More Awesome Than You!

I'm trying to make some careers, but since I've never used any of the EA careers, I'm a bit unsure whether the behaviour I'm seeing is to be expected or not: what exactly determines at which level of a career a sim will start out? Would it normally make a difference whether they apply in situ, or by newspaper/computer/whatever other ways there are? Do LTWs come into play here (I have AwesomeMod installed)?

I was assuming everyone would start out at level 1, but one of my tester sims started at level 2 and I don't know why: She doesn't have any more relevant skills than the ones who started at level 1, and all of them applied at the town hall. The level-2 sim has an LTW about the political career, the others do not.

Maybe someone more familiar with default game behaviour would be able to give me a hint .. what would normally influence  this?  ???

In more detail, I changed the Political career thusly:

Level 1:
  <Metric1>Mood</Metric1>
  <Mappings1>-500,0,30</Mappings1>
  <Metric2>SkillX</Metric2>
  <Mappings2>0,3,4</Mappings2>
  <Args2>Charisma</Args2>
  <Metric3>SkillX</Metric3>
  <Mappings3>0,3,6</Mappings3>
  <Args3>Logic</Args3>
  <Metric4>RelBoss</Metric4>
  <Mappings4>-40,20,40</Mappings4>

Level 2:
  <Metric1>Mood</Metric1>
  <Mappings1>-140,0,65</Mappings1>
  <Metric2>SkillX</Metric2>
  <Mappings2>1,4,5</Mappings2>
  <Args2>Charisma</Args2>
  <Metric3>SkillX</Metric3>
  <Mappings3>1,4,8</Mappings3>
  <Args3>Logic</Args3>
  <Metric4>RelBoss</Metric4>
  <Mappings4>-20,40,60</Mappings4>

The first sim (A) who applied got a level 1 job, the second one (B) level 2, the third one (C) level 1 again.

Skills:
(http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d124/pbox/politicalsims.jpg)

They don't have a boss yet and their work performance is at 0 since they haven't actually started to work yet, they only just got their jobs.


Related question: has anyone fully figured out the <MappingsX> keys yet? In particular the first value? The last value seems to be the "ceiling" for performance, but I'm not sure about the other two - one of them must be the "floor" (what is considered minimum acceptable performance), but which one? And what does the other one mean? The middle one might be a median point perhaps (what's considered "normal" performance); I see that the white circled values in the UI correspond to my second and third values, but again, since I've never played careers before I don't know whether that's normally a range between min = abysmal and max, or between medium = normal and max. I noticed that the EA defaults for the first value are very often negative .. maybe to make sure that even a sim with no skills would have a green smileyface? Another theory: the first value could be some sort of weight applied to that metric (and the other two are floor and ceiling) .. I guess I'll find out more about this as soon as I playtest some more, but in case anyone already knows this, I'd appreciate some input.

So after some more testing, it seems pretty clear that the values are min, midpoint (normal performance), max. I'm still baffled by the first question though .. why that sim got a level 2 job without being qualified for it.

This could happen if the sim had previously worked in the political career, specifically at level 4, and got fired and quit (rather common when you combine story progression with Sims that refuse to go to work). Sims that are rehired will join the career at 50 percent of their old level (rounded up); this is an XML tunable.

Yes, that was it! Thank you. I just checked in a default Riverview, and that sim is indeed in the Political career (must have gotten fired when I bulldozed the townhall). I had seen the tunable before but failed to make the connection.

Mystery solved, thanks =)


ETA: I've compiled my learnings about the <MappingsX> stuff into a separate post here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,17869.0.html