Robot shop stupidity

[qvcatullus]

With any luck there's already a fix or three that I've missed because I didn't play for a pretty long time. Feel free to call me a moron and point me in the right direction. Both, please.

I'm trying to run a robot shop, both to try out a different business I didn't run in the 2.5 hours I originally played OFB and so that I could make some of the robots available to the whole neighborhood if they came in to buy them. Trouble is that the game seems to get confused about restocking -- it seems to be selling the base of the robot stand rather than the robot itself, so it will happily replace a hydrobot with a cleanbot and vice versa; same issue with the sentry/munchiebots. It even keeps the old price -- if I had put a sentrybot down originally, I sell it, and the restocker replaces it with a munchiebot, it keeps the sentrybot price up for the new munchiebot.

This is intensely annoying to me, both because it makes the shop pretty stupid, but also because it always winds up with all sentries and no munchies or such. Then when I send someone in to buy a robot, the kind that I want is, inevitably, the one that is not available. Not that the clean/hydrobots are even remotely worth purchasing in the first place, but that's a different issue.

Is there any sort of fix or hack (possibly a workaround other than 'only sell one type of robot') to clear up this stupidity? Something that forces the game to remember which kind of robot was originally for sale would be optimal. A 'craftables as buyables' hack would, I suppose, fix at least one of those problems and strikes me as more likely something that already exists.

[Gus Smedstad]

The robot and the base are parts of the same object.  You can't use one without the other, and you can't sell one without the other.  So the behavior you're seeing (selling the base AND the robot) is the correct one.

I'm not sure about how to fix the price problem.  It's been a while since I ran my own robot shop, since I got completely bored with OFB's businesses.

 - Gus

[qvcatullus]

My point is that they're not being treated as the same thing. Both the hydrobot and the cleanbot use the same sort of base. If I sell a hydrobot and have both hydros and cleans in inventory, the restock command seems just as likely to put another cleanbot down as a hydro. It's clearly just considering the base as the object for sale, not the whole robot, and will happily put down either kind of base that fits the bill. I'm not angry about the bases disappearing with the sale, that is of course supposed to happen. What's driving me batty is the idiotic way in which the game replaces them.

[notveryawesome]

Unfortunately, that's just how the game works. I've gotten around this (somewhat) by having two sims making two different types of robot (from the same badge level) simultaneously, so that the two types of robot alternate within the owner's inventory. For example, I'll have Sim A 'make many' of the hydrobots and Sim B 'make many' of the cleanbots, at the same time, and thus the type of robot that appears in the owner's inventory will alternate between the two. This still doesn't fix the pricing discrepancy, but at least it keeps the same type of robot from dominating the sales floor. I agree that the entire thing is rather stupid, and this is why I no longer bother with robotics shops.

[nocomment]

Here's a possible workaround.  Simwardrobe has made a "Sani-Bot" because he didn't like the cleanbot.  I *think* this is a completely seperate object, so your employees shouldn't get confused when restocking.

I haven't tried this robot yet, but I believe it's crafted at the station just like other robots.  The web page is here:  http://www.simwardrobe.com/

Ok, I just checked, and it's a buyable object.  There must be something weird going on with the bases, because he has a warning that his Cantina bot uses the same base, and the robots may return to the wrong bases. 

You could post on his message board and ask if his Sani-Bot would help with your problem.

[notveryawesome]

No, there's nothing wrong with the bases -- that's how they were designed by EAxis, and this is what Paladin had to work with. All roverbots use the same roverbot base, and all hoverbots use the same hoverbot base. Yes, it's stupid, but that's how they were designed in the first place, and thus there was no viable way for Paladin to work around this when making his own variations of the robots.

[nocomment]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to blame Paladin.  By "something weird" I meant a limitation of the actual game, not some mistake on his part.

I didn't realize robots shared bases.  I started a robot shop, but obviously haven't worked very hard on it! 

[J. M. Pescado]

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?!?