More Awesome Than You!

So, I am preparing to install AL in the coming week, and as I have a custom hood where everyone has to be customized and have a certain function, I have a couple of questions about landlords.
1. Are they the same type of NPC:s as the fast food cook/tour guide, or more like the postman? Can you interact with them (besides the landlord/tenant interactions), marry them ect?
2. I read somewhere that the game spawns 3 landlords. Do you get a random landlord for your housing? Can one landlord have the responsibility for many houses?
All other info you have about them also interests me.

There seem to be three landlords in each neighbourhood, when you play an apartment lot for the first time one of them will be allocated to that lot and come and have your sim sign the lease. The landlord comes to the lot each day after that. Landlords can be male or female, adults or elders. They do some autonomous tasks in the common areas of the lot such as gardening.

Your sims can initially only perform very limited interactions such as talk to the landlord, they are similar to the maids in that respect. Just as with maids, after you build relationship points more interactions become available. If your sim becomes friends with a landlord, they will ask you if you want to hang out with them, and at that point all the normal interactions become available.

If an appliance breaks or there are roaches on the lot, you can have a sim call the landlord to report the problem and they come over immediately.

Each landlord definitely appears at more than one apartment lot. I believe that you can move or marry them in but in that case I assume that they would be like the other NPCs and lose their 'job' as landlord.

I'd like for the landlord/lady to stop using playables trash compactor.  He/she just barges in and uses the compactor all the time.  If the compactor is blocked he dumps the trash on the floor and leaves it for my sim to clean up.  :o

Yes, I have noticed that too.

Oddly enough, on one of my own apartment lots I have two landlords. There are four apartments and two different landlords show up for different tenants.

That's odd because I have seen two different landlords in one neighborhood but I seem to see the lady landlord at more apartments than the male.  He must only be landlord of only one apartment lot, that's all I have seen him

I would be interested in an option to PICK the landlord.

Yes, from any existing sims.  And when the landlord is appointed, he gets the money.  That is a priority for me to hack.  I want my Inge and Peter Jones filthy rich (without using motherlode) before Sims 3 is out.

Oooh. Good priority :D *Gives Inge some apple cake with vanilla cream for the tea.

There is one bug with the landlord. In the beginning, they come in early everyday and leave when all is well. But after the weekend party that they autonomously throw (a pizza gets delivered), they do not leave ever after. They just pace back and forth in the common area. My sim does not have option to "say goodbye". "Shoo" is there and only gets them out of the door, they then keep pacing out there.

I would LOVE to have a "real" landlord that actually pocket all the rents.  With current available mods, I'm thinking to "Sim Copy" (Christainlov's) the landlord with a playable sim, and familyfund the "real" landlord every time rent is paid.  When I play the "real" landlord, I'll have him/her go to work as landlord using a custom career.

I don't have the problem with my landlord anyway.  Yes he hang about for a long time if I let him stay, or after the party, but he behaves sociably and leaves when it gets to about 2am (if he's not having too much fun being smooched over by Julien Cooke)

What happens if you delete the landlord using "moveobjects", or force an error on him?  Would that break something or would he just reappear and start pacing again?

Also, I just want to express support for Inge's work as well - having a "real" landlord (i.e. not an assigned NPC) would be great.  I shall watch progress with interest, and look forward to Inge's ultimate success.

I especially like that the landlord is so helpful with the garden in the backyard. Keeping up with the garden can be a pain, especially for single moms. I dont like that he insists on wearing his silly modern clothes, despite me giving him a new time appropriate wardrobe with Christianlovs rack. But picking another playable as landlord would be the best solution.

I believe I read over on Simbology that deleting the landlord breaks him/her, and the landlord never shows up again on that lot until it's completely empty and reset.

Yay. My first thought with AL was that I wanted a sim who would purchase apartment lots, then rake in the rent. Totally doable with your pending shiny and Monique's comp to donate the cost.

I think I have sorted out how it has to be done now.  The only thing is I don't think it's a good idea to change the geezer who actually comes round to do the maintenance, think of him as staff from a letting agency.  But I am pretty sure I can get a situation where you can make any playable sim be landlord, including parting with the money to purchase the lot.  Also I might be able to get this working for hotels too.

Squee! So is the plan to have the rent money that gets dropped in the box go directly to the sim who owns the lot? I would love having that in my game! :D

Ownable apartments AND ownable hotels.. *Faints

I forced an error on him to get rid of him. But the other day he was  back on the lot to check on his apartments. Nothing broke.

But what I want to know is, how I can get rid of lot visitors and the landlord when there are in my apartment? I have no goodby options for this NPC/townis.

The Hammer and Sickle features "make bugger off", does that work?

Smite certainly works. Try smite.

Smite only works if they're outdoors.  Doesn't help to get them out of your apartment.

Now stompe me in the ground, but I have no clue what you talking about. ??? I looked through the hackdirectory, but couldn't find anything with hammer and sickle :'(

Please point me in the right direction.

Business Runs You looks like a Hammer and Sickle wall sculpture. I will refrain from pointing, however. I can't do EVERYTHING.

Thank you, I found a hack, who silently caused a conflict. It was not just to get rid of the landlord, it was for every lotvisitor. I had no good by or ask to leave option in my pie menus. Now where i can get rid of my neigborghs, I can use just APO to cut the landlord out of my apartment.

WANT! *drool*

Um, anyone else have the problem of the landlord picking up the old newspaper to dispose of it, then dropping it, then picking it up, then dropping it, over and over again? I use move objects on to delete it so he stops. It seems to be the only way he will.

Nah, my landlord cleans up the old newspapers just fine. Sounds like some kind of hack conflict to me...

I think that can be related to having a compost bin. It sometimes happens with the All-In-One maids, if you for example have hid the garbage bin to make them go to the compost bin. There was a hack for this, but I don't think it works 100 % anymore.

My landlord stayed for five days! Once I put in your Apartment Controller, he paced not in the lobby any more, but IN my sim's apartment. When got "shoo"ed, he just paced in the bathroom even when the bathroom door is marked "locked to all sims", or stayed in the apartment when the bathroom door was removed. Anyway, I finally made him selectable, and found he was all green. I slided his energy and a few other things to red, and he left after a while. He returned as normal the next day, and came and went just fine ever since, inlcuding after pizza parties.

I was planning to use Pescado's money orders as a way of transmitting the money to the lot owner, once a day.  Can anyone think of a reason this would not be a good idea?  I think it's good to not have too many different forms of currency in the game.

I would love to have ownable hotels and apartments!   ;D

One question, though:  Who would the tennants need to befriend in order to get cheaper rent in the apt?  The "real" landowner, or the "geezer"?

Ah...  I suppose the way I was planning it, it would have to be the geezah.  I was just going to let the normal process decide the rents and then they would be passed on to the owner.  On the other hand, there are two other options.  One is that the token does have a space for the rent to be set arbitrarily.  The other is that if the agent decides to let you off some rent, he has to make up the shortfall himself so the owner continues to get full rent.

Edit:  Actually the money orders are not gonna work after all.  I wanted something that stays in the recipient Sim's inventory rather than becoming part of the household funds.  And that will be useful when I make my hack for sims keeping their own earnings.

Later still:  No it has to be just me being thick - there must be *some* way of cashing these things?

Help!!! I suddenly found out how it's done and my sim has become a millionnaire.  I thought it wasn't working because he didn'#t get the money, then he got another money order out of the Buy catalogue and suddenly it all came rushing into his funds!!   Is this intuitive?  Hmm?  Anyway it's good enough :)

Ok well all my RTBNs are behaving themselves for a change, now I just have to link this up to the mailbox for rent collection.

Hehe, I can help - send the millions to some of my poor sims :P

I love the idea of playable landlords! My only question: would they have to actually own the lot in question, or could we just assign a sim to be the landlord/"lot owner"? Either way, a good idea. With what the rents are in AL, I would expect most playable landlords to be millionaires!

At first, the Lot Owner (who gets the income) will be seperate from the Landlord NPC, who we should think of as the letting agent.  Later I might be able to add an option to make the Lot Owner also do his own maintenance work and rent collection, but that bit is slightly more tricky.

I also have that problem with the landlord just hanging out for days in the common area, usually ignoring his daily tasks. I have the ControlThisSim hack by Dolphin (I'm sure it's not updated, but it hasn't caused any problems for me), so when I notice that there's stuff he should be doing, I make him selectable and make him do his job. When he finishes, I stop controlling him and he usually goes home. He then works properly for a few days before I have to start the whole process over again. If there isn't anything he should be doing, I just ignore him and let him play chess all night in the rain, alone.

Btw, I'm really looking forward to your new shiny, Inge. I'm gonna go search for this "apartment controller", since it seems to do what I want, with the extra bonus of being current and awesome.

Progress report...
Good: The rent from apartments is now going to the nominated lot owner.
Not so good:  The unplayables can't see the contents of their apartments (which I sort of knew anyway) but it means they are paying a pitiful rent as if for a completely unfurnished place :(

Back to the drawing board!

Will it be possible to nominate any playable sim, even if they live on the premises? I can see a scenario with a "houseowner" who lives in a part of the house and lives on the rent from the other apartments?

Yes - currently any sim you can get onto the lot (teleport etc) and make selectable for as long as it takes to make him lot owner.  At this stage the option makes the currently selected sim the owner.   I could add an all-family picker, but it didn't seem a priority at this stage :)

In my main test lot, one of the playable sims who is renting an apartment is also the lot owner.  It's a remote owner I have not yet tested :D

I think I will make it that the person becoming the owner actually has to pay the value of the lot.  It seems more realistic that way.  Anyone think this is not a good idea?

Rent does not include any furniture in the place anyway. The cost of an apartment rental is unchanged whether you furnish it or not, the calculation used to determine rent bases it purely on squareage. This is apparent when you build an apartment building, check its rent cost, move out, furnish, recheck rent costs, no change.

I think that is an excellent idea Inge! More realism :D

Well... if furniture is not included in rent, then something else is wrong, since my playable sim is paying $160 and my nonplayable tenants are paying only $20 for the same sized rooms.  I am going to have to implement the original idea which is that the owner sets a rent himself and the calculated rent is ignored.  Either that or I will have to advise my land owners not to waste money furnishing the place as they will never get their investment back.

That would be fantastic, actually. Dumb game won't let you get crappy high-priced slumlord apartments.

I can think of one exception, that the landlord does not have all the money for the building but can take out a loan (read: mortgage). I'm thinking of Monique's auto payment to repay the loan.

Talking about the furnishing, is there a way to rent a furnished apartment. The current business model is so limiting. Autonomous calculation that includes all the furnitures would be so nice.

I can't wait for this mod! It will work great for a period neighborhood. I also like that the landlord can live on the lot. I have this vision of old houses split into apartments with some doddering old lady in the downstairs apartment as the landlady.

I actually prefer that the landlord has to buy the lot. Its more realistic. Also, is there someway the landlord can be charged a maintenance fee or something for maintaining the building? Of course, I could always do that through other hacks. :)

Thank!

The initial test version is up now, but missing a few features I am planning to add.  I think I would advise at this early stage that people use a test hood, and remove all the included files from their Downloads before opening their serious hood.  I don't want broken tokens littering an otherwise nice area :)

Edit:  Ok as I don't get time to play much as I am always hacking the code instead, can someone let me know the range of apartment rental prices they have seen?  Also the range of Hotel room prices per night?  Max, min and typical please.

Cheapest apartments I've seen are around 200 simolions per week, and that's for a tiny place with no bathroom (just a small kitchen; I think the whole place was an 4/12 rectangle) and the most expensive rent I've seen was about 3000.  However, it would be easy to make rent a lot more than that by just making the place huge.  Also, I guess the cheapest rent would be for a tiny room with only room for one single bed an nothing else.   :D

Rent isn't just based on apratment size, since 4 apartments of the exact same size (in my expirence) alsways have small varriations in rent.  It seems to me that more expensive floors/walls come into play, since I don't paint them all exactly the same.  I don't know about windows/doors though.  Supposedly, the kitchen and bathroom pieces that come with the apartment also factor in, but I really don't know if this is true.  I've also read that if you have boolprop testingcheatsenabled true active and shift-click on an apartment door you will have the option to "rent furnashed" and supposedly this is exactly the same price as renting the same apartment empty.

As far as hotels go, they are stupidly expensive in my expirence.  I think about 400 per night for a tiny room is about the cheapest I've seen.  Highest was around 2000 I think?  My sims usually just go camping!

I'm sure someone else will have better numbers.  I really havn't played many vacations since they are generally very annoying (Hotel maids not cleaning, dirty dishes remaining on the lot even after the family goes back home...I find I have to re-do the whole vacation hood before it is even playable).

Well that gives me an idea of the range, thank you :)

I definitely agree on the silly expensive hotels. Its hard to play a medieval guesthouse in the mountains, priced 1000 simoleons/night, or a Gypsy Travellers Camp for that kind of prices. A possibility to have really low prices would be excellent (100-200 a night would be so much better).
Over all, total freedom in setting the prices would be best. I mean, that way you can always take in the counting what tenants you want, what they can pay, and how fast you want your house owner to get richer.

Well I really wanted to just offer a range of about 10 prices so they all fit on one menu without going "more".  I *could* use my option from the whatever-I-made ages ago that lets you just keep clicking "more" till you get a totally custom-chosen rent.

Inge, use the option that is easiest for you - a range of 10, starting with a really low one, maybe 100-200, that would be fine for me :D

The change I made today allows - nightly - 1,10,20,50,100,200,500,1000,2000,5000,10000.  This covers hotels too, you see.  The amount would be multiplied by 7 for the weekly apartment rent payment.  So you could have a $1 a night youth hostel, up to a $70,000 a week apartment.   Now if you have the lot owner resident in an apartment on his own lot with even just one other apartment to let, he can have a very nice serviced home and an amazing income :)   Just make sure all the other tenants are unplayables - a playable family would go broke very fast indeed.

Or is that top rate just too ridiculous and I should remove it to make room for another more average one?

I think the range is good. I mean, there COULD be a palace to rent, for those super socialites, couldn't it? And 1 § a night is a very good rate for those gypsy wagons and the likes. I like it. :)

A palace... that's given me an idea.  How about a manor on a large lot, with the playable family in it, then a lodge, and a couple of apartments in the converted stable block?  The grounds could remain open of course, to the public.   Use my auto-teleporter to get visitors to the grounds.  Since the OFB businesses don't work on apartment lots, we'll just have to revert to the pre-ofb ways of running businesses!  (Get the paytoilets and a paybuffet for the tea rooms)

I am thinking of something similar - the owner living in the main building, two wings to rent out to better off people, maybe relatives, maybe some smaller apartments for the poorer people..
yes we have to be creative to make the "businesses" to work now. I can't wait to play my downtown area.

So we'd be able to set the rent for each apartment or hotel room separately?  lol  I guess that would make sense.  I love the idea of having one big "landowner" manor where the owner lives and 3 or so smaller houses/shacks for the peasants.  You could invite the peasants over and influence them to clean, cook, garden, repair ect.  And then have them babysit for free to boot!   ;D


And cheap as dirt rent for gyspy waggons would be great, since how realisitic is it for them to pay anything at all?  lol  But the way I set up a gypsy camp, I like the apartment format so 4 playable families can share the common areas together.

I personally find the non-playable single adult/elder sims boring as hell, so the way I'd play would likely be all playables in an apartmrny complex anyway.

This has attracted a lot of interest, but only 8 people have been brave enough to download it so far.  Anyone else gonna lay their lives on the line and help with the testing?

Inge, I am home tonight and will start a special hood to test it in. Will be back with a report later tonight :)

I made a test neighborhood but spent too much time making my apartment building. Unfortunately, I will be away for the weekend. I will download it today and try it out for a bit though.

Inge, for the prices, it would be good if we have more choices in the lower range. Afterall, the tenants will mostly be playables and I want the rent to be challenging but not impossible. I think one click of "more" wouldn't be too much trouble. Or is it possible to have sub-menus? For example, 10 incrementals under "1-100", 100 incrementals under "100-1000", etc.?

Yes, but have you taken account of the fact that the typical sim job pays at least §120 a *day*, and usually humans spend about one third to one half of their entire income on housing costs?

I just want to chime in and say I'd love to have choices in the 1k-5k range mostly. I want to try to balance out the sims' ridiculously high paychecks with more expensive apartments. :)

My first custom apartment building is quite wee. No room for much of anything, which is how it should be in an urban setting. But the tiny apartments result in rents around 300, which is okay I suppose for the trashy areas, but not for the really nice spots!

Going back to the original comments on pacing landlords - I found the easiest fix was to make selectable which seems to trigger a 'Leave' action and they head for the door. I then immediately set them back to unselectable and they depart ok and return to their landlordly duties next day. Force error didn't work, it just sets them back in the same pacing loop. The problem seems to occur a lot once they become friends with your sim(s) and hangout after work; it's usually their actual apartment he gets stuck in.

OK, assume it's simply a function of being me - but I cannot find reference to where to download this so I can test it. Please point me in the right direction so that I can apply my current lack of braincells to making this fall over in ways no intellegent person would.  ;D

Here:
http://simlogical.com/slforum/index.php?topic=1829.0 (http://simlogical.com/slforum/index.php?topic=1829.0)

Thanks - off to apply lack of braincells to it  ;)

Thanks Madame Mim, I didn't dear asking for fear of being flayed (what with being a noob)  ::) I swear I went to Simlogical, but I fail at searching.

I've experienced this.  I either make my sim go outside to say goodbye to the landlord, or moveobjects the landlord to outside... then he/she wanders off as usual.