More Awesome Than You!

Ever wondered why your teens can get money for college for their jobs, grades, and skills, but not their talent badges? Apparently, despite the fact that most talent badges take longer to earn than it takes to earn 8 skill points, EA decided that it's not important enough to recognize. Well no more! This hack will allow your teens to receive an additional §1,250 for each silver level talent badge they have.

While this hack is something for Uni, it requires at least Open For Business or newer.

Pictures can be seen here (http://forum.djssims.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=401).

Notes: Foreign language strings are not overwritten with this hack, though obviously the new scholarship names will only be in English since I don't speak any other language. The rewards for the talent badges cannot be revoked due to the fact that you can't normally (that I'm aware of) lose badge points. I'm open to any other suggestions for other scholarships as well since this was ridiculously easy to make. :P

Thanks to: Pescado, because I used the test to see which expansion packs are installed that he has in Macrotastics. :P

Huzzah!

Neat!  I'll give this one a go...

Is it at all possible to alter the exsisting scholarships?
I've always been annoyed that townie teens get the orphan scholarship because they have "no living parents", while playable teens with undead parents don't get it.  It does say no living parents, so zombies and vampires should count.  I'm hoping it's possible to either give the shcolarship to the children of the undead, or revoke it from teens who can't show at least one dead parent memory.

Well, I guess you could give scholarships for reaching max enthusiasm in any hobby.  Though I think the payout for that should be small, since that's pretty easy to do.  Maybe you could do one for getting a certain number of vacation mementos as well.

Do werewolves get scholarships?

Great idea jfade (although I'm disappointed you didn't name the hack Badgerships).  I shall try it and report back.

Gwill, I wonder if it should translate as 'no current playable parents'.  What happens if you have a CAS parent and teen family then kill off the parent?  Does that qualify?

This sounds great, I will give it a try.

A greater variety of scholarships would make sense. After all, there are prizes for creative writing, why should sims not get one if they have written a novel. That also takes long enough.

This is an idea that makes sense.

If dancing can get a scholarship, I don't see why being good at robotery or fishing shouldn't. 

I've got it in my hacks directory and will let you know how it works.

I will say that I HATE that the Goth children cannot get orphan scholarships if Mortimer dies before they hit college. WTF, people!? Bella's gone! *thud*

The badge scholarships are a cool idea; thanks for implementing that.

One thing that always annoyed me about the skill points scholarships was that a kid would get $$ for having eight points in one skill even if s/he had no points in any other skill, whereas a kid who had, say, five points in every skill got nothing.  I was thinking that it might be nice if there were a "well-rounded" scholarship, for kids who were passably good (around 5?) at everything.

Because there is never a prize for mediocrity?  Scholarships are for rewarding high achievement in a specific area, awarded by a group or organization that values the quality being rewarded.  I suppose you could have the scholarship given by the "Good Enough Society of Middle Managers" or something.   :P

How many people do you know who are pretty good at every area in life?  Personally, I don't know very many, though since my colleagues are mostly professors, they are a rather more-skewed-than-average group.  :-)  But I see plenty of kids who are, say, jocks (Body 8) who can barely pass their courses (Logic 2) or smart kids (Logic 8) who have no idea how to have a social interaction (Charisma 1).  There are plenty of artists (Creativity 8) who can't find anything because their space looks like it was taken out by a hand grenade (Cleaning 0).  Oh, sure, there are exceptions, but these things are stereotypes *because* they are so often true.

So, I don't think that being pretty good at everything is being mediocre.  It seems pretty damned rare to me.

Just in time for a brand new testing hood.

But Corylea, a sim with 5 skill points or less in every category is not a jock, a smart kid, an artist, or anything else.  He's merely kind of average, sort of good at a bunch of things while utterly failing to stand out enough at any of them enough to be noticed.  You may be surround by people like that, but you'll never see them for what they are because their achievements aren't impressive enough.

It should be noted that, in the real world, being well-rounded helps you to get into college, but not to get your college paid for. For that, you need to excel at something, or have mommy & daddy shell it all out, or indept yourself to the goverment. In Sim-world, anyone who doesn't flunk out of high school gets into college regardless, and finishing a semester nets you more money instead of costing you.

The longer I play, the more this annoys me. I'm thinking of switching to some format where students can get scholarships beforehand still, but once in college they get no more money. Add in harder grades, and any student with a grade average below a B can't get into PU. B- to C- gets into some unnamed uncreated tiny crappy university with only dorms and minuscule rooms. D+ on down doesn't get Uni.

...and they should have to pay back all the "free" money they got while in uni. It should be automatically deducted from their paychecks until it has all been paid back.

That would be a great idea.

And much more realistic as well.

Oh, yeah. I already have the family pay if they want extra moneys, but for some reason I stopped charging them tuition when I moved to this new 'hood. Quite stupid since the sims in Prospect Beach so far are incredibly rich (when you have a three bedroom decked-out house with $400,000 in the hopper and only work the shop two days a week, that qualifies as incredibly rich to me).

Yes, I believe that's how I'll explain a certain sim's (who is a child now) inability to go to college. Momma gave all her money to a plastic, gold-leafed statue.

Hmmmm.....

* jfade approves of this idea...

I think I shall have to find some way to do it. How much free money DO they get thrown at them while in college anyhow? I never really payed attention.

I think it is §1200 per semester if they get top marks. Ooh-this would be great if you could do it!

Pfft. Being well rounded doesn't do shit for you. The majority of students who apply to college fall into the "well-rounded" category, therefore it is a competitive disadvantage against students with more "focused" interests. Colleges are more likely to admit/give scholarships to students who excel in a single area (so, jocks with no other skill points or interests, or students that only have narrow interests like music or drama and NOTHING ELSE). So if you think about it, the game is realistic in that way.

I'd like a hack where they didn't get money while in university. Maybe good grades could just reduce their bills a little.

I think a lot of people confuse personality points and skill points.  Five points is indeed average for personality but not for skills.  The fact that skills go up to ten doesn't mean that halfway up is average.  For example:

5 Charisma points will get you as far as President (Level 8) in the Business career
3 Body points will get you as far as Starter (Level 4) in the Athletic career
5 Cooking points will get you as far as Executive Chef (Level 8) in the Culinary career
5 Logic points will get you as far as Scholar (Level 7) in the Science career

Being a starter on a professional sports team is a pretty elite level of skill.  Being the president of a company is not something that happens to Joe Average.  Five PERSONALITY points is average, but five skill points is not.  We think of five skill points as nothing special because we're all expert slave drivers :-), but in fact, the person who has enough athletic ability to be a starter on a professional sports team AND enough cooking ability to be an executive chef in a restaurant AND enough brains to be a scholar AND enough to reach the same levels in the other skills is wildly rare.

I think that average for skill points is more like 1 or 2, and the person who had 5 in all of the skills would be admired as an incredible polymath.

I think the kind of Mr. or Ms. Ordinary that you all are thinking of is more likely to have one or two points per skill, and I agree that such people don't get scholarships.

This was a brilliant idea, thank you for sharing.

Does this hack include scholarships for the new FT badges as well?

I took care of the money problem in college by making the students re-pay the money needed to build their dorm, with interest. ;D  Originally, I'd intended for some family to endow the uni, but the parents are still up to their eyeballs in debt with their mortgages.  Tyrant Overlord back in the base 'hood holds all the mortgages, and comes by to try to eat someone's brains as punishment, if they can't make at least the interest. :D  The YAs are in no danger of missing a payment because they get so much money every semester, but I priced the dorm as a residential lot in a regular 'hood first, so they'll be paying back the money for generations.  A hack would be better though, the bookkeeping is irritating.

Several times, I have made a multi-generational family in CAS strictly for the purpose of killing off the middle generation (i.e. the parent) in order to have an orphaned teen living with their grandparents and they do get the scholarship. I usually kill the parent pretty much right after I load their lot and it still works.

Yup.
Yeah, heh, I have a hack in mind I've been toying around with doing for a while and given that it seems like a popular idea I'll probably actually do it one of these days. We'll see. :)

I am interested in this idea but - how does the kid get enough $$ to move back to a neighbourhood upon graduation? I am not enough of a slave driver: my students rarely graduate with even 20k, and that's if they started with ~6k in scholarship funds. And God forbid they move to their own place and move in a dormie, because that splits up the $$ even more once the graduates start moving out. Or do they move back in with their parents even if they're not a Legacy heir and save up to move out in this scenario? Does college eat up all the scholarship funds? I guess it would, to be realistic. *kofflikesimsisrealistickoff* I did experiment recently with a Sim who was born from an illicit liaison. I wanted her to have her share of the inheritance so I had her putative father send her 1/3 of the family funds via the money order after she moved to the college bin but before she went to college, and sure enough she had 100k when I moved her into a dorm. Now I know that works, it might be a partial solution to the heir getting all the money just because he's the last on the lot when the parents die.

When you think about it, Legacy is sort of cheating because the kid can move back home and instantly have access to all the career rewards the family's stocked up so far, and it doesn't matter how much s/he leaves college with since s/he's coming back to a fully stocked house and ample funds. In real life, moving home after college is not usually an option!

If only there was a way to really implement apartments and rent... then the poor recent graduate could move into a 300/wk roach-infested firetrap. Ah ha ha ha!

About half of the people I know moved back home, at least temporarily, after college. The other half of us were already non-locals and had been working and renting while in school. So having sims move back doesn't bother me. That said, most of my sims don't do so, as moving out gives me an excuse to build.

In Prospect Beach, pretty much everyone is filthy rich (with the exception of Daphne, but she's a hippy). One current sim started a business while in college and had enough to buy a very nice home straight out. One other was technically an orphan and I had noted how much money his mom had before she kicked it (approx $197,000 in the family coffers). When he came of age, I family funded it to him, as I considered it held in a trust. In other situations, I have the parents grant their kids some money as a nest egg. For Daphne, she saved about half of her college scholarships and moved into an empty, windowless, tiny barn and still has very little to her name after working in the oceanographer career line for about half her adulthood. But then, she has twins (the only kids not in prep/private school as she can't afford the fees) and four cats to feed.

In my new side 'hood, it's a miniscule self-sufficient island (or as close to it as I can stand). The one family has a good house and makes a fair bit on produce, but they are far from rich. The kids won't be going to college as they can't afford tuition (yup, I charge tuition less initial scholarships...usually $20,000). At least two of them need to move out, and they will probably be living in tiny shacks off of what they can scrounge.

Jfade, I really like the hack and for me it seems to be working as intended. Nice extra money for my sim teens!

The problem I see about removing the money they earn at uni is that I'd hardly ever get my sims to move out of their parents' house. I use the no20khandout mod and if newly graduated sims started out with some hundred bucks, they'd have to earn loads to ever buy their own home - after all, you can't go to a sim bank for money, and there aren't any places to rent and live in (yet.....).

I used to use Monique's computer for bank loans. That way a penniless sim only had to buy a computer to have access to internet banking. I found the interest added on was sufficient to ensure the money got repaid asap. (As Monique is inactive I see there are 2 different updates of this computer for FT but there is no internet banking in the one, I have not looked at the other yet.)

   As for me, it'd be a nice addition to have that 'no handouts at college'.  With ACR's normal settings, it's a rare family that has more than 3 kids (my average is a tad over 2 kids per household).  True, the 2nd generation kids of the founding house might be a bit squeezed, but with the additional scholarships, my college house will still have money building up due to the large ratio of kids who would normally be inheriting their parents homes.  Also, all of my girls return to their parents home to be married out of, giving them a 10% dowrey.
   I rarely play pre-made homes, so the basic need is to buy an empty lot, from that point, the parents can money-order any needed funds.  Any mod that even 'slightly' reduces the cash floating around, is good.
   It would also add an additional challenge to that starting CAS YA, he/she will really have to work their butt off at college, to even scrape up the cash for an empty lot.  :)

   Edited:
   I await with baited breath for the next installment of TANSTAAFL package.
     No20kHandout  -  check
     PrivateSchoolBillfix  -  check
     NoFreeMoneyAtCollege
     CollegeCostsStupid
     NoInsuranceInheritance - check (not sure why no-one mentioned it, but Jordan M.G. put up one on this site earlier - and i never saw it till today)
     NoRetirementPay   (yes, i know i could just make them quit, but i want the retirement memory)

Edited to check off NoInsurance for Elders Death

Chaavik's has it. As far as I can remember, Chaavik's is the most like Monique's original and also allows for studying of the new badges (that's how Mystery Bleu got her gold sewing badge and is now torturing the youngest two by making them wear handmade godawful clothes). I haven't used the loan functions, but I know they are there. Online bill pay is definitely working, as are private school fees.

Sorry if this is an extremely stupid question, but... Why should it cost the Sims money to go to university? It isn't like that in real life.
EDIT: Nevermind, turns out it does in the US.

It's the same anywhere, whether you prefer to have it rolled up as "taxes" or just pay for it yourself. I prefer the direct method.

Universities in South Africa are subsidised. Non-citizens pay significantly higher tuition fees.

I remember being very amused as a high school student, when an exchange student from Germany told me that culture should be available free of charge to all. In an ideal world yes, but in this reality someone, somewhere always has to pay.

At state schools here in the US, a resident of another state will pay a good chunk more than a state resident, too. It all makes sense. A state-line hopper loses out in the long run because a portion of their taxes are going to colleges in their state and then they are paying more for an out-of-state school. (This of course doesn't apply to private universities, where you are getting screwed at both ends regardless of where you are from).

I just started building another uni (because $20k is really expensive with my property tax scheme). First one, Renwarr College, teaches all subjects, has multiple small dorms and apartment living/small single rental homes, with a really nice quad and classrooms with skilling objects the small dorms can't hold. But it's $20k/student. Second one is Tou Laine Tech. Only teaches math and science, only has one dorm with barely-functional rooms and crappy communal showers, and has one large community lot that serves as both classrooms and bookstore. But the classrooms have career reward objects and crafting benches, and it's only $8k/yr, free for kids of the Mayor.

On the other hand, isn't it good that people with less money can still get a good education?
I guess it's up to every person to decide what to think.  But here in Denmark, university is paid through taxes.  :D

The same thing could be accomplished with tax breaks for donations to universities, for the purpose of providing scholarships (or need-based financial aid) for students with less money.  This is how it works at the private uni I attended for undergrad; I certainly couldn't have afforded to otherwise.  In fact, they'd probably give out more money if their donors didn't have to pay taxes for state schools, too.

 
By not overwriting the foreign language strings, does this mean the original text is left in place to confuse us (with only the names of the scholarships changed)? Would overwriting the strings bork anything/ increase the size of the mod?

No, it just means that the original names of the scholarships are there and unchanged in all languages and the new scholarships are only in English, so if someone played in Spanish, they'd see the old scholarship stuff in Spanish and the new stuff in English.

Bah! Awesome! I do not understand teh SimPE, thanks for the explanation.