a turn, all babies/toddlers/kids/teenagers/adults will be basically the same age etc.

I also let my elders die of old age. No life elixir for them, i quite enjoy the insurance payouts 

[ZephyrZodiac]

I just take the view that since they are sims, not human beings, and since the game itself allows them to live forever, then why not?

By the way, I always play with free-will on, and though I'm sometimes annoyed at the dumb things they do, sometimes, too, I'm totally amazed at something (which I realise is a result of random programming) they do.  For example, last night  I sent David (a Fortune Sim teen who was in the red quite a lot to buy himself a mobile phone to cheer himself up.  He got the phone, then spotted Leonie Mitcham, another teen, ventrilofarting poor old Herb Oldie.  He went up to Leonie, shoved her hard and made her cry, then gave Herb a hug!  (He did know him, of course.)  I thought that was quite amazing, especially as he was feeling a bit disaffected himself!  She had a go at him a bit later, and he just kept up the antagonism without any prompting from me!

[Ancient Sim]

He got the phone, then spotted Leonie Mitcham, another teen, ventrilofarting poor old Herb Oldie.  He went up to Leonie, shoved her hard and made her cry, then gave Herb a hug!  (He did know him, of course.)  I thought that was quite amazing, especially as he was feeling a bit disaffected himself!  She had a go at him a bit later, and he just kept up the antagonism without any prompting from me!

Never seen that before, that's nice.  I was hoping something similar would happen in my game recently.  When one of my YA's was sobbing her heart out because she'd caught her steady boyfriend in a clinch with a dormie, her brother was standing just across the hallway and must have picked-up on it.  Did he go over to his sister to cheer her up?  No, he just followed the perpetrator of the crime downstairs so he could push him on the swing.

[ZephyrZodiac]

They do some odd things, don't they!  Leonie was at the mall again upsetting people, and Don Lothario was quite happy to sort her out!  He made her cry, which she always does if she loses and argument!  It's very odd, her stepsister is Cassandra's daughter, Desiree Durham, and she never upsets anyone, just wants to get to know them!  Her mother and stepfather (Desiree's father)  never go around upsetting anyone, and I certainly didn't create her in CAS as a nasty sim, and her aspiration is popularity!!!!!  I just think she's still sulking because when her mother moved in with Max, she gained a step-sister and step-brother and wasn't an only child any more!