More Awesome Than You!

When one of my YA's graduated and moved into the neighbourhood the job he needed for his LTW didn't start until Thursday.  No problem, his degree was ideally-suited to Natural Scientist which meant he could work in that career on Tuesday & Wednesday and make some much-needed cash.  He went in at Level 9 and on Wednesday came home $30,000 richer having made it to Ecological Guru.  This job is one day a week and that day happened to be Wednesday, so it was just as well he wasn't staying in it.

My point is - what the hell are they supposed to do for the other six days?  They can't do two jobs at once and as this Sim is maxed-out on all his skills except two, which are almost maxed-out ( and which I am deliberately keeping like that so he can go for the Max Out All Skills LTW next), what else can he do other than spend all day selling masterpieces (not novels, because it makes them so depressed).  Maybe he could teleport in neighbourhood kids and train them on the career objects?  This guy is a knowledge Sim, what is he supposed to learn?  I suppose I could get rid of some of his skills and he could re-learn them, but that seems a bit drastic. 

What ARE they supposed to do with their time if they're only working one day a week?  There just aren't enough things available in the game, at least not in terms of gaining them anything.  They can't even spend their time visiting community lots because the time doesn't pass while they're gone - not that there's anything to do there they can't do at home anyway.

Well with just the base game and Uni, probably nothing.

I would imagine if NL promises to be all that it seems to be, that a job that is only one day a week would be convenient to hang around Downtown and go on many dates.

I recently just had my Sim quit his job because the hours aren't NL-compatible in my opinion and I'm planning for him to sow his oats in the new ep before settling down.

A one-day work week Sim would make a good parent though, esp. for raising toddlers and buildig skills in their kids and teens.

I wish our Sims could hold down more than one job at a time.  That's always a desire I have especially when I have Sims living from hand to mouth and they have something like 2 days off before going to work again.  It'd be nice to pick up an extra job on the side.

Yeah, it'd be nice if the game allowed you to work 3 jobs at once, perhaps juggling them and trying not to get fired. Consider also: you get 3 vacation days for having a baby. At one working day a week, you'll have 3 freaking weeks of vacation. Your sim probably will never need to work again. Consider it an early retirement. Natural Science is thus a great career track for both "people who want to make a lot of money really fast" (re-apply repeatedly at L9 to rake in the huge 30K promo bonus), and "stay-at-home" people.

Presumably, whatever you want. I generally go for Be Instructor or Power Idle. Both have the effect of getting the aforementioned sim out of my way, which is why you send them to work, right? So you don't have to keep pampering them? Use that Power Idle. :P

Go hang out at community lots, make some poolhalls or something. Throw lots of parties. Invite all of your friends over for your sim to paint their portraits. Let him wander around on free will and see what he does. Have him have kids and actually spend time with his family instead of just everyone studing or something. Get a new job from the newspaper (lower than computer) and work his way to the top of all the career laders. Have him chat on the computer until he meets everyone in the neighborhood. Woohoo all the service people, then invite all of them over at the same time and see if through chatting with each other, they figure out that you're the new town bike.

Well, I can't send him to the community lots because as aforesaid, time doesn't pass so I'd still be stuck with him when he got back!  Neither can he have kids, at least not more than one, because I am restricting all offspring to one per family.  As for starting jobs from the bottom, he can't do that if he's an Ecological Guru because he's already got one.  See the problem?!

I'd already thought along the lines JM mentioned, actually.  If I put him into Ecological Guru at Level 9 every Wednesday, he should keep coming back with $30,000, then he can do another job for the rest of the week.  On top of that, he will get one cowplant a week and can fill the garden with them.  I'd have loved that idea before I found out that killing off townies doesn't actually help in terms of overloaded neighbourhood problems. 

Give them to paint, or write a novel. Each painting can be selled - and that's another job.

But when I give them to paint, I always have passing-by visitors, so I host them almost all day.

Anyway, you choosed the new job only to get the carreer reward, right? After you get the reward - "find a job" again, may be you'll get the Paranormal reward, and again. My sims LTW is to be criminal mastermind, but for now I send them to Paranormal. After I get the O-Nomitron, I'll search for another job. As they are already in platinum mood, I collect as many reward as I can.

And, don't forget the kids: the job you have doesn't require nanny, except once a week "just for now" - and the parents can spent a lot of time with the kids.

Or give him the Be Chief of Staff LTW and let him get a real job!

You could try turning your neighborhood townies into supercapable useful members of society by taking in a few at a time and training them and then turning them back into NPCs.  I'm currently doing that with my teen townies in Veronaville in case I decide to send any of them to college.

Or you could start focusing on Influence points instead of aspiration points and use them to make two sims fall in love with each other and then once you've accomplished that, get more influence points to make them hate each other.

You could have your Sim become a serial killer.

I like Sara_Dippity's ideas! *making mental note*
What about an orphanage - though you said you're keeping numbers down. Or he could found a religious cult, building a temple and moving in some teenagers to Instruct, they could all wear togas  :P. Or an old peoples home, make him work to build it up, having given away all his money to the local dogs home.

Maybe he could run a prison?

Yes! A prison. I have one right here (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=107406). LastDitch Prison was created soon after Inge started releasing her prison objects. It doesn't have many of the newer bits but the base structure is fine, you can see some pics here (http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~witch3/houses/lastditchprison/lastditch.htm#Top).

 

That should keep him busy on his days off!

Situations like this make me really hope that they carry through with that expansion they mentioned as a possibility in the survey, one where you might be able to build your own furniture or do something else like that, something productive for sims with max skills and such. I hope that rumor that was squashed turns out to be true, the farming expansion. Or other things that can be a hobby, not just painting and novel writing. I know they mentioned making jewelery.

I think they could perhaps bring in new skills, which would give the Knowledge Sims something to aim for!  Maybe they could also bring in an extension to Uni where elders could perhaps study something and they could add elder only LTWs to go with it!

It should be easier to lose skills, or harder to gain them. Current rates are ridicilous: even without smart milk stuckage I can often get a teen in permaplat with all seven skills maximized.

For which reason I rarely try to do it, leaves them nothing to aim for in life!

They should have changed the careers instead of simply rehashing the Sims1 ones!  For example, the top of the politics careers shouldn't be Mayor of Simcity, but something else, and Mayor of simcity could be an award for one sim at a time, say to be held for 3 days and determined by some point-count within the game.  Either that or they should have totally rewritten them and made them more logical!  How many ambulance drivers do you know who go on to become Hospital Chief of Staff?

True ZZ, that's why I only have one mayor at a time. If I want another sim to become mayor, the current on has to 'resign'. On top of that, any mayor can only stay mayor for one sim week + 1 day at most(sort of like real politics, where the elections change mayors as well, and any elected official can stay for two terms @ appr. 8yrs total)

Same goes for chief of staff. I grant them one for the community hospital and one for the university hospital, but they have to step aside for new chief(s) of staff.

G.

What a good idea!  As long as they only have mayors, it should work, but Prime Ministers have no restrictions apart from the wishes of their own party (at least, in the UK!)

One time I was at a hospital and I ran into an ex boyfriend. He was working in the cafeteria. He told me all about his plan to work his way up from flipping burgers to being Hospital Administrator. Dude, I got news for you...
Man am I glad he's my ex.

I figure that SimCity has a lot of hospitals. I mean, I sure as hell do. Just to fill the constant demands of whiny sims requires at least 3 hospitals covering a goodly-sized residential district. Of course, the only thing you've ever managed to produce is slums full of the sick and dying, which is clearly explainable by your LACK OF HOSPITALS.

Funny, though, it must be the clean air in Pleasantview, but none of them ever seem to go into hospital!  (Except occasionally after an accident at work, and you never actually SEE them go!

Sims don't have accidents at work. If they're at work, they can hold it indefinitely until they either get home, then have an accident out on the sidewalk, or until their lunch break.

I think it was actually in sims1 when they had accidents at work, but only in the Athletic and Military Careers.

No, in TS1, they didn't have lunch breaks, so they just held it until they got home, then pissed themselves. But back then, sims didn't care if they peed themselves.

The accidents I meant were broken arms, bullet wounds etc.

Nope, sorry, there's never been any KIAs in any version of the Sims.

I know I haven't played Sims1 in a while, but I have an excellent memory!  In the Police career,for example, they get the popup that they were injured in a shoot-out, and lost a couple of body-skill points!

Never seen one of those, but now we have chance cards that do that.

Well, the Sims 1 chance cards just didn't have options to choose from, they just appeared!  I know they happened in every career because I used to use Job Factory to write my own careers but you couldn't, if I remember correctly, write chance cards, so the original career you replaced would pop up with totally unrelated chance cards!

Not true, not true :D.

My SimCity becomes a slum because the traffic and roads get so horrible (see, I didn't even try the 'my computer is bad' excuse anymore). I don't have Rush Hour; I've been told that this expansion takes care of the traffic and road mess that is in SimCity 4. I make lots of hospitals there, I faithfully place them so there are no areas left out, even if they overlap. And firehouses and police-stations, but still... Maybe I'm just not good at trying for large cities, my mind is not as precise and logical as yours JM.

Your SimCities are a model of scientific precision. Aside from that, I need to behave like a useless log for several hours, and you are beyond this wussy behavior. That's why I am logical vicariously through you, logic by proxy :D
Besides, now I want a cool 8G elevator for my high-rises, and I can't get them either.

In my TS2 community I have 94 characters, including NPC's. I figure, one hospital is enough for them. And the University I have attached has another hospital. If I had a big neighborhood, I would let them have more chiefs of staff, but even if I ever build a large neighborhood and mess around in it until it becomes a Big Fiery Ball...etc. etc., I'll not risk this particular neighborhood for anything. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a wuss, and I'm in for a good kicking. I'll go have some coffee, maybe the shakes will keep me awake :D

G.

I'm not really sure how building 6x6 grid squares counts as highly scientific or logical, but they manage to get to decent size doing this. But you are still dumb and have an ugly butt.

JM, there you go, telling secrets again. You promised not to do that. :D

G.

When I play Sim City 4 (haven't done it in a while, since my CD's broken, and I'm not sure if it's worth replacing) my cities just sort of naturally grow in various directions, with no real rhyme or reason to them. Sort of like a slime mold. And they stay fairly safe, healthy, clean, etc. Maybe it's because I've been playing Sim City games for almost 10 years? It's not terribly difficult: this building makes crime or whatever go down, this building makes this other thing go down. Add in budget balancing and a fairly dense and well connected road system (I understand why emminent domain is a major road building tool now. Boom!) along with perhaps a decent bus system, and you're set.

EDIT: Oh, yes, and I usually give family sims the Ecological Guru job, or I use it to abuse the career system by switching careers a lot and making obscene amounts of money. Knowledge sims who have maxed out skills usually get most of ther ASP from romantic interactions with spouses or from aliens. Heh heh heh.

Yeah, mine start out pretty healthy, but sooner or later the roads deteriorate, the businesses leave, etc. etc. Someone told me not to use autoroads at all and to get 'rush hour', then I could see an improvement. They also grow as if on their own, hence the road deterioration. I even put public transportation anywhere I can thinking  (probably wrongly) that it would ease the road usage, no dice. I should give rush hour a try.

G.

I tried SimCity4 and couldn't get to grips with it at all.  I thoroughly enjoyed SC3, but 4 is much harder.  No matter what I did, my cities all died.  I couldn't seem to get my own Sims into the game, either.  I had Bella & Bob in it (the versions that come with the game), but they were always moving because the areas they lived-in deteriorated so quickly.  I didn't really get chance to play it much anyway, because I got TS2 soon afterwards and got hooked on that.  Maybe I will try again if I get bored waiting for Nightlife.

I've also decided what to do with my Guru.  I will change the day with a mod so it's always Wednesday, at least until he comes home, that way he can work every day and earn $70,000 simoleans a week (plus more if there are chance cards).  Don't know why I didn't think of that before.

Gnomon's 'flamingo of weekness' comes in very handy for that. There are about 6 or 7 (or more) flamingoes available, each with a different purpose.

G.

Not sure what "Autoroads" are, but you probably shouldn't be having problems with road deterioration unless you're not funding the transit department enough. I think the original, pre-Rush Hour game also has a number of pathfinding issues that go unfixed which causes minor problems later in the game.

Where do i find such a flamingo of weekness? I tried a google search, and found lots of flamingoes, but no weekness

Wouldn't know. The only Flamingo I use is the ordinary Flamingo of Kickyness.

I have the Flamingo of Weekness, you can also use the Inseminator temporal mod.  The flamingo is available at http://www.living-it-up.net for the person who asked and anyone else who's interested. 

It was I that asked.

But, the link you posted is somewhat inaccurate.. The real one is without the G in living.. as in http://livin-it-up.net/

The flamingo of decay doesn't work properly in Uni - beware!