More Awesome Than You!

Harder jobs + correction of bugged paychecks and job recognitions for OFBp2. Old p1 version available, no longer supported.

OFBp2+: (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/yellow.gif)  OFBp-1:(http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/terror/green.gif)
OFBp2+: (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) harderjobs.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/hacks/harderjobs.zip)
OFBp1-: (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/zip.gif) harderjobs-p1.zip (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/ofb/obsolete/harderjobs-p1.zip)

Harder Jobs + Fixes for TS2OFBp2
Made by: Flying Fish Systems (J. M. Pescado & Doctor Boris)

Special Thanks To:
Hobbsee the Scrawny Pencil Neck
Fat, Hairy-Bellied Ness

Congratulations to: Draklixa!

INSTRUCTIONS:
Place in your MYDOCU~1\EAGAME~1\THESIM~1\DOWNLO~1 directory.
Place only "-fixes" file if you want only fixes without the harderness.

FEATURES:
Makes standard jobs harder: Uni graduates no longer receive automatic L8/L9
start and upper-level jobs have limited numbers of openings. Also includes
pay and recognition fixes for TS2OFBp2 "Owned Business" jobs.

COMPATIBILITY:
Compatible with all FFS hacks. For TS2OFBp2+ only!

SIDE EFFECTS:
May cause computer damage, incontinence, explosion of user's head, coma, death,
and/or halitosis.

WARNING:
Do not open, crush, dispose of in fire, put in backwards, short-circuit, or mix
with non-awesome hacks - may explode, leak, or catch fire, resulting in injury
and/or death.

I'm assuming that we need the fixes if we have OFBp2?

If we want the fixes, but don't want the harder jobs, what are the options?

See the RTFM: Get the "fixes" only. If you want harder jobs, you need both, but you always want the fixes even if you're a Ness-like wussy.

What exactly are the fixes?  I already have your mod for ensuring they don't get paid for irrelevant skills, so this is obviously something different.

Fixes include recognition for teens still in the "old" hours track, not-teens in the shifted-hours version, and correct paychecks for those hours.

Sorry to follow up, but is this fixes for Uni things or do I need it?  I have only base game + OFB

If you have OFB, you need at least the fixes. Even if you don't have Uni, you might want the entire thing anyway.

How much harder is it? :P

I don't want to download it and find that my sim is dead before it gets to the top of the career chain :P

It depends on how full your career chain is. Like in real life, not everyone can be CEO, regardless of their qualifications. If too many upper level positions are already filled, your choices are to A: Find a new career, B: Create a vacancy through either skullduggery, or waiting for someone to retire/die (people die, and sometimes you can help them to die!), or C: Get used to your lot in life.

If your neighborhood is young and underpopulated, you won't notice much of a difference, other than that you have to now WORK for your higher-level positions, rather than be handed a level 10 post after a single day of work for Uni graduates, but once the upper echelons start getting full, you're going to find it that much harder (read: You can't advance except by chance cards and/or evicting the existing occupant). The number of people who can occupy some positions will be readily obvious: You can't have two mayors!

2 Questions: Can I use it if I don't have OFB?

What is the difference between OFBp2+ and  OFBp1+ ?

OFB2 is the patch that just came out.  OFB1 is the old OFB patch from March.  The new one has more fixes in it than the old one.  the list of the new patch is on the sims2 site and is here in the podium too.

The patch says it fixes the problem where teens with jobs in businesses get a car pool arriving along with the school bus.  That's the only problem i've had, but I'll DL it anyway as you say I need it.

The reason teens have a carpool arriving at the same time as their bus is not a bug, per-se. The reason the bug arrives with their carpool is because their work hours started at the same time their school hours did, making it physically impossible to do both at once.

OFBp2, therefore, added a new job schedule with attendant changes for teens. These work hours are actually quite nice, but are shorter, only 5 hours instead of a full 8. The bug is that the game would pay out incorrectly as a result. Not to mention these are nice work hours other sims might be interested in!

Ah - so it was the pay that was buggy, the "as intended" job and school hours just clashed..  I was actually looking forward to seeing if my teen could hold down a proper job without getting fired by skipping school occasionally.  No challenge any more...

So any teen who is currently employed at a business will get their hours changed automatically by this mod?  I think I only have one at the moment and she's a townie teen (due to become playable though) because once I get back to their lots I get them to quit so they can do an ordinary teen job to get the High Achiever, although that's more difficult now that I have Syberspunk's mod in that makes getting an A+ harder.  Basically, my method has been to employ newly-transitioned teens not yet in employment (Fortune if there are any) so they develop business skills, then by the time I play their lot again they have decent badges that they can use later in life.

No, it simply fixes the recognition of the job as an "owned business job", instead of handing bugged paychecks out. If you want to flip the hours around, you can try the debug option "Change My Shift" in BRY.

ok this hack you said it that graduates will no longer get l8 or l9 jobs right ?

i was just wondering if this is only true when sims get there jobs from a news paper. because when my sims look in the newspaper they get offered the lower level jobs , but when they look on the pc they still get offered the higher level jobs ,

That's the way the game has always worked -- jobs from the newspaper always start at the lowest level; jobs from the computer start at higher levels commensurate with the skills the sim has.  Without the influence of a university degree, the computer jobs were limited to level 5 tops, if memory serves.  With the right degree and graduating summa cum laude, though, a sim could pop in at l8 or l9, but only if he/she found the job through the computer.  This hack keeps them from starting quite so high, but they still will start higher than l1 if the get the job through the computer.

The computer used to start them at level 6, which was still an automatic career award on join for every job. Now they start, assuming all factors are in their favor, someplace randomly between 1 and 4.

No, retrying will not get you a different level. I thought of that already.

well i never knew that . (i guess thats what happens when u nearly always cheat to gte your sim a job)

Well, I have an NPC (Remington Harris) who got a Level 6 job right off the computer.  He immediately got the reward object, and he's never even been to Uni.

Is this supposed to happen?

Pre-made Maxis Sims and townies tend to have garbage data in their job fields, which probably caused that.

With this, or without this? Level 6, without, is the normal level.

Of course, with.

I've always played with one family at a time.  This means I'd have to start playing multiple families at once before I see limited space in higher positions, correct?  Is there any kind of special notification when a sim can't advance due to limited space?  And exactly how many positions are available for each level?

Could you make it harder? Maybe a nuclear edition? Something that really challenges .

Harder? What in particular needs to be harder?

Everything I guess. My sims are getting promoted every day I would like it to be more challenging.

If you're getting promoted every day, it means you're essentially playing a perfect game. There's no real way around it, and once enough sims are promoted, the upper slots will be full. Making it even HARDER would be kinda hard, other than to reduce the number of slots, period.

Or you could just give your sims the shitty jobs of your choice through OFB.

Like maybe sticking in some randomness before job promotions? It would be somewhat realistic since not everyone can get promoted to the top of the ladder in less than a week's time, even with a uni degree. :P

I have this, and I played a couple of weeks, and it was still very easy for my sim to reach Top of the Business level. Maybe a 'nuclear war' edition could through in randomness, so that even if a sim meets all the requirements for a promotion, there's still a chance that s/he won't get it?

Ste

I wish we had random job changes. Those would be great. I would love never knowing if one day if you go to work and are randomly fired or traded to another career. OR better yet. KILLED. lol I would like some death and hardship in the game. no20k usto make that happen but now it barely phases the first generation sims. So we need to have some mass plagues etc to keep them on their toes. You know like a random popup. "While playing the stock market you mistakenly invested in a company called Enron You family is now broke or better yet in the red lol."

Edit:
I was thinking would it be possible to make a stay in job never get promoted mod

I'm not too big a fan of random chance cards. I personally think whether or not you gain or lose money should be a function of your actual decisions.

i'm with J.M.
i prefear a random action from my sims unless a random card..
for example.. a sim could come back from work.. furious 'cause he is degraded and then autonomly chose to change his job.. or maybe could have an aspiration to change job.

i think also, that the research of the top of career could change the personality of sim..
a politic career could interact with the "outgoing" personality...
probabily a sim wiht "3 in outgoing" will grow up.. if the sims have a good career..
even not.. maybe the sim will resoult less nice/simpatic :D

Err....then you're kinda NOT with me.

I don't have this in at the moment (although I plan to use it in my planned new neighbourhood) and I've found since the new patch that none of my grads are getting put into the really high levels.  Most of them are starting way below their capabilities as far as their skills are concerned.  I can't remember the last time I had someone automatically put into Level 8 or 9, it's just not happening anymore.  I've even had them put in a level where they've had 6 skill points more than they needed.

One of these days I am going to complete my Uni careers mod and complete chance cards for all levels (if Maxis refuses to do so, someone will have to…).

More careers should have chance cards at the upper levels which get Sims fired by the way.

Don't forget jobs have a family friends requirement. If you don't meet that, you may end up with a lower starting level.

I so want this hack (the harder jobs aspect, the limited number of top spots, etc) and--if it can be done--would love to see random death and incarceration in certain career fields (for military and police careers--yes, there should be a moderately high chance that a sim is killed on the job. Ideally there would be an NPC who "regrets to inform you..." and brings home the urn. In the criminal track there should be an even higher chance of death and also of incarceration--the sim is out of the game, just like a child taken by the social workers. The notice should be "[sim] has been convicted of [name of crime] and sentenced to [days] in prison (or life, and he won't be coming back ever...)" However, in every career accidents can happen (mayors get assassinated, science labs release deadly pathogens, etc.) I really think it would make play much more interesting!

Of course, I don't have OFB yet, and likely won't be getting it for a while. Is there any chance the hack will work with fewer expansion packs (Uni and NL), or would it totally break my game?

I've already thought of those, but at present, the infrastructure does not exist to make those possible. Perhaps at a later date.

So, will my Uni and NL game be able to utilize the applicable elements and ignore the OFB part, or should I just look at the hack wistfully (with quivering lower lip and big sad eyes) until I can afford to buy OFB?

Is there a way I could modify the number of openings in the upper levels or would that be too complicated for me to bother with?

Too many, or not enough?

At the moment, I'd say "not enough", though that may change.  I've got the fixes in my game at the moment and I'm considering the harderjobs portion because I hate how it lets me skip job levels.  But I'm a little concerned about the number of openings in the upper levels because I've got a few really big neighborhoods (I expect them to become BFBVFS's soon) and if the numbers are as restricted as I'd assume that you'd prefer, there'd be way too much competition.  Then again, I may change my mind later.  I dunno, I guess I just want to know how flexible it is, and since this is more of a personal preference thing that's why I asked if I would be able to modify it myself.  It's not a problem with the mod by any means.

will this work with the family fun stuff patch?

Unless specifically noted otherwise, anything made for OFB will work with Family Fun.

thanks

So is there any way to stop top dogs from pulling strings to give other Sims a promotion to the top flight?  For example there's only supposed to be one Mayor of SimCity, and it's a difficult position to attain.  But, a Senator who makes nice with this Mayor can find themselves promoted to the same job :)

The system will self-correct itself the next time you play one of the lots and actually send them to work, for obvious cases of "There can be only one!".

I'd just like to jump in here and add to the pestering for an NL-compatible version of Harder Jobs.

And to endorse Avalikia's idea that the number of top-tier job slots be user-configurable. Or perhaps it could be set to automatically vary, depending on the total number of sims in the neighborhood...

I'll look into it. It may or may not be feasible based on deep core changes, or maybe the p1- version already works. Not sure. In any case, I don't have any way to test it out. You can crash test p1- if you want.

Well, for some top-tier jobs, the limits are mostly set so that competition will be an actual issue at some point. At 14 career tracks in the game, with an average of maybe 2-3 slots for top-tier posts, that means 28-42 top-level posts. Considering that the typical neighborhood probably doesn't HAVE that many playables, let alone workforce-age playables, that is a lot already! Tightening them any more would turn it into "There can be only one!" for all jobs, loosening them would erase the competitive element entirely. There is also simply no way to actually store the configuration, short of direct-editing of the constants. Which you're always welcome to attempt. Just don't say that we didn't already consider these factors.

Okay, el Presidente--if you think it's a candidate for crash-testing as is, I will give it a go when I get a chance and report back on my findings.


Mmm...I get the idea here, but actual "competition" is pretty limited at this point. Now it'd be really, really cool if you actually could directly go up against the current holder of the position, trying to outperform or outmaneuver or outconnive them in some way--but that's probably just idle fantasy. As it is, one can only compete against the current holder by taking them over and playing them until they retire/get fired/die, or by killing them.

My thought was that growing one's neighborhood to the point where they needed, say, another Mayor could provide another avenue to getting the top job, and it would also be the fruit of actual work on the part of the player (albeit, if taken to extremes, work that could hasten the day that the neighborhood a splodes).

Well, I believe it's a matter of opinion where the point of a good enough amount of competition is, and knowing the level of difficulty that these mods tend to add, that point is probably much earlier than I would prefer.  Then again, if the larger neighborhoods I have start exploding, I'll end up with a quite a few small neighborhoods and I might want to increase the competition.  But I'm not a modder by any means, which is why I asked if it would be easy.  That way I could tinker with it a lot and not have to bug you about it.  But if it's not an easy prospect I'll just have to decide whether I'd be happier with it or without it.

I have the fixes part of this in my game, but not the harder jobs hack itself. 

I'm finding that my summa cum laude graduates are getting jobs at level 7, even when the degree is the appropriate one for the job they're after.  I thought the fixes only fixed OFB business related jobs, without making careers harder?

Normally I wouldn't mind, but at the moment I'm playing a challenge, and I'd like my sims to hit the top of their career as soon as possible so they can quit work and start having babies.

Tried splitting the file differently. Should work now.

The caps for levels 6,7,9 and 10 of the politics career appear to be set to -1. No wonder my sims weren't getting promoted.

Negative numbers mean that the position involved is singular or strictly limited, as in, an impossibility for two people to have that job simultaneously. This is particularly true of the Politics career: You can't both be mayor! Thus, a lot of the politics track jobs are "singular", in that only one person may hold the elected office at a time, for logical reasons.

Out of interest, do these numbers apply across the whole Neighbourhood, or just across a sub-Neighbourhood? It could be argued that Strangetown and its Downtown are separate constituencies, so you could have a sim elected as Congresscritter for Strangetown without affecting the availability of the job in its Downtown...

(This would be a nifty addition to the hack, if not already there. And should be easy for the man who wrote Local Walkbys! 8))

Whole neighborhood. Given how easily and quickly one can travel between them, they're almost assuredly the same area, represented as "SimCity".

I've had two newly hired sims quit on me because they were vastly underpaid.   
Stupid sims shouldn't have taken the job if they weren't happy with the salary!    >:(

Not sure if it's the hack or another buggy bit of maxian code, but I think the problem is they were hired for another lot. 

First one was a gold badge florist hired for a new business who had a couple of other badges.  I wanted to set up a new business, bought the deed and decided to make it a florist when I found a gold badge florist with management potential on the available employee list.  When I visited the lot for the first time, he was there ready to craft, so I built the florist shop around him and set him to work on snapdragons.  He quit very quickly.  I guess it wasn't a florist when I hired him so maybe his badge didn't count somehow. 

Second was a gold badge sales girl hired from home for a business lot selling statues.  No other badges.  Can't explain that one away.

Relevant wages has no really good way to determine what the correct wage for THAT lot was if you hire them from a different lot. You will have to adjust their wages when you go to that lot if you hire from the wrong lot. The alternative being that most sims become unemployable due to irrelevant qualifications.

Sales is always relevant though.  So it's the second one that really didn't feel right.  Surely that one shouldn't have happened?

When hiring sims for another lot, I think I'd prefer the "count all badges" approach rather than the "count none".  You don't have to hire them if they are too expensive and I really wasn't up for the nasty surprise of two of them quitting almost immediately.  Your hack, choice of course, but it's something to think about.  Including a warning in the readme would be a useful too 

"If you hire sims for another lot, their wage may not be correctly calculated.  Check they are not massively underpaid when they turn up for work or they may quit without warning!"

I got a better selection of sims when I hired from another lot for some reason.  The florist guy didn't come up in the list of sims to hire for the lot I was on, but there he was in "hire sims for another lot" so I decided to set up a florist there and then...  I was bored with waiting for a reporter!