More Awesome Than You!

There are none, right? It's nothing?

I searched, okay? No one is saying anything about any such thing.

It's just more pegs for ocd-ers to compulsively fill, right? Just like the mementos and bug box.

If there are benefits, then I guess they are too subtle to even matter.

I'm so disappointed by this half-assery.

The sim's needs are supposed to freeze, I think.

My sim's needs go up, and not just fun.

This for sure does not happen...at least not all of them. Because if it did, they'd never need to stop hobbying, ever.

Hm.

My sims needs do not freeze.  Quite the opposite.  I have only had one or two sims in the zone ever, but they tend to disregard everything while their bladder and hunger bars decrease.  One stargazing sim had to be snapped out of it to go to the terlet at one point.  I have not found a particular purpose to being in the zone and do not bother anymore.  It only seems to be good for focusing them on their hobby for extended periods, which is not really anything I care about anyway.

If someone else has noted a more worthwhile reason than "decreased motive decay" it would be fun to hear about it, but excessive and obsessive hobbination does not really seem worth much to me (except perhaps to get the LTA points).

I just had a sim go into the Zone last night while trying to get his gold flower-making badge. His moods still dropped, even with the Zone glow. Honestly, it didn't seem to do anything at all, which was a huge disappointment.

When I was still trying to figure out the last elusive butterfly bug, I had a Bigfoot who would hunt bugs day and night in the Zone.  The only motive that decreased was hygiene, and that's directly related to the bug-hunting action itself.  He did not eat, he did not sleep, he didn't socialize.  The only thing he occasionally did was take a bubble bath to get his comfort up after being chased by bees.
This went on for nearly two whole generations of sims.

The zone does do something to motives.

I think I've had a sim in the Zone for just about every hobby now.

I do believe they've all had to stop to sleep and pee and eat and such. Perhaps it depends on the activities themselves or something. That would kinda explain why it's so hard to decipher wtf is going on, and no one can come to a consensus across the board.

Try using the latest lot debugger info to print motive report before/after zoning. It may or may not have a minor, non-perceptible effect.

I'd buy that explanation, but we need to disentangle the effects of the new motive decay aspiration rewards with the effects of being in the zone.  I've had sims in the zone where nothing seemed to decay apart from energy and others whose needs seemed to drop like a stone.  I suspect the difference is partly about the rewards those sims had chosen.  A family sim who chose all the rewards reducing motive decay v. a knowledge sim who picked knowledge and career rewards.

I had high hopes that sims in the zone were going to be able to craft more things before their needs tanked.  That hasn't worked wonderfully well for me so far, but maybe the answer is to choose crafters who have all the motive decay rewards instead.  Does the knowledge sim "learn faster" reward help them with badges as well as skills?

Of course it's always possible the zone has no effort or isn't working properly. 

Only good thing I've seen about a sim getting to the zone is that they pick up another lifetime asp point (for the first maxed hobby, at least).

For me, that's the only reason to do it.  I might also consider getting them in the zone and letting them go if I just wanted to "park" them for a while.  They could go make pottery in the zone and perhaps the pots could be sold for cash while I concentrate on some other sim's life.  I suppose it's a bit better than just power-idle for elder permaplat sims.

From reading the literature I understand the Zone is supposed to be a temporary activity-specific Platinum mood - they'll keep going regardless of motives until they're dying or whatever. This is unconfirmed rumor, mind, even if it is from the official literature.

Blech. Half my sims above teen are already perma-platted from their LTA (a lot of this is because they've been breeding like bunnies). I need to refind that hack that negates the permaplat effect.

The only sim I bother with getting to max enthusiasm on hobbies is Terrence Rowe, for the asp points. He gives out think caps to his progeny (23 direct descendents living and at least 3 on the way), and he's been permaplat for two generations now.

And a funny thing about those less-motive-decay things is...they often seem to do jack shit.

And I wonder if that's due to a lot of the new hobby activities draining energy and such like all get out. A lot of them also drain hygiene like hell, but at least that makes sense. Pottery and working on cars are dirty business.

I hate that going jogging drains energy so much though. Shouldn't the extra adrenaline and endorphins actually give them a bit of a boost?

The FT patch that was out for a bit and since withdrawn (due to EAxis idiot coders) fixed that bug.  It's not just jogging -- playing soccer or basketball would drain them to the brink too. If you haven't had any sims make custom clothing, you can use the patch -- there's links to it in various threads here. A quick search should turn one of those threads up in the last 30 days.

Yeah, I made custom clothes pretty early on.  ::)

I know that I can extract a clean skins.package from the cd and all, but I didn't know jogging was fixed along with the other sports activities. Good to know.

At least popularity, pleasure and romance sims get useful motive-decay bonuses. The benefits for family sims on the other hand are of so little value to me that I don't see why I should bother with benefit points for them. Before they get to the - interesting - energy motive benefit they have to reduce fun and social needs (which for several reasons I see as a disadvantage). Fun and social is NOT what a pregnant sim is lacking, why couldn't they get a hunger/energy benefit? Plead with social worker? - I've seen the social worker once soon after I started playing sims 2 and I didn't save then. More twins? - How original, not that there are a zillion ways to get twins already (and who wants twins all the time anyway?).

I think I will adopt my own benefit system and change them accordingly with SimEnhancer because I do see the difference, especially in winter when energy and hygiene drops incredibly fast. I am also beginning to wonder whether I should install the patch, didn't someone make it available here somewhere?

USDA Grade A BS. Energy decay in winter is the same as it is in every other season except Summer, for adults, -255 to -205 per day (depending on Activeness). Summer decay rate is -220 to -180 for adults. Hygiene is -300 to -100 (depending on Neatness) regardless of season. Oddly, these values mean that slobby sims are the ones that bathe a lot and neat sims are the ones that don't. Very counter-intuitive.

There are a lot of counter-intuitive bits in this game's setup, aren't there? Like building relationship points while talking - you'd think you'd "plus or minus" depending on what the other person said to you (as in, "Yes, I like what he's saying. Plus at that. No, I don't enjoy that topic. Minus his ass."). Instead, you get a plus or minus depending on whether the listener "accepts" your inane chatter. Backwards, really. And the 'argue' social is twisted all to hell. The one that really bothers me, though, is that as far as the game is concerned, "healthy" and "fattening" are the exact same thing. Somehow adding some homegrown tomatoes to your salad gives it a massive infusion of fitness-draining calories. Good thing I have noeatcrap; otherwise my sims would all be porking out over salad!

Strange. I see a massive energy/hygiene decay when they are outside in bad weather/snow.

Not so strange - the two statements are not mutually exclusive.  All things being equal (e.g. your sim is inside reading a book) energy/hygiene decay will be roughly the same in winter as in any other season.  If you dump your sim outside in the snow, you add a new consideration and all things are not equal.

My sims are still getting fat with noeatcrap, even the non-lazy ones. Although I suppose it depends where you draw the lazy line. The two I've had pork out were at 5 active.

I have lots of fat townies. :( I purposely make some of my playable sims fat but IMO it is far too easy to get them fit. Exceptions to this of course, are my Grilled Cheese porkers.

One fatty I have is a secondary grilled cheese (though he acts like a primary). Fine for him to get fat off of them. He was supposed to own Say Cheese!, which I built after rolling for the mayor to make a restaurant with him in mind, but then I rolled for him to fulfill his LTW, Be a Cult Leader. This works, too. Perhaps one of his cultists will run the restaurant.

The other one is a romance sim, the one who runs a full-service massage parlor and has twins with her sister's husband (who lives upstairs with the sister and their child + one on the way), not that any of the involved know the true parentage of the twins. Thank you, SimPE and Risky Woohoo.

None of my townies are fat yet. Of course, I haven't played any restaurants but once or twice.

It's the welcome wagons that make them fat! They come round at noon-of course my sim is hungry then, so I serve a meal. In every new household I make. Bingo! Fat townies! On the plus side though, one of my playables has just opened a gym :P

But this effect is mainly because there's no such thing as chronic disease in the sims.  That's really what 'unhealthy' means, not specifically fat, but prone to heart disease, diabetes, emphysema, etc.  Many of these are linked to being overweight of course, but in the sims there are absolutely no consequences to being fat.

Also, I've found that stocking the fridge with homegrown tomatoes doesn't make most foods over-filling if your sims have cheap prep, and cooking surfaces.  It's just that the differences between the cheapest vs. most expensive base game counters/appliances is so massive that fresh-fortified foods on the most expensive counters is completely over the top.  Lately, I've been having fun keeping my families dirt poor, and most of them eat one or two full servings a day of what a normal person would eat: a low food value breakfast like cereal, and a high value dinner like pork chops or fish.


This is only half-moronic, because neat sims logically should be able to maintain higher hygiene through their anal habits, like the way they eat, for example.  What's missing is stronger tolerance.  Sloppy sims should have a much higher tolerance for personal filth so that they'd walk around in a stink cloud for at least a day, before thinking of bathing. :D

I don't actually mind the high-calorie, sparkly dinners, but that's only because I have Dizzy's leftover array. Good cooks with expensive counters can make a plate of salmon that'll last for days, lol. It's actually quite convenient in terms of sim-management, because once I've served a sparkly meal, sims can spend the next week pulling leftovers out of the fridge for themselves without attempting Lobster Thermidor when they're only mildly peckish (that's the one thing about the game that's griped my ass the most from the very beginning). No, sparklies plus autonomous leftover-ing is a breeze. I just think it's silly that in an unmodded game a sim will lose significant Fitness while eating a sparkly salad. It's just not very sensible design.

My headmasters are always fat.  Hard to avoid really.

Yes, but all these are genetic conditions. Since sims don't have genetic conditions, they don't get messed up when you inbreed them, either.

Pescado, I'm surprised that you'd be so sloppy.  Those conditions certainly do have a genetic component, but the likelihood of suffering from them is undeniably modified by behaviour.  I'd be perfectly happy with a rudimentary facsimile of chronic disease in the game, wholly divorced from genetics, depending only on behaviour -- even recent behaviour would be preferable to the complete lack of negative consequences in the game right now.

Hmm, I also have Dizzy's leftover packages (from his Seasons anthology), and while I had great success with the "put away leftovers" one (though had to disable it for dorm lots, that got annoying fast), the "get a leftover" one never seems to kick in. My sims would be on the verge of starving to death when I'd have to direct them to eat something, they'd never try to make themselves a meal either, and since I have "no stuff face" installed too, they wouldn't do that as a last-ditch effor to save themselves either! Probably a conflict my hack scanner isn't picking up.

You don't happen to being a custom refrigerator, jennydee? Because many custom refrigerators were never updated for Seasons, and lack the "Get a Leftover' option.

No, I can manually direct my sims to get leftovers from the fridge, so I don't see why the mod can't call into that function as well.

And you have have-a-leftover1c-serve.package?

Sorry to sound condescending but I know how the hack shuffle is, especially when changing expansions.

Yes, I have havealeftover1c installed, and there are plenty of leftovers in the fridge. My sims just never seem to autonomously try to make themselves food at all anymore. I still suspect some hidden conflict with the nostuffface hack.

I have Inge's No Autonomy Fridge patch and I've never had any luck with Dizzy's Have A Leftover either. I wonder if there's a conflict there?

I don't have Inge's hack, but did have Monique's auto food-ordering hack installed. Trying the game now without it to see if that makes a difference. The hack conflict detector didn't see anything conflicting in those mods, but since my current sims have been harvesting their own food & haven't gotten an auto-ordered basket of groceries in a while, I figure I can try not having Monique's hack for a while anyway.

Better yet use Dizzy's work-deliver3-40-20.package.


Here for Seasons (http://www.nectere.net/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=4e5659d35589f1f2860e2144ab328a3e&topic=1140.0)

Does the food supply in the fridge have to be at least moderately low before this happens? Or is it a 40% chance every time the fridge is not completely full to the brim?

Because if it's the latter, well, that's a lot of groceries.

I'm not sure about the level that triggers it but I can tell you I altered the BHavs of that hack so they didn't do it so often.  It was often enough to annoy me.  Then again I have a very low tolerance for sims doing things without permission.

Just to report, disabling no-stuff-face seemed to do the trick and allow my sims to autonomously try to feed themselves, coming up with an action to Have a meal but actually pulling a leftover out of the fridge instead. Yays!

Dizzy's Have a Leftover modifies autonomous fridge behavior, so yes, there's a conflict. When sims autonomously try to make a meal, his mod makes them grab a leftover instead.

On the original topic of this thread...

Being in the zone seems to slow motive decay.  Just not by much.

Ran a test:  Max Motives, paint entire painting, screenshot.  Same sim, five times without zone, five times with.  Fresh sim with no LTA bonuses applied.

I layered the results in Photoshop to show any variation between individual rounds; there was little.

Results here: top zoned, bottom not.  http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm1/highstresslevel/thezonetestresults.jpg

These results appear inconclusive at best.  Difference is minimal, therefore likely not significant.  Can not reject null hypothesis of no apparent difference.  My view would be that the zone remains, by and large, useless.

Difference is minimal, but present.  I repeated the test, this time doing two paintings in a row, and pausing as soon as the "painting complete" dialog was displayed.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm1/highstresslevel/thezonetestresults2.jpg (Top zoned, bottom not.)

I did three runs of each zoned and non-zoned.  I layered the screenshots in Photoshop, setting all but the bottom layer to 25% opacity.   This shows that each motive dropped to the same point in each of the three runs, with the exception of environment, which was effected by day/night.  (Note the faint, secondary black line on the environment bars.)  Season was fall for each run, to avoid seasonal motive changes.

Being in the zone does slow motive drain, but again, its not by much. 

woot, data!

Sims being in the "zone" doesn't seem to be of any great benefit to make it worthwhile for me.

I find the sound so annoying with the constant repetition. I lower the hobby gains to stop it. Is there any hack/mod that puts a stop to that irritating sound? Would be so very gratefull to get one.

Jfade made two versions (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11263.0.html).

Thank you gynarchy! I take regular strolls through the Peasantry and I don't know how I could have missed it. This is going to save my sanity!

I'm noticing a lot less Zone motive decay post-patch?

There are days where I don't even realize it's suddenly 6 a.m. because no one ever needed putting to bed all night.

I haven't got the datas and things, but I trust myself.