More Awesome Than You!

It was kind of hard for me to tell from the RTFM, does this keep visiting Sims from holding the baby for hours on end, thereby annoying the hell out of the baby (and me) and keeping everyone else from interacting with the visitor (I did not invite you over to keep the baby awake all evening) and keeping the parents from being able to feed the baby? Or does it only work with family members? I had a Sim invite her father over last night, I thought I could get some cute shots of Grampa with the new baby and his older granddaughter. But most of the time he was there he was holding the baby, no one could talk to him and no one could feed the baby. There's no interaction to "take baby from" (and why not??? we need this) so I had to wait for him to put the kid back in the crib finally. After two spells of standing around holding the baby for about two hours each, I had the father grab the baby and queued up a bunch of interactions with her so Grampa would actually *meet* his other grandchild and talk to his daughter. >:(

Jen

I have all JM's baby fixes and it does stop visitors from messing around with the baby. Add to that the 'eye in the sky', and the only time the baby gets picked up is when it needs feeding, diapering etc.

You are so right, 'take baby' is definitely a good idea, but the fix takes care of this.

Oh good, glad to hear it. I installed it immediately after closing the game last night but haven't had a chance to try it out yet. Good thing my husband wasn't here to hear to me yelling at the monitor :P "Put the damn baby DOWN!!!"

Jen

Have you tried the "Call Over" option?  Might be useful for challenges if it works.  Since Gramps won't interact with your sims, maybe it will work if they interact with him.

No, I didn't try that. They won't talk to him or tell him a joke or anything though, it drops out of the queue when he doesn't respond ??? Anyway, this challenge allows certain hacks if they don't affect the gameplay or scoring and this doesn't, it just fixes something that's broken :P Thank goodness, too, I'd die with twojeffs' final exam fix, not to mention all JM's critical fixes. In fact they have an allowed hacks list, which includes all the twojeffs/JMP critical fixes.

Jen

Wellm that's great, then, you don't need to worry!  Is the annoying gramps a family sim?  It wouldn't surprise me!  The only useful grandparents I've found are either romance or Knowledge!

I'll bite.  Why are romance and knowledge grandparents useful?

OK - in one version of my game, don Lothario married another romance sim whose mother was a scorpio knowledge sim.  Don and his wife had twins, and immediately granma appeared, started looking after one baby - fed it, changed it's nappy, bathed it, cuddled it etc. and put it to bed.  The wife's teenage daughter married Keanu Broke and had a child.  He went to work, she stayed at home to look after baby, and got very depressed.  Mother appeared and took over baby minding so daughter could have some fun!

Both these occasions were totally autonomous - I had no hacks or mods back then, so I couldn't have rigged anything!

Aren't highly-outgoing Sims more likely to drop by uninvited anyway though?

Well, yes, but I don't think the Knowledge sim grandmother was particularly outgoing, she was quite a bad-tempered Scorpio.  Also, it wasn't the dropping by that was useful, it was the spontaneous babycare!

Oddly enough, Grampa is a fortune Sim. Of course he didn't do anything useful with the baby, just stood there like a stump holding the kid :P

Jen

Well, I've never noticed whether I've any fortune sims that are useful - I don't have that many but I could grow Mary Sue up and observe!  But since she was a hopeless mother, I don't hold out much hope!

I'm guessing that the grandma's personality, rather than her aspiration, was what caused the autonmous care for the baby.

The most interesting autonomous behavior I've seen happened with my namesake Gregsim.  He started out as a Romance sim (before I learned that Maxis's idea of "romance" is "sexual predator").  I grew weary of trying to keep him happy as a Romance sim (and was also becoming bewildered by the number of baby bombs seeded by my playing with the teen woohoo hack) and changed his aspiration to Family.  After that, any time someone invited him over he wanted to take care of the babies instead of trying to jump the hostess in every household in town.

I think he's the only sim I've had who would autonomously change a baby's diaper without some help from an FFS hack.  On the other hand, since he's my viewpoint character and gets invited into every household, his ubiquity might the real cause of this phenomenon.

You may be lucky with Family sims, I just find them a total pain!

normally i'd have one of my sims talk to the visiting sim. he'll put the baby back into the crib and you can keep him busy so he won't hold he baby ever :)

it was nice though when the visiting sim was the father of one of my babies. he helped fed the baby

I can usually get them to put the baby down by telling them a joke, but as in your case, it doesn't always work.

I don't mind visitors having some sort of access to babies, not after seeing a few retrieve a smelly baby/toddler and bathe it.

In fact, now that I've learned who the neighbourhood suckers are, they've become rather popular friends for Knowledge and Finance Sims. (or any other Sim with a 'fear of diaper changing')

It's funny how my permanent platinum romance sims are the most playful and nurturing of the family toward the babies. I remember reading that on another thread, too. Used up all their romance wants, now they roll wants to interact with the hundreds of off-spring and grand-offspring they've created. It's kind of cute, I think.

Well, most of my romance sims are in happy one-to-one relationships, but they still roll up all the right wants when there's babies around!  And good old Herb Oldie - Coral adopted a child - Aurora, who is cute! - and all Herb wanted to do for ages was be best friends with her!

I'm sorry you've had such bad luck with family sims, ZephyrZodiac!  They are my favorite aspiration, followed by Knowledge.  I guess if I were a sim, I would be a combination of Knowledge and Family.  The others could seem to care less if their babies ever get potty trained or learn to walk or talk.  I never see any other aspiration spin a want to teach their child to study.  I've been making all my teens Knowledge sims though, and changing it after they get to college.  I find Family and Knowledge the easiest to please.  Of course Fortune sims can be if you buy them stuff all the time, but this does not appeal to me.  Romance can be fun for a change, but I get bored with these wanting to jump every person they meet.  Like SimsHost, I was very disappointed in Maxis' definition of "romance."  I guess any sim is what you make them, and you can make a good parent out of any sim.  It's just nice to get Aspiration points for it.  I don't understand why people say some sims are better parents than others when they will all take care of the children any way that you tell them to.

I've had very little problems with Romance sims. They are just like any other aspiration, whatever wants you give in to seem to spin a little more frequently. Ignore them, they seem to (eventually) go away.

One of my best dads is Romance, much better parent than his 'family wife' who forgets about them immediately. He did all the toddler training (wanted to) as well as teaching most of his dozen children to study... (he never wants to cheat on his wife)