More Awesome Than You!

Pescado, would you please consider expanding/enhancing "harder jobs"? I just had a teen get a job in oceanography (her first job ever). She worked less than one hour before being promoted to the top of the teen career track. That is just absurd.

Is there a way to add another check requiring a minimum of three full work days at any level before becoming eligible for promotion? If it's feasible, I'd also add an additional day for each career level above five.

That way no sim would ever reach the top of their careers unless you turned aging off?

What would be really good is if the higher up the ladder you got the fewer vacancies there were at that level so you were actually competing against other sims in the hood.  So only one in each hood could be right at the top, only 2 at the next level down etc

And/or how about if you always had to be good friends with someone in the same career at a level above you in order to get promoted?  Then for the jump between 2nd highest level and highest that's when the really tough bit happens - you have to be platinum asp, full green mood, fully skilled at everything etc.

Harderjobs already does something like this -- there are certain jobs (mayor, captain hero, maybe others) where there can only be one in the hood at a time. I believe Pesc said he did this for any job where it doesn't make sense that there would be more than one at a time.

Croiduire, I have to agree with you, but I don't know about the three-day thing.  Maybe one full day?  What's bothering me more than anything else is age problems.  Perhaps some kind of age check could be added?  So that they couldn't be promoted beyond a certain level that makes sense for their age.  That is, if such checks can be made in terms of sim-days old, rather than just the broader age stages. 

For example, I have a girl straight out of college, adult, and supposed to be about 24 years/sim-days old and in the medical career, and I've got her as an intern or resident, which makes sense, but I can't keep her from being promoted and have to keep knocking her down a couple levels.  I really can't see her being a surgeon or whatever until she's at least in her 30s, you know?  I have another guy straight out of college in the law career and he's gotten up to Entertainment Attorney in just a couple days.  He'll probably be promoted again soon. 

Otherwise though, I'm happy with everything else harderjobs is doing.     

The teen career only has 3 levels.  If your sim is in private school when they find the job (whether from paper or computer) they will start at level 2, which is one promotion away from the top of the career track.  If she did less than one hour's work, it sounds like you answered a chance card and got a promotion from that.

If you want your teens to start teen careers at level 1, then don't put them into private school until after they have a job.  Also, don't answer the chance cards, because there's a chance they'll get promoted from that even if they don't have the skills/friends required.  Another way you could make it harder is to only look for your teen's chosen career in the paper, rather than on the computer.  With only 3 jobs per day in the paper, and with all the careers now available for teens (assuming you have both Seasons + FT), your sim may have to wait a while before finding the job they want (or that you want to give them).

At the moment (since BV through to FT) Original Harder jobs don't work as advertised anyway. Every sim who was waiting to become a Mayor got promoted straight away after installing BV. And more keep getting promoted.
I admit it might be due to the fact that I am using Inteenimated Pets0jobfixes.
Did anybody notice that without Inteen?

harderjobs works as advertised without inteen.


(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/cats/dead.jpg)

I do play with extended lifespans, proportionate to pregnancy (and uni, for that matter) so that a day is 3 months. However, as far as never reaching the top of the career ladder, who cares? I do everything I can to prevent permaplat as it is, and frankly how many people actually get to the top in ANY career? I'd much rather see "started as a file clerk, promoted to secretary, then personal assistant, and retired as an office manager" or "started as a general construction worker, retired as a foreman" than the whole architect/lawyer/business tycoon nonsense. I just don't know how to make it happen.

Croiduire, you could pick one of the skills they need for their career and not train it up beyond a certain point, or train it very slowly - say a skill point every 3 or 4 days AND only when they need it for a promotion (so those promotions where you need 2 more skill points in a particular skill than the previous level could take 8 days).  This is in your control, so you don't need harder jobs modified to tailor this aspect of the game to your playing style with its extended lifespans.

I was getting my teens to go for all the skills scholarships, plus the pool, abduction, dance & job scholarships, but then I asked myself what's the point?  Yes it's for cash to go to uni with, but then I realised that no20khandouts had no point in my game because all my sims were graduating with more than that due to the scholarships they started with, and all the skillpoints they had made promotion too easy.

Oh, for a game of this type that had meaningful opportunity costs built in. That way my Strategy Gamer self (which says: get all the teens all the scholarships, try to make everyone achieve at least one LTW, etc, etc) wouldn't be in conflict with the side of me that's disappointed when everyone ends up the same.

I would really like some dead-end careers, where it does not make much difference whether you reach the top level because you still aren't much better off than before, but my search for custom careers like that wasn't very successful so far. If you play with your sims for a very long time it is not always easy (or fun) to keep them from acquiring skills, so that they don't get promoted. I have two sims in the politics career and every creative activity is forbidden to them. 

I only purposely allow my sims to skill if they roll a want to either 1) Gain a skill point, or 2) Reach a certain skill level. Otherwise no directed skillling allowed.

Even harder harderjobs seems like an overkill solution to me as well.

I also tend now to play in such a way that all of a sim's self-improvement activities need a want before they can be started. Sometimes, just for the lulz I'll make them complete the want regardless of the consequences. A silly sim wanting a promotion and a skill point (needed for for the promotion) roll up an hour before work begins will be made to fulfill that want, before going into work, late, pants-wettingly desperate and falling down eye-bleary. That'll teach the silly pixel-piles to have dreams.

Besides, as it is far to easy for sims to get a job anyway I have a ploy to ensure they live like most of the human race by doing a job they would hate if sims had the ability to be so emotional. When job hunting, I pick a random number and then force the sim to take the 'modulo' 3 or 4 of that random number to choose which of the 3 or 4 available jobs the sim will take.

Since FT added new chance cards, the odds of getting fired seem reduced and this is retrograde step. But with an evil imagination is is not difficult to keep them in a condition of perpetual uncertainty.

Oh yes, I always allow them to quit job or stay home from work when those wants appear.

Finally with debug mode always on, I have a few final punishments to administer. Burning food is punished with the loss of a cooking point. If the msoke alarm goes off I take away 2 points or one third whichever is more. Lazy bastards who pig out and get fat lose all body points. Idiots who clog toilets and break stuff lose mechanical points. Being stupid enough to get electrocuted can lose them all points in mech, cleaning and body. Getting slapped by a neighbour result in decimation of charisma, and if I catch them getting caught at cheating I decimate their logic skills. I don't really need harderjobs, but being an idle bitch, it's simpler to install the whole DC.

Of course I sometimes worry that my casual interference in their works with my debugger's elan is a recipe for a BFBVFS ... but what the hey.

ARRing this for my game.

LOL, this is brilliant!  I am absolutely going to steal this idea.

hoo yah - yes, there's a nice set of ideas. 

I'd like dead end jobs too.  I made a cleaner career for Mama Hick which involves lots of bad pay and cleaning toilets.  I only made the upper levels of the career because I thought about her escaping my little scheme and getting promoted to something higher up in the Slacker Career (that's the template I used).  I had no iintention of promoting her above level 3 but you know what they're like.  I cut the pay drastically at the top but if she ever does make it to level 10, she will be Head of Hygiene Services in Little Carping.  But, then again, there's a wild card in there which will catch her with her fingers in the budget and she'll get demoted to cleaning the public lavatories again.  Her clone is the maid in Little Carping.  I have nothing against cleaners BTW - I mean, someone has to do it and I'm grateful.  It was written with Mama Hick in mind who lives in a caravan (trailer) and whose twin daughters fight every day after school.  I didn't know children could fight in the game till I had those two.  I digress.  I quite enjoyed writing the career though they are a s** to do - 10 levels with four options for the chance cards for each level.  Even with the SimPE career editor, they take ages to do.

There is actually a field to define how many levels you want in an individual career, but EA in their usual shortcutty kludgey way decided to hardcode it in some places and use it as a test in others for whether the career is a human or pet career!  So it's pretty useless.

I've been playing since the game came out and I've never seen either of these wants! Is there some prerequisite for them appearing, like the sim has to be in a foul mood or really lazy or something similar?

I love your punishment ideas by the way, I might have to see how implementing a few of them in my game as well.

Someone with influence should ask Pescado for a punishment hack.  ;)

My fortune Sims often roll the want to quit their jobs after they fulfill the want to sell a great novel or sell a masterpiece. I've seen the "Stay Home From Work" want a couple of times with my Knowledge Sims if they lose a skill point or something equally traumatizing. I'm sure the wants come up at other times as well but those are the times that I can remember seeing them.

Failing a chance card can also trigger the want to stay home from work, whether it's demotion or loss of skills.

Well I've never been able to get a single sim to paint a masterpiece (even after trying time and time again with a sim with full creativity) so that's probably not helping. The chance cards happen all the time though, just yesterday a sim lost 3 logic points from one of them but still didn't get any quite job or stay home from work wants. I guess I'll just have to keep trying.

My pleasure sims also roll the stay home wants occasionally, not related to anything sometimes it seems.

NO guarantees, but I think the value of the painting or novel is based on the mood of the sim during the painting or writing. Or, more likely, when finishing the painting or novel. I haven't sold a masterpiece, but I finished a novel with a sim in platinum yesterday and fulfilled his want to sell a great novel. My strategy? Immediately before writing, he goes on a date with his wife. He rolls the usual date wants and occasionally fills hers, until he rolls the "have a dream date" want and fills the date meter. End the date, instant platinum. You don't even have to leave the house, except to reroll lame wants.

Warning: this is with Uni+NL only. I have yet to clean out space on my hard drive and install any other expansions.

I've noticed that with FT, it's almost impossible to get the Masterpiece want fulfilled now. I've had several Great Novels, but even Sims with high Arts & Crafts and maxed Creativity are having trouble selling good paintings: they're rarely over $100. Which makes it easier to have a starving artist, anyway, I suppose :P

As for dead-end careers, the only one I know of is this one (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=154035).

The other dead end jobs are as employees in owned businesses.  I don't think they get paid properly even with Pescado's fixes though I wouldn't swear to that.  I had one manager who got paid 0$ for 9-5 Mon-Fri.  Employ mama Hick in a restaurant somewhere.

I don't know that you can blame that on FT. My sims are still getting the usual amounts for their paintings.

And it would also make it more likely that they could then complain about how they're not appreciated for their artistic vision (i.e. the real NEED in society for horrible clown paintings).

Unfortunately, while FT seems (don't know if it's only my perception or if it's a real difference) to have decreased the proportion of paintings that achieve masterpiece grade, my experienced painter sims still seem to sell a number of masterpieces and get their wants fulfilled regularly.  Your experience may just be a sadorandom artifact, as suggested by Stitches.

Aren't masterpieces restricted to still life and portrait paintings, anyways?

No, I don't think so.  A masterpiece can be anything at all and depends on creativity skills and painting experience, as far as I know.

Sadorandom, or the ever popular "hack conflict."

I agree with Jolrei. I've had normal junk paintings sell as masterpieces (pre- FT anyway).


The mood of the painter is critical.  I don't get masterpieces unless their mood is platinum.  I thought that stop/starting the painting also reduced its value, so a masterpiece has to be painted all at once or maybe in 2 sessions.  I'd love to know if that is true?  Again I haven't got Freetime installed yet and I wonder whether how new Lifetime mood affects the Masterpiece code.

From what I've seen in my game, I don't think novels and paintings have the same set of rules.  Does anyone know for sure?  I'd have said that creativity skill has to be 10 for a masterpiece, but not a great novel.  Is it possible to get a masterpiece from a lower skilled sim?  As to experience, I've noticed that it matters with novels - I'm not convinced it makes much/any difference to paintings.

Well, in a way that's good to know. I am having another issue with the EAxis easel, as it happens - it didn't occur to me that they might be related. Oh, bugger, time to do the Dance of the Booleans again.

I've never been able to get a sim to fulfil the great novel want before I installed FT. Just yesterday though one of my sims finished a novel, she had 3 creativity when she started writing and maybe 7 points when she finished and the novel fulfilled her great novel want and gave her the memory so you definitely don't need full creativity or even a good mood to fulfil that want. (She was pregnant when she was writing so definitely not in a great mood most of the time!)

I did hear before FT that a sims had to have 10 creativity to even have a chance of fulfilling the paint a masterpiece want, but like I said, I never managed it.

For a Masterpiece, the Sim has to have a 10 in creativity already when starting the painting. They also have to have completed a number of paintings before the masterpiece. In other words, if they have gained creativity with the piano or by some other means, it may take a while before they generate a Masterpiece. My Sims have never had to be in Platinum to fulfill the want. Also, not every painting completed after 10 creativity will be a masterpiece, so there is a bit of sadorandomness involved.

Creativity should be maxed, definitely, but I think there's also a hidden 'Painting' skill, which has to get to a certain point before you can sell masterpieces. Even then it seems a bit (sado)random. Any painting that can be sold for over $500 is a masterpiece, no matter how it was painted.

So we definitely agree the rules for masterpieces are different from those for novels.

Do we think the calculation of painting/novel value is a function of the number painted?  It's clearly not the only factor for paintings, but if the other factors only adjust this base price by a small margin then your sims will tend to paint all masterpieces after a while.

I'm not convinced that stop/starting paintings doesn't reduces the value.  I'm sure I read that somewhere a long time ago, but probably not anywhere awesome.  It's certainly plausible from what I've seen in my game.  I'd have sworn mood was a factor for painting too.

I really don't think I can be bothered to track paintings and novels in game to test it out though!

It SHOULD be! If you write a crappy beginning to a novel, get less suck, and realize you wrote crap at the beginning, you can just reedit it before you ever send it off. Once something is PAINTED, though, it's etched in STONE, barring copious use of turpentine.

Aren't some masterpieces painted over the top of other pictures?  Working artists certainly used to edit bits of their paintings for important things like adding the face of their new patron.

It is difficult, though not impossible, to resurrect a crappy painting. It is, however, extremely unlikely it will be anything above mediocre when you do so. Most often the best option is to re-prime it & start again, else it's wiser to just grab a new board or canvas & start from the ground up.

Every painting that sells for 500§ or more counts as a masterpiece.

I have a bonsai that shows hidden skills, and it shows how the skills for writing and painting increases after creativity has reached level 10.

I do think mood affects the price of a finished painting, but I think the number painted is a bigger factor.  That might largely be because sims with low needs won't keep painting.  I had an unfortunate romance servo in perpetual reddish asp, who painted whenever he wasn't cleaning, gardening, or nannying.  By the time his youngest charge left the family manse, every painting sold for $700 or more.

Ask Gwill.  I seem to recall she had a servo who had painted hundreds of masterpieces.

Oooo, where'd you get that?  The status screen that shows hidden skills is one of the things I miss about Insim.

Bonsai of Wisdom (http://hideki.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=208176) from MTS2.

   Value of paintings doesn't seem to correlate to numbers of paintings painted.  I just had a child who maxed his creativity as a toddler, his first painting sold for over $500.  It is true tho, that the more paintings a sim does, the higher the price goes (the price will fluctuate up and down, but it consistently goes up).

Did the toddler max creativity on the xylophone, or by drawing on the activity table? The latter could conceivably count towards 'paintings painted', though I wouldn't have thought it would. That's too logical. ::)

   I don't have FT, so i have no idea how the activity table affects things.  Toddler maxed using the xylophone (which is so easily done now, double smart-milk effect, Autumn (Seasons) boost and Adventurer/Journalism reward in toddler room), maxing 2 skills as a toddler is feasible.

It's the same for me, but without the Journalism/Adventurer reward. Several children painted masterpieces, so now I remove the smart milk effect as soon as my toddlers grow up. MOAR PAIN is good, this game is just too easy otherwise. Also, I've the regular habit of starting/stopping the painting, gaining creativity via different objects, etc. My vampire maxed on the piano, painted three full paintings (start/stop) and got a masterpiece (green mood, green Asp).

Mood might be a factor, all my sims have also been in green mood or better. But as far as Aspiration is concerned, I have had some teens of the full-skills variety achieve masterpieces in red. Then again, it might just be my game. After the masterpiece is painted, though, it does seem to take some time to get another one.

This:
 

Is the opposite of this:


Also, I've heard that paintings are one of the few objects in the game that appreciate over time.  Is this true?  How long does it take?

They appreciate a little over time. It's not worth it for non-masterpieces. When a sim dies, they appreciate greatly. I haven't looked at the numbers...generally, if I'm keeping a painting around, it's because it's a "portrait" or an early house painting I want for history and the sim painting dimensions work for it..otherwise I'm doing recolors of existing art. Less chance of the old reverting-to-stupid-sunset-painting bug. Anyways, I have one in my farm lot that I know was about $100 in value when painted and the artist has been dead for about 15 sim days. I can check what it is now.

A couple of portraits in my Sims' house are worth a bit over §3800. The Sim who painted them has been dead for three generations now. Two grilled cheese paintings are worth about 1k less and the painter of them has been dead for about two Sim years.

How long do you mean with a "sim year"?

4 seasons.

That's a lot of simoleons!  Let me guess, the family doesn't need the money from selling it by now so the value is pretty irelevant except that their bills are nicely impressive!

.... what does it do for room score I wonder.....

The obvious answer is to move in a bunch of townies and have them paint, then off them.

I didn't get to check on Mystery's painting last night. I was playing the eldest, Oscar the Mayor's house, and saved on day 2 of a 5 day rotation. Only to have the game crash due to one of Aikea_guinea or Geyldh's meshes that I'd downloaded that night when I tried to buy adult female clothing for Bonnie, the eldest. It was on day 5, when all seven children grew up, after all the birthdays. I was pissed, but it's my fault for not saving before a birthday like I normally do. TJ's SimBlender to the rescue.

Well, in this case the paintings are portraits of previous generations so no one is allowed to cash them in. I have another hallway full of masterpieces that the family has painted in case of emergencies but they are indeed very well off so they are just wall clutter now. I don't think they do a whole lot for room score. I have them on the ground floor in the main hallway area and I can't seem to get the room score there above half. I don't know if it's the stairs, the elevator, or the amount of open space but the environment score just doesn't want to budge. I thought having the paintings there would help but the meter is still stuck at half. Maybe I should change the color and see if they like violent violet or something better. :P

Haha, if I ever manage to play through more than one generation of a household, I'll definitely have to get portraits of each generation.

But I get too attached to my CAS sims and never let them die or grow old.  I just had my first sim become an elder yesterday...since I bought the original Sims 2 game way back when...

And I only let that one age because it was a genetic experiment using plantsims.

It's not obvious to anyone but you! :D  But this idea is too good not to nick for my own 'hood. ;D


Did you get it from the booty?  Could you pleasepleaseplease go tell Hecubus which one it is?  I'm forever having crashing problems with their meshes.  Now that they've defected, Hecubus is going to try to figure out what the fuck was going on with TSR tagging and their meshes.

A while ago I tried to start a biz where half the time they paid via the ticket machine to paint, the other half of the time they were sold their own paintings. Didn't work, as apparently sim visitors will not autonomously paint. Bah.

I put all the new adult female stuff in a quarantine folder last night so I could get the kids back to where they were supposed to be and clothed, with Bonnie out in her full-service massage parlour home biz. It was maybe 12:30 when that was done. I'm going to do binary tonight. Someone else at PMBD grabbed all of their stuff and said it was one of Geyldh's flannel shirt meshes for adult females, but that one is working fine for me and the crash happened when I switched to adult female outfits, not separates.

Someone else over there reported a problem with the Metal Postcards mesh...  Could it be that one?