More Awesome Than You!

This is a challenge by Huzzah, posted originally on Shoo Flee. I thought it might appeal to some people here who are fond of challenges that involve sim torture:

Okay, I had an idea for a challenge. It's called the Lyin' Low Challenge. Here is what you do.

1. Make an Adult Popularity Sim in CAS. They must have 10 Outgoing. They must live alone.
2. Move them into an empty lot of any size and build a house. Unallowed items are: A telephone, An Energizer, a computer. No aspiration reward objects allowed.
3. Try to keep them from going into Aspiration Failure...and try to keep the Social Bunny away. they MAY NOT meet anyone. Ever. They must stay alone. No boolProp, but money cheats ARE allowed. In the event that you run out of food, you must sell the fridge and buy a new one. No repairmen, or maids, or gardeners, or matchmakers.

Note: for the purpose of the challenge, "met someone" is defined as gaining the memory of having met a sim. No memory editing cheats allowed.

Scoring:

-1 for every time you go to work but you shouldn't
-1 for every Social Bunny
-3 for every Aspiration Failure
-5 for every person met
+2 for every day the Sim goes without going into Aspiration Failure or seeing the Social Bunny
+2 for every day spent in gold or Platinum Aspiration
+5 if, at the end of the challenge, the Social bar is in the green
+5 if, at the end of the challenge, the house is completely clean--no options to Clean--and there are no broken appliances

The challenge ends when they transition into an Elder. And only then.

By the way--the reason money cheats are allowed is because you don't go to work often. They may go to work every other day. As for days off--if you have one, that DOES count as a day that you don't go into work. HOWEVER, if you have TWO CONSECUTIVE DAYS OFF, they count as ONE DAY YOU DID NOT GO IN. So if you get Saturday and Sunday off, and you went to work on Friday, you may go on Monday. But not Tuesday. Tuesday you must take off.

I played it a couple of times. Here are the results:

http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=102094
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=102387

You might want to disallow the RenuYu Orb as well.

This is supposed to be hard? This sounds more like how I usually play new CAS sims. :P But what's the point of any of it if you have unlimited money?

Doesn't day dream fufill social need?

This looks quite frustrating, but I loved your second story rohina! Cute little alien baby!

There was a rule disallowing all aspiration rewards, but it seems to have gone missing in one of the rewrites. *I* didn't write the challenge. It was Huzzah, as he/she keeps PMing me to remind me. I must not take credit.

Anyway, Huzzah added some rules about downgrading items, but I think they are stupid. I was thinking of adding a one motherlode only rule, but I don't think I'll play it again. It's not as amusing as the email challenge.

Well, very few people are awesome enough to fill that standard.

Ponderance: Is the sim allowed to make a robot? Does that count as a person, since it's crafted on-site?

Also, I don't actually see a prohibition against leaving the lot, as suggested by your story, merely a prohibition against meeting anyone while doing so.

Seriously?  Too funny.  ;)

I absolutely loved your Hermit stories.   ;D  I thought about trying this one, but the rules became a blur to me when they kept changing.  I loved the abduction idea you had, which was a wonderful loophole.  I also like JM's idea of making a robot.  I think abbeyroad was going to try making snapdragons.

Even if it did count as meeting someone, you would only take a -5 point reduction, and then your problems would be solved.  Your brain must be constantly looking for loopholes.

Bunch of dumb questions...

1)
Does that mean the sim must not clean the house at all?  ???

2) Did you count the 5 points reduction for the baby? Technically, it's like meeting someone new.

1) I think "no options to clean" refers to the house needing to be clean at the end of the challenge. No rules about keeping it clean along the way, so it is just a 5 point bonus, really.

2) Yes, I did take the 5 point deduction. My score at the end was 71.

Pescado: I think you could make a servo. The only issue would be keeping the sim in a good enough mood to work on developing robot skill. abbeyroad was trying to get her sim good enough at flower arranging to make snapdragons, but she said it was slow going. My guy spent an awful lot of time building charisma (practically the only thing that got him aspiration points) and stargazing.

Yes, but that means you lose. Winning score is 124 or 126: 29 days no failure, 28 or 29 days gold/plat (depending on how this is counted, since you start green: how exactly is this counted? The whole day, @1800, or just some point in the day?), and 10 points for clean green finish. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.

Other factors to note include whether a Uni start is allowed. If Uni is allowed, you can take in a few more points if Uni days count, for a 16x24 Uni period (you can repeat each semester once, doubling your days here), and/or take in still more points for using the Cow Plant (no need to meet the drinkee).

Also, does it only count as having met somebody for the "met so-and-so" memory? It is possible to utilize other sims without ever actually "meeting" them. These points all need to be clarified so I can crush you.

Actually, scratch that. I can get an infinite score easily. :P

This challenge is now officially owned:

Here's my strategy:
Go meet the Grand Vampire: -5 points.
Become a vampire. Live forever. Rack up 4 points a day for every day you live. Forever.

Again, NOT THE AUTHOR OF THE CHALLENGE. Hem.

I think you must be have an adult sim. No Uni or teens allowed.
I calculated the gold and platinum days once a day at 8am, since that was when the challenge started (ie when my guy moved in the first time)
I would define meeting as having the "met so-and-so" BUT, no cheating to edit memories allowed.

Edited to add: excellent work-around. I think that is perfectly fine, but definitely shows the issue of "this challenge is kind of boring" which I had mentioned.

Naturally, it is not as cool as E-Mail. I make sure that my challenges never have infinite score exploits by making sure you can't even normally get positive points. :P

Not sure I would want to try this challenge, I'd feel too sorry for the poor Sim, but those stories were great, especially the second one.

I enjoyed both those stories too Rohina, you always manage to get a different slant. :)

I enjoyed Rohina's stories, but I missed this thread at the time, so I wasn't quite sure why the sims were being hermits. Oh well :).

I'm sure it would be possible to make this challenge more awesome [1], by simply tightening up the rules. Here's what I came up with in 20 minutes of evil plotting.

baratron's modified rules for the Lying Low Challenge, originally by Huzzah at Shoo Flee

OBJECTIVE: Make an Adult Popularity Sim in CAS and play them for the span of adulthood without allowing them to meet another sim. Try to keep them from going into Aspiration Failure... and try to keep the Social Bunny away. The challenge ends when they transition into an Elder.

RULES:
1. No cheats except where specifically permitted. You may use move_objects or the debug cheat only to move or delete stuck objects and sims, or force errors on the same. You may not delete sims to refresh their moods.

2. You must start with an adult sim created in CAS, with 10 Outgoing points and Popularity aspiration.

3. Your sim must remain a Popularity sim! You must never change their aspiration.

4. Your sim must remain human! Turning them into a vampire or zombie is prohibited and will forfeit the Challenge! Cheating to turn them into a robot is also prohibited.

5. Your sim must start on an empty lot! No other inhabitants are allowed. Should pets come into existence, they are also prohibited.

6. You may never move anyone new in. No Move In, Marriage or Adoption is allowed.

7. Your sim must not go to work! Exception: You may take a job to fulfill a Want, but must never actually go to work.

8. Your sim must never meet a service NPC! They must ignore the postman and newspaper deliverer. If an object breaks, the sim must repair it themselves or buy a new one. If they run out of food, you must sell the fridge and buy a new one.

9. You may use any hacks, but may not use them to cheat. No magic mood refreshers, hacked money trees etc. [2]

10. No moving between lots unless the home lot becomes irreparably bugged.

11. NO SAVING AND RELOADING unless a bug occurs.

RESTRICTIONS:
1. You are allowed to use any Maxis items or custom contents, except for telephones, cell phones or computers. You may use a computer that is hacked so its only function is "Write Novel" [3].

2. You may use any of the aspirational awards except the ReNuYu Senso Orb and Energizer, but they must be paid for. You may not purchase them with hacked collections. No more than 5 Money Trees per lot.

3. You may not use any career rewards, as your sim may not go to work to earn them.

4. Your sim may visit a community lot, but may not meet anyone while there.

5. Your sim must live entirely with money earned on the lot. Exception: Busking is allowed on community lots.

6. You may not receive money from another lot. You may send money to other lots, but you may not receive any back.

TERMINOLOGY: For the purpose of the Challenge, "met someone" is defined as gaining the memory of having met a sim. No memory editing cheats allowed [2].

SCORING:
-1 for every day there is a Money Tree on the lot
-2 for every Social Bunny
-3 for every Aspiration Failure
-5 for every time your sim goes to work
-10 for every sim met
-100 for every time you use kaching (yes, kaching;kaching; counts as two times)
-10000 for every time you use motherlode

+1 for every day spent in Platinum Aspiration
+1 if, at the end of the Challenge, the Social bar is in the green
+1 if, at the end of the Challenge, the house is completely clean (no options to Clean) and there are no broken appliances


Now the Challenge becomes more about finding the loopholes in the rules and the bugs in the game code ;D. I can think of at least two solo activities in my current build of Sims 2 which increase Social even when the sim is alone... Also, there is an interesting loophole in one part of the Scoring - I'll leave finding that to the experts.

Notes:
[1] This Challenge is now more awesome, but not More Awesome. I hope you understand the difference. baratron has still not finished the Ethiopian Challenge, therefore is not More Awesome, so cannot issue More Awesome rules.
[2] SimPE and other external sim editing programs count as cheating in this context.
[3] I do not know whether a hacked computer of this sort exists, I am merely stating a rule to be obeyed.

Excellent tightening. I really want to see someone else's story of how they do this challenge.

There's an easy enough way to keep social up without meeting anyone - provided you can get your Sim up to Gold talent in Flower Arranging.

Um, yeah, but let's define "easy", when you have a CAS sim who is mostly miserable the whole time. If you can get that gold flower arranging badge before the sim turns elder, my hat is off to you.

I didn't say I was using his time to get the badge. I'll get another sim to employ him first, and he'll build the badge on his boss's lot. (Is this blatantly against the rules, or merely against the spirit?)

Do employees meet their employer if they don't actually interact with them?

I can't see how you could get another sim to employ your lying low sim WITHOUT MEETING him. If you can figure out a way to do that, show me.

Let me clarify:  If you hire employees using the telephone dialog instead of in-person, do you automatically meet that employee?

Can you telephone someone you haven't met?

You can if you're hiring people using the telephone.

I can still see a few loopholes. Mostly, your ability to gain unlimited points from days of platinum, provided you can stay alive through various means, means you can still rack up unlimited +score. Being hired even if you don't meet the boss is right out, however, since you cannot receive money from another lot, nor earn money from another lot, which being an employee would pay you. The clarification on career awards is slightly vague, however, since you *CAN* earn career rewards without going to work.

Yes it's necromancy, but what they hey - this is a slow forum, and it's only being bumped up a half dozen positions.

Using Baratron's rules:
Start a serious sim
Move into empty small lot.
Get a chess set and a chair.
Get logic 3.
Sell chess set and chair.
Meditate.
Wake up as needed (bills, most likely) then meditate again.

Very, very dull, but social won't drop much in the tinsy tiny bits where you're awake.

Your aspiration meter won't be much good, but with no items on the lot, you're almost certainly going to have wants to buy them. Do so and then stash them in your inventory until the next day when you re-sell them. Odds are that you'll spend a decent amount of time in platinum due to this.

Almost effortless, and insanely dull, but you'll get a decent to good score at the end.

ASP no longer decays while meditating, so you'll be permaplatted. If you do it on an empty lot as, say, a vampire, though, you could potentially keep it going forever. And ever. And ever. So you can milk an unlimited supply of points at 4/day, meaning your score is effectively infinite. A puny, weak challenge from a puny, weak Rohina. At least Pinstar's new challenge required some cleverness to abuse.

Lying low in real life is not a challenge. Just really really boring. So, no wonder in TS2 it would be the same way.

Now if you want a related challenge that IS difficult, try being a highly social sim (20+ best friends) and avoid meeting x number of sims.

Just wanted to say, AGAIN, this was not my challenge. I was just reporting on it, like I did with the Pinstar one.

Actually, your score wouldn't be infinite. It would be arbitrarily large. There is a difference.

And infinity isn't very fun anyway. Can't get into an arms race with it, like you can with arbitrarily large numbers. And "arbitrarily large" is more fun to say.

I don't think Necromancy applies to the Challenges forum - the Challenges are designed to be available and commentable on at any time.

Not boring if you have a computer, games and the Internet.  ;D

With that in mind... I think this challenge is a cool idea. It just needs to be more challenging.

I'm going to try this with Email rules tacked on.

Make an Adult (not YA) in CAS
10 outgoing
Popularity aspiration

Any addition of a Met Person memory: Immediate disqualification.
No walls (Fences are acceptable for repelling wildlife)
No toilet (you may not buy a toilet to satisfy a Want, either)
No cheats (except for fixing bugs)
No money from other lots (including: careers, OFB jobs, community by-the-hour jobs, money orders, any 3rd party mod that allows money transfer). Write Novel is okay but you have to watch carefully so they don't chat. Money trees are okay. Selling paintings is okay. Playing an instrument for tips is okay if you can manage not to meet anyone.
No meditating.
No vampires!
Asp and career rewards are okay if you acquire them legitimately without disqualifying yourself. They must be bought with points if applicable.

Challenge ends when your sim transitions to Elder.

Scoring:
+1 point for every 24 hours in platinum (cumulative, non-contiguous)
+1 point for every $1000 of net worth more than you started with (you may start with less than but not more than 20K)
-7 points for each appearance of Social Bunny
-7 points for each aspiration failure (Therapist incident)
-infinity points for each Met New Sim memory
-infinity points for each bladder failure

Hopefully this will be somewhat more awesome than the previous revisions, and worth resurrecting the thread.

Have you tried this challenge? Because it is hard enough meeting the needs of a sim with 10 outgoing without having him freeze to death.

I haven't tried it with the Absurd Temperature Fluctuations Expansion, no. I'm doing the Lying Low Email challenge right now and I'm going to have a pretty crappy score but it's not impossible. It's sure easier than the Ethiopian Challenge.

Edit: It often happens that all his scores are maxed out except for Social. But it's really not that hard. The Email thing hardly even makes a difference if there is no weather to be exposed to, except that you can't buy burglar or fire alarms, or the cheap mirror. Laying Low sims are well suited to being Email sims anyway, as the 10 outgoing facilitates bush use.

I guess it would be a lot harder with a female sim, though. Still, it's not much of a challenge if you are allowed to meet people and just take the penalty.

You should be allowed to "utilize" other sims without meeting them (you can't control them through cheats or testing features though).

I think it might be easier if you are allowed to use the Lot Debugger to upgrade them to 6 wants... you'd have better chances of rolling wants that you can satisfy without disqualifying yourself. I didn't do that though because it felt like cheating, personally.

The no walls restriction is almost irrelevant if you can use fences. Managing a laying low + email sim where you couldn't block him off from visitors would be significantly harder. With fences, you can just barricade him completely, or, if you have OFB, just lock the gate.

Visitors typically can't get at your sim anyway unless they're greeted, which you can't do. Plus, the point penalty doesn't matter because there is an infinite supply of positive points. This is why my challenges DO NOT GIVE POSITIVE POINTS OUT. Notice how there are only negative points in the standard rules!

Only the original rules allow vampires and my version prohibits meditating.

How else do you get infinite points if you're limited to human sims? Can the elixir be used to prolong life indefinitely? I thought it only slowed you down.

If it bothers you that much, just ignore the two rules that allow positive points.

An elixir is worth 15 days of additional life and costs about 30K points, so in order to stay alive forever, you only need to net about 2K ASP/day average. Pretty trivial there.

I'm not bothered, I'm just saying this challenge is trivially solved.

MOAR necromancy, sorry. There's an even bigger loophole here:

Merging households = no 'Met Sim' memory.

Just merge another Sim into the lot. Problem solved :p

You haven't read the bold part, have you:

Gah! *facekeyboard*