More Awesome Than You!

IT'S ADDICTION!

Every time I don't use them, it feels like my sims are spending more time juggling their needs than doing anything else!

Exercise a little will power, wimp.




I mean, come on, what sort of advice do you really expect?

Advice on how to keep my sims from self-destructing when they're not using snapdragons?

Seriously, it's like two hours of working/playing/whathaveyouing and six to eight hours of recovery...

am I missing something or are they supposed to waste that much time on refills?

Especially eating...by the time I fill the hunger bar, the bladder is low (understandably), but when I empty the bladder and take a shower, they're hungry again!  It's like a damn horse, just eat and poop all day long.

I don't see a reason to stop using snapdragons if they work for you and make the game more fun to play. Is there any specific reason you'd like to rid yourself of this "addiction"?

It just kinda feels like cheating.

But then so do vampires, robots and plantsims and I have no trouble with those..so maybe you've got a point...

Sims with more active points need less sleep and such, and I think they lose energy slower. I'm not sure, but I think there may be a similar effect for playful sims and fun?

You might also look at the layout of your houses. Are they very large? How much time does it take for a sim to switch from one activity to another?

In addition, some activities are less draining than others. You might try to be observant of this.

Install all the macrotastics items. Push "Power Idle". Watch and learn.

That really only works if you have the right items in the house- but the macrotastics REALLY help.

If your sim doesn't have enough cooking points for macrotastics to work, it can kind of let them starve. Power Idle is sort of an advanced setup.

You remind me of this post I saw at the BBS the other day of some kid saying that their sims' spawn kept getting taken by the social worker. When given real advice...teach the kids to do homework, pause when needed, keep families small until they are used to juggling...they basically put their fingers in their ears and shouted "NOT HELPFUL!" but fawned over the players who told them to use maxmotives and boolprop. Lame. Not saying that you are that bad, just that you reminded me of them.

It's simple.

• Don't use them. Sell those you have off and don't create any more. You no longer have the option.
• Again, play small families (a couple and a spawn). Play on the slowest speed and pause when you need to. Heck, pause every hour as a rule and check everyone's motives.
• Learn to do things that fill multiple motives at once. Need social, comfort, and fun? Plop a couple of sims in front of the tv. Comfort from the couch, fun from the tv, and social from talking together.
• Quality over quantity. Especially with meals, you want your sim with the most cooking skills to cook for everyone else so that they only have to eat one meal a day (since they get fed at school/work). With a new family, one sim should immediately go to learn cooking and have three skill points before a meal is needed. Use quality items. 2 energy/3 comfort beds are cheap for a reason.
   

Even my pregnant sims aren't this bad.  I can't help but wonder what sort of personality your sims have and how inefficient the lot design is.

Eating: 
- Train cooking to at least 5, then get your sim to cook a platter of pork chops and stick it in their inventory.  The platter has 6 servings, so this will save on cooking time 5 times.
- In a multi-sim household, get your best cook to cook up a platter each for the other sims and pop it in their inventories.
- Use decent counters and stove for better quality food.  Don't bother with the food processor, as it doesn't add anything if you have good quality counters.
- If you have Seasons, you can improve the food quality further by having fresh food in the fridge.
- Try to make sure your sims eat alone, then they won't waste a lot of time talking while they are supposed to be eating.

Bathroom:
- Add bathroomusesyou to your game.  Make sure you add the BUY toilet paper to each bathroom in your house, and configure it.  Makes bathroom use much more efficient.
- Make sure you have enough bathrooms on the lot.  I aim for at least 1 bathroom (toilet + shower) for every 2 sims living on the lot.  Helps avoid pileups during the morning rush.
- Use a high end toilet and shower so that the sims take less time in the bathroom.
- Showering is quicker than taking a bath, so only put a bath on the lot if you have toddlers and/or dogs.  If given a choice then messy sims seem to always take the bath option in my game.

Energy:
- A high end bed is an essential (E6 or higher on the sleep clock), otherwise your sims spend too much time sleeping trying to regain energy.
- Never use the cheapest bed.  It's a waste of simoleons as sims can recover energy faster if passed out on the floor.
- You can avoid sleep altogether with an espresso machine or if you have Riley's coffee maker in your game.  Just tell your sims to macro/caffeinate, and make sure there's a dishwasher and chair close by in the same room.  You caffeination station should be in or near your skilling area and close to a bathroom.

Personality:
- Pay attention to your sim's personality, as this can alter the time it takes them to do things.
- Get parents & grandparents to encourage traits in your simkids while they're still at the child stage.  Once the parent or grandparent is friends with the child, you can use Macro/encourage for this.
- Active sims will run between places on your lot (under macrotastics), and can stay up later at night.
- Neat sims take longer to eat than messy sims.

Lot layout:
- Is it a three waterbag trip across the lot?  This can waste quite a lot of your sim's time, particularly if your sims are lazy.
- Take a look at the thread on Awesome Spec houses (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7263.0.html), to get an idea of efficient house design.  Very few downloadable houses on other sites are awesome spec.  Fortunately, we have had a couple of contests here on building awesome spec houses, and results and entries can be found in this board. (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/board,20.0.html)
- If your sims are lazy and taking three hours to go from kitchen to bathroom, then consider sending them on an Asian vacation and getting them to learn teleport from the ninja.  Macrotastics will use ninja teleport when it's more efficient than the sim walking/running to their destination.

Take a look in the war room (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/board,4.0.html) and poke around some of the threads in there for further ideas and useful information.

heh, I'm not that bad and I never use cheat codes or 3rd party cheat items.  I do, however, use macros on the sims I'm not currently controlling.

also, re: all that advice:

I attempt to do that.  I just suck at juggling.  

------------------

ok, I might have exagerrated on the hunger/bladder thing.  The decay rate and clock rate are outrageous, though.  It takes a half hour to take a piss and 5 minutes to walk across the bedroom.  :o


I never design my own houses.  I'm even worse at house design than I am at juggling.  I just use premade houses and modify them slightly as needed.

And I try to get the highest rated stuff as quickly as possible, but I still feel like I'm watching my sims recharge more than I'm playing them.

I will say I'm having an easier time of this game than I did with the first one...

You didn't actually read all the advice, did you?

Uh, yes, I did... ???

Damn, you're a fast reader.

I hadn't even finished editing all my typos when you made your post about "all that advice".

I'd love to have your reading speed, especially when you consider that my advice contained three links to other threads & sections of MATY that would be useful for you to read and thus were part of my advice.

EDIT to add: I assume you were referring to my post when you said "all that advice", rather than Zazazu's much simpler list of 4 dot points.

Both, actually.  I started to submit my post and it said there was a new reply.  I didn't visit the links until after I replied, obviously.  But I did read the post.  :P

And since I haven't said it yet, thanks for the advice.


[edit] Also, for you technicality lovers, it's probably more accurate for me to have said "I attempt to do most of that.  I didn't think about using platters in inventories because I'm not used to having an inventory...

I understand your snapdragon addiction, I also overused them but it did get boring. Now I restrict myself to one bouquet per bedroom.

I don't use them much anymore.  I do in my legacy house, but then I also have about 12 or 13 ghosts there, so low motives would be lethal.  I also have a bunch at the legacy businesses, especially the ticket businesses. 

The best thing I ever did for the motive cheat/micromanagement problem was to play a BC and then an Asylum, especially the latter.  They may not be terribly happy, they may see the shrink or the therapist, they may pee themselves, but they won't necessarily die. I have a college house that is packed-eight sims and they aren't all that bright.  I use College Rampage and the Skillinator.  When I see a few of them are getting hungry, I have one fix a meal and then Call To Meal.  Otherwise, when I see one complain that he's stinky or needs to pee, I just look at the screen, shrug, and say "figure it out, genius."  Usually they do.

I noticed that on the Macrotastics thread you expressed some concern about socialization.  Seven of those eight sims have one nice point and enjoy picking fights, but most sims would rather be friends.  Their whole little lives are about getting to 100/100 with everybody they know.  A simple Macro>>Socialize>>Friendly will do it, and then after that, the occasional game of Red Hands is your friend (essential because a lot of mine are maxed playful.)

Reading the Awesome Spec houses thread was so helpful.  I didn't do everything to spec, but it solved a lot of trouble. Meeting needs is often a result of poorly deigned house

Seriously - try downloading some of the AwesomeSpec houses. I'm particularly fond of Trepie's Budget AwesomeSauce (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8931.0.html (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8931.0.html)) if your Sims have the 50k to buy it; otherwise Witch recently posted a couple of playable starter homes (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10644.0.html (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,10644.0.html)).

The house makes a huge difference. The largest lot I usually play, unless it's a Legacy and I have no choice, is a 3x3. You'd be amazed at what you can fit into a 3x3 lot and still have room left over for a pond and a swimming pool.

Feh, one ghost will do it. I just had a major upset last night when miss meanie-pants Celina was scared only twice by her father's recent ghost when she was already tired from having to get up and get her 7/8 alien son out of the crib. She passed and the two cats and toddler had to go into care, to be quickly rescued by her estranged sister/cousin. Not even Jumbuktu*  could save her, as his shrine was in her bedroom on the other floor.

*Jumbuk IV reward from the Adventurer career that Celina decided was a god, and who she had convinced her older cat he was the avatar of. The girl was maladjusted due to a predisposition to being a mean little shy child, plus her father nearly moving her away from her sister/cousin due to almost marrying a money-grubbing human, plus then later on her sister/cousin married a guy she protested to as he was also human but who she secretly was attracted to. Hopefully having a Jumbuktu-sculpture-filled nursery for his first couple of years won't have screwed up Derek as well.

I was concerned about this issue.  My game is full of so many hacks(by the way, make it so enjoyable) that I was wondering if I could play without hacks.  That is probably the main reason that I bought Lifestories.  I play hack free and it is nice to know that I don't have to play with hacks if I don't want to--but it is way better with hacks.  I don't see snapdragons as being that bad-I put one on each nightstand and they wake up refreshed instead of waking up like they had just ran a marathon in their sleep.  If you still want them to eat breakfast together and you have the InSIMinator then make them have 50% hunger lost and then they will eat breakfast. With snapdragons, you will be able to manage their needs in a normal way.

Really, I think the need to mood ratio is just off.  I mean, when I wake up in the morning, I need to piss and take a shower, then eat breakfast...but I don't wake up grouchy and depressed just because I have to do the morning routine (and said routine doesn't take me three hours)

Maybe there's a happy medium somewhere out there...

Um.  Pause the game at 5:59 a.m., check everybody's motives and queue up what they need the worst before they even wake up--lowest bladder is queued to go toilet, lowest hygiene is queued to shower and lowest hunger is queued to make breakfast/get leftovers as soon as you unpause and their feet hit the floor.

*shrug* Works for me. 

If you sent them to sleep with Macrotastics, the morning pee/shower/change ritual is handled automatically with all the utilities installed.

I just don't understand what your problem is. I think that most of us would agree that handling our sims' needs is a manageable and fairly easy process. You've received a lot of excellent advice, and if you try this stuff I am sure that you will find that it isn't actually that hard. I am getting the sense that you really just want to complain about the game.

Not only is it easy and manageable, but it's so manageable that a machine can do it. So MAKE THE MACHINE DO IT.

Granted, IT SHOULD NOT TAKE AN HOUR TO PEE.

I'm not saying that I have trouble managing their needs anymore (I think I've actually got a handle on it, even without JM's wonderful macros, thanks to advice here).  I just disagree with the setup on principle.  I'm not complaining, just discussing.  Am I not allowed to disagree with and discuss game mechanics?

Since you disagree with certain mechanics of the game, then go cold turkey and stop using whatever mod irks you.  Just discussing your angst won't accomplish anything.  Do something about it.

I personally love the snapdragons and have them set up in each bedroom.  It's always nice to get a good night's rest.  ;)

Yes but then, WE'D HAVE THE ENSUING TIME FILLED WITH WATER BALLOON FIGHTS!

Should'a would'a could'a, the game is what it is. It's insanely easy to control a full family of sims if you pay some fracking attention, even in an unmodified game. I have no sympathy. Try a 4-adult, 15 child (including 3 toddlers) Free Love Cult house. Then go back to a simple family, and everything seems ridiculously easy. Heck, I've been giving my sims every other day off from being told what to do (excepting caring for babies). If they have to piss badly enough, they'll go...even without BathroomUsesYou, which I don't use. Only sloppy sims will walk around stinking, which is fine...they are SLOPPY. And as long as the refrigerator is stocked, they won't starve. Quite the opposite. Burn down the house, sure, but that's what water sprinklers and alarms are for.

Anyways. Haven't used a snapdragon since the first month of OFB, and that was only in a ticket-biz. Now, I have Jumbuktu (Jumbuk IV) in a bedroom of one of my sim houses, surrounded by treasure and flowers, but that house isn't even occupied now as crazy died.

You have to admit though, the taking an hour to pee thing is obnoxious. It kind of makes sense for most other things in the game, but the peeing isn't even remotely comparable to real life. "Sympathy" not withstanding, it's ridiculous. Like EA WANTS the bathroom to be occupied at all times, so other sims can't use it, and pee themselves. Call it a pet peeve, but it just drives me crazy.

Ziggy: the poster was talking about the mechanics of the game itself, not the mechanics of a mod. Removing whatever imaginary mod you were thinking of won't fix the problem.  ::)  Neither will being rude about it for no reason.

Okay, so if you want to talk about game mechanics: what aspect of the game would you change, without making it too easy? Is there anything that you think should be harder? If it were much easier to fill their needs, I think the game would be a lot less compelling.

IMO, it needs more stuff like Uni and BV to give you goals and such for your sims.  I'd love to see an EP that let you control your sims at work.  I mean, yeah the sandbox of the original game is kinda fun, but sometimes I like having scenarios to beat...hell, that's why you guys have an entire subforum dedicated to challenges...playing just to play gets boring after a while.  And since I'm not much for the storytelling parts of the game, I generally just keep creating new sims and building them up to success and then starting over again.

I mean, on the one hand, juggling the needs of several sims without macro help is a little too hard for me.  On the other hand, the game itself is a little too easy as far as promotions and money and such.  It's like they put the challenge in all the wrong places.  Filling needs should just be a simple thing of remembering to do it.  Getting promoted at work should actually require some user skill instead of skilling and friendships.

But oh well, the game is still addicting as hell.

Juggling the needs of any number of sims is never hard, it just slows your game to a crawl since you have to stop and check everyone manually, turning the game into a stop-motion slideshow.

Well, it's hard for me to have the patience to do that.  :P  I eventually get tired of it so I just let sims fall into depression.

Then keep your families smaller. For all that I can handle a family with 20 members, I definitely don't do so frequently. I think that it took around three hours to play through a day with my largest. Right now, my melded family (everyone's back in the same house due to a death) has two adults, a child in college, two children (one of the couple, the other their nephew), two cats, and a dog. That's honestly larger than I prefer. Celestina keeps trying to get pregnant on me. Thank you, lot debugger. Four sims is a good number, maybe with a pet. When Dylan graduates, he's moving into his own house with his prospective mate and I don't anticipate more than one child.

I'd like to see the Sims melded a bit with the Stories series. I still want all the freedoms we have in the Sims, but I like the options for guided gameplay and incremental goals from Stories.

My comments weren't rude, but to the point.  If you don't like certain mechanics of the game, chances are there's a mod to fix the things that irk you.   If the OP doesn't like using snapdragons, then he/she can stop using them and explore other methods, such as smaller families and other suggestions made here. 

There's no reason to accept everything EA has put on the TS2 plate.

That would have been reasonable, yes. Only you didn't say that.


Emphasis mine. Granted, the poster hasn't exactly demonstrated their brilliance, but there's nothing to indicate that they actually ADDED a mod to their game that increases motive decay, and were just complaining instead of removing it.

Maybe Sims 3 will have a greater focus on stuff other than mindlessly filling needs. As it is, however, this game is still based on the original version of the sims, which was ONLY about filling needs. The motives make sense to me though, since it creates something of a coherent simulation for the sims' behavior. I'm not sure how you could change the core gameplay to make it much different.

The reason everything takes so long is that sim-time is about 60 times faster than real-time, but sims do not move 60 times faster, instead moving only about as fast as normal people do. Therefore, if activities are made in scale with this, sims would move like they're on speed. This is why something that would take 3 minutes in real life, like walking across the lot, takes 3 hours for sims, meaning that "Run Here" is simply necessary. So when a sim takes an hour to pee, it's performing an activity that in real life takes about a minute.

Unfortunately, time-scaling issues like this afflict all games, and the Sims is no exception. Just look at how a tank is produced in a minute by a factory, in the same time it takes the same tank to drive across your base. It's the typical game-compression effect: Activities requiring microscopic amounts of time or resources take up a disporportionately large amount of it, while things requiring enormously macroscopic amounts take up disproportionately little. Thus, an activity like "peeing" consumes an enormous amount of a sim's proportional time while an activity like "become the CEO of a Microsoft-size corporation" takes up a few days, and a pizza costs $40 while a Lamborghini costs $10000. For this reason sims are at high risk for microscopic failures that just don't happen to real people, like pants-wetting, while easily able to achieve macroscopic successes, like becoming a CEO. While standing in a pool of their own piss.

Also worth noting is that the Sims was originally entirely about peeing. It *WAS* originally The Toilet Game, after all.

That's why players have wished (and repeatedly requested since Sims 1) that there was an option to adjust the timing. I am not too concerned about time issues since I mostly play with aging-off and don't care if my sims stay downtown for 2 days but if I had the choice I would make the day pass slower.

They shouldn't have taken out the Toilet Skill.  As it is now, only toddlers can Toilet Skill.  I'd trade Body Skill, or even Cleaning, for Toilet Skill.

The problem with adjusting the "timing" is that the timing is intricately keyed to every time-based aspect of the game, with the game pegged to 1800 ticks to the hour. If you adjusted the timing at THIS point in the game, every single object would get confused! Also, the very nature of the timing is tied to the balance of the game. You would literally have to redo everything. It is nontrivial, even if designed from the very beginning.

Well, I don't think cleaning even existed in Sims 1. What would the Terlet skill do? Enable female sim to pee unaided while standing without dribbling on themselves? Reduce the "dirtiness" level hit for using the terlet while standing?

I still think they take too much time to pee, though. I mean, I pee faster than that in REAL LIFE! It's crazy in sim time and still not a good representation of real time. They just want everyone to wet themselves.

Reduce hygiene impact with every skill point gained. Increase the odds that they'll remember to flush every time. Make them quit worrying about using public toilets. And of course, decrease the odds that they'll end up standing around in puddle of their own piss.

Not to mention that players could create pissing contests between their sims...

No sillier than sim beauty contests, far as I'm concerned.

Do people really have this many sims peeing themselves? Or are you all being facetious? XD I haven't had a sim pee themselves for like a year and a half now and I've been playing the game for two years.  And even back in my early days, I only had a very tiny handful pee themselves...and they had added circumstances...such as being pregnant (and it was only one pregnant sim...it was eat or pee and I chose eat. XD) and being a vamp stuck in the sunlight.  And I play without the BUY mod too.  I'm just surprised that players have this much trouble keeping normal sims dry-panted.

~Sid

Facetious. I am, anyway. The last time one of my playables peed themselves was when a toddler got off the potty to transition to child; she grew up, then wet herself. I don't find it difficult to avoid the morning potty rush, either.  Half the household gets run through the bathroom routine before bed (and are still green when they wake up), and the other half does the bathroom routine when the wake up.

The only thing irks me slightly is mopping up the puddles when the dormies (under nouniprotect) all decide to pee right in the middle of the kitchen. But I'd rather have peeing, vulnerable dormies (and puddles) than a dorm full of INVINCIBLE PIXEL DEMIGODS.

Just be nice if they went in another room before letting go ... ;)

The issue mostly vanishes when manual control is taken, but left to themselves, disaster inevitably follows as everyone decides the bathroom is the hottest area to be, and then form a big pileup and are unable to leave or kick anyone out so they can pee, because they absolutely MUST be alone and the nature of sim-stupidity is such that that th moment they have finished an interaction, they resume standing there with vacant expressions on their faces instead of moving away!

Feh, I play with free will on (and often leave my sims to their own devices while I play with one or two individuals) and I have never had a problem with them peeing themselves. I haven't had a playable wet themselves (with the exception of electric shocks and ghost scares) since I first got the game four(?) years ago.

Eh, I play with free will on and don't use many macro-type hacks OR snapdragons, and only 1 or 2 households have Jumbok. It really isn't that difficult, and I don't even micromanage all that much. I did have a sim pee herself last night for the first time in ages, but to me that's funny *shrug*.

Honestly, unless a sim is pregnant there isn't much chance they're going to die if you ignore them for five or six sim-hours to tend to another sim. They may decide they don't want to do anything useful, but unless they decide to go hot-tubbing during a thunderstorm, their stupid actions aren't generally suicidal.

The most recent sim-peeing I had was Celina, during her death throes. Dad's ghost scared the piss out of her...then everything else. Before then, the only sims I had pee themselves were nannies. I don't use Bathroom Uses You, and I almost never have pile-up issues (since perhaps the first 3 months playing) despite having parties with 15-20 sims. It's all in the design.

I don't see peeing themselves all that often, either.  It's either a ghost hitting them, or it was in the asylum (8 sims + one toilet + no control = pee accidents) or when my college house had a munchiebot.  It goes and gets them Chinese food, and that makes their bladder need decay ridiculously fast.  I turned it off.  Easy.

PB