More Awesome Than You!

Semi-random thought/idea/request...

Well, I'm a fan of post-apocalyptic stories, writing and reading them, and also a medieval history buff, owning several books on the Black Death. So I had a thought about the Sims, and namely when the neighborhood starts getting big and unwieldy.

I was wondering if it was possible at all to create a Hack of the Apocalypse - namely, some hack which, when activated, will kill off a set percentage of your Sims at random. Even better to be able to choose between several percentages, if possible. Sure, you can fabricate this with current death hacks, but having to choose which Sims die is no fun - at least for me. There's some Sims I'd hate to lose, but if it makes the story of the survivors any more interesting... eh, I'd go for it. Obviously not a hack you'd use every day, but I think it'd make things interesting in a failing 'hood. *grin*

Not sure how it could be implemented, as the diseases in-game aren't very deadly unless you leave a Sim-uncured for a long time as a visitor, or if it even can at all... which is why I'm asking the experts. Heh heh.

If you want a post-apocalyptic neighborhood, just borrow a local four-year-old and let him play your game for a few hours.   ;D

I would definately use that lol!  There's been a few times I would have welcomed the four horsemen to come and devastate a neighbourhood that's gone belly-up :D

Give them the flu and food poisonning, neglect them (leave them on freewill) and see who lives and who dies?

How about you visit each lot in turn and stand all the resident Sims in a circle.  In the centre of the circle, put a pair of scissors (Run With variety).  Do all this with the pause button on.  When you're ready, unpause and shout "Go!" and see who gets to the scissors first.  Continue in this way throughout all lots, until you have a lovely collection of pretty pink ghosties.  Repeat when necessary.  You may also like to invite a collection of townies at a time to an empty lot (apart from the scissors, of course) and follow the same procedure.  Chances are you'll have a lovely time and least the Sims who die will die happy (sort of). Off you go then, snip snip.

Ancient, I keep a scissors on each lot in my custom neighbourhood - just in case!  When Maxis first launched the scissors, it was deadly.  Then they updated it; now my sims never go near it, not even on freewill.  It used to be much more of a 'fun' object.

Well, there's always decimation. Summon every single sim in the neighborhood, then line them up and kill every 10th sim.

You know, I never really thought about the etymology of the word "decimation."
*Cue PSA jingle* The More You Know!

sandilou - I agree about the scissors. It seems like it takes such a long time for them to "slice" themselves with the scissors. I ought to start using the reindeer for speedier deaths.

I really miss the indoor fireworks+rug=boom feature from the original Sims. And the way the children used to scream when you starved them to death.

Geez, I'm a mean sim-goddess.

Ok I give up  :)

I've never downloaded this 'fun pack'

I've visited the sims2 exchange *shudder*.....I can't find it!?

A link would much appreciated, TIA  :)

You don't get it - Swift doesn't want to kill sims; she wants a global hack, which will announce a meassage: "due to 'black death' plague, 60% of the townies died" - thus she will not kill the sims, but will get more place for new ones.

...I could use it too.

Only marginally on topic, but Swiftgold, you should read Connie Willis' The Doomsday Book if you haven't already. Sci-fi fantasy Black Death, absolutely wonderful.  And I just read a terrific history by James Kelly called The Great Mortality.

Edgar Allen Po is not good enough?...:)

Disasters would be great, mysterious fires, arsons etc, as well as home invasions while you are at work. Mayhem! Just like in real life! Or maybe like in Simcity you could have the mothership come destroy large portions of land after one too many abductions (random of course). But it will never happen, because everyone wants to feel good and play nice nice...

I've had something like a plauge in my neighbourhood.
My sim caught a "mysterious disease" while making medicine, and spread it to a townie on a community lot.  From there it spread a lot, and after a while it was deadly to leave your home.

I beg for basically this exact thing for this exact reason every time anything tangentially related comes up, but no luck yet. I really just want to make the flu more contagious and much more lethal, set off an epidemic and play with that. Maybe I should just learn how to make hacks.

I wish zombies would spread disease.  Never sick, but always contagous.  But I'm mean.

The reindeer?  Do they kill people, then?  What do they do, butt them to death with their horns? 

They are very badly wired.  Pet it an you get a bad shock.

http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/object_detail.php?asset_id=70&asset_type=object

Snip away!

Ooh, I'll have to look at those. My newest one is "In the Wake of the Plague" - lots of interesting stuff. Like the Black Death may have been bubonic plague and anthrax at the same time - and if you have an ancestor who survived it, you may be immune to HIV...

Anyway, hmm, there are some ideas... I mean, yeah, the every tenth Sim thing... unless I totally closed my eyes or something, I'd end up lining them up so as to magically avoid certain Sims and, well, plague isn't choosy between your favorites  :D Though I suppose if it was a thing based on a disease, you could give certain ones immunity if you just -had- to, and then the NPCs would be immune too which would prevent more useless respawning. I don't have any townies except a few I made myself.

I have the scissors, too, but I've never seen them use them by themselves, they just kinda lay there.

I had an epidemic of the flu going around in my neighborhood for a while because I couldn't be bothered to keep visitors away and play each house till everyone was cured. A couple Sims did drop dead because they'd been visitors everywhere, and a couple were pleaded back and the other's mother failed to rescue him. He's my zombie now and I'm gonna cowplant him soon because he's depressing. Otherwise I just haven't had any random deaths, and I've tried - I've sent low Mechanial Sims to fix washers and trash compactors - a few shocks, but no deaths. The satellite is really rare and making them go cloud-watch is like selecting them to die, too.

I guess I just wish for random, out of my hands deaths, otherwise I may as well just kill all the more boring Sims in a mundane way and pretend I didn't choose :-\

Well I was reading the prima guide ( I know I know) section that dealt with electrocution.  Basically it said that if your sims gets shocked he will die if his needs are low.  If his needs are high, he will survive.  So that's one way to do it, but that kind of death is more of an execution type death than a plague.

I've never had a sim die on me from disease (apart from the mysterious choking death) so I'm not sure under which conditions they die.  I'm assuming it's being sick and having low needs, especially comfort.  That's why I suggested making them sick and food poisonned and them let act on their own.  When my sims are sick I am always ordering them to bed, to relax or sleep. But who knows what they would do left to their own devices.   Play pinball till they drop dead?

I'm curious as to what would happen.  Not curious enough to kill off my sims though.

My Angela Pleasant in fact died last night due to being shocked while fixing the trash compactor. She actually got shocked twice in one day, and the first time her husband, Komei, successfully pleaded for her death. The second time, I queued up for him to plead for her death but somehow it dropped out of the queue, and Grimmy wisked her away. But no matter what happens, I always save.  ;)

The way I'd like to see something like a neighborhood apocalypse is to have a contagious disease that actually is lethal. I have tried a few times to see if a Sim could die of disease but despite my best efforts I always get the "So-and so iis healthy again!" message the moment they hit the bed for 5 minutes. Has anyone here ever had a Sim actually die of disease while playing the lot? I imagine some sort of hack to make anyone who contracts the Mysterious Disease (very contagious in my 'hood) have a 10% chance of death would be just the thing...

I would also like something like this. I wouldn't want the "disaster" to start randomly but to be something I triggered. But once I triggered it, then it would be random in which lots and/or sims that were effected. Kind of like with vampires - if you don't have the grand vampire bite someone, you don't get any more vampires in your hood. But once you "let the genie out of the bottle" then the spreading is out of your hands.

I haven't had any actually die of the disease after they get it when I'm playing their lot, though I've had two die as visitors on other lots and one die after I returned to the house. I have a lot of families and try not to play one too often so the Sims had the disease for a long time as visitors, and visitors' motives can get really low sometimes.

Ah, like the vampires, yes! Something that supposedly also stops after a certain percentage, too, because although I want to cull the herd, I -would- like to play with the ones that are left. *grin*

I think that would be neat, too- and I thought they had to be drunk to dies from the scissors? At any rate, drinking seems to speed the process- maybe throwing a big party with a lot of toasting and a well paid bartender (a wedding party? anniversary? haha!), plus all the sims and lots of scissors just lying around...

is it possible to die on a community lot?

I'd like something similar as well.  Good idea!

haha I can always tell when my sons (twins, and I didn't even eat cookies much when I was pregnant  ;D ) have been playing my game because a Sim will show up named "xcfjkbfjbfjdsbjs dsdd" who lives in a lot filled with bunny heads...

I never knew about the reindeer, but plan to go test it out tonight.  *Imagines a white ghost with a blinking red nose*  :D

I LOVE the idea of a contageous disease!  It would really help thin out my older neighborhoods and add a random element to the deaths.  I've had sims die of disease but I had to work very hard to keep them tired and poorly fed to do it.

One of my sims may have died of disease, im not sure, It was either that or starving to death. I put her She got trapped inside a fence with only a shower and an easel. And i havnt seen her ghost because her tombstone mysteriously disappeared from the lot. I think her husbands ghost may have smashed it.

You REALLY want me to add you an option? I can give you "Decimate Neighborhood" if that's what you want....you won't get any tombstones, but every time you choose the option, the neighborhood will be decimated.

Yes.
Is there a way that we would know who got the plague? Would any of have memories of the sims that died if they were on the same lot as the unfortunate ones? Could you make it so that once a certain percentage croked then the plague would miraculously go away? And I would want this to be something that I would trigger, not something that would randomly happen.

*rubs hands together*  Now my medieval neighborhood will truly be complete - plague and all!

None of my sims have died from disease, and I've had the five-minute cure happen nearly every time one gets sick.  A few of them have been electrocuted fixing appliances, but they survived -- in each case their needs and mechanical skills were high.  There are a couple of sims I'm getting tired of, and they have low mechanical skills . . . .

The first sizzling I saw was a repairman, and the old fool hadn't quite finished the job when it happened.  He left immediately (wouldn't you?).   

Hmm...maybe. I might be able to do a popup of who was given the death token.

Nope. This would be pretty crude, just randomly handling out the death token. Everyone affected would just drop dead on "another lot" when you visited their lot.

They wouldn't actually "croak" or have a disease. They would just mysteriously vanish. It wouldn't be a continuing thing. A decimation would just arbitaarily "kill" every 10th sim, in the original sense of the word.

If you REALLY want an actual PLAGUE, on the other hand, you could just infect a townie with one of the various deadly diseases available in the make-me-sick tester, and then just watch the plague rampage through your neighorhood unstoppably.

Every 10th sim - this would include all age groups right? None of that Maxis silliness where the youngins don't get wiped out. This would be good for when I get too many playable sims. Don't have the heart to just wipe them all out. (Yes, JM- I'm weak that way.  :P )

Whenever I've had an illness spreading around the hood, it's been annoying but nobody has ever died from it. The only deaths that I've had in game that were not intentionally caused by me was one electrocution, four or five mysterious choking deaths and old age deaths. Sims are damn near immortal if the big eye in the sky doesn't interfere.

How about a mod that makes the plague more virulent?  Like it could be caught in the normal way (I assume it's a % chance) but you'd have a 33% chance of dying from it.  I know there are some mods that still lets your sims get sick but without any chance of dying.  If that can swing one way, I'm sure it could swing the other?  Then all the ghosts would have died from disease.  Seems much more realistic than just mysteriously having 1/10 of the population vanish.  The latter sounds more like some kind of alien mass kidnapping :)

Yeah, I like this idea too. It's near impossible for Sims to die of any disease now, even when you try. I've noticed how when they're sick, sometimes the bladder meter will drop very suddenly to half full. Maybe the hunger meter drops precipitously to the bottom... or ???

Apocalypse by alien abduction doesn't sound so bad. :P

I haven't had any sims die from disease yet.  Even when I tried to make them die from the disease/flu they never did.  They seem to miraculously recover regardless of whether you let them rest or not, heh.

Yes please please please!

Is the chance of dying from disease coded somewhere where it could be easily found and changed? Like, say, someplace that even an ignorant monkey like me could find it? Anybody know?

Only if they are returned somehow different.  If they just disappear never to be seen again, it's just like any normal day in New York City or Chigaco or something.


I tried but couldn't find that mod again.  I think it was on MTS2.  It said something like "Your sims will not die from a disease but can still get sick".

A disease that was actually dangerous instead of annoying would be great. And then, while you're at it, convince Maxis to rewrite the code so that dead sims no longer clog up the works. After that, I would like a pony.

As per the etymology of decimation, which someone mentioned a long time ago -- Rome used to have a very-seldom-used punishment for their soldiers called decimatio, in which the soldiers in a legion which had disgraced itself would be grouped off by tens and each soldier in a group of ten counting off from one to ten. A lot would be drawn with a number from one to ten, and apparently the other soldiers in each group were responsible for killing the one with that number.
There's some degree of debate over precisely what went on, when this was used, etc., but it worked great as a threat. The legion only loses 10% of the soldiers, which isn't really that bad in terms of logistics, and the survivors got an interesting object lesson.

LOL  This was so funny!

C

No, I don't want them not to die. I'm sick of them not dying. I want an apocalyptic plague!

Well, I would like a pony. But I think you got my point.
The one thing that I fear more than having my boring extra sims refuse to die is having them die, be replaced by more boring extra sims, and *poof*

lol ! no, the point is if there is a mod that reduces the chances of dying to zero, maybe it can be modified to increase the chances of dying to something else.  That's what ignorant monkey, huh kate monster was  asking.

Using the Maxis diseases would seem to be the easiest, to me, and you can immunize your favorite Sims from dying that way with the various hacks that do that. I suppose stopping it once it's gotten would be the hard part, and of course you wouldn't lose babies and toddlers except to the social worker, hmm. I ended up keeping an Insim health monitor on almost every lot to nuke my last annoying disease roundabout since I got bored of not having visitors over while trying to get -everyone- better...