More Awesome Than You!

Inspired by Damion Cormier's SSU career (http://hullabaloo.simshost.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6522) I thought I'd draft a related Challenge (I've never tried to write a Challenge before). This is just a draft; suggestions for improvement welcome. This is a short challenge, that could probably be played through in a sitting or two (or six), rather than an enormous long challenge like Legacy. It's also probably incredibly wuss by Certain People's standards;  but I'm okay with that.  *8)

"Sleeping Through College" Challenge

The basic aim of the Sleeping Through College Challenge is to graduate from college as well as possible while doing as little academic work as possible. The Challenge involves just a single main Sim, and the rules apply from the moment that Sim enters college to the moment e graduates (or the moment the challenge is failed, whichever comes first). The main Sim may be male or female, and of any aspiration (although certain aspirations may lend themselves more naturally to it), and may come from Create A Student, from moving in a previously-uncontrollable dormie, or from a neighborhood (if the main Sim comes from a neighborhood, the incoming Skills should not have been too egregiously elevated by mods or cheats; use your own judgement). The main Sim may live in any type of college housing, and there may be other controllable Sims living on the same lot subject to the rules below.

Basic rules: No cheats. Specifically, no typing anything on the cheat command line, or using any mods that change the game behavior, with these exceptions: moveObjects may be used to move or delete glitched objects; mods that are solely to prevent or fix nasty obvious game bugs / glitches may be used as required (but if they have other features, those other features may not be used); cheats and mods that have only a visual effect (blur removal, improved lighting models, etc) may be used at will.  Aspiration rewards may be used at will, but hacked rewards (buyable, hacked collections, etc) are forbidden.  (i.e. pretty much Legacy cheat/mod rules.)  Unlike Legacy, you may exit the lot without saving (life is too short), with scoring consequences as described below.

Academic rules: No assignments or term papers or tutoring or research. The main Sim may not work on an assignment at any time (the College / Do Assignment verb may be used, but must be cancelled as soon as the Sim has put down the little assignment book), nor on a thesis, nor do research nor join group research. No other controllable Sim may ever work on an assignment or thesis for the main Sim, or Influence any other Sim to do so. (The main Sim may influence non-controllable Sims to do so at any time without penalty.) No other controllable Sim may Introduce the main Sim to any professor. The main Sim may not ask any professor for tutoring at any time. The main Sim may attend up to three classes (in the entire course of the Challenge, not per term or per year), and any number of final exams, with scoring consequences as described below.

Scoring:

Number of classes attended (entire college career):
none: +1000 points
one: +500 points
two: +0 points
three: -250 points
four or more: FAILURE

Number of assignments or theses worked on:
none: +0 points
one or more: FAILURE

(Other grounds for immediate FAILURE include the main Sim doing research of any kind, having other controllables do assignments for the main Sim, and so on; see "Academic rules" above.)

Main Sim from CAS (no incoming skills): +100 points

+100 points for each final exam skipped.

+100 points for each semester (each half of a year) in which the main Sim uses neither "Influence... to do my assignment" nor "Influence... to write my thesis".

Drama bonus: graduate without majoring in anything but Drama: +100 points

Dorm bonus: graduate never having lived in any non-dorm college lot: +100 points

Loner bonus: graduate never having lived in a college lot with another controllable: +100 points

Academic probation: -500 points per incident.

Kicked out of college: FAILURE

Exiting the lot without saving: -100 points per incident, and you must appropriately annotate your score (e. g. "450 points, including a 100 point penalty for exiting without saving that time the dorm burned down").

Graduation:
Summa C Laude: +1500 points
Magna C Laude: +1000 points
C Laude: +750 points
Other: +500 points

(Note that Damion's college career would have failed on several counts, but that knowing what I know now I think I could score 500 or 1000 at least...)

Comments and playtesting most welcome! I'm sure the points aren't perfectly balanced (I don't actually know what skipping a final does to one's grades, for instance, never having done it...).  And there may well be some trivial loopholes that I've forgotten to close.

Have at it!
DC

So basically they have to get through the entire thing on influencing dormies to write their term papers and assignments?  It probably wouldn't be all that difficult, I had a Romance Sim who basically did that, although he did go to more than 3 classes and I think he was forced to do one term paper himself.  That's about all he did do, though.  As for what happens if you don't go to your final, you get put on academic probation and if you don't make it next time you're slung out.

Well, that'd be one approach.  It wasn't Damion's main strategy, though; see his story for alternate methods...   *8)

Really?  You get automatic probation for missing a final?  I thought it was just some lowering of grade points (so if you had a full grade bar but missed a final you could still pass the semester).  Heh...

Tx,
DC

You're right, you're not automatically put on academic probation.  If your academic bar is completely filled, the worst you get for missing your final is a C for the semester.   I would imagine if your bar is low enough, you could be put on probation.  So graduating Summa or even Magna cum without attending finals would be impossible.

(without the penalty for skipping finals) I could easily do well in this challenge.  I had a Romance Sim a while back who only attended one class her entire 8 semesters and graduated Summa cum Laude.  No hacks, no cheats, just a lot of influence points and woohooing with professors.  By her junior year, I had it down to such a science, her bar was full within the first 15 hours and I had her on the roof smoking the blower for the rest of the semester.

Yeah, that sounds more like what the Prima guide says (not that it's always reliable!).  It says that you lose 350 out of a possible 1000 points if you miss a final; so if you started out full you end up with 650 points, which is like a C+.  You'd only go on probation if your bar was low enough that 350 points got you down to a D or whatever.

Great stuff!  *8)  Just the sort of thing I had in mind.  Did you run into the problem that once your Professors are all in love with you, you stop getting grade points by interacting with them?  That was the effect that made Damion's story interesting.  (That and the special feature of Drama profs.)

DC

Probably better not to allow a sim that was a playable teen in the neighbourhood.  One dose of smart milk as a toddler, and it's incredibly easy to have at least 8 points in each skill by the teen years - 8 in each skill is probably what you mean by 'egregiously elevated'.  As an example I was just playing a lot a few minutes ago, the teen in the family had all skills to 8 (some to 9) before transitioning to teen (Dad is in the athletics career, so there was a body reward on the lot).  As well as that, with the friendships he's made already, he has more influence than a starting-out sim.  Moved in dormies also have at least one friendship (with the sim that moved them in) so they'd have a head start on influence too.

I'm one of those people - and there are quite a few - who is offended by the idea of sleeping with professors to get grades.  As a part-time mature age student at uni in RL, I can tell you it rarely happens, and when it does happen it's classed as sexual harrassment and the professor/lecturer/tutor can get in VERY big trouble for it, up to and including job loss and prosecution.  So if I were to play this challenge I'd be influencing dormies or pledges to do the coursework.

Not getting the 100 points per semester for getting others to do coursework (800 per entire course) is outweighed by the +1000 for not attending classes.  If you really want to make this an offensively distasteful 'sleep with the professor' challenge, you should make it a penalty for influencing others, and make it higher in point value.

When I played that Micky Dosser sim (in one of the male frats I think?) who starts on probation, the first semester I played him his GPA went to 4.0.  The bad grades from previous semesters weren't taken into account in the GPA.  So it would be possible to coast through this challenge on C grades as has been outlined above by others (max out bar, then miss exam), then go for the summa cum laude in the final semester.  That's +700 points for skipping 7 exams and you get the summa cum laude bonus.  Might be better to adjust it so there's negative points for each exam you attend, and make the penalty higher than 100.

Thanks much for the suggestions!  I'm playtesting it through right now (with a CAS sim; Suzette Somnius just A+d her first semester, although her aspiration dipped awfully low at some points; maybe there should be a penalty for aspiration failure), and it's fun.  Not sure how challenging it is yet. 

I'll probably need to add some restrictions on the lot(s) where the main Sim lives, also, and/or on the use of aspiration rewards.  Could just make a "main Sim may only use rewards e earned and bought emself" rule (to avoid salting the place with hordes of Energizers and stuff in advance), but I'm waiting to see if I can think of anything that allows for more creativity.  Don't know if I want to ban other lot enhancements (more comfy chairs, etc); given how short this challenge is, I want to make it flexible enough that people can play it in their existing neighborhoods, and not have to like create a special neighborhood or unenhanced dorm for it.

I'd like to allow people to use Neighborhood-raised teens if they want to (for similar reasons).  Maybe there could just be a larger bonus for a CAS sim, a smaller one for a moved-in dormie, and none for a Neighborhood-raised kid?  Something like that.

I find professors sleeping with students for grades pretty offensive in real life, too, but this is just a fantasy!  *8)  Maybe there could be a "no woohoos with profs this term" bonus to counterbalance the "no academic Influences this term" bonus?  I'd like to allow people to play it in Influence style or Romance style, or whatever mixture they want, without having either style obviously higher-scoring.

Really?  You can get C's for seven terms and still graduate cum laude?  That'd be weird, even for Maxis!  *8)  I'll have to look into that, and definitely adjust that part of the scoring if it's true.  (Although if people know enough about the game to do that, they probably deserve a bit of a bonus...)

Tx again,
DC

This is too easy.

Consider the following
+100 CAS
+100 Dorm
+100 Solo
+100 Drama
+800 No Influence
+1000 No Classes
+1500 SCL (better than +800 skip all finals and +500 basic graduation)

Max Score Possible: 3700.

All too easy. Just get all your GPA from research, which is not penalized at all. Is this supposed to be a challenge? Your powers are weak, little man.

Research is absolutely forbidden.  That's mentioned in the narrative, but not in the tables; I should make it more explicit.

Only compared to yours, your awesomeness.   *8)

So....why not then not have a penalty for either one? If you obviously wish to encourage one or the other style, why penalize either one?

I think the idea underlying my intuition there is to reward either Pure style (since a Mixed style is in general easier to play in this kind of thing).  So sure it's not too hard to pass the semester using both Romance and Influence; using just one or the other (not both) might be a little harder, and so deserve a bonus.

Or maybe I just like giving out bonuses.  *8)

omg, JMP replied twice!  I'll never wash this thread again...

Uhh, you really should wash...JM is really dirty and digusting.  ;)

Hm, okay, so what's the proper Romance-style equivalent for the "no academic influences this term" bonus?  Just "no woohoos with Profs this term" seems too easy.  Would "no non-autonomous romantic interactions with profs this term" be too comparatively demanding?

Candidate updates:

Main Sim may only use Aspiration Rewards e bought with eir own points (penalty for violation immediate FAILURE).

Raise CAS-main-Sim bonus to +200, impose a -200 penalty for using a Neighborhood-raised Sim.  (That doesn't feel quite right somehow, but it'll do as a strawman.)

+100 points for each semester (each half of a year) in which the main Sim has no non-autonomous romantic interactions with a Professor.

Maybe something about not having the main Sim live in housing that's been too wildly buid/buy enhanced, although I'm not sure just how to set that bar.  Maybe a "use your own judgement" thing...

(In case it's not obvious, this is intended as a challenge where the hard part is getting a high score, not simply surviving at all (like Some We Could Name), or enduring the endlessness (like Legacy).)

I concur.  You never know when he's been elbow-deep in blood. Or deeper.  He prefers to bathe in it.

And this is a problem how?  *8)

But to return to the nominal subject, a fascinating oddity has come up in playtesting. Suzette Somnius just had her second A+ semester (and with the No Academic Influences bonus for both of them), and when she got back from her final there were popups telling me that she's met two more professors! What's up with that? I don't remember that happening before. Sims don't get new professors every year, do they? And they aren't supposed to meet profs at finals anyway, are they? Are these professors in her department, that she can butter up for grades? Or what? They aren't professors that any of my other college Sims have encountered, so I suspect the game just newly spun them up. Why? If the game keeps spinning up new profs for Suzette to fall in love with, this isn't going to be much of a challenge at all! *8)  And on the other hand my game's going to have far too many Philosophy profs.

Guesses and pointings-out that I'm missing something obvious most welcome,
DC

Did she declare a major this semester?

When my sims were still meeting professors* if they declared a major (or switched majors) they would meet new professors at the next class and if they didn't attend any more classes that semester they'd meet the professors at the exam. 

There might be an idea for a purity bonus - never made friends with any professors (i.e. relationship at 0/0 or lower with every professor for duration of challenge).  And for the other way would be never used influence for any study-related reason.

*My sims no longer meet professors thanks to one of TwoJeffs hacks.

No, she declared Philosophy within the first ten minutes after arriving at the dorm, immediately went to her first (and, touch wood, only) class and met her Philosophy professors, and hasn't switched majors since.

Maybe not having been to a single class her entire second Freshman term has somehow confused the game.

Yeah, there's already a small per-term bonus for not using academic Influence, and I'm considering a corresponding one for the other obvious style.  I was thinking of just "no romantic interactions with Profs", but maybe a 0/0 relationship score would be more equitable.  Decisions, decisions...   *8)

I'm pretty sure you do meet new profs every year. My sims have 8 they know in their relationship panel when they're done. And if you hadn't meet them in class before, I guess it makes sense you'd meet them at the final, tho I've not actually tried that as I usually send mine to class.

Oooh. I think I know how I can get both the No Influence *AND* the No Romance dings now. Mwahahaha.

How bizarre!  I know mine haven't in the past; my very first college student Gina Raptor (http://www.davidchess.com/words/sims2_a/GinasCollegeYears.html) came home knowing only four Profs: the two General Studies profs and the two Philosophy profs (at least I'm about 92% sure of that).  Maybe some glitch prevented the game from generating more for her?  Or something?

Yeah, that part would make sense.

I went into SimPE and verified that these two profs Suzette just met were indeed freshly spun up (or at least their instance numbers very strongly suggest that), and a couple of quick phone calls verify that they are indeed Phil profs (I don't know how to figure out a professor's department from SimPE).

Man, if you really get a pair of fresh Professors every year, the Romance style of this challenge is going to be 'way to easy.  Thinking Caps on!  *8)

Very gratifyin'!  The mark of a good challenge is that it gets the player thinking. 

(Or that it produces funny stories.)

I hafta admit, mean as it is the Ethiopian challenge does that. You can't help but try to think of ways to accomplish it. If I could feed the kids somehow, I might even really try it instead of just playing around trying to see what is doable ;)

Same with this one. It's interesting. I hate Uni tho - I don't think I'd have the stamina to try, mess up, start over (which seems to be the way I do everything).

Goddess, I'm picky :p I want a challenge you have to think about that is just what I want to do ;) Hm, maybe next lifetime.

I don't think you meet new professors very year, or at least it's never happened in my game.  The only time that you meet professors is the first time you go to class and then the first time you go to a class of your chosen major.  I've never seen professors other than those met from those two times in my Sims' directory.

If you want to set living standards (I agree, some dorms are like palaces), just make a list of what you can have in the dorm.  Like they all have to be Maxis objects under 1000 simoleons to ensure they're low to midrange.

Damn, the new rules just completely changed my score as I can't woohoo with professors or use the double-credit term paper trick anymore.

I am not quite sure why you would ever have to sleep with a professor to get class points, the phone works just as well. And as far as introducing, I am not sure what you mean, do you mean the actual menu item Introduce to or any kind of interaction with a professor in person? I mean can one sim invite his/her professors over to the house, or call them on the phone and the challenge sim jsut happen to talk to them, or join the conversation on the phone?

I have already played college like this a lot before I got JMPs college clock, my sims spent all their time learning any skills they hadnt already, making friends and making money (since I had no 20k), thee only time they went to class was for finals. It might be a little harder if the Challenge sim had to live on his/her own made from Cas. That way you would have the element of hardship to live on a small lot and try to make money to build a home and get through college. He/she could still go to community lots to meet and influence people to do his/her bidding.

Yeah, it's great fun to read stories about other people struggling to accomplish challenges like Email and Ethiopian.  I'm not nearly bored enough with more mainline gameplay to bash my head against them myself though (i.e. I'm still content with my wussiness).

I have the advantage here that I love Uni; dunno why.  Some personality flaw no doubt.

That's good to know; that's what I remember from all my other college students as well.  So I'm still wildly puzzled as to why Suzette got these two new Profs.  Very odd.

Hm, a thought.  Sounds like work, though.  *8)

Are you actually trying to play it?  Cool!  You can still woohoo with professors; there's just a new bonus that you won't get if you do.  I expect it'll be difficult-to-impossible to get all the bonuses.

And what's this double-credit term paper trick?

Does it?  My impression is that the phone interactions are a pretty limited way of building relationship points and thence grades.  But if you can graduate Cum Laude without ever doing an assignment or term paper or going to class more than once, just by talking to professors on the phone, more power to you!  You'll get a good score. *8)  Of course if it's so easy that any idiot can do it also, we may want to revise the scoring...

I meant the actual menu item Introduce.  The other things that you mention would be allowed strategies.

Right now a CAS sim living on a lot with no other controllables gets two extra bonuses (CAS and Loner).  The part about building a home sounds interesting, though; maybe there could be an extra bonus (or even an extra-challenge variant) where the main Sim has to start on a nearly-empty lot.  Is that even possible, I wonder?

Yeah, talking to a professor also gives you academic points but woohooing with them gives you a lot more (about the same as writing a term paper, I think). 

Double-credit term paper is when you influence a Sim to write your term paper, wait until they're almost done with it and then start writing your term paper on another computer at the same time.  After you're done, you get credit for having written your term paper and then you get credit again for the sim you influenced having written your paper.  It fills up the bar more than halfway.  If you do that, go to class once and do a couple of homework assignments, you can completely fill up your bar in less than a 24 hours.

Thanks, yeah.  I was just opining that talking to profs on the phone seems so slow that it'd be a challenge ('challenge', ha ha!) to rely just on that for grades.  Not that it wouldn't be fun to see someone try.

Ah, wild!  Hadn't heard of that one.  Forbidden in this challenge, though, because of that "start writing your term paper" part.

Well I think a CAS YA sim or townie sim only has $500 so to live on his/her own would require a very small empty lot.

As far as talking to professors, yes over time it can fill your entire bar or at least enough to make deans list, especially once you are friends with them, of course you can date them if you choose and never actually wohoo with them as well. Add in influencing others to do your bidding and you can easily graduate at the top, well except that part about skipping finals.

So if the sim is a cas or townie sim with the bare amount of money and required to live on his/her own, the challenge really is making enough money to have a life, buy the neccessary equipment for skill building, making friends to do your bidding and money making schemes. I assume you can allow your challenge sim to tutor others for cash right? Of course if you enter into the secret society there is always grade hacking as well that can be done. All this without ever going to class, of course its not like you would really have time having to accomplish all the other stuff.

By the way, I do like your challenge, I use this type of arrangment as outline above for legacy sims to make it a little harder, with each subsequent legacy sim generation following the same path (with the no20k handout) so they have to work like crazy in college to have enough money to even buy a plot and build another house once they graduate.

Yeah, I think there'd have to be something more elaborate to incorporate housebuilding into the challenge.  Maybe we'll save that for version 2.  *8)

Well, that's certainly true for about one semester per professor.  But once you're at 100/100 with both of your professors (which will happen in about one year year in the normal course of things if you're using relationships for credit), it looks like little or no extra grade credit is available by this route.  So the simplest version of the method can't work for a whole college career.

That's what happened to Damion and the Art faculty in the original story (http://www.davidchess.com/words/sims2_a/SleepingThroughCollege.html), and that's where Suzette is now in my playtest, halfway through Sophomore year.

So it's not as simple as "you can fill your bar just by relating to professors."  More invention is required...  *8) Damion solved the problem by switching majors, but that requires (or almost requires) going to class to meet the new profs.  I have Definite Ideas for approaches that don't have that drawback, but I don't want to reveal them yet, in case they like don't work or something.

Sure, that's definitely allowed.  In the current rules the challenge isn't really about being cash-constrained at all (you can always sell your dormies beds and stuff, heh heh).  But I agree it might be possible to put together a variant of the challenge that is; interesting thought.

Glad you like the challenge!

According to the Prima guide (for whatever that's worth), woohooing with a Prof in your own department is only worth 50 grade points in itself (whereas a term paper is worth 325).  But as long as you aren't yet at 100/100 with that prof, you also get five times the increase in daily rel score, plus six times the increase in lifetime rel score.  The Prima guide claims that those numbers are nine and one (for woohoo in bed anyway), so if they're right and a Sim woohoos a department prof with whom their current rel score is 91/99 or worse, the total increase in grades would still be a mere 50 + 9*5 + 6*1, or 101.  About the same as a longish conversation, really, which might give an increase of 20 daily rel points, times five grade points per rel point, for 100 grade points.  (Prima says that the numbers for tub woohoo are higher, thirteen and eight, which would give a maximum delta of 163, about half a term paper.)

Bed woohoo with a professor you're already at 100/100 with, on the other hand, would result in only a 50-point increase; barely noticable!  Which pretty much matches my experience in Damion's story; bouncing around in bed with Professor Jane once she started taking him for granted did almost nothing for his grade meter (poor fellow).

Okay, here's a minor rules update, based on having playtested through it once.  Scoring and analysis of Suzette Somnius's college career to follow (and perhaps the whole uplifting and amusing story, with pictures, on the Exchange or somewhere, sometime later on).

The "Sleeping Through College" Challenge, v 0.5

This is a short challenge, that could probably be played through in a sitting or two (or six), rather than an enormous long challenge like Legacy. It's also probably incredibly wuss by Certain People's standards;  but I'm okay with that.  8)

The basic aim of the Sleeping Through College Challenge is to graduate from college as well as possible while doing as little academic work as possible. The Challenge involves just a single main Sim, and the rules apply from the moment that Sim enters college to the moment e graduates (or the moment the challenge is failed, whichever comes first). The main Sim may be male or female, and of any aspiration (although certain aspirations may lend themselves more naturally to it), and may come from Create A Student, from moving in a previously-uncontrollable dormie, or from a neighborhood (incoming skill levels have scoring consequences as described below). The main Sim may live in any type of college housing, and there may be other controllable Sims living on the same lot, subject to the rules and scoring below.

Basic rules: No cheats. Specifically, no typing anything on the cheat command line, or using any mods that change the game behavior, with these exceptions: moveObjects may be used to move or delete glitched objects; mods that are solely to prevent or fix nasty obvious game bugs / glitches may be used as required (but if they have other features, those other features may not be used); cheats and mods that have only a visual effect (blur removal, improved lighting models, etc) may be used at will.  Aspiration rewards acquired normally by the main Sim may be used at will, but hacked rewards (buyable, hacked collections, etc) are forbidden.  (i.e. pretty much Legacy cheat/mod rules.)  Unlike Legacy, you may exit the lot without saving (life is too short), with scoring consequences as described below.

Academic rules: No assignments or term papers or tutoring or research. The main Sim may not work on an assignment at any time (the College / Do Assignment verb may be used, but must be cancelled as soon as the Sim has put down the little assignment book), nor on a thesis, nor do research nor join group research. No other controllable Sim may ever work on an assignment or thesis for the main Sim, or Influence any other Sim to do so. (The main Sim may influence non-controllable Sims to do so at any time without penalty.) No other controllable Sim may Introduce the main Sim to any professor using the Introduce verb. The main Sim may not ask any professor for tutoring at any time. The main Sim may attend up to three classes (in the entire course of the Challenge, not per term or per year), and any number of final exams, with scoring consequences as described below.

Miscellanous rules: no controllable on any other lot may invite the main Sim over as a guest (penalty: immediate FAILURE); if the main Sim happens to show up as a walkby, controllables on the lot may interact with em normally (the Gods have smiled upon you), but they may not Introduce em to any professors or do anything else that would have immediate GPA consequences.  The main Sim may not use any Aspiration (or Career) Rewards that e did not buy emself with eir own Aspiration points.

If anything happens that would normally constitute an immediate FAILURE, you may exit the lot without saving and avoid the failure, subject to the exit-without-saving scoring penalties as described below.

Main Scoring:

Number of classes attended (entire college career):
none: +1000 points
one: +500 points
two: +0 points
three: -250 points
four or more: FAILURE

Number of assignments or theses or research sessions worked on:
none: +0 points
one or more: FAILURE

(Other grounds for immediate FAILURE include the main Sim doing research of any kind, having other controllables do assignments for the main Sim, and so on; see "Academic rules" above.)

Graduation:
Summa C Laude: +1500 points
Magna C Laude: +1000 points
C Laude: +750 points
Other: +500 points

Academic probation: -500 points per incident.
Aspiration failure: -500 points per incident (shrink, potato sack, mop, etc).

Kicked out of college: FAILURE
Death (obviously): FAILURE

All sortsa minor little bonuses and penalties and stuff, 'cause I like those:

Main Sim from CAS (no incoming skills): +100 points
Main Sim starts with 20 or more skill points: -100 points

Main Sim never lives on anything but a standard unenhanced (at the time the Sim arrives) Maxis dorm: +100
Main Sim lives for any period of time on an absurdly fancy mansion-type lot (use your own judgement): -100

+100 points for each final exam skipped.

Style bonuses:
+50 points for each semester (each half of a year) in which the main Sim uses neither "Influence... to do my assignment" nor "Influence... to write my thesis".
+50 points for each semester (each half of a year) in which the main Sim has no non-autonomous romantic interactions with a Professor.

Drama bonus: graduate without majoring in anything but Drama: +100 points

Dorm bonus: graduate never having lived in any non-dorm college lot: +100 points

Loner bonus: graduate never having lived in a college lot with another controllable: +100 points

Dumb luck adjustments:
any significant glitch in your favor that you feel guilty enough about to apply this adjustment: -100 points
any significant glitch against you that you'd like some compensation for: +0 (life is hard)

Exiting the lot without saving: -100 points per incident, and you must appropriately annotate your score (e. g. "450 points, including a 100 point penalty for exiting without saving that time the dorm burned down").

Note that this Challenge is not intended to be all that hard to simply complete; the goal is to complete it and get as many points as possible.  It's even possible to finish successfully with a negative score; that's okay, you'll just have to do better next time.

(JMP variant: as above, except that you start out with a score of -3000, you lose 50 points each time the main Sim uses a bed or a toilet, and if you finish with a negative score you are a FAILURE and everyone will POINT AND LAUGH.)   ;D

DC

So I played Suzette Somnius (a Leo Romance Sim) through the Challenge successfully.  (This is in Uni with the patch, but no Nightlife.)

The first three terms were quite easy, just seducing Professors and all.  After that it got much harder, because the Professors were already at 100/100 with her, and further interactions had no GPA impact. 

The slimy trick of allowing a professor to catch her cheating at the very start of the term (when there weren't any existing grade points to lose) and then building GPA by making up with the betrayed prof worked pretty well once, but not so well later on, for reasons that I don't really understand.  (If I had NL installed this would probably not have worked at all, because of the Furious effect.)

Using Influence was essentially a bust; getting other students to do assignments for her got Suzette only a small amount of GPA, and she couldn't build Influence back fast enough.  If she'd been a Family Sim with that talk / joke / appreciate / tickle / talk cycle she might have gotten away with it, but at the time I tried it all of her Influence-bearing Wants were the big difficult Romance ones like "woohoo seven different Sims while riding a unicycle".

No more mysterious Professors appeared after that first time, but Suzette had to vigorously befriend all four to make it through the challenge.  I feel a bit guilty about that (and have applied the relevant penalty).  If it hadn't been for the extra professors she probably would have had to switch departments (and therefore attend another class), or vigorously persue the possibility of her existing professors bringing other ones by as guests and then switching to their departments.  Or something.

Her grades were A+ A+ A- A+ B B+ A+ A+, and her final GPA was 3.8, for undecorated cum laude.  This makes me strongly doubt the theory that one could skip seven finals, get C's for the first seven terms, and then do so well in the last term of Senior year that one graduates summa.  Evidence for this theory is welcome.

Also, Suzette developed a peculiar obsession with lunchmeat sandwiches.

Scoring:
Attended only one class in her entire career: +500
Did no assignments or papers or research: +0 (as required)
Graduated Cum Laude: +750
Main Sim from CAS with no skills: +100
Five terms with no academic influencing: +250
Two terms with no romantic Prof interactions: +100
Dorm bonus: +100
Loner bonus: +100
Dumb luck adjustment for the two extra Philosophy profs: -100

Total: 1800

A good score in this Challenge is therefore declared to be two thousand.  ;D

(Suzette lived the entire time in the Maxis standard Pinenut Plaza dorm, but previous occupants had enhanced it enough that I couldn't take any bonus for it; on the other hand it wasn't so fancy that I needed to take a penalty.)

Comments and suggestions and stuff most welcome (and especially other stories from other people trying it). This turned out to be much harder than I thought from the first couple of semesters, and I certainly learned alot about influence and the details of Uni life and all.  I'll have to try it with like a Family Sim or something next and see if that's very different.  Meanwhile, Suzette is eagerly looking forward to being allowed to satisfy her Wants and needs without these bizarre constraints...

DC

My bad.  Looks like I was wrong (again).  Previously when I'd played the male frat house in La Fiesta Tech I'd never played it more than a few semesters.  Greek house + maxis premades really didn't hold my interest ... normally I don't play either much.

So after your post I went and played the LFT male frat lot again.  Mickey Dosser does start on probation in his second semester, with a GPA of 2.0.  Excellent source material, which my own sims wouldn't have provided.  After the exam at the end of that second semester his GPA showed as 4.0.  Same for after each exam in the 2nd and 3rd years.  This is what initially led me to believe the previous semesters weren't taken into account in calculating the GPA (isn't it supposed to be an average?)  BUT ... after the exam in semester 7, his GPA dropped to 3.8, even though his bar was maxed out.  Ditto for semester 8.  Final result : graduated cum laude.

If I'd bothered to play the sim all the way to graduation I would have known better than to claim you could do 7 Cs and still graduate summa cum laude.  Consider the claim withdrawn, while I go and try to hide my non-awesomeness under the carpet somewhere.

I've been thinking about this challenge in my non-awesome way.  The 8 final exam hits of +800 would be almost negated by the 750 difference between summa cum laude and cum laude results.  I'd prefer to take the final exam hits (simply because I feel like my sims have failed if they don't graduate summa cum laude - but that's my RL perfectionist urges talking) and wear the net loss of 50 points.


Looks like you've stated that twice.  Or do you mean it's 100 just for only living in a dorm (enhanced or not) with an additional bonus of 100 if the dorm is a standard and unenhanced?

You said you didn't have NL in your game.  Hmm, I wonder if the access to the new influence wants in NL (ask out on date, have a dream date with ...) would have made the influence thing easier?

If I use a neighbourhood sim (either my own, or a townie my own sims have danced with a lot), do I lose any points for dancing skill?  Access to the bust a move social really helps in building fast relationships.

BTW, I didn't see any reference to Suzette hacking grades ... did you do that in your challenge?

No problem!

Such bizarre numbers would have misled me also; I wonder what the GPA number actually reflects, if it can go down even in a term when the Sim gets an A+?  I didn't pay much attention to Suzette's until Senior year, so I don't have any data to contribute.

Hm, yeah, that's what the rules mean as currently stated.  That may be too much of a bonus; 200 points for spending the whole time in an unenhanced dorm.  The difficulty scale is I think something like ( unenhanced dorm ) > ( moderately enhanced dorm ) > ( moderately enhanced non-dorm housing ) > ( mansion ), but it may be futile to try to capture all four levels.  (Right now it'd be 200, 100, 0, -100, but that might not be sensible.)

Dunno; I'd love to hear experiences.  I got NL a few months ago, and I expect I'll actually install it sometime this decade.  8)

Nah, I think I'll let that count as just clever gameplay and not penalize it.  The raw speed of relationship building doesn't seem to be a key factor in the challenge anyway (at least based on my experience so far).

Nope.  I've never done it at all, in fact.  From my theoretical knowledge of it, I'd say it could be a useful technique in the challenge, counterbalanced by  the time to find and befriend three Society Members, the risk of being caught, etc.

DC

I've started this challenge. 

Day 1 my CAS sim went to a uni community lot, befriended the ss guy that was there. 

Day 2 she had a date with him (off- campus so that it didn't affect semester timer).  She had 4000 influence points after the date and they were best friends.  They danced together enough so she could bust a move to boost the LTR and the STR.   Also they had 1 bolt, so that made the flirt/kiss/makeout interactions come quicker, for more influence/LTR building.  Back at the dorm, she used some of her influence points to get someone to write her paper.  Then she got a 'contact' outing invite, normally I use debug and select all the sims in the outing group, I didn't this time because it's a challenge.  Was kissing the dude who started the outing, didn't realise the SS guy was there (and I should have, of course he would have been part of the group!).   Not a good idea - now he's furious with her, so she's lost her first SS friend.  But at least she managed to regain most of the influence points she used before the outing turned sour.  And she can make friends with the other dude again once the furiousness wears off.

I think the +100 bonus for a CAS sim is too low.  A CAS sim is MUCH harder than a playable neighbourhood sim - for a start neighbourhood sims have friends and influence already, they don't have to spend time trying to build influence.  I have another playable sim sitting in the student-bin.  When I'm done with this sim, I might play the other sim in the same style, then compare scores.

Taking out all my hacks has been interesting, it's a long time since I played a hackless game.  Normally I play 'challenge-style' challenges, not for the scoring, just to try out a different approach in my game.  This time I'm actually doing the challenge minus the hacks.

Is using the Secret Society's "Grade Hack" forbidden? After all, it is part of the game, and the whole process of sucking up to the SS might bring interesting results. If so, I am willing to try that aspect of it.

Does this mean we can't use the career/aspiration rewards that are on the SS lot?

Nope, I don't mean to forbid that; have at it!

Hm, hm, hm.  It certainly does seem to mean that as written.  I tend to think that should be okay, though, since the Society has its own associated challenges and barriers.  Assume there's an exception for rewards on Society lots, and we'll put it into version 0.6.  *8)

Cool!  Keep us up to date.  *8)  I'm writing up the Suzette Somnius playtest as an eight-zillion picture story for the EA Exchange right now.

Good feedback, thanks!  I playtested with a CAS Sim, and the lack of skills and previous relationships didn't seem like that much of a problem (Suzette's problems with Influence were with the fullness of the bar, not with its size), but that may have just been something about my (inept) playstyle.

Glad it's interesting!  The only hacks that I routinely play with are No Age Discrimination and No Buskers, but the more time I spend on maty the more tempted I am to install dozens more...   *8)

DC

I'm in semester 8.  Sally got off to a really bad start (with the outing described in my last post).  Her first semester was 2.7 GPA, 2nd one she barely survived without probation - 2.3.  Not helped by the fact she needed body points and I had to take her to the gym - she lives in a Maxis standard dorm (I haven't even put in an end table by the mailbox for the bills) with no workout equipment, and working out to tv/stereo for body points is too slow and too draining.  However she met and befriended more SS members at the gym.

I think that Mickey Dosser experience in my previous post must be weirdness because he's a Maxis premade sim.  Sally's GPA has never shown 4.0, even though she's got A+ every semester from semester 3 onwards.  Currently in semester 8, has maxed out bar, 2 days until exam, GPA 3.5.  She has gone to every exam (as I said she would).

She got into the SS at the beginning of semester 3, and I've been learning a lot about hacking grades.  Hint: it's easier with logic points.  She hasn't used influence since the 2nd semester, and she has spoken to her 2 professors over the phone in 3 semesters - this didn't help her grades any since they're Drama professors, and doesn't qualify as a non-autonomous romantic interaction.  She has never been on the same lot as her professors.  So I'm taking the professor bonus for all semesters.

She had a 'contact' outing invite from one of my playable sims from the main 'hood.  I turned it down, as that would require interacting with a controllable sim, which I felt was outside the spirit of the challenge (besides I'm considering feeding Sally to the cowplant on the SS lot after she gets her final result so it would be better if my playables didn't befriend her).  Sally kept rolling wants to befriend that sim, but I ignored those.

So running score would be  - including current semester 8 : +500 class bonus (one class attended in 2nd semester, cos I was desperate to avoid probation) +100 loner bonus +100 CAS + 100 dorm +100 unenhanced + 50*6 no influence + 50*8 no romantic interactions + 100 drama.  1700 points, plus whatever she graduates with.  Hey, I'm doing better than I thought I was, earlier I was considering ditching this character and starting again after the debacle of the first two semesters.



The playable sim from my neighbourhood that is sitting in the student bin is maxed out in all skills (one dose of smart milk as a toddler, and she had 8 or 9 in most skills - except body - before she hit teen.  So all she had to train as a teen was body).  Her 10 logic points will really help with hacking her grades, and she won't need to waste semester time going to the gym to train body points.  She'll also start with a full influence bar, with her friendships and the influence bonus for satisfying the 'go to college' want - not that I"ll be using the influence much with her, hopefully.  As soon as I put her on campus, she'll be going to uni lots to meet SS members.  I'll act as if I don't know who is in the SS, so she will have to meet them in person, rather than just phoning them in the campus directory.

I'm concerned about whether my playable sim can maintain friendships with existing friends and family by phone - she's a popularity sim, and I don't want to risk her losing her friendships - is this allowed?


Welcome to the dark side!   I started out with one or two mods - the first one was TJs graduation fix which I needed for some of my graduates to be able to graduate (back before I had NL).  Then I added the critical fixes by TJ and Pescado, then a few more hacks that looked interesting or fixed annoyances or bugs (stuck kicky bags, anyone?) ... then a few more ... and just one or two more ... then one day I realised I was already a long way down the mods/hacks road, and I might as well install Pescado's Director's Cut.  That was back before this board existed, and I haven't looked back.

EDIT: Update.  Sally graduated with 3.5 GPA - plain graduation.  Total score 1700 (as outlined earlier in this post) + 500 = 2200

I am mightily amused by this challenge, and will definitely play it when my next generation of sims are of college age.

I heartily approve of the style points for refraining from plagiarism.

I was thinking about the unspoken section of your challenge, though, in the skill point aquisition department. I mean, if you have a CAS sim with no skill points, he/she clearly has to acquire them in order to get decent grades, and yet the effort to do so is not penalised. I think it should be.

You are allowed to enhance the dorm after she moves into it!  (Hm, you should probably only be allowed to use money that she earned herself to do so.)  Suzette did all her body-point-getting at the stereo (http://www.davidchess.com/words/sims2_a/Stc_Challenge_051.html), but then Philosophy only needs one (as opposed to four in Drama), so it wasn't tough.

That was very noble! 8) I don't know enough about NL yet to judge for sure if such outings should be forbidden, but it sounds like they probably should.

Narf narf!  Has she been annoying you during the Challenge, or do you just have other people that need a drink? 

Wow, so she's earned basically all of her GPA from grade-hacking?  Has she ever been caught?  Maybe we'll have to think of some excuse for penalizing Society membership ("I hear they study alot over there"). 8)

There's a penalty for that, but it's just 100 points.  We'll see if that's too small. 

Also very noble, although not required by the current rules.

Sure, as long as you have the time.  Unless I've forgotten something in the rules?  She can even invite existing friends and family over for visits; nothing academic about that...

Very nice.  Beat me by 400, anyway!

DC

We eargerly await your reports.

Given that it's pretty much plagiarism, buttering up professors, or breaking into the computers, there's not really a moral component to the style bonuses.  8)

There's currently a 100 point bonus for starting with no skills, and a 100 point penalty for starting with 20 or more skill points.  Does that address your worry here, or have I missed the point?

Oh, or do you mean that skilling (at least skilling with books) is sort of like studying, and so ought to cost one points in the basic spirit of the challenge?  That's a thought; have to see if I can think of some creative way to incorporate it.  (How about a flat -50 for each skill point that the Sim has at the end of the Challenge?  Heh heh.)

For some reason the EA Exchange keeps refusing my upload, even though it's a mere 152 pictures and five or seven meg.  Must be some server problem.

After a little CSS and Perl and Photoshop hacking last night, I put up a version on my own site; The Story (http://www.davidchess.com/words/sims2_a/Stc_Challenge_000.html).  Comments and derision welcome.  Not exactly a detailed analysis of the gameplay, but it might have some funny bits.

(It also references version 0.6 of the Rules (http://www.davidchess.com/words/sims2_a/StcChallenge06.html), which includes Kyna's suggestion about allowing use of Reward objects on Society lots.)

(Wait, didn't I already post this last night?  But I don't see it in the thread.  How confusing...)

What's her Aspiration, by the way?  Any comments on whether it made the Challenge harder or easier?

Welp, here's my results.

Extreme Rules Start (-3K)
My sim: Personality 0/10/10/5/0, Pleasure, turns-ons: Vampire, Beefy Arm, Turn-offs: Beard. (+100)
Dorm: Craptastic Hall (aka. Small Dorm With 5 Rooms) (+200)
No other sims in residence (+100)
No Classes (+1000)
Declared Drama Major (+100)
No Romance x8 (+400)
No Influence x8 (+400)
Summa Cum Laude (+1500)
No Bed
No Toilet

Total: 700 (3700 normal)

Additional perks:
Became vampire, maximized all skills, max ASP in bank, permplat.

Strategery:
Call Taxi, go downtown, get Dance 6. (Bust-A-Move). Return Home (70h remaining).
Wait for night. Call Taxi. Go downtwn. Find Vampire and Befriend. Be bitten. (no motive decay at night!)
Date people! Get lots of ASPs!
Return home at dawn. Still night at home! Go back and do it again!
El Cheapo Gypsy dating service: 50 first dates! Now permanent platinum.
Use ASPs gained from downtown runs to steal skills with Simvacs! Gained 6 cooking, 4 cleaning, 3 mechanical, 7 body, 10 logic robbing cook, coach, cow, cheerleader, and assorted visitors! Permanent platinum, no failure chance.
Get into SS.
Hack grades for semester 1 to full.
Befriend professors for GPA boosts. Bite him and get him kicked out of NPC pool for a new professor! No romance. Hack grades as needed.
Steal more skills. Repeat procedure.

Isn't it nice how time stands still when you go to a community lot? Extend the night multiple times by going to a community lot, doing things until dawn, coming back....AND IT IS STILL NIGHT! DO IT AGAIN! AGAIN!

Conclusion: Still more awesome than you.

I fed Sally to the cowplant simply because I didn't want her in the main 'hood for this neighbourhood.  Nothing wrong with her apart from being a romance sim (not my favourite aspiration unless I've come to know the character and their story).  I started the 'hood using Prosperity style rules - roll a die to determine number of families, keep on rolling to determine number of sims, age groups, aspirations, star signs, etc.  (Note the use of the term 'prosperity style' since I didn't remove my hacks to start the 'hood).  So she doesn't really fit into the neighbourhood storyline.  But her gravestone still exists, so the possibility of reviving her is always there.

On the skilling issue, I think there should be a bonus if you get a skill to at least 8, apart from logic, which has obvious benefits in the hacking path.  Sally used the energiser a lot to keep her mood up (bought with the asp points from all those dates she had) while she was hacking grades, so I only needed one trip to SS lot each semester.  So she spent a lot of time keeping her aspiration level at gold or platinum.  She still managed to get 10 logic points by the end of her time, and 6 or 7 cooking points while I was still considering whether to keep her.  This was on top of the skill points required by her subjects.

Sally did get busted a few times, each time was a 450 simoleon fine.  She got busted at the dorm once, and the cop took her computer as well as fining her.  After that she did all her hacking at the SS lot.  After I got her logic to at least 8, she only got busted one more time.  And I got wiser in when to stop the hacking session.

Nanette, my playable sim from the neighbourhood, is in semester 2 now.  She got into the SS first day on campus (with 37 hours semester time left), hacked her way to 4.0 GPA in 9 hours - again using energisers.  Nanette had the advantage of a lot of asp points when I started, so she doesn't need to worry about having enough points for energisers.  She maxed out her bar for semester 2, with 62 hours semester time left, and is currently back at the dorm painting masterpieces to satisfy the masterpiece want (that always rerolls as the same want), keeping her aspiration level high.  As well as making cash - I'll be putting the No20kHandout mod back in before I send her back to the main neighbourhood, so every simoleon she makes will help.  Nanette has not yet been busted for hacking her grades *touch wood*  She hasn't even bothered to phone her professors, or used a single influence point.  Has not attended class, but is attending all exams.

On the EA thing, I've seen people posting lately that they've been having problems with the EA site, both with uploading stuff and with viewing other people's pages.  So even if you managed to upload there, others probably would have difficulty viewing it.

On the aspiration thing:
Sally was romance, the same as your Suzette.  Dates helped there.  Asking out on a date is an influence want, as is having a dream date.  At some point during a date, if it goes well, you'll get into a repeated cycle of backrub-hug-flirt-kiss-makeout-woohoo.  All boosting aspiration.   After a dream date your moods are all very good as a reward for a successful date.  
Nanette is popularity - being still in first year she still only has 4 want slots, and two of those are 'write a bestseller' and 'paint a masterpiece'.  The other two are usually 'want sim to go to college' regarding various teen friends of hers (both playables and townies/downtownies).  These are all general wants, not specific to her aspiration, so her aspiration isn't affecting her time at uni so far.  I'll wait and see what more want slots does for her.

/Kyna quietly ignores the proof of the non-awesomeness she's already confessed to.

One is speechless.  (Well, comparatively speechless.)

You won't get any argument from me!  I stand in awe.  Recycling Professors via vampirism in particular is a brilliant touch.  We'll have to forbid all that stuff in the next version of the rules.  8)

I really have to instal Nightlife one of these weeks...

I'm much too softhearted to do stuff like that.  I've never even had a Sim die (except for Benjamin Long that one time, but that was just so Kaylynn could plead him back).  I'm slowly steeling myself to allow some permaplatinum townies / gownies to die of old age someday soon.

There are two schools of thought here: one says that skilling up is a good thing and shoud be rewarded; the other says that it's too much like studying and should be penalized.  We'll suspend judgement for now.  (edit: or we could reward having skills but penalize studying in order to get them, thus giving JMP and his skill-vaccing even more points.)

I didn't make very good use of asp points in Suzette's run (I suspect I'm pretty much the opposite of JMP, in that I don't really plan things out very much, I just sort of dive in doing whatever springs to mind and seeing what happens).  An Energizer probably would have helped her out, and I think she could have easily afforded it.

I assume there's a GPA penalty also?  But I guess it's reasonably small?  (Just whatever you'd already gained in the current session, or something?)

Good luck to Nanette!  8)

Yeah, it seems to be a pretty bogus place in general, but I thought it might be fun to get wider exposure for the Challenge and all.  Maybe I'll post a one-page story (I tried that yesterday with a test story and it worked) with just the teaser image and the URL of the full story.

Pah!  Awesome is as awesome does...

Any particular trick to reliably meet the appropriate (Drama) profs?  Or do they just eventually walk through the Downtown lot reasonably often?

After eliminating a professor, you can meet another one in several ways, among which includes attending your final, or having someone, not necessarily you, go to class. Once someone has identified the professor, you then need to finagle your way into meeting that professor yourself. This can be accomplished in many ways, such as by dating the person who knows the professor to gain the professor as a contact.

The short and skinny of it is that there are many ways to use controllable sims to manipulate the game for other sims without actually sharing a lot with them at any time, and thus giving up the +100 point Lone Gunman bonus.

Thank you this is gr--.  Ooops!

How does that work?  If there aren't 50 dateable people in the neighborhood that your Sim doesn't know, does the game roll up new ones for the Gypsy to call down out of the sky?  Did you have like 50 skyborne dates all standing around the lot at once, wondering why the datee was ignoring them?  I don't suppose you took any pictures.  *8)

I think there has to be a merit bonus for the Pescado approach. Sims should not be skilling in any way that resembles studying - study cleaning/mechanical/cooksing should be forbidden. What about a rule that says skilling is okay if it is building fun, but not otherwise? So neat sims can clean, but sloppy sims cannot, for instance? Everybody can build creativity by playing instruments or painting, and the body skilling activities may be variable depending on the number of active points your sim has.

Off topic, but I'd thought I'd reply to this. The answer appears to be NO. One time in a test neighborhood, I had deleted all the Sims, and so there were only two households, but no townies. I was playing with my daughter and her friend, made Sim-thems, and the first thing they wanted was to "find a boyfriend! we want boyfriends!" So.... wait for the matchmaker (the only time I've actually wanted the matchmaker), greet the matchmaker, pay $5k and get.... the mailman. Pay another $5k and get... the only other male Sim in the neighborhood. Pay a final 5k and get... the mailman. Over and over, all we got was the mailman and the one Sim aptly named "Joe Test".

So disappointingly, no, it appears the matchmaker just uses the existing pool and never generates new Sims.

Inneresting, thanks.  So to do Pescado's trick in the challlenge I guess you need to first make sure there are 50 first-dateable Sims in the neighborhood (can the Gypsy reach into associated Uni 'hoods?).  Which would be trivial in some neighborhoods, but mine tend to be comparatively sparse...

Yeah, the gypsy can bring YA students from Uni. In my experience, there's plenty of people in the college directory, but then I haven't deleted the dormies and such so maybe some people have a smaller pool.

The game spawns around 50 dormies, plus there's the maxis made YAs on their uni lots.  Then there's the townies, the downtownies, the NPCs ... So there's a big enough pool, presuming you haven't deleted all characters, moved them in, or killed them all off.  For an adult, the dates pool includes YAs, Adults and Elders.  The gypsy gives you the choice of male or female, so you don't have to restrict your dates to one gender.

Thinking on the vamping-the-profs idea to get them out of the NPC pool ... I guess a good time to do this would be shortly before an exam (if your sim is attending exams).  Then your sim will meet the next two profs at the next exam, with a minimum of fuss.  I know there are other ways to meet profs without going to class, but the exam method is much easier if you're going to be attending anyway.

On the subject of skilling, I don't think CAS sims should be penalised for gaining skills.  Not if neighbourhood sims with maxed out skills are permitted in this challenge - I feel my previously playable sim already has enough of an advantage, without hampering CAS sims even more.  Consider also, that this challenge is designed so that you don't need a new 'hood, you can play this in any of your existing hoods.  Personally, I wouldn't send any sim back to the main hood with less than 5 cooking (at the bare minimum, preferably higher).  If there was a penalty for skilling a CAS sim you'd discourage people from trying the challenge, I know I wouldn't have tried this challenge with Sally (who was a CAS sim) on that basis.

-------------------------------------------------
EDIT to add Nanette's final score and my post-challenge feedback:

+1000 No classes attended
+1500 Graduated summa cum laude
-  100 Main sim started with 20 or more skill points
+ 100 Dorm bonus
+ 100 Non-enhanced dorm bonus.  Non-enhanced for duration of challenge, apart from energisers acquired via her ASP points
+ 400 No influence used for 8 semesters
+ 400 No romantic interactions with professors (didn't even phone them)
+ 100 Drama student for duration of challenge, start to finish.
+ 100 Loner (Nanette was my only controllable sim on campus, and I did not play any lots in the main 'hood/downtown during the challenge)
--------
3600 total, which is the max possible for a sim with more than 20 skill points at the start.

As Pescado has noted there are loopholes involving other controllable sims.  Might be nice to see a bonus for not playing any other controllable sim at all during the challenge (ie sims on other lots).  It's a short challenge, so it's not too much to ask of a player. 

To balance the influence/romance bonus, you might like to consider a 50 point bonus for every semester you didn't hack grades, so that all 3 playing styles have similar scoring advantages and disadvantages.

I like Rohina's idea of a merit bonus for the Pescado approach to gaining skill points.  However I still think players shouldn't be penalised for earning the minimum 20 points required for a degree.  So maybe a small (+10?) bonus for every point simvacced, and a similar penalty for every skillpoint above 20 points that was earned the 'traditional' way - as long as that's not too complex for a player to score.  The attractions of this challenge include its speed and simplicity.  It's playable in an existing hood, with existing sims.  If the scoring system becomes too complex, some players won't bother to score.  And if they're not going to score, they'll probably not bother to remove hacks, mods, etc.

On a related note, the penalty for a sim who starts with skill points could be a sliding scale.  At exactly 20 points the penalty is 100, and every skill point above that could be another -10 to the score.  (Which would mean Nanette would have had a more reasonable penalty of 600 for starting with maxed out skills, instead of 100, bringing my final score to 3100).

Personally I don't think I should be a mere 200 points behind Pescado's score - he started with a CAS sim which required a much more complex strategy than my simple strategy.  BTW he seems to have totalled his score incorrectly.  His score doesn't add up to 3700, it adds up to an even more awesome 3800.

Nanette's strategy : Went to uni lots on first day to meet & befriend 3 SS members.  Got into SS 11pm first day (37 hours semester time left, due to timer counting down on uni lots).  Hacked her grades at SS lot for all semesters.  Attended all exams for 8 A+ results.  She spent the rest of her time back at the dorm, satisfying the 'paint masterpiece' want repeatedly.  Can't claim no bed/toilet, as she slept the first day to roll over the study related starting wants of 'write term paper' 'go to class', etc.  After that she didn't use the bed and she never used the toilet - it was energisers all the way.

This challenge was fun, and it was a refreshing change to the way I usually play my uni sims.  Thanks for this.  I hope my feedback is useful.

Yes, but I bet *YOU* used BEDS and TOILETS!

Well, I didn't bother to delete all the sims in my neighborhood. In fact, my approach to the challenge was essentially Scorched Earth. Eliminating a dozen professors and countless NPCs and visitors is quite brutal on your neighborhood's filesize. All in all, I'd say in about 50 sims were created as a direct or indirect result of my swath of destruction.

Don't try this strategy on a neighborhood you care about. :P

I already said she used the bed once on the first day to roll over the study related wants (she started at uni with all 4 want slots filled with study related wants) so guilty as charged on the bed score.

Impressive score, and thanks much for the feedback; really glad you enjoyed the challenge. 

To some extent I want to avoid overly detailed scoring rules; not only does it make people less likely to bother in the first place, as you said, but it also sort of gives away all the strategies right up front.  For a hacking-related style bonus, I'm thinking maybe 50 points per term in which the main Sim doesn't use a computer at all.  My tendency is to leave the skill things as they are, just to avoid too much complexity (although your sliding scale for incoming skill penalties does seem sensible).

The thing about beds and toilets was meant as a joke, but then I hadn't really thought about Energizers.  (Not using aspiration rewards at all would be an interesting variant of the challenge; it'd be so different that it probably ought to be thought of as a whole different challenge, rather than just giving some enormous bonus in the current one.  Or there could be some big per-term bonus for not using any; but I don't know if the extra bookkeeping is really worth it.)

So let's see, what should the next challenge be?  How about reaching the top of your career ladder without ever going to work?  8)

doh,  you can do that?

hmmmm... getting pregnant a lot will keep you employed without going to work, but then how do you get promoted?

I dunno how, but yeah, let's do something like this one - sounds like fun :)

To get promoted without ever going to work, just date someone higher up in the career field than your sim. If the date goes well, then the sim higher up in the career may put a good word in about the sim who isn't going to work. Wash, rinse, repeat, and style.

I bay be mistaken, but nothing is said about hacking grades (Secret-society sims).  It seems that this challenge would be cake as soon as you get your sim into a secret-society.  Is grade-hacking allowable?

Actually I was kidding again; but from what Venusy says, it sounds like it might be possible in NL, by dating higher-ups.  But I don't know firsthand (have to install NL one of these days).

Grade hacking is definitely allowable.  It has certain risks, requires good logic, requires getting into the Society, etc.  But it might be the most effective way to get a good score.  We're currently considering adding a 50 points bonus per term that the challenge sim doesn't use a computer, which would add a 400-point offset to any bias in the current rules toward grade-hacking as opposed to other styles.

At this rate, pretty soon there won't *BE* a way to get any grades.

You're already giving away 2 of the 3 strategies - the romance and influence ones - in the scoring.  You may as well cover all bases. I like that this is a flexible challenge, encouraging people to have fun with different methods of playing the young adult stage.  I do tend to get in a rut with the boring tediousness of the YA stage, playing it the same way for every sim ... using a different approach was a refreshing change.

I think you need to remember the computers are fun too.  If someone is playing with free will on (not that I do) and their sim autonomously uses the computer for fun, why should they be penalised?  Then there are those who don't realise flamingoes are the best way of boosting fun, or who choose to send their sims to the computer because that's a more 'realistic' way of gaining fun.  There's also the social aspect of the computer - emails, chatting to meet new people, etc.  Especially since in a hackless game you can roll wants regarding the fun/social aspects of computers.

Or at least to get any grades without forgoing some potential style bonus.  Which might be frustrating to those who like to get every single possible point. 8)  (I remember back in the SLIGE days I added a "no monsters in secret rooms" switch, because there was one guy who just had to both kill every monster and zip through the level in minimum time, and monsters in secret rooms annoyed him because he had to slow down to find the rooms and kill the monsters.)

Glad to hear it!  On the scoring, I like asymmetry; if deciding to go for the no-hacking style bonus also means that you have to put up with a restriction against other uses of the computer also (and if the rules are more cagey about hacking than about the other two methods of GPA building), that's okay with me.  It introduces a nonlinearity...  8)

I had fun with this last night.  Georgina is a romance Sim with the "woohoo with 20 sims" want, so I went with a blend of promiscuity, influence, and crime to solve the challenge.  (I defer to JM's awesomeness but I just can't get into the vampire thing... don't really like the aliens either.  But I digress).

Georgina's MO was to first befriend the local secret society folks (two of whom lived in her dorm, fortuitously) and then satisfy her sexual desires to gain influence with which to convince her lovers to write her term papers and do her assignments.  This usually worked pretty well, except in one semester (the only one where I sent her to a class during the challenge) she had a massive falling out with Prof. Ted who proceeded to take away all her grade points for the semester.  I'm not really sure what happened, but no matter what she tried to do to make it up to him, he got more and more peeved until she was left with nothing.  Unfortunately, she'd already had the term paper done and she was out of influence, so I sent her to one class and then had her hack her grades.  She did get caught once hacking grades as well, but hadn't done the term paper yet luckily.

She only slept with one professor but befriended several.  Mostly she slept with her roommates and random other folks she met on campus.  Her grades weren't spectacular (3.3) but heck, in real life she'd have been lucky to get that having attended only one class.   Final score was 1500.  Not an awesome score, but she had a relatively realistic methodology.  It was fun.  Plus I learned something - I'd never made the connection that Influence to Do My Assignment was only available when the assignment was on the table before ... RL here I come!

Glad to hear it!  That's more important than the score; the score is just to structure the fun.  How'd you get her to meet the correct professors without going to class?

;D Yeah, that's something every high school senior should be taught...