More Awesome Than You!

Here's what I've found so far regarding Work Performance, on default values:

1. For each "performance metric", a sim receives a score ranging from -3 to +3. The average of these values is then divided by 3 to attain a value of and multipled by MaxPerfFlowPerHour or MinPerfFlowPerHour (if negative), which varies by job.
2. For being ambitious, a sim receives +2 work performance per hour.
3. For working hard, a sim receives +3 work performance per hour. The Athletic Career does not have this option.
4. For having the MultiTask perk, a sim receives +3 PPH.
5. For goofing off, a sim receives -1.5 PPH and gains +20 fun/hr. Negated by Professional Slacker perk.
6. For sleeping, a sim receives -3 PPH.
7. For "building independent case" (Law Enforcement), a sim receives -1 PPH.
8. Having the "Brave" trait(Military/Law Enforcement) or having the "Evil" trait(Criminal) gives +3 PPH.
9. The Schmoozer trait does not directly impact work performance, but doubles the effectiveness of sucking up (but not socializing).
A. "Workaholic" does not grant any direct bonus to performance, but allows you to boost performance out of work and reduces fun drain from working hard.

You will be promoted when your work performance passes 100. Note that using the "Practice Skill" tone has no known penalty.

NOTES:
1. Goofing off or sleeping has no effect on performance if you are there before your actual starting hours, but will still give fun/energy.
2. Working hard has no effect on performance if you arrive early, but will still drain fun.

MAX/MIN PERF FLOW PER HOUR BY JOB - Special Values Apply At Max Level

JOBNAME	MAX	MIN	MAX10	MIN10
Default	14	-8	8	-10	For Jobs Not Listed
Medical	13	-8	8	-10
Law Enforcement	13	-8	8	-10
Military	14	-8	6	-10
6-School	11	-6	NA	NA
12-School	8	-7.5	NA	NA

Armed with these numbers, you can pace yourself accordingly.

How does mood factor in?  Are there any modifiers for sending a Sim to work in a great/terrible mood?

You, my good sir, shalt receive a cookie.


But what is 'goofing off'? I haven't heard of it in my jobs. Only Slack Off. Is it the same?
<--- Clearly non-awesome.

Slack off, take it easy, hang out in lounge - those kind of things = goofing off ;)

Does "build independent case" actually do anything, then? I've been ignoring it so far.

After doing it for a while, you will either get a success or a failure.  I believe it's related to your logic skill, and I've never had a success so I can't tell you what you get, but I have failed twice and it it just a minor performance hit.  It might also hit you coworker relationships, not sure.


Mood is a "performance metric."  See point A.


Does building skills not have any effect on stress level?  I never noticed a performance decrease, but I thought it added more stress.

I assume Office Hero modifies work socializing in the same fashion that Schmoozer does.
Also, how quickly does performance decay while you are missing work?  And what the heck is up with the Vacationer reward, I have no idea how that work.  I have no option to call in, and if I just tell my sim not to go, I still get a performance hit for being missing.  How does this thing work?

Maybe it depends on the sim. I tried this on an athletic sim in the sports career; his performance still climbs while he's working out, and he gets free body points to boot ;D Haven't noticed him getting any more stressed, although he gets cranky if he hasn't exercised in a while, so it could even alleviate his stress. That's just him though, not sure how others handle it.

Yep, that'd be me failing at reading comprehension.  Somehow I just wasn't parsing it. 

Goof off is the various slacker choices. It goes by different names in many jobs, but it's the same deal. Having the Professional Slacker perk negates the penalty, but grants no bonus.

Ahh, alright.

Next I wonder about the Vacationer reward trait. It doesn't... seem to work.

Interesting, it seems the one or two notch drain in your mood metric that comes from working hard too long is not enough to counter the benefit of actually working too hard, especially if you pre-pad your fun bar before going to work.

I've had one success with it in the Science career track. He was awarded with a sizable boost in job performance. I don't have any hard numbers, but it was enough to max his job performance resulting in a promotion at the end of the day. He was probably a bit less than halfway through the performance bar at the time, but I'll admit that I don't watch it all that carefully.

Politics ("new course of action") had a similar effect.  The success popup may have said something about work relationships being strained, but I was too busy spending the bonus to notice the little people.

I have a couch potato in law enforcement. He is brave and has the multitasker perk. He always seemed to start experiencing fun drain and strain a couple hours before the end of the shift. It seemed that on Friday the drain started earlier and was more severe. I generally had him just do business as usual and occassionally switched to chat with partner if that icon was yellow.

When he took the split for Special Agent in his career, he needed body and of course a couch potato shouldn't like to work out. He however actually has fun on the thread mill. So, when he started getting strained at work, I had him work out there at the office. His fun went up and his strain went down. His work performance meter was maxed out at the end of the shift.

From what I've noticed with the vacationer trait, if you don't go to work you get a very minor performance hit, but you won't get fired even if you miss a week of work.  My sim with vacationer would only show up to work when he needed money or all of his performance smilies (skills, coworkers, etc) were maxed.  That's the only trait I bought.

I have a sim (Criminal career) with an athletic LTW.  I sent her off to the sports stadium to join the Professional Sports career, which she did.  She was informed that she would start Monday at 1500hrs.  As it was Friday, she did not have to report to work (or so the game said).  I sent her home. 

As she was biking home, the clock passed the hour and it was 1501hrs.  Her job performance meter immediately started to drop and the note on the Career tab said "...is missing work."  I clicked on the "Go to work" button, which then informed me that the sim was not due to start work until Monday, and would not allow the sim to go. 

The job meter continued to drop until 2100hrs (end of shift), when the game informed me that if she didn't shape up, she would likely be fired.  Since her job meter was about 60% in the red, I had her quit the job and figure she can reapply when on a day when she isn't supposed to work, like Sunday.  Rather this than start her with a performance deficit.

Anyone else notice this type of thing?

I think it's a bug with trans-midnight jobs in Awesomemod, partially induced by the fact the game uses two totally unrelated call systems to determine this. It no longer exists in the present version, so just wait for the next version.

I noticed that jobs have the 'need X amount of friends' for getting ahead.  Any chance of a 'no friends needed' mod coming out?   :-*

What jobs have a friend count requirement?  I haven't tried all the career tracks through to the end, but I have never seen a friend count requirement.  The most I have seen is a "relationship with coworkers/boss" requirement.

I think the Political career track runs off charisma (which requires x=friends to skill up).  I believe all the other careers just ask that you get along with your co-workers. 

Do performance metric improvements stack with eachother?

Like if I had a Schmoozer sim with the Office Hero perk, would he recieve even more office relationship boosts?

Or say, Ambitious, Professional Slacker, Evil, and Multitasker? If a sim had all four of those traits/perks would he receive the bonuses granted by all of them while slacking off in the criminal career?

Yes. If you have the Ambitious, the Relevant Trait, and the Multitask benefit, especially with workaholic, you can expect to get a promotion every day for a quick climb to the top, barring the annoyances of filthy Days Off! Grr!

To boost up in Charisma, and therefore any job needing charisma, you need friends & relationships:

charisma level             required friends              required relationships
1                                         0                                    0
2                                         0                                    2
3                                          1                                    3
4                                         2                                    4
5                                         3                                    6
6                                         4                                     8
7                                         5                                     10
8                                         6                                     15
9                                         8                                     20
10                                       10                                   25

So, do you want a mod to let people increase charisma without friends?  Or, a mod to let people advance in their careers without charisma?

Whatever will help a sim get promoted without relying on needing friends or relationships.

... to start careers at lvl 10;
... to just give you a cool mill everyday at 5 0'clock.

---

In case you want more content than complete sarcasm, the indirect friend requirement for politics hardly seems unfair.

EDIT:  Ah, journalism.  Yeah, i can imagine a journalist with no friends, but there's still the argument that they need "contacts".

DANG.  Now I just confused myself.  Even with zero charisma, you can get promoted, just not too quickly, eh?

Correct.  None of the metrics are hard-and-fast requirements, just contributors (or detractors) from overall work performance.  With all other factors maxed, and especially with perks like "Multi Tasker" stacked on, even having one factor at the lowest level won't keep you from progressing through the career.

Can you switch tones while at work and have both (or more) of them do any good?  For example, I had a businessman who had pouty faces in both the "hold meetings" area and the "co-workers" area.  I started him off holding meetings but then switched to hanging out by the water cooler.  Hanging out at the water cooler didn't seem to help at all.  Maybe I switched too late?

Switching works fine - I frequently have Sims switch tones at school and at work.  It is entirely possible that you switched too late in the day for enough benefit to build up.

Ok thanks.  I'll try earlier next time.
If I sit there and watch the pouty faces will I actually see them improve while my sim is at work?

Yes.  Sometimes my sims don't wake up in time to use the bathroom or eat before work/school, and their mood quickly tanks until (a) they find a toilet, and (b) it's lunch time.  I can see the mood change once their motives are fulfilled; all other factors should change the some way as well.

In the sims 2, a sim would empty their bladder and fill their hunger bar at work when either got low.

In the Sims 3, the bladder empty seems to be present in its original form.

However the sims don't always om nom when hungry, leading them to suffer the bad mood of the 2nd tier hunger moodlet for most of work before they finally eat and fill up. (if they happen to be sent to work hungry)


Anyone know the mechanics of how long a sim will wait to take lunch, and at what hunger levels they will take lunch at vs skipping it?

Don't really know the mechanics, but I find that at least the dayshifters eat very reliably around what would be considered normal lunch time. (12-13-ish).

Something I noticed last night, and maybe it's just that something else happened behind the scenes that I didn't notice: When one of my sims went into the special agent career track (joining the vice squad), his relationship with his boss went a little into the red.

Is this something that normally happens (to simulate that the captain has had it up to here with his screwball antics) or did my sim somehow make his boss upset when I wasn't looking? 

According to the GameplayData.package file...

Build independent case actually causes your performance modifier to dip by 1. Sort of like bumping your mood from "Elated" to "Very Happy", down by 1 level.

The time taken to complete building the case is 600-1080 mins (10-18 hours).

As for success rate, it depends on your logic skill. Above level 7, it will always be successful. Below level 7, probability of success decreases linearly (not too sure what this means, ie if level 0 gives near zero chance of success).

Upon success, your work performance gets filled up by 75%! So, if you calculate the losses you're taking over 10-18 hours at a performance penalty of -1, maybe you can see if it works out profitably.

Upon failure, your relationship with every co-worker takes a hit of -5. Is the relationship scale 100? Ie, -50 to 50? Or 0 to 100? Or -100 to 100? Not sure about this.

Ok, that's all I can read for independent cases from the GameplayData.package file.

The Vacationer reward seems to reduce performance decay by a factor of 0.2. Ie, decay is reduced to one fifth of normal.

The performance flow when missing work seems severe: -10. That's even more severe than the being at work in your worst possible condition: -8.

So, with the Vacationer reward, it seems missing work will only give you a performance flow of -2.

I do hate the fact that any performance gains when performance bar is full (100) is wasted. Weird.

Working hard causes your Fun meter to decay at double the rate. It's -5 per hour if you work normal, not hard.

I do it all the time. I work hard till my "Having a Blast" moodlet is gone, then I slack off to get back that moodlet. Having a good mood is vital in the initial levels, when only the mood and 1 other factor (usually skill) matters. When more factors come in, having a second-rate mood doesn't do as much harm; the drawbacks are averaged out to a smaller value.

I think the "Propose New Course of Action" is hardly worth it. It takes 16 hours (2.5 work days) to complete. There's only a 10% chance of getting promoted (outright, doesn't consider performance bar).

30% chance that we get a "impress boss" outcome (+40 to relationship). 40% chance we get a "brown-nosed boss" outcome (+40 to boss relationship, -40 to coworkers). 20% chance that "no one is impressed" (-30 with boss, -40 with coworkers).

Better to use "Inspirational Speech" to develop relationships, than to use "Propose New Course of Action". Very bad chance of getting a promotion with that anyway.

That chances listed above seem to be hard numbers, not affected by skills or anything.

Few questions.

Is there a way to tell which jobs and modes of working within those jobs are 'social' in groups vs not? Loner sims get negative moodlets from being around groups of people, but I notice sometimes if I switch modes it will go away. Some are obvious, like independent research, but I'm just curious if it's known which modes are group work vs individual and which careers are better suited to loners.

How efficient is sleeping at work/school vs the bed? Would it make sense for a tired sim to arrive at work early as possible and sleep until work starts?

Does "Going to work" incur any bonus or penalty or is it keeping the bar from neither going up nor down.

Sleeping at work is an inefficient way to fill the sleep bar, in my experience.  Apparently those doctors' lounge couches are lumpy.  It doesn't appear to make a difference if you show up early - it seems that both the energy gain and performance gain only begin once actual working hours are reached.

From what I've noticed, a sim will be in the red for hunger, but won't eat at work until proper eating hours, depending on the time they work (for example, a night shift worker will eat a dinner meal at 18:00 or so). Even if their hunger is super low when they leave for work, they won't eat until a certain hour is triggered, as far as I've seen.

I've seen the same.  Kids at school and adults working day jobs eat only at either 12:30 or 13:30, even if they're halfway to starvation.

When I was in school, they didn't let us eat lunch in class.  Even if we had skipped breakfast that morning, and thus in Sims terms were "halfway to starvation."

 - Gus

That's why I learned how to sneak food under my desk. That and a good book and I was all set for english class. What did they expect, club activities were at lunchtime XD