More Awesome Than You!

As you know, OFB added object crafting which allows you to create your own objects. Most of the really cool objects come from crafting too. But i wanted to know if you really have the time to find someone with crafting skill so you can have robots and junk. Am I alone on this one. I dont want to always craft a kite on every lot that has a kid. Im not crazy about the whole crafting system.  :-\

You don't have to craft a kite on every lot. Make a toyshop, have one Sim (even an NPC) crafting the toys for it, then go and buy them.

After all, it's all about the businesses.

It would make more sense if sims rolled a want to gain a talent level!

They do actually.  One of my sims wanted to get Silver in the robotic skill, then Gold after he got silver.

What I'm planning on doing is having a few people with Robot shops and have them just sell their equipment to everyone else.  Not everyone has the talent to build a "sentient" electronic being.

Well, I'm pleased to hear they do get the want, but so far I haven't seen it!  At least they get fun from crafting, though.

This would almost be a feasible idea if not for the fact that none of the crafting workbenches can be marked as "For Sale."

It wouldn't do any good to sell a crafting bench to someone else anyway, since a) they can be bought from the normal catalog already, and b) you can't transfer crafting skill with them. I read that as referring to selling the robots, not the benches.

Well, when I saw the word "equipment," I wasn't thinking of a functional, useable item. It made me think of the "robot-making" equipment, etc.  ::)

I agree. I find crafting time consuming and boring to watch your sim do. I alsways hire someone to craft things in the back of my shop. Thats as far as I go with it. Why have a dog and bark yourself is my philosophy.

One thing I have been unable to figure out and the Prima guide doesn't comment on either way is, does having a high logic skill make you craft the robots any faster? I know it makes you go up to the next badge level in robotics faster, but I'm not sure if anything can reduce the time it takes to make a servo. It would be nice if there was a way because it sure does take a while but I guess it's a pretty expensive and powerful object so that serves as a means of balance.

At any rate, if any of you REALLY want to cheat, Monique has a buyable servo over at MTS2. I'm passing on it though. It just feels a little too cheatish for me. I'd rather just set up stores from my sims who can make them and have the others who can't go there.

My interpretation of the Prima guide's explanation was this: Skills don't directly affect Talent-related tasks, but they instead give a boost to Talents by allowing the associated Talent with each skill to be improved faster. A Sim with full Body skill, for example, will improve on Restocking twice as fast as a Sim with no Body skill, or rather, he will gain Talent Badges in half the time that the no-Body Sim will.

The obvious answer is to have your employees do it.  That's clearly not cost-effective for cheap items, but I think the profit margin on things like SentryBots is high enough to pay a salary.  I'd need to collect some data for actual crafting times to be sure.  I'd also really have to get a business up to level 10 to see if there's any point.  There's no question that salesmen / cashiers / restockers generate more cash per hour than crafters, but do you get so many customers at level 10 that you can keep 7 employees and your own sim constantly busy?

I've just gotten up to the point where I have a Sim that can build Servos.  His employees can't build anything better than Cleanbots.  Of the craftable robots, only Servo seems significant, and worth having someone who can supply the neighborhood.

Toy Robot - just a regular toy.
HydroBot - keeps flowers watered, but you still need a gardner if you have hedges.
CleanBot - keeps wastebaskets empty, but does no other important cleaning tasks.
SentryBot - I guess this is useful if you have a lot of enemies.
MunchiBot - haven't tested this yet.

I have a hard time imagining caring about any of the other craftable items.  Yeah, Snapdragons are supposed to be good, but they seem too much like cheating to me.  I barely use Aspiration Rewards because I think they make an easy game even easier.

 - Gus

You can't. I have two businesses at level 10 and still my sim with one other can happily run the store. Thats not including the sale of any craft items however.

I can't imagine a use for 8 sims running one store.

One on register, one on restock, one on sales and you are all constantly busy at lvl 10.

I can see a 4th if you need crafted crap though.

My Diva has a gold robotics badge, but only 4 Mechanical points and it took her a very short time to make her Servo.  She did it in 2 sessions, all in the same evening, and it was the first thing she'd ever made.  I only stopped her because her comfort was way down and she needed something to eat.  Not sure why you mention Logic, I thought that was for Register skills, but she hasn't got a single Logic point.  I'm not sure how long everyone else's Servos are taking to make, but this one was pretty quick I reckon.  Her Servo also has a gold robotics badge, plus 10 Mechanic & 8 Logic, so it'll be interesting to see how long he takes to make one (he'll be making his Miss Right Bot soon).  It took him quite a while to build the Munchie Bot, but that's because he was constantly being interrupted to go do his silly chores.

Maybe it is mechanical, I was being lazy and didn't look it the book.  ;D

Toy robots are, as you can imagine, useless. Munchiebots randomly fetch either pizza or Chinese. As the Chinese is harmful when eaten, the fact that Munchiebot will get it tends to make it useless.

Even Servos are not really commercial products for the public. They take forever to make, and do you really want a few dozen Servos, by extension, a few dozen SIMS, added to your neighborhood? These are basically specific items kept in the back room that you peddle to specific customers that YOU want to have one.

Snapdragons are not really that cheaty. The Energizer is far more effective, since the snapdragon aura appears to have little effect on energy, and they have a rather limited radius.

They're also the only thing worth actually MAKING, since without this effect, the Floristry badge is basically worthless. As it stands, you have a clearcut demand and reason to peddle the damn things: Everyone could always use more snapdragons around. You won't mind at all that your sims have just blown half their wallets on them: They're worth it, as opposed to when a sim buys 10 plasma TVs and then you find them in his inventory and go, "What the hell is this crap good for?", likely forcing him to start his own business to sell off the damn things to get his money back!

In fact, that's what the business district seems to look like, people selling the same crap back to each other ad infinitum, and I don't actually RESTOCK. :P

I'm pondering making it so playable sims won't show up as customers to stores. :P

Please do JMP. Please do.

Oh yes please!! I'd really *much* rather all the customers were townies and whatnot. If I want my playables to buy something, I take them myself :p

And it makes townies useful!  and if you deleted all characters, it gives you a good reason to create a few more!

Some of my playable sims are broke ass bitches anyway. They keep coming back and browsing but when I try to sell to them they're like 'Sorry, I ain't got no money'.  >:(

Every lot I go to, Brandi is a customer, but spends most of her time socialising and trying to pick fights - I've always noticed how often she pranks the wrong sim!  But she never buys anything, but there again, she IS broke!

to start with i was quite happy to see familiar faces buying goods. then i occured to me.....what the hell are they going to do with all the crap they buy, especially after the second or third visit
yeah so selling to townies only would be a much better idea

I'm not so sure about that; I have a teen with 10 logic skills helping on the register at the family  home  bakery and he pushes the buttons slower than a 10-month old child.

Is there a difference between which register you use?  Or does using the old time cash register slow them down even more (as in real life)?

AFAIK, only the badges make a difference in register speed. Until they get at least one badge, they'll be slow as molasses in January going uphill. Even with a bronze badge they aren't too speedy.  :P

I like the way you think  Motoki!.  I do use her computer though, even though it drives me bonkers because of a bug that randomly speeds up my sims.  (even if they don't use the computer.  Just having it in the house is enough).  I used it to get the startup cash necessary to start a business.  This is a kind of reverse cheat.  It's making the game harder :)

One thing that hasn't been mentionned in the thread is you could hire a employee with the badge you need.  While browsing for employees yesterday, I saw one with a gold badge in robotics.  Should have hired him, then I'd have a robot cashier.  My teenaged daughter has gone off to college and I had the shopkeeper's totally unskillled husband fill in for her.  Ouch.  Lost lots of customer loyalty that day.

That's what I've started doing, hiring towines to do the tedious work really fast that does not require socialization of other sims.  The first business I've built is both profitable and popular.  It's an art gallery filled with costum art made by Darren Dreamer (I had him working his butt off in "still-life" and "portrait" heaven before OFB came out and kept finished pieces in inventory) and it is run by Darren Dreamer and his wife (forget her name).  Darren is all about sales and his wife socializes people.  His hired help inlclude Dirk (who is a supburb salesman), Meadow Thayer who alternatly tidy's up and restocks some of the really expensive purchased art, and Brandon Lillard on cash machine.  I think I could do better than Brandon though, I hired the townies at the same time because I didn't realize that sims available-for-hire changes on a day-to-day basis.  I'm gonna keep checking the want adds and get some more appealing crew  :D

So, does JM actually have OFB or did I just have a super-realistic dream??

Yes, please do this. I don't want my sims buying useless things or getting messed over by the incompetent beauticians at the salon in Bluewater. I sent one of my sims there and the chopped her hair into a mess. I wanted to send her to another playable sim's salon but I can't do that.

Marvelleaux: You probably already know this but you can also hire sims in person. You do need to have a bit of a relationship with them (at least 20 daily IIRC) and you'll get a chance to see what badges they have before you make the final decision whether or not to hire them so if they don't have any badges you want you can change your mind and cancel out of hiring them without penalty.

It is a bit tedious to do this, but if you have relationships with most of your customers and need a worker with a certain skill it may be faster than waiting days for the right employee to show up over the phone.

Well if he doesn't have OFB he's having a incredibly super-realistic dream, because he's been talking about OFB quite a great deal.  So unless he finally snapped, I'd bet my copy of OFB that he has the expansion :)

Dang it, that's yet another option I just don't get, even when the relationship is 100/100!

I would guess he is, um... "previewing" the game using the power of teh intewebs and pirates.

ZZ I am highly doubtful that you could be missing a bunch of options.  My bet is that a) either you are  looking in the wrong place, or b) you have hacks that conflict.  Have you tried running the game in a totally hack free environement?  And if you did, have you tried creating a new The Sims 2 set of folders as a test to be 100% sure that's it's not some hack hiding somewhere?

I would guess he is, um... "previewing" the game using the power of teh intewebs and pirates.
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Oh yeah  ;)


Motoki:  yes, I've hired in person before but I must have done it before I knew you could see what talent badges a sim has.  I've been "hiring by phone" because I could see them there.  Thanks for the reminder!

Well, it may be a hack conflict, although I've been careful.  However, I had the same problem when I first installed Uni (and no hacks at all then) as I couldn't get the college options to appear - so I'm not convinced it's a hack, just as likely a faulty install.