Casual Romance challenge

[rohina]

Okay. I had an idea, sparked by the shiney brilliance of the Casual Romance mod currently in testing.

Here's the challenge:

Usual preamble about not using cheats to improve mood and relationship. You may not use any cheats to give skill points, or badges. You may use the college clock or to "take final now" but not to suspend time or reset the semester. No other cheats to stop time are allowed. You may use the elixir, but its use will definitely brand you as non-awesome.

You need an up to date version of CR. No messing with the timers or any other settings on the adjuster to make it more likely that your sim will want to woo hoo. Put the adjuster on the lot and leave it alone. You may click it if it tells you you need to set up tokens, or if you want to view a sim's stats. No other uses allowed.

Take one romance sim who has a LTW of woo hoo 20 sims, and satisfy that want without EVER directing them to do any romantic interactions with another sim. That means no backrubs, no hugs other than friendly, no flirting or kissing AT ALL, no slow dance, no tuning up your robot.
Your sim must have no loves at the beginning of the challenge, but if you are playing easier levels, friends are okay (that's why it would be easier).

You may adjust for degree of difficulty:

easy: use a born-in-game teen
medium: young adult (a CAS YA will be slightly more difficult)
hard: CAS adult
pescado-level: CAS elder

Edited to add: you may ask a sim on a date, but you still may not direct any romantic interactions.
You may leave pregancy chances and risky woo hoo on, likewise you can get married since both of these things will likely make it more difficult to acheive the LTW.

If you need to set gender preference, you may do this with the adjuster or by directing one flirt: check sim out. If your sim has the ability to scope room, you do not need to set gender preference.

[J. M. Pescado]

What about "REALLY HARD", with a CAS Elder?

[twojeffs]

Heh, I don't normally go for challenges but trying that with a CAS elder could be fun. I may have to give that a shot. I need another crash test dummy anyhoo.

[Ancient Sim]

Er ... is there a time limit for this (or is it until death stops woo-hoo?).  Do's and dont's?  Plus & minus points for doing/not doing whatever?

Not to worry, I've been trying to think of something challenging for this mod myself, so I will try this and maybe make a story out of it.  I reckon a YA would be the easiest, considering how rampant my dormies are.  Even better, I could start with a fresh set of dormies in that 14-bed Maxis dorm, make them all AC/DC ... add a sprinkling of visiting profs/llamas/cows ... they'd be done before they ever graduated ...

Of course, there's quite a collection of woo-hoo NPC's to cheat with ... in the absence of rules, one assumes they're out of bounds?!  Ditto Lizzlove's woo-hoo bed?  I will just assume nothing 'cheaty' like that is allowed.  Then again, that would presumably mean I couldn't make all the dormies AC/DC.  Aw, shucks to that then.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, obviously, the time limit is to simply beat it, no doubt by manipulating the conditions such that casual woohoo will occur, then removing all the other furniture and locking them in a room until they do, much like how one gets dogs to mate.

[rohina]

The rules say no cheats or mods that change/improve relationships, so Lizzlove is out.

There is no scoring because I operate primarily on verbal intelligence and numbers irritate me (much like the feeling of wearing a thong).

I like the most difficult category.

Challenge ends when the sim goes permaplat (win) or dies (lose).

I cloned Bors from my Legacy, so you can use him if you like.
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/sim_detail.php?asset_id=697913

[Ancient Sim]

Why did I think this was TwoJeffs' thread?  Still thinking about how to go about it, or rather which method to go for.  Going to have to use a bloke I think, the females don't seem very interested in woo-hoo when they're preggers, although I suppose I could always turn the option off.  Been thinking of doing another Bachelorette Challenge, maybe I could combine it with that.  Except the 'bachelor' I had in mind was JMP ... as a Romance Sim???  Hmm, not at all sure about that one.

[rohina]

It might make an interesting story. 

I started it last night with a guy in a 9 person dorm. He managed one woo hoo in freshman year. I'm hoping things pick up a little.

[J. M. Pescado]

Like with all aspects of sim behavior, the only way to have a reasonable chance of inducing a sim to do something specific on his own is the "cage match" approach.

[Avalikia]

I dunno, locking two Sims in a room together with nothing else to do smells like cheating to me.

[J. M. Pescado]

I dunno, locking two Sims in a room together with nothing else to do smells like cheating to me.

Hey, it's the same method you use to get dogs to mate. Why shouldn't it work on sims? The only way you're going to get a sim to choose the correct action is to make sure he doesn't have any other choices.

[Magicmoon]

Why might it not work? Because TJ gave each sim a timer that counts down. When it reaches zero or less, they are most likely to woohoo. But they CAN and often do woohoo long before then.

So even if they are locked in a room together, chances are they will just pillow fight.

EDIT: oh, they older they get, the longer their timers are. They can also go negative on the timers, but they max out at -24 hours.

ETA: There is also a way to cheat with the adjuster...that should be against the rules.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's why, like disciplining a room full of unruly children, you have to smack them everytime they do something stupid.

[rohina]

ETA: There is also a way to cheat with the adjuster...that should be against the rules.

Can you be more specific? So I can update the rules?

You are not allowed to direct the sim to do any romantic interaction AT ALL, casual or otherwise. What else can the adjuster do?

[Avalikia]

Isn't there a way to reset the timer?  (I'm not sure, I haven't tried that mod yet.)

[Magicmoon]

Yes. If you turn on testing cheats, then you can shift click on the timer and reset it to zero.

That's why, like disciplining a room full of unruly children, you have to smack them everytime they do something stupid.

Well, I've tried that method with the CR mod. You can stop them all day long from any and everything they try to do, but when they decide that it is time to woohoo, it kicks in and puts itself in the queue, even if they are busy. Then they will drop what they are doing, finish their queue if you let them, then proceed to get busy. But stopping them from other activities doesn't make them head to the bed or photobooth any faster.

They also tend to use the photobooth more often than beds, but also have a higher chance of being rejected by the partner.

You can however, stack the odds in your favor by choosing the ages of the sims, and certain aspirations. Young, family sims have the highest chance of shorter timers, but also the highest chance of pregnancy, unless you turn off their ability to get pregnant. (But this point is moot if you are going to insist that the sim be romance). Whoever makes the rules should decide whether turning off the ability to get pregnant is allowed or not. Even though they will continue to count down on their timers while pregnant, and will still woohoo, pregnant sims usually don't feel as well and don't tend to rush to the bed as often and sometimes let their timers go negative.

EDIT: You can also use the adjuster to set their gender preference. And they must have at least a gender preference of 1 of either or both sexes before they will do anything with this mod. There is a setting of gender preference/Low which gives 2 points in your choice of sex, or bi - gives 2 points to both male and female.

You MUST have an adjuster on every lot that you want teens or elders to do their thing autonomously. They won't do anything at all without an adjuster on the lot (YA's and adults will). This includes community and university lots.

And JM, you will have to break down and give them freewill....oh the horrors!

[rohina]

Okay, updated. Since pregnancy is no advantage, it is allowed. Cheating with the college timer or aging off is clearly not allowed.

[Magicmoon]

I just reread the rules. You still have to have a gender pref for CR to work. This can either be accomplished by:

A single flirt/check out sim (which does nothing to add any score to the sim being checked out as long as the Romance Mod is also being used-and is highly recommended with CR mod)

OR

Using the adjuster to set the sim's gender preference. Otherwise, the mod will never start working.

If you are using a sim that has already flirted previous to the challenge, then the preference will already be set. But CAS sims and newly transitioned teens must do one of the above before any CR actions will take place.

If you use the flirt/check out sim interaction then their gender pref will be set to whichever gender the sim just checked out. If you use the adjuster to set the pref, then you can set it to either sex or bi.

So is bi allowed with the rules or not? Of course anyone using bi will have a natural advantage sinces there will be more sims to choose from in the pool. So either everyone should use bi, or no one should.

Oh, I also noticed that you said in the rules "friends would be easier". Not so! With CR, flirt type interactions are available extremely early in the relationship. I've had sims make out with each other with scores as low as 0/1. Once the 2 sims have a much higher score with each other (as in friendships) Maxis interactions start being used instead of CR interactions. Which means that they actually have a HIGHER chance of flirting if they barely know the person. Sometimes friends insist on staying friends and reject advances.

NOTE: As of the current version of CR, beds work in residential lots, dorms, and Greek houses. Photobooths work in all these plus community lots. Beds do not currently work on community lots. Hot tub interactions may still be buggy and will be more available in future versions.

[dizzy]

Seemed pretty clear to me that you can't do that.

Put the adjuster on the lot and leave it alone. You may click it if it tells you you need to set up tokens, or if you want to view a sim's stats. No other uses allowed.

Take one romance sim who has a LTW of woo hoo 20 sims, and satisfy that want without EVER directing them to do any romantic interactions with another sim. That means no backrubs, no hugs other than friendly, no flirting or kissing AT ALL, no slow dance, no tuning up your robot.

[Magicmoon]

But if you don't set the gender preference, then you lose the challenge before it even starts because the mod won't work.

[rohina]

Not true, I don't think. My guy had the ability to scope room, so he did that. If you can't scope room, you may either do one "check sim out" or set the gender preference with the adjuster. Sims are naturally pretty adaptable with regard to preference, so they can be gay, straight or bi depending on how you want to play.

Friends are easier because the object is woo hoo, and although your sim may flirt more with CR when the relationship is low, he is going to get a sore ass from being kicked out of the photobooth.

I've been playing the challenge for a while, and I found it took my sim quite a long time to get accepted for a woo hoo, but now he has a bunch of friends, so he is racking up those conquests much more quickly.

[Magicmoon]

Yeah, if they have ability to scope room, then they have a gender preference set.