More Awesome Than You!

Okay, I have been messing around a lot in SimPE recently, and a couple of odd things really puzzle me and I wondered if anyone knows the answers.  So I thought I'd start a thread where we could try and answer these question, and post other mysteries as well.

I'll start with this one.

Why are all toddler skill tokens "owned by (N00X_User00000)  (Mortimer Goth in Pleasantview, but it's actually the first sim to be created in a neighbourhood.)

I was wondering what those were too. I was looking through memories of my neighbourhood today, and I saw those 'toddler skill tokens' as well.

I believe JM says this is because SimPE is not set up to properly recognize the owner of these tokens, and it simply names the first sim, which is Mortimer in Pleasantview.  I'm not sure now exactly where it was he said that now, but it was said in passing in one of these threads on here...somewhere...

Well, I suppose you can't expect Maxis to actually program anything properly!  (I did do a search before I put the question but I didn't come across Pescado's answer, just one or two references to toddlers and skills (not always together.)

Anyone else have a question?

Here it is.  I got lucky. :)

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=102.msg1976#msg1976

It's actually not a Maxis bug, it has to do with SimPE being programmed to recognize the values.  For example, in the past SimPE wouldn't recognize the Therapist or Grim Reaper and labeled them Unknown, but in later versions of the program, they are properly recognized.

Oh, perhaps it's because I tend to use the classic version for most things.  I'll have to have a look in the NL version.

OK, I've got one.  How come Sims take 30 years to reach the end of their teen years (3 baby, 4 toddler, 8 child, 15 teenager), but are only 26 when they transition to adults? 

(Incidentally, because of this, they will increase the age-gap between themselves and their parents by 4 years as soon as they transition.  I was in the habit of sending mine to Uni 4 days before adulthood and playing the home lot 4 years, until I realised that by doing this I was increasing the age-gap four years.  Now I don't play the home lot at all until the YA is an adult, that way the age-gap doesn't increase).

As for the toddler skill tokens, I can't remember who mine are owned by, but the illness ones and travel ones are all owned by dead Sims, usually ones that have never even been played (many without character data).  Les Pleasant is a favourite in my game for travel - in fact (and please don't laugh) when I first saw it I thought he'd maybe been one of the drivers before he died. 

Thanks for starting this, ZZ, I've been wondering about the toddler skill tokens too, and why it's always Mortimer who own them.

I've got 2 (potentially stupid) questions:

1) what does the token Motive Transport do?
2) why aren't grandaunts/uncles recognised as family?

I'm not an expert or anything, but do you by any chance age your children a day early? You know when th emessage comes up: "It's time to buy so-and-so a birthday cake." I always age my kids right then so they actually end up missing a day of their lives. So baby actually has 2 days, toddler 3 etc. If you do that in between every transition from baby to adult/Y, it would subtract 4 days from their life. Right? I don't know...makes sense to me. Is that even what you were asking?

Ancient, the way I've worked the math out for the ages - really roughly, mind you - is that the teen stage is 'artificially' lengthened to be about twice as long as it actually should be. Sims are actually about 20/21 when they age to adult, and then are a mere 50 (!) or so when they age to elder!

Of course my method doesn't account for those three days sims stay as babies, which I do because otherwise the sims don't get out of being toddlers until they're about 7 years old, which is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is if you do count it all as a straight one to one ratio - they're 29/30 by the time they reach adulthood. This makes the age at which they reach elderhood marginally more sensible, but throws the rest of it completely out of whack.  More game design wankery...

I have no idea why they decided to make the teen stage so long. It isn't more fun to play for anyone, I imagine, even Ea's mistaken target audience... no one really likes being a teenager. :p

I like the teen stage a lot more than the kid stage -- teens have more time to build skills! (Although, I have to say, as a teen I spent most of my time doing schoolwork, and all time at home not spent doing homework was spent kicking stuff to maximize fun so I could continue doing homework, or something along those lines.)

If kids grow up with stuck smart milk, they can build skills really fast, and have time since they do their homework in no time flat!  Also, unlike teenagers, they WANT to learn, so unless the skill drains all their fun, they'll be keen to do it.  And in RL, you are a kid for 8 years and a teen for only 7.  (At least, here in the UK where kids start school at 5 you are!  And in reality, 3-5 yrs is not really toddler!)

Grand anything isn't recognized.

I remember being horrified when I first realized great grandparents didn't recognize their great grandchildren as family.

And I felt accomplished for having everybody alive that long...pssh lol

Any great or second isn't recognized beyond that point.

Seems odd that, having provided both Aging off and elixir of life, that the Moxoids didn't realise this could mean not just great-grandparents and great great uncles and aunts still being around, but even more generations than that!

I have altered all my ages now anyway using Inge's agecons mod, mainly to give them 10 extra years as adults and 10 less as elders, although I've also altered the other years a bit so they go to school at 5 instead of 7 to coincide with the fact that I am British like, y'know???  My teens also get 5 years less and I class each 2 years as 1 year so they go to Uni at 18 (I actually give them 11 years so they can go after work on the 10th day without transitioning before they get the chance, but I never use that extra day).

Quite why they go to Uni at 30, spend all those years there (depending on how you look at it, this could be as many as 27, making them 3 days into elder in terms of days played!), then graduate and mysteriously become 4 years younger (or 31 years younger if you prefer) is probably the biggest mystery in the entire game.

1) It's used to store the sim's motives when they move from lot to lot. There are several of those 'transport' type tokens used to store various things while sims move.

Which is why you can do this kind of inbred family:

(http://www.io.com/~torkle/images/family2.png)

Picture rotated by suggestion from eaglezero.

I have had a little pondering of my own regarding relationships.  Why is it that an adopted child looses their memories and family-ties to their birth family?  I had a orphaned child whom I had another family adopt.  She still has a birth sister in UNI, but she no longer recognizes her.  Now that she is a teenager, she cannot date her adopted brother, which ruins my entire storyline!  :(

Oh, and bloodlines:  Is there a hack that I might have installed that took the Polination tech out of the picture?  I have two alien children by diffrent "fathers."  They are realted anyway through marriage.  (They are step-uncle and step-niece).  But, amazingly, there's no Polination tech in their line, and the line comes straight from their "father" to them.  :( 

And why did  my alien male suddenly develop crushes on their "mothers" (the female who raised them) when they become YA?  If my orphan girl can't date her adopted brother, then the alien shouldn't be able to have a crush on the woman who raised him!  EWWWWWWW!

All valid questions (although they can be rectified by chacking the family box in SimPE) which Maxis could so easily find answers to, I think.  Now, to some extent I can understand the adopted sibling, as British and presumably US law counts adopted children brought up together as being family and they AREN'T allowed to marry in RL.  What I find hard to understand is that, if you have two teens nearing transition, so in RL terms they are around 19, and their parents marry and they all move in together, suddenly those teens are off limits to each other.  I have a strange instance of this in my game, where the son of each partner in the marriage was going steady with the other.  As soon as the second partner and son moved in, this going steady remained, all the associated wants remained, but could not be fulfilled.  Right I thought, I'll move them out when they grow up, and then it's bound to be okay!  But, no, it wasn't, and now they were desperate to woohoo, the one with the family aspiration was desperate to get engaged and joined, the romance sim had all the corresponding fears.  But the only physical contact they could have was friendly hug and family kiss!  I had to get the parents to split up so they could have a normal relationship, then get the parents back together again!  (I didn't have SimPE back then!)

*groans* I could accept making them recognise great-grand anything as family would make the game codes way messy than necessary but if they could recognise grandpa and grandma as family, why not their siblings too? Well, it was more of a bemoaning than questioning.

I'm just paranoid about how since romance sims greet guests by planting a kiss on another sim's lips (and getting 'Kissed so-and-so for the first time' memory) instead of giving a friendly hug, that it would create a situation where first kisses are stolen unwittingly. First time I saw that was when Nina called Daniel up to invite him on an outing, I had Daniel decline the invite, she somehow teleported to the Pleasant lot after Daniel hung up, and not wanting her hanging around making a nuisance of herself (I had 2 dates going on at the time), I had Daniel tell her goodbye because everybody else was busy. He sauntered over to Nina and instead of giving her a goodbye hug, he kissed her goodbye. I looked in their memories and there it was, the 'kissed (insert name) for the first time'. Huh??! I'm not worried about teens greeting adults, I'm worried about YAs greeting adults. Putting a tick in the family box in SimPE could only do so much :-\.

I have this problem too. What I found out is that crush status overrides it, at least if they don't have crushes at the time of the marriage of a family member. See, most of my neighbourhood is related by blood or marriage, which definitely closes the pool for romance sims! I now use the mistletoe to get them the crush, and then they have most of the options available, but 'family kiss' still remains.

But the point it, these two sims weren't family, even though they are step-brothers, and had they grown up and got joined BEFORE the parents married, it would have been acceptable even in RL!  If I'd done it that way round, I'd never have had the problem!

Sad thing is, though, since NL the most I've been able to get for them is one lightning bolt, and to do that they BOTH had to change aspirations.  Their turn-ons/offs are as near the same as I can get them, but unfortunately Jean-Paul is Scorpio and David is Libra, so unless I actually change the personality of one of them, (which would mean they were different characters and I refuse to do) there seems only one option left, which does sometimes work - Public Woohoo in the phot-booth!

Well from my experience, if both turn ons match (In those case I always choose haircolor and either glasses, beard, make-up or fitness) and there is no possibility to have the turn off on both side (a bad turn off would be underwear or swim suit, a good one would be vampirism or an hair color) and they have good aspiration match it should show 2 bolts instead of 1 even with bad zodiac signs.  You could try to have them with the same aspiration it does help, that is if the # of bolts is actually that important.  I personally don't really care about that and match Sims the way I want too, it is not that hard by playing with the turnons/off to change a stricted bolt to a 1 bolt.

Oh, I shan't split them up, it just seems a shame that it just doesn't seem to be working for them at present.  I think David might just as well go back to being Romance, but I'll leave Jean-Paul as knowledge, at least till he gets permaplat!  David is in the military career at present, but however many times I re-roll his LTW, military just doesn't appear, but he's very keen on being a celebrity chef, and he can achieve that just as easily in his original aspiration!

I wish I could choose their LTWs.  Some sims are just perfect for Captain Hero, others have the personality that's just begging to be a Mad Scientist.  And they want to be a Celebrity Chef.  It seems like the LTW should take more of their personality into consideration, not just interests.  And I never think to have my sims get a magazine to read about whatever I want them to be!

I use InSIM to change interests if I need to for a better LTW (rerolling the LTW using JMs lot debugger)


edit - I also have JMs Greater LTW Variety & Sanity mod

Well, I found virtually all my sims wanted to be celebrity chefs when I had the mod installed, as it doesn't work for CAS sims, which mine mostly are.  And I've never found changing interests had much effect, it's far more down to aspiration with just a touch of personality. 
Talking of which, I had something very odd happen in my game tonight!  Micky Ho and Rick Steel each have an alien baby (Rick because he's knowledge and wanted to meet aliens, Micky Ho because he's a Romance sim with high fun levels who got to the telescope before I could stop him.  Well, Rick,s baby was by this time a child, and Micky Ho's a toddler.  He had two vacation days left, it was Friday and bothr of them were due to go to work, so I cancelled Micky Ho's queue so he could stay home and finish skillbuilding.  So Rick loses his queue and says "I know I have other responsibilities, but I can't leave the little ones unattended" and I couldn't click on the team bus to send him to work, but I was able to send Micky Ho, who had just been up all night, instead!  The only explanation I have is that Rick is Pisces and a frustrated Family sim!

Zephyr is David a popularity Sim?  If not even if you reroll LTW 1000 times Military (becoming a general) will never appear since it is a LTW related to popularity Sims only unless you have JM Greater LTW hacks which is based on completely different things, so I don't even know if the military LTW could appear by using that hack.  Personally I use the FFS lot debugger to reroll lame LTW, sometimes it can take up to 10 shots before I get what I want but I do get a nice variety in the game (but all are related to their aspirations).

Personally, I think the LTW a Sim have is totally random and it has nothing to do with the personality or interest, it is only related to the aspiration they follow.  The reason I say this is simply because after a complete reinstall of the game I did not want all the pre-made Sims to have the same LTW which the game does if you are not careful.  So what I did is for Dina and Nina for example I loaded the lot and from the second the wants started to spin I hit pause, look at their LTW and if I did not like it I went back to neighborhood view withtout saving and reloaded the lot and most of the time both or 1 of them would have a different LTW.  It does not work for Sims created in CAS though, once they are place on a lot the LTW will be fix but I put a back-up in which some sims were still in the bin and when I place them in a house they add different LTW then the 1st time I placed them.  I am good at noticing those stupid things in the game lol.  The same applies when you use the renuy-u-orb, if you reload the same lot without saving and choose the same aspiration your Sim won't get the same LTW, did it many times before the FFS lot debugger NL version was out.

Remember about a month ago I mention I was putting back my back-up every two weeks well this is how I got to notice this.

Missdoh, David was originally a Romance sim, but I changed his aspiration to popularity to try and get their relationship up to 2 or 3 lightning bolts.  He's always been in the Military career, mainly I think because when I first created this family Uni wasn't out and therefore there were no LTWs to worry about.  I just got him the best paid job available that day, and although he is a very lazy Libra, once he got the Assault Course I had no trouble getting him to peak fitness.  It's also one of the few careers which have no cleaning demands!  I also happen to think the military is a good career for romance sims anyway!  But since making him Popularity I've rerolled his LTW loads of times, and everything but Become General appears - and he'd hate all the cleaning he'd need for the Police or Culinary careers!  So I had to settle for 20 Best Friends!

It is actually possible to reroll an LTW for CAS sims if you have the Nowhatsthis mod installed, as they tend to stay on the sidewalk and chat, which gives you time to exit and get them back in the bin and try again.  Once they go into the house, I think it stays fixed. 

Well the problem is that most of my Sims lives alones when I move them in a house so unless they would talk to the bunny they have no Sim to talk too.  :P

Did you try to change their LTW with both college clock adjuster and FFS lot debugger?  Maybe one of them will finally give you what you want, I find it weird after so many tries that you did not succeed and have one question for you:  does any of your Sim actually have the LTW of becoming a general?  I don't know if by quitting and reloading the game it would make a difference but it does when you don't use hacks.  When you start the game, every new Sims you create will have the same lazy LTW unless you force it by restarting it or using hacks.  Same with pre-made Maxis ones, I got tired of having all the Sims wanting to be in the athletic or culinary career so I worked on a way around it but eventhough, unless I quit and restart the game (or load another neighborhood and come back), the game would give me the same LTW over and over again....  It is like when you start the game it picks automaticaly 2 random LTW for each aspirations, it does drives me nuts! 

Thanks to FFS lot debugger and college adjuster.  ;D

Oh, I've had plenty of Popularity sims wanting to be Generals.  (Also the occasional Family Sim).  And funnily enough, although he's lazy, he rolled Hall of Famer a few times!

I have those, too, but I try not to use the InSim for anything but checking pregnancy status and getting mt same-sex couples pregnant.  I use some of the other stuff to fix problems that crop up (game glitches) but for what I'm doing I'm trying to stick with the basic game (as much as possible).

And even with JM's mods, I don't always get what I think would be best for a sim.  A knowledge sim with high neatness should be a mad scientist.  A family sim with high neatness should want to be Captain Hero.  I seem to be getting a lot of celebrity chef wants, have 20 best friends, earn $100,000, (depending on aspiration, of course).  But even my knowledge sims don't roll up mad scientist much anymore.  They mostly want to max out 7 skills, which isn't that hard even without using the thinking cap.  And they also seem to want to be celebrity chefs, which is fine and in accordance with JM's mods and, for some, their parents' careers.  But it still seems like the LTW should take more of their personality into consideration.

The one nice thing about the more general LTW is that those sims who roll up, say, max. 7 skills, can go into ANY job, so I can easily place them in a Uni career like natural science and get them to be an ecological guru and still achieve their LTW.

I just think it would be nice to be able to choose from, say 3 or 4 LTWs at the time you choose their aspiration - like when they become a teen or at Uni when you are asked if you want to change their aspiration.  That way, you could make it as easy or difficult as you want!

High neatness is not necessarily mad scientist thing. That's not the precursor for mad scientist: A desire to be mad scientist comes through a moderate interest in Sci-Fi and Paranormal, based on the actual activities of Mad Scientists.

So maybe if I increase David's interest in politics he might roll the Become General LTW?  I hate having to get them to change careers before they've reached the top of one!

He won't suddenly change LTWs, but that could be what he wants after you finish this one, if you alter his interests. However, General is not a core LTW to Knowledge, so you'll only see it unlock if someone in his family has or is retired from that job.

Oh, sorry, JM, David was originally romance, then I changed him to Popularity, so he has the right aspiration for General, just won't roll the LTW.  I wonder, though, if increasing his mechanical beyond what is required might do the trick?

I understand that the interests play a lot in determining what the LTW will roll.  But there are 3 careers which need high cleaning skills (from the base game), 4 which need high body skills, and so on.  So it would make sense if a neat sim rolled one of the careers that required high cleaning, an active sim rolled one that required high body, etc.  And likewise a sloppy sim shouldn't want to be COS or MS or CH, or maybe the likeliness of rolling that LTW should be lower.

I remember the first time I played Don Lothario and found he was in the medical career.  Since I was just starting out and learning how to play, I thought it was odd at the time that such a slob was in a career that required high cleaning skills.  I kept telling him, "Hey, you're the one who wants a promotion!  Stop complaining and mop up that mess you left in the bathroom!"

I guess I just need to have them read about the things that will raise their interests where they need to for certain careers.

Dam!  I just burned my grilled cheese!  Which leads to another mystery - why don't sims scrape the burned part off?

Don may hate cleaning, but he does actually get quite good at it.  I've had him roll the Celebrity Chef LTW, which also requires a lot of cleaning, so I've got him to about level 7, when he will wake up in the morning an go straight to the kitchen to clean up the dirty plates!  And long before that, if you don't queue him to clean the flood in the bathroom, he does it autonomously, whines and moans a bit, but it gets done!

Yes, he does get good at it.  Or did.  My Don died a long time ago.  And I haven't played Pleasantview in months.  But I don't remember him ever cleaning autonomously.  Seemed like he was always turning on the stereo and dancing or heading to the hot tub if I didn't give him something to do.

But then, I had him marry Nina, who was high in neatness and she headed to every mess right away, so maybe that was why he never cleaned on his own.

I may have to start Pleasantview all over again - some day - when I'm done with or tired of my custom hood.  Or it turns into a BFBVFS.  But it I do, I'll have to make sure to keep a backup of it as it is now.  I'd hate to lose Herman before he has a chance to grow up!  I left him last at college!

In the game I was talking aboout, he married Brandi, so she was always the one who'd head straight for the piano when she woke up!  Don's fun levels don't seem to decay as quickly when he's happy!  And I should imagine life with Nina could be more than a tad depressing for Don!

Well, they were both romance sims, and seemed to get along quite well.  They had two kids, a son and a daughter, who are probably the best looking sims I've seen this game spit out!

Don made me angry, so I figured I'd pair him with another romance sim to teach him a lesson.  I found out real fast about jealousy that way!  They both had a friend over, and all were in the hot tub when one of them (I think it was Nina) got "friendly" with one of the friends.  Don slapped her silly!  Same thing happened the other way around, too.  But I never let them break up, I just gave them careers with different work schedules so they could each get their "on the side" romances while the other was at work.  Or had them invite another sim to a community lot.  But I had to be careful there, as Don had quite a few romances with sims of both sexes!  In fact, he seemed to prefer the guys, if I remember correctly.  Him and Alexander Goth were always together or thinking about each other.

In different versions of my game he had a fling with Dustin Broke (who in another became his stepson!) and with the youngest Broke, Keanu.  when Keanu subsequently came to Don's step-daughter's growing-up party, and she promptly leapt into his arms in front of Don, it was a joy to behold!  Took poor Jenna days and days to make a friend of Don again!

OK, another mystery!

Why does the maid refuse to make the Soma bed once you've installed NL?

I decided that Don was probably heterosexual (hell, someone in my game has to be ;) ), but also figured that Don would only be happy in a relationship where non-monogamy was par for the course. (I don't want to have unethical sims, much better that everyone knows and no one minds!). So pre-Nightlife, I set up a quad relationship with Dina, Nina, Don and Kaylynn (the maid). They were pretty much all in love with each other, except Dina & Nina of course. Anyway, since installing NL, I haven't been into Pleasantview, because trying to run that household without the Romance mod would just be... scary. I fear the slapping.

Well, until the Romance mod is completed, you can use a no jealousy hack, either one that turns off lot jealousy, or a no jealousy at all hack such as LizzLove's.

I had Keanu Broke in a Greek House with three friends (pre NL) with the romance mod installed, but there was still a lot of jealousy going on!  I think he was the only one who never got jealous!

Well, it depends a lot on personality...if they are Romance sims, they will still get jealous if their personality did not meet the requirements.

True, one was Pisces and got terribly jealous - but it didn't stop him from playing around too!  Sims have such terrible double standards! ;D

Here's a mystery.... What is the 2x2 room in the back of the toilets in the Similar Sights Sculpture Park for? It's empty, but has two lights and a door so you can get in. Very suspicious. ;)

Extremely!

Maybe it's for 'realism' ... to give the impression the park has more than one entrance/exit just like in real city parks.

Or maybe they just didn't finish it!  Still, a useful place to hide the lot debugger!

Another 2 questions, not exactly mysteries but I'd love a definitive answer so I can stop wondering:

1) Why do kids get the option to 'work out' on the stereo but the action dropped off the queue almost as soon as you put it there? Somebody at Maxis forgot to disable it or I'm just too stupid to get it right?

2) Does the 'Practice' option on the myshuno do anything other than provide fun? Is there some hidden skill or benefits, like, the more they practice, the better they get at winning in a game of bingo?

Question 1 - do they need to pee?  If so, it will drop from their queue until they've been to the bathroom.

I'm pretty sure there aren't any hidden benefits. Besides, since when was playing Bingo a skill?

And it's not as if there were a jackpot to win!

They aren't in any danger of peeing themselves, the bladder bar is usually half to 3/4 filled (don't want them to stop midway to pee), and there is room for them to do a work out :-\. I'll try again later.


Well, it's all because of the word 'Practice'. At least now I know for sure it's really a game of chance :P.

They may not be in danger of peeing themselves, but unless the bladder bar is totally green, then very often the Work Out option does drop from their queue.  You could try either the assault course or the punchbag - the option doesn't drop from their queue then.

I was too stupid afterall. I've been using the punchbag mostly (my video card seems to have issues with the assault course), and I just wanted to see sim children work out to the stereo as I've never seen it, until last night when I did as you directed ;D.

I just wish they got some fun from it!  I mean, most human kids love doing things like that!

Interesting point about Don cleaning up, he does in my game as well.  In fact, if there are dirty pots downstairs cleaning them up is the first thing he does when he gets up.  His eldest daughter, who also has just 1 Neatness point, also autonomously cleans up any dirty pots she comes across and both his daughters automatically clean-up the mess they make after showering.  His sons aren't so fussy, though.  What always puzzles me is why sloppy Sims get all agitated when they encounter messy rooms (especially as it's usually them who've made the mess).  Why would they care?  You'd think they'd jump up and down in glee. 

You'd think so, wouldn't you, but I guess the programmers just couldn't handle it!  On one occasion, Mary-Sue walked by Don's lot and kicked his trashcan.  He was furious!  After all, trashcans are for salvaging, not kicking!

Figured this is my chance to ask about things I've always wanted to know but were too trivial to start a new thread about, so, here's another question :P: What does the 'contact' thing do? You know, a sim calls up your sim with an invitation to go downtown, a game tip pops up telling you your sim has gained a contact and there are benefits to be had or something like that. I've only been on 2 of those, and I didn't like it too much. First time I got a call like that, I thought it'll only be one sim my sim had to entertain, I was not pleasantly surprised when half the town showed up. Ok, that was an exaggeration but you get the idea. So, does having a contact bring any advantages and whatnot?

When you sim has a contact, they get a temporary relationship boost with that person. It may be good for going on a scored outing with that person in hopes to squeeze an item or a job promotion out of them, or as you've seen, for meeting other sims (haha, ugh). You can tell how long the relationship boost will last by looking at their portrait; they get this bluish overlay that disappears in the same manner as the red furious overlay does.

Erm, "temporary relationship boost", it's a one time thing, like, say their STR was 60/30 and because of the 'contact' status, it went up to 70/35 (or something like that), or does it lasts as long as the bluish-clock-timer thingy and relationship building is faster than normal? I was too busy and stressed out with the group outing to take note, after that I just want to forget about it :P. I was concentrating on my sims' skills building at the time, so they didn't have much time for socialising, and the contact came and went. Both times, they never got anything out of it (they did get a promotion the next day, but I thought it was because they were due for it anyway, all necessary skills requirement met and they had gone to work punctually in platinum mood) even when I cheated my way to a highly successful outing the second time round :-\.

Contact outings are easier than other scored outings because you start with a relationship of 30/30 with the contact (assuming you were 0/0 before).

First thing I do on getting out of the taxi is make friends with the contact.   As making friends appears to be one of the things that boost the outing score/timer, 9 times out of 10 making that friendship boosts the outing into the next level.  This easy to achieve early time boost give contact outings a head start compared to other scored outings.

I believe the number of the people in the group is the same number of people you can invite to a party.  I have a line in my userstartup.cheat (intProp MaxNumOfVisitingSims) that sets that to 6, and I always have 7 people on a contact outing (my sim plus 6 sims).  So if you've fiddled with this for bigger parties, that might be why half the town was in your outing group.

Successful contact outings have the same rewards as other scored outings - a random possibility of a skill point, a gift, or a promotion (if someone in the group is higher up in the same career path as your sim).  Or maybe nothing.  You'll know the promotion is from the outing because when your sim returns from work with the promotion you get a message that says something about the other sim pulling some strings for your sim at work.

I had a pleasure sim in the medical career.  She met Don Lothario, and simply invited him over, he fell for her and the next day she got promoted "due to Don Lothario pulling a few strings" - but she had the necessary skill points anyway!

I have indeed, and it was set to a much higher number than yours, at 20. Used to be 8, then 10 (which somehow didn't change anything), then finally 20 because oftentimes my sim was about to throw a party, some sim would happen to walk by and cut the number of sims down by 1. If it was a sim I had planned on including in the invite list, fine, I'd go ahead and make the call then greet the walkby, but more often than not, it wasn't. Of course I could make the call anyway, but I much appreciate that the guests for parties like birthdays and weddings usually show up with close to full needs ;). "Half the town" was an exaggeration like I said, thank goodness it was about 6-8 (haven't gone on many group outings so I can't recall), but still a rude shock the first time ;D.

Thanks all, for taking the time to tell me about 'contacts'.


Yeah, I much prefer gifts. I'm always excited to find out what goodies the sims that snuck up to the house have brought in their bag.

Even if you have the option for 20 in your parties, you can make your groups smaller, it's entirely up to you how many "Bowling League" or "Keep-Fit Club" members you have.

"Keep-Fit Club" :D, somehow, I thought that sounded very amusing.

Isn't 8 the maximum number of sims one can have in the Manage Groups list, no matter how high MaxNumOfVisitingSims is set to be? I would actually prefer if that number could be manipulated like MaxNumOfVisitingSims, for the kind of outing that doesn't keep score of course.

I think it is 8, although sometimes you get the option for a lower amount (I think if you have other sims on your lot at the time) but I meant you can choose within that limit how many you have in your group.  If you want, you can have a group of 1 (+ the sim who's group it is).

I think a Keep Fit Club would be a great group for some rather sedentary elders!  And just think how much they can earn by being personal trainers!

I have a few more little puzzlers!

1.  Why is the Skip Broke that remembers his relationships with his family not the same Skip Broke that Brandi has memories of in Neighbourhood Memories?

2. Why does Beau Broke, a toddler when the game begins, have the Knowledge aspiration?

3. Why does Alexander Goth have the Fortune aspiration.

4. Why does Alexander Goth have a Furious token when he's never been furious with anyone?

5. And  why isn't Dina Caliente Dina Bachelor, or Michael Bachelor Michael Caliente?

I think the answer to all five questions is Maxis was sloppy with the way they set Pleasantview up. Memories are all over the place. Alexander doesn't even have a memory of Bella's abduction, but has a memory of peeing himself instead. Dina has no memory of falling in love with Mortimer. Alexander reckons he was taught to talk by Bella, but Mortimer reckons he dunnit.

And the list could go on and on...

I know Maxis was sloppy, but it's fun tracking down all their little mistakes (or "feature"s!)

I got a tad bored last night what withn Cassandra Goth preggers (again), so I decided to spice things up a it and used the age sims cheat to see if she looked similar to the Cassandra from Sims1.  Well; I think it may be becuase she was preggers, but she ended up being just a HEAD.  No body.  Any ideas to this mystery?  By the way, she turned back to normal when I adultized her again.

I tried aging Nina Caliente down to a child, she froze, and about half a dozen social workers turned up, one oafter the other, to take her away.  It just turned into a never-ending loop, so I had to get back to windows and exit the game!  I think there are issues with the AgeSimsCheat!

I'd read about it on other sites, but never actually used it.   It did give me a good laugh though, seeing Cassandra as just a head. ;D

Did she KNOW she didn't have a body? ;D

No, amazing isn't it...She did play cops and robbers with her son, but that proved a bit difficult when her head was at floor level.  You want a good laugh, you should try it sometime....

Gosh, head at floor level... I keep thinking about Japanese horror movies, terrifying and hilarious at the same time :D. This would be very good material if you are the kind who plays to tell stories - "Oh.My.God. Did you hear about Cassandra? Don cheated on her and the poor girl lost her head!"

Something interesting happened to me the other day, because I play pretty stupidly and sloppily sometimes. I had a family of three, with a live-in cousin who was acting as the nanny. The husband got stuck in the car, and I boolprop testingcheatsetc'd him, and accidentally hit "delete." I said "eh" because he was a pretty boring dude. Poof, the car disappears and so does he. His portrait went away in normal play, and in SimPE I made him dead and made the family's daily/lifetime zero so they would stop rolling up wants to talk/kiss/play with him, and I "unmarried" the husband and wife. "Daddy went to the store for eggs and never came back, mmmkay?"

The problem is that he still appears in the family's loading screen, lurking in the background creepily while the wife cuddles with her new husband and baby. Is there any way to completely get rid of him?

Speaking of...here is a mini-mystery. The left-behind wife, while wanting to see her disappeared husband, also rolled the want to fall in love, and to have another baby. So I had her fall in love with another fellow in the nieghborhood (I don't have the casual romance mod), and got her pregnant, and then removed everything in SimPE that related to their romantic relationship, so she would leave him alone (he was engaged to someone else). I severed their ties--made them friends and buddies only. And then, with absolutely no romantic feelings, she rolled up the want to get engaged to her babydaddy.

I figured it must be meant to be, so I had them fall in love again, and now they are happy as clams.

Also, what is the difference between "friends" and "buddies" in SimPE?

First the easy one: friends are friends, buddies are best friends.

Now, when you got rid of the husband, did you make him a ghost?  Is he linked or unlinked?  Do the family have memories of his death?  If not, you need to go into Neighbourhood Memories and give them all the appropriate memory.  Add it at the end of their memories, then move it up to where you want it to be.  You will also need to edit the wife's family ties, as she may still have dead husband shown as the "married to" tie.  All in all, not the easiest thing to do to make sure you get it right.

Next time you accidentaly delete a sim, just save, exit and reload, they will reappear at the mailbox.  If the sim is boring, there are ways of changing their characters to make them a little more interesting, and changing aspirations can also give them more zap!

I'm not sure how to get rid of him since he's not dead, but I know one possible way to get him back; I had something of a situation like yours. Had the Caliente sisters go downtown, but when they arrived, only Nina was controllable, then when it's time to go home, only Nina got out of the car. Dina went MIA and her thumbnail had also disappeared. I used Inge's teleporter to summon her onto the lot then move her back in. Everything appeared to be fine since :-\.


Oh good, reassuring to read that it's actually okay to delete. I wasn't sure of this before :P. Had a problem with Darleen Dreamer on Monique's hacked pc (she was somehow able to email Darren's long dead father even though his name wasn't available in the mass email list, not to mention the late father-in-law has no character data!), she kept resetting and finally, I hit 'Delete' instead of 'Reset' in debug mode. Was so glad when I saved, exited, went back in and she was standing by the mailbox :-X.

friends = friends
Buddies = best friends

Thanks you guys. I think I should be sending my subscription fee directly to ZZ.

I did make him a ghost, but I did not tinker with his family's relationships the way you described. I am NOT that awesome.  :P And I don't really want him back, because the family's working out much better with the stepfather. Although it might be fun to bring him back and say that he had to fake his death for insurance purposes...I think I saw that on "Knots Landing" once.  ;D

ROFL!

OK, here's a mystery if ever there was one.  Why does Komei Tellerman have a wet patch in a strategic place on his work uniform?  (see pic).  And no, he didn't make the pool of water, it was a leaky toilet. 

Maybe he didn't get there in time?

It just looks like a shadow to me...

Strange place for a shadow! ;D

I've noticed that with a few of my medical career track sims as well...

Maybe it's due to having an "accident" while in the middle of an op!

It's probably a joke. Low level medical types, recently graduated students, often go without sleeping or, er, other necessities, for days at a time. So it's probably not a wet patch as much as a permanent stain from repeated wet patches.

How Komei would hate that!  ROFL!  (He's one sim I really enjoy torturing!  In one game I had a sim offer him lessons on the Assault Course, and keep him there until he nearly dropped from exhaustion!  In another, he and Joe Carr each have aliens kids having got themselves abducted - the telescope was there, they chose to stargaze!)

Komei is SUCH a tool. He was made to be tortured. My Sims RUN the other way when they see him hanging out somewhere. I love this thread!

Here's another one: babies used to age up in my game, even when aging for all other Sims was turned off. Now babies are frozen along with everyone else. I used this before Univeristy to give Brandi Broke her ten million children. It was more bearable if there was one baby at a time and many toddlers. When did this change?

I've seen a lot of posts about sims being abducted.  Are you using some kind of hack/cheat for that to happen?  My understanding was that there was like a 1% or 2% chance of being abducted without mods.

I personally use TJ's higher chance of abduction hack (which has now been modified to reduce the chances from his original version) for my Sims.  It's too few and far between otherwise, and if I don't want an abduction, I don't place the expensive telescope on the lot.

Really? Maybe I remembered incorrectly, but I seem to recall the babies don't age with aging off. It was a long time ago with TS2, before I knew any cheats beyond what was provided in the readme, nor of mods and hacks. I was (stupidly) trying to fufil a family sim's want of 10 children, so I had aging off until the next new baby came along so that the age gap won't be too big between the siblings and before the parents hit elder stage. I thought the aging off cheat affects all sims on the lot?

Considering where you are posting this: duh!  ;D

I use the red and the blue telescope from hmmm... 2Jeffs? Don't remember who made those but they are great. The blue one makes it 5 times more likely they will be abducted and the red one makes it 10 times as likely. Just seems less like cheating when I don't make them get abducted...

1.  There is 2 Skip Broke Character Files...Brandi is thinking of the original Skip instead of his replacement...Darleen,Micheal and Nervous(ST) also have clone character files...
2. and 3. Beau doesnt actually have the knowledge aspiration, if youll notice most of his wants at least when he turns into a child will center around Knowledge Wants.  Most children have Aspiration Tokens.  And its random.  I have seen Alex with Popularity token.  I think its just a token so that they will ahve certain wants that all relate to each other.
4.  I never noticed that
5.  Maxis always does wierds things that we dont have a clue about.  Its just like why dont the Singles girls have their own last names.

Oh, the very first hack I ever installed was the Always Abduct telescope!


I'm aware there are two skip Broke files (plus many others) but itdoesn't explain why she was married to one but "knows" the other!

Look in simPE and you will see that Beau has the Knowledge aspiration right at the beginning of his Memories.  Alexander has the Fortune aspiration in the same place!

The singles girls don't have their own lasdt names because, except in Uni, there is no way to put more than one sim in a family with separate surnames.  However, if it bothers you, you can use simPE to give them the last names of their mothers by checking their family tree to find out what it is.

Why does she have to be Caliente?  If widows reverted to their single names, it would make sense, but Brandi doesn't revert to being a Newbie, so why does Dina revert to being a Caliente?  It doesn't stop her and Nina from being the Caliente sisters, just because she was once married!

By limitations of the game, Dina has to be Caliente if Nina is. If you want a real-world type reason for it, then I think it's perfectly sensible that Dina would not want to be calling herself by the name of her last husband, considering he was apparently Bella's brother, which I'm sure would raise a few red flags for Mortimer.

And if the surname didn't raise red flags, Dina's age should  :P. Dina's memories are odd too. She reckons she had her first kiss with Michael as a teen, which is not possible unless teen Dina had her first kiss with Adult/Elder Michael.

Just shows they didn't think it through! ;D