More Awesome Than You!

I realise that there're some bad layouts in some dorms. E.g bathrooms're on the 2nd floor while the bedrooms're on the ground and the students have to go upstairs everytime. I tried to build one for my own, but completely unavailable.

So would appreciate it if anyone has any dorm lot in good layouts. As all of u can see that it's better to let the young sims stay in a dorm than a house for rent.

Have you tried making a dorm on a residental lot, then using "changeLotZoning" to make it a dorm? I tend to make my own dorms that way, or at least edit current ones so they're less annoying.

Either way, I too would appreciate any links or downloads of any decent dorms. Primarily, any of them that look nice on the outside and have big dorm rooms.

 "changeLotZoning"-Is it a new program ? Plz advise.

If you build your dorm as you want it, then bring up the cheat box, type changelotzoning dorm into it, then save and exit-when you enter the lot again it will be a dorm. If you like you can type in the cheat box dormSpecificToolsDisabled false to change exsisting dorms around to your liking. Just type 'true' instead of false to change it back so you can't build while students are there  :)

Thanks for your instruction. Maybe I'll set up a new Uni neighbourhood with more comfortable dorms for my young sims :)

Good plan :D Be careful though, more comfortable dorms usually mean much higher bills!

The best dorms have one or two big nice rooms, depending on how many playable sims, and a bunch of tiny rooms, like 4 squares for the NPCs. They don't need beds etc.

Plus if you make it right, you can put bathroom access only through the playable sim's room. Dormies are much more fun if they pass out an piss themselves all the time. Makes it like real life.

IF your dorms get billed. It seems to be rather inconsistent whether or not your dorm will receive bills at all!

I've noticed that if teens that are born in-game move to a dorm they don't tend to be billed, but if you add a teen townie to the dorm, the bills start arriving as regular. If it is a CAS-made YA then they definitely get billed.

Interesting theory...  I'm going to have to try it out some time.

Hmm, I was wondering about the dorm bills, too.

In one of my own hoods that I started a long time ago, the dorms I used for my born-in-game YAs never got any bills.  Ever. The mail carrier comes, but doesn't put any bills in the box.  Never has, whether they're all my sims in the dorm or there are townie dormies.  And I change colors of the dorm rooms and furniture every time a new sim of mine moves in.  And occasionally add stuff to the dorms.  In fact, I changed the staircases in all of them to the modular stairs while I had YAs living there.  Still no bills.

I recently started another hood where I made all my sims YAs so they could all start at Uni and get their skills built up before going to the hood.  Same campus as the first one, same dorms.  I made some minor changes to the dorms in the second hood, mostly color changes as I color-coded them to go with the four colors of pens I use to make it easier to keep track of who's in what dorm on my Uni chart.  (Made the changes before I moved in any sims.)

The first semester these YAs were there their bills were over $1000.  Second sem they were just over $900.  They keep going down, but they've had to pay bills every semester.

I thought it was odd that in the first Uni there have never been any bills for any of the dorms, since all my other Uni dorms/residences have bills, but I thought the bills were way over what they should have been in this last one.  This bunch must be paying the bills the first bunch doesn't get!

I've seen that in my game, too, and that explains it. When I first started playing uni, I used the Maxis-mades, and they all got bills. Then I had a run of all game-born students, and the bills stopped.  Now I'm playing a combo of some Maxis-mades I didn't play early on, a CAS-made brother and sister, and game borns, and only the dorms without game-borns get bills.

See-told ya! :D I noticed this a while ago.

Maybe their parents are secretly paying them!

*Hits the Thanks button for ElviraGoth*

I always wondered why my YA's didn't get bills and thought it was because I moved them out after the first semester

I actually found it completely random, for example I have 4 of the 5-roomed dorms, no dormies, but all the YAs that were waiting in the bin are in one, and the other three have all the Pleasantview and Bluewater Village townie teens in.  And the bills were pretty low - and at least they aren't paying for a load of dormies to sponge off them!  In each case I eventually made them residential, but the bills didn't go up, except by what you'd expect as they bought better furnishings.

I don't think I've ever paid bills in a dorm, but that is just fine by me. Staying completely true to life, it is complete crap to have to pay the bills for all the townies that live there too. No point and since my sims get scholorships, they really shouldn't have to pay for anything.

Even more so for the poor CAS YAs who start with 500 simoleons apiece!

Presumably, those "scholarships" were intended to pay for your dorm bills, as opposed to being free pocket money to do...well, there's not a whole lot you'd want to buy anyway. Those odd jobs Uni introduced? Probably to pay for those hapless scholarship-less chumps.

In a sense there's not much point in buying anything you don't actually need, most of the furniture is virtually valueless by the time you've carted it all back to Pleasantview in your backpack/bumbag (inventory) and even works of art mostly deteriorate pretty quickly too. Better really to continue living in a comfortless dump and save your cash.  Send your girlfriend back first, so she can struggle along to make a home for you, send her the cash and then return to a nice little house in a leafy suburb!

Well thanks to no 20k handouts, that "pocket money" is extremely needed! That makes the difference between living on the lawn with your uni furniture and no terlet to living in a box with some furniture and a terlet. I prefer the box and I think my sims do too.

I'm absolutely sure they do!

My current CAS made YA has pretty much made a career out of DJing on community lots.  And thanks to communityskilling maxed out creativity in no time.  He's living pretty comfortably now seeing as how he makes $30 a pop DJing as opposed to $16 a pop serving Expresso like they all had to do back in the old days.  Or worse yet, working in the caffiteria.

Sounds good - pity they don't get tips for karaoke!

I usually send my would-be generals and athletes off to the gym to coach dormies!  They can do pretty well from that, and if you stick a PC in the gym, they can get their term paper done while they're there.

Are you serious?? That is all stuff you can do?? Well, I think I might let my uni students roam around a little. Hmmm...I have a senior right now so I think I'll let him use his 72 hours to earn some extra cash. And all this time I've been sending them to the espresso bar. I can't beilieve that I never heard of that stuff, but I really didn't like uni, aside from getting a degree.

If you stickone of Gnomon's flamingoes on your community lot, (or TJ's energy thingy) they can stay there almost indefinitely, phone thier friends etc., and as long as the college clock is also on the lot and you freeze the time there when you arrive, they won't lose any of their remaining time at their dorm or house, although they will attend class normally.  Actually, if you put either Echo or DJS 's sleep on community lots hacks in, they could live there for the whole of their stay at Uni!

I've done that with SS lots on occasion (had a sim spend an entire semester there).  Great place for making new friends, gaining skills, and even getting a little action, since the first thing I usually do with those SS funds in wall in a section of the house and add a double bed for my sim to, um, exercise on.  I guess the game treats the SS lot as a dorm, because my sims have always been able to sleep there without any hacks.

The only downside on the SS lot is that they can't make phone calls out to friends, only to go home.  But they can receive incoming calls, which with JMPs mods actually become useful.

Of course, having an inventory is useful too - those SS funds need to be spent in a good cause, and what better cause than letting your sim buy the expensive stuff he needs, sticking it in his inventory and taking it home?  (Always supposing he can use his inventory there.)

Been there, done that, stole the TV. :)  Yea, the inventory works on SS lots.  Like I said, the game treats them more like dorms than community lots, and in some cases even more like a rental house, since all the buy and build options are available without using the dorm build cheat. The only other downside is you can't hire a maid for a SS, so you either have to clean up after yourself, or use your influence on one of the dim-witted SS members to clean the place up for you.

But you get cleaning skills!  The only sim I ever got abducted was knowledge, and he loved cleaning up!  Since I now ban dormies etc. everywhere, my sims don't get the chance any more - but I suppose if one got the want, I might allow dormies and the SS Prof to visit.

Yeah, you could spend all of the SS lot's money on stuff and bring it back with you with the inventory.  But I much perfer pilfering all of the career rewards there with it.   ;D

Why not have both?

Does the SS lot regenerate at all?  If you pilfer the rewards, will they ever return short of being put back?

No, once they're gone, they're gone.  Any changes to the SS lot are sticky, regardless of whether you're adding or subtracting stuff.

Yeah, I usually buy any things they want there such as expensive computers, instuments etc. I only do this if they actually want these things though-contarary to what Pescado says, I try not to 'cheat' ;D

At least he doesn't say you're an incompetent cheat! :-[