More Awesome Than You!

This one just might be twisted enough to get a Pescado stamp of approval.

http://legacychallenge.com/apocalypsenolc.html

I really like the way this looks. The idea of unlocking things is appealling to me. not usre how I'll remember every rule, though.

Which two are you unlocking first?  ;)

I'm going to wait until someone makes a score card of some kind. The rules are too many and too complicated for me right now. I felt lost even after reading it twice. Does sound great though.

I'm going to think about it for a while before I play it. I'm kind of up to my knees in legacy at the moment, and I'm not ready to start another multi-generational story. Plus, I'm thinking I want to make a neighbourhood of mutants, and that might take a while.

Well, obviously, you need military for the ability to send to college (or else this isn't going anywhere), and you need a creativity unlocker. You also need the buy/build mode items, but there are a few loopholes you can use to get around that. The ability to travel about unlocked by Mil also opens up a great number of potential exploits. Also, the entire "spouses" thing is an exploit, as there are no limitations for how many spouses you can have, or what you can choose as a spouse, so you can marry as many times as you wish, whoever you wish. In a best-case scenario using the above, it's entirely possible to defeat this challenge within a week or two on gen-zero, possibly faster. :P

I'll be going for a neighborhood populated only by zombies and a few survivors ...  all of who will be sims from the Maxis neighborhoods. This should be fun. ;D


As I was reading it, I was thinking of ways to make it more challenging. One spouse per sim seems a reasonable way, and so does not allowing spouses to unlock restrictions. Otherwise I'm afraid it will turn into Legacy, where things get tedious after a generation or two.

Pescado, are you suggesting polygamy? Does the game allow that? Or serial monogamy? I would certainly purify my game of awesomeness such as harder jobs if I were to play this challenge.

Black Widow Strategy!

Prep a set of 13 spouses in college, lining them up for the aforementioned career tracks, max skills, get relevant friends, getting to 100/100 rel, etc., loading up with supplies, etc. Now graduate your founder, get military, do the "top job in one day" thing that all Uni graduates get by default, and then start abusing your community lot powers. Now comes the fun:
Marry one of your preselected 13 spousen, in order. Use him to complete an unlock, which him can do, as a spouse. Now kill him! There's no rule against this and no penalty for sims dying. In fact, the Paranormal lock suggested this strategy. Congratulations, you are now free to pick up another spouse, which can unlock another one. Do so. Kill him. :P In theory, this can be accomplished quite quickly. Heheheh.

That is awesome! It is even plausible, what with the whole apocalyptic ambience being so dangerous to human health and all. Heh.

It might take more than 2 days purely because of the luck of the draw with which jobs come up in the paper. It's also a very strong argument for making your founder a romance sim, because that way he/she might actually enjoy the whole serial spouse experience.

The paper is kinda useless in this regard, since it will only offer L1. You need the computer for this. Plan accordingly. As for knowing which jobs come up, that's only a problem when your choices start narrowing later, since early on, you can just pick whichever one has the offered job of the day. There are also ways around that, too....

You can only use a computer as a typewriter to 'write novel' or 'write term paper' until the Science restriction is lifted.

So do that, then. :P Actually, there's a few other ways you can abuse some nice loopholes if you want, that should eliminate the need for that, too. Think about it.

I'm glad you guys like my challenge!

You can't finish this challenge in one generation. The only spouse that can lift a restriction is one that directly contributes to the birth of the next generation.

In fact, the ONLY Sims that can be added to the family via move-in/marriage are spouces that will produce the next generation, thus you may have only one spouse per generation.

That sets up kind of a race condition: If you move in a spouse, and then they reach level 10 before anything is born, does this mean it doesn't count and you do not benefit from the level 10 position, meaning that they have to spawn first? Even with a requirement of spawning first, very little actually changes, other than that your cycle time is up to about 3 days instead of < 1. The strategy remains sound.

The way I read it, I interpretted that only the spouse that taht produces the heir can unlock restrictions. Since you can only have one heir, only one spouse would count. Though, that brings up another question. Say that you had two children with two spouses, an heir and a spare. If the heir dies, and therefore the spouse didn't actually contribute, if she unlocked something, would it be relocked? I think I've confused myself.  :(

I don't recall reading anything about there being only one heir.That wasn't in the ruleset, it merely states "next generation". In fact, it distinctly states "heirs", meaning more than one.

Yes indeed. In fact, you can have as many heirs as you want, so gen 2 could theoretically unlock 8 career rewards. (That is 7 kids, plus the spouse of the producer of the gen 3 heir.)

Okay, I just have Legacy on the brain.


Who would fit this category then?  ???

I read "heirs" as in one per generation....14 generation = 14 heirs. I realize, of course, that the rule don't state this explicitly, which means Pesacado's strategy is still valid until the grammatically-induced loophole is closed.

I should have been clearer with that. Let me rephrase it.


The spouse that has currently or will bring in the next generation may unlock a restriction.
Children produced by the family may unlock restrictions.
Each generation, only one child may take on a spouse (who can unlock a restriction) and create the next generations.


For example.
You have your founder, who can unlock a restriction.
They marry a townie. If that spouse is going to be the one to help them produce the next generation, they may unlock a restriction. If they AREN'T going to help produce the next generation, then they cannot unlock a restriction.

The founder and spouse have 3 children. Each of the three children can unlock a restriction when they reach adulthood.
Only ONE of the children may bring in the next generation. The spouse of that child can unlock a restriction, but spouses of the others cannot.

So on and so fourth.

Simply:
The founder and any biological children born into the family can unlock restrictions
You may have 1 spouse per generation unlock a restriction too, but no more.

Thanks for really grilling me on this. I'll post these clarifications on the other boards.

So, this makes it at least a 7 generation long game. Right?

Not at all. The more children you can produce, the more restrictions you can lift

In my test family I was able to produce 3 children for the 2nd generation. That means 5 total restrictions unlocked, plus a 6th for spouce of one of the children.

Thats 6 out of the 15 done before the birth of the 3rd generation.

Now I see. You can have multiple heirs unlock things, but not multiple spouses.

Just curious, why did you stop at 3 children if they all unlock something?

Probably because that's as many squealing spawn as he could stomach at once.

I was thinking that this challenge would be pretty difficult, but if you can handle your Sims reproducing a lot in one generation, it wouldn't be tough at all.

A limit of two surviving children per generation would re-introduce a certain amount of difficulty. The main problem would be making sure your Sims didn't burn to death; the founder would pretty much have to be Captain Hero, as far as I can tell. That's the reason I haven't bothered with the asylum challenge, all of them I've read have become "who can survive the blazing inferno" stories.

I'm not sure i agree with your viewpoint.   True, i'm still a complete newbie when it comes to playing Sims, but this wouldn't be a 'hands-off' type challenge like the Asylum would be.  You have total control when they make their one meal a day, if a fire starts, woudn't you still be able to have your sims(s) get out their own fire-extinguishers?

Isn't that already "hard" as it is?

I don't really think fires represent a real risk when you rule with an iron fist like I do.

Well, I thought it would be until I started doing it. Now it's just sort of irritating trying to remember all the kids' names. It's true that they don't each end up with the same skillset and time in platinum as they would if there were only two of them, but they're all growing up platinum and getting many scholarships to college. It comes down to how long you can stomach raising baby after baby after baby. It is a pain, but not really "hard". No elixir of life would complicate things, of course.

John: Sims can get out their own fire extinguishers. The problem comes with getting them to actually stop screaming long enough to do so.

So how would you avoid fires if you could only cook on the cheapest grill, then? They can't visit community lots, so no stealing food. They can't have a fridge, so they can't just eat lunchmeat sandwiches and instant meals all the time. They would have to eat at home sometime. What am I missing?

If you play with Firemod, sims will not moth the fire and will eventually learn to quit screaming and put it out themselves once they get used to the idea of things being on fire.

You can visit community lots if you unlock Military. And the answer, obviously, is that there is no food. Simple. Eating food is a barbaric practice anyway.

Why can't they have a fridge? Fridges are in a seperate category, and in fact the rules for culinary give hints about turning the fridge around after the one-meal-per-day has been used up.

I highly recommend gelatin for its long shelf life.  lol

:) :) :)
Ivy

   LOL, just to show everyone how far i am from awesome, i can't even figure out what to do without showers/baths.  As a test, i started a sim in univ, 0 neat, 10 outgoing, 9 active, low in last two, Knowlege Sim.  I'm only on the morning of the 2nd day, and his constant yelling at me because of the flies buzzing around him is irritating.  Would being in hygiene desperation have any side-effects?   Increased chance of illness/disease for instance?  Or is it just something i'd have to put up with.  I've already tried having him washing his hands, and it took too long just to bring it up.
   And yes, i know the starting Sim CAN use a shower, just trying to look ahead.

I think you need LESS WHINY. :P

I was thinking that gen 1 would clearly be the jello generation because of the fire risk and the food restrictions. This is fine. I can see a strong argument for unlocking military as soon as possible, because if you leave it for a generation, that means none of gen 2 can go to uni, right? As far as the other one goes, I am not sure. Given the need for skilling, and the restrictions on skilling objects, it might be fairly important to get some smartmilk.

Your sim can bathe at the sink (it's an autonomous action, so leave him alone and see if he'll do it). Serial hand-washing will bring hygeine up eventually, but does take a long time.

Yeah, but you don't actually need to unlock smartmilk to use it, since aspirational rewards you already possess can continue to be used, you just can't buy more. A smartmilk holds 5 rounds, so two dispensers should effectively satisfy your smartmilking needs for a goodly chunk of the game.

Reply to J. M. Pescado  "I think you need LESS WHINY. "

lol, trust me, i thought of that at first, too bad this isn't a More Awesome Challenge.

"-Cheats, mods or hacked objects that would give you an unfair advantage over a player who didn't have or use them may not be used."

I adore all of my mods (especially most of yours), it just piqued my curiosity and i wanted to satisfy my own mind IF i was to attempt this.   Heck, i can't even bare to give up the very first hack i every got, 'nospoiledfood' by Monique.

I will say this tho, afternoon of the 2nd day, i had my very first ever Sim to take a sponge bath.  It seemed almost as effective as a mid-priced tub, so that does ease my mind.

I wouldn't qualify it as giving you an unfair advantage, since it doesn't actually improve things. Your sims will still be just as angry about it, they just won't bother annoying you. Also, it's an important fix, so you can't avoid it anyway. :P

Well I for one am looking forward to treating my sims to this awesome challenge. ;D

Since there is a page with free samples, I don't feel any MATY hack/mod is an unfair advantage. I can't help that not everyone uses all the resources at their disposal! *evil grin*

I'm thinking military first, then culinary, and hoping for an alien technology near the begining...to unlock the aspirations.

I do have a question about the spouses. The rules don't state whether or not the spouses need to be CAS sims. So, what's to keep my founder from marrying Morty (retired Scientist), and using him as the reason to unlock restrictions? As long as he knocks up the founder before he keels over (and provides the heir...), it seems perfectly legal to me!

Because Morty never actually did the Science Career. :P He was just set as autoretired from it, and didn't actually *DO* it.

Yes you can buy and use a fridge, any fridge. In fact the one GOOD thing the Life of Crime restriction does for you is re-fills the fridge every time you pay protection. The mob is kind enough to bring you food on pay day... so you can live just long enough to pay them next week.
Once you unlock the Crime restriction, you'll have to make sure you have some other way of obtaining food.

Here are a few other clairifications posted on other boards:


1. Regarding spouses: Only 1 spouse per generation can unlock a restriction, period. This spouse must contribute to the birth of the next generation. You may unlock the restriction before the next generation is born, but they must be the one to help bring on the next generation. The only exception to this rule is if the next generation is brought by alien pregnancy.
2. Spouses can keep their current job if they have one. If they are at the top of their career field, they instantly unlock that restriction (provided they are that generation's one spouse)
3. Regarding Law enforcement. I realize my goof. Yes teens can still go to school. They just can't get part time jobs or visit community lots without a 10 body.
4. The items that spouses bring may be added to the house. In fact, unless you have unlocked the athletic restriction, you must place those items until the spouse is holding 3 or fewer. It doesn't matter if you can use those items or not. If you place them on the lot, they'll begin to depreciate and you'll have to pay more protection money on them. Every spouse you move in could be a liability (Picture a spouse that brings 2 pianos and 2 DJ tables) until you unlock athletic (so they can hold onto all the items they bring) or business (so you can sell all the excess items).
5. Aspiration Reward objects may be among the 3 that the founder takes home with them. The reward objects would have to be purchased with the founder's own aspiration points. Career reward objects, found at the secret society lot, may NOT be taken back, as your founder did not earn them.
6. You can woohoo all you want in college, since the medical restriction (or any other restriction for that matter) doesn't apply to your founder in college.
7. Kids who return to college in later generations ARE under the restrictions.
8. Since there are no 'weeks' in college, Sims (other than the founder) attending college that have not lifted the life of crime restriction must pay protection once per semester, immediately after finals. If you have more than one family member attending at the same time and in the same lot,  the household only needs to pay protection once per semester.
9. The "Can't Leave Lot without a 10 body" restriction on Law Enforcement applies to teenage sims who wish to attend college. The challenge is designed to make it hard to return to college. After all, higher learning isn't possible until society as restabilized a bit.

Once per semester?  I can see twice during the time being at Univ, but...     lol  That 1200 they get won't go THAT far, at least for the sims i normally send thru.  Looks like i won't be sending kids to Univ until several restrictions have been lifted.  4th gen maybe, for me anyway.    lol

I'm given to understand, that while at Univ, only going to class would be allowed for future generations/YA's until Military was unlocked?

I was thinking to unlock Slacker first, as that would open up changing careers as much as needed, also allowing someone to get a career just to use a reward i might already own.  I always have terrible luck when it comes to those chance cards.

Oh bugger. Forgot to put the "NPCs or Townies" restriction in the main rules. Thats going up on the next update.

Only townies or NPCs can join the family. It's too easy to make player sims at the top of the careers you want unlocked with maxed skills to allow player sims to be married in.

But we are free to make mutant townies, right? As long as they are random CAS sims (well, except for the mutant facial features).

So, we're you're guinea pigs, hm? Do we get bonus points for that?
 ;)

Well now if it wasn't in the rules to start with when posted, it doesn't count  :P  No fair changing the rules after the game is in play!

hehehe
:) :) :)
Ivy

Here's a strange query: where might one find the apocalyptic homes that Pinstar mentioned...since any links in there names seem to be AWOL.

You can make townies, as long as their careers, skills and friend totals are all random.

You can find the safe houses plus some stock zombies to download at my simpage
http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/mysimpage.php?user_id=131247

So, basically, my first port of call would be the natural science restriction first. It's one of those start at the top jobs and immediately unlocks Snapdragon Bouquets. From then on lots of the restrictions are pretty meaningless.

You wouldn't be starting at the top job, you are limited to lvl 1 jobs from the paper as the only thing you can do with the computer is 'write novel', until Science Career is unlocked.  And remember, there are some difficulties there, you can't sell the output from that workbench, tho i'd imagine you can delete them from your inventory, and you need to make sure you have room in your inventory to hold that arrangement.   It would definitely be one of those things you'd need to already have done while the Founder is in University, and hope for no bad chance cards.   ;)

Since your founder at Uni is under no restrictions, there should be no reason why the founder doesn't already have a snapdragon in their inventory, not to mention way more than enough money saved up to buy another flower station as soon as the restriction is lifted.

While at Uni if they are on their business lot they don't have to go to class, and a small lot can be had very cheaply.  Put a ticket machine on there, a few inexpensive items (flamingos for example) to start with, and charge folks to come kick your flamingos.   Don't worry about "sales" interactions; just let the people come.  Spend your time then working on your flower badge to get the snapdragons.  Sell off the flowers you make in buy mode until then to make more money to add back into the business.  As you get more capital, add in a few more inexpensive items to your lot (swingsets are a wonder!) and raise your prices.  Use the small fridge on the lot, make several meals of lunch meat sandwiches immediately in a row, stick them in your inventory and get them out as needed.  Sell back the fridge after you've made as many meals out of it as you can to regain the entire amount.  Use espresso for your energy. 

In order to gain capital to start your venture, spend a little time your first semester on your community lot at Uni playing in the band.  Grades don't matter, you can earn more money playing in the band than you can from your dean's list.  You should be focused on building skills and making friends/potential mate anyway, all of which can be done at your business lot.  There's no reason why you shouldn't have at least one level 10 business by the time you leave Uni, making a ton of money this way.

Once you have your coveted snapdragons, all you have to worry about then at Uni is energy, which is well covered by working the espresso machines correctly.  Back home they'll have a bed for energy.

Before you leave Uni, make sure you've hired a manager for your lot.  The business restriction only states "Your Sims may not start their own business or purchase community lots".   It does not state that you cannot already have a business in existance.  The second item in your inventory from Uni will therefore be the deed to your business lot.  At least one of the other two items should be a snapdragon bouquet.  The moment Natural Science is unlocked you'll already have one snapdragon bouquet ready to be able to start mass producing more snapdragon bouquets for the rest of the lot since you'll already have the talent badge and money necessary to do so ;)

Since you may purchase a phone, and phone calls to a business lot are not restricted, you may still call to check in with your business to gain the cash from it.

That's my 2cents for now on the matter.
:) :) :)
Ivy

Flower Badgecraft can be earned just fine on your regular Uni lot. If you're doing pre-Fallout business, the idea is just to get lots of money, but there's plenty of ways to get more money than you'll ever know what to do with before even leaving Uni. And still get a 4.0, if you want. I'm gonna wait until the ruleset gets finalized, then I'm going to abuse it some more. :P

When I stated 'grades don't matter', effectively they don't.  Since you can only get a level 1 job out of the newspaper, getting a 4.0 isn't going to help you once you finish Uni.  You only have to do well enough to continue staying in Uni until you've completed all you want to there.  And as we all know, it only takes having enough skills (which is what you're working on anyway) and minimal effort to make passing grades.   It won't affect your future spouse's job either, unless you've chosen to unlock the Science career first, which is quite honestly not the first career I would unlock.  They too will only be able to get a job out of the newspaper.

On the business lot, it excludes all that Uni nonsense and gets to the bare bones, lets you build up a level 10 business (or several) and earn your badges as well.  You could, if played right, earn several business badges and perks while at Uni.  One of the perks of course being connections, and the other being money, both extremely useful to have.

Once you are done at the business lot, you can go back to Uni, work on your grades and still get your 4.0 if you want to, and effectively no time has passed at Uni while you've gained your level 10 business(es) and all your badges and perks.  And either there or on your business lot, you'd still have plenty of time to get your skills up.

At least one business would then be giving you continued income after you leave Uni, depending on what you decide to keep in your inventory as your 3 items.

Edit: If you look at his 3 lots, you'll see one of them (the witch's one I think) has a driveway built underneath it.  I'm assuming then that means the driveway must encompass the 8x8 area.

:) :) :)
Ivy

I'm thinking I've just thought of more abuses now. Muhahahaha. I know how to beat this challenge in about a day again. :P

You're welcome

:) :) :)
Ivy

More clarifications:

1. Does the driveway tongue need to be in the 8x8 area, since it cannot be detached, or does the 8x8 area need to be drawn to include the driveway?
2. If a bloodline member does not live on the lot, either because he moved out, or because he did not join the lot from college, does he, and can he still, unblock one of the restrictions?
3. Can a bloodline member return to the lot if moved out or returning from college, even if "Hopelessness" has not been satisfied yet?
4. Does the use of the paranormal award, explicitly permitted in the "Paranormal" restriction description, count as moving anyone in, since you do not actually move-in or marry?

Since the degree is one of the three items that must be taken back ... doesn't it make more sense for the founder to drop out or fail?  He's only going to be getting a paper job when he goes back anyway, so the degree doesn't really matter.

So the idea would be for your founder to do as much as he can (in terms of money, skills, meeting future spouse and spouses of future generations), then fail uni at the last possible moment.  The downside is that the founder and spouse could not unlock any of the uni career restrictions.

But you can't get Natural Science from the paper. Everyone seems to be assuming you can use the computer to get jobs. Pinstar, can we get a clarification?

My sims normally get jobs from the computer, so I'm not sure on this point.

But I thought you could get uni careers from the paper - you just start at a lower level.  Isn't that why there are chance cards at the lower levels of uni careers?

Yeah, my sim got an Uni career from the newspaper just yesterday. You do start lower but they are there :)

You can get uni careers from the newspaper just fine if you've graduated.  It may take a while to rotate thru, so you may want to have a stash of cash just in case.

Here one of my uni grads (another lot) who is in the paranormal (also gotten from the newspaper) looks for a new job and natural scientist has come up in the SimCity Times.  Her hubby beside her is already working his way up the natural scientist career, also gotten from the newspaper, so she won't take the job, but it's there nonetheless:

clicky here for pic (http://home.comcast.net/~ivy5551212/unicareernatscientist.jpg)

The only benefit to getting it via the computer is the higher starting level.

:) :) :)
Ivy

My assumption for the Uni-business thing would be that...

It gets destroyed in the Fallout. Makes sense right? So while you can still have the snapdragons and whatnot in your inventory, you cannot keep your business after the fallout. Although the money perk would be nice to have.

But I would make a request that "no friends for careers" be allowed for this challenge. As it fits in the theme. No one would care about how many friends you have, they would just care about if you could do the job or not.

Okay, let's assume that it does get burninated in the fallout.  Not agreeing, but let's take it from another angle:

While at Uni, you can sell the deed(s) to your lot(s) to any townie for an ungodly amount of money anyway, and it will tide you over very well.  In fact, you could do this repeatedly if you wanted to, as townies have unlimited funds.  Since you can set your own price for your deeds, the sky's the limit so to speak.  You just have to have the right perks, badges and skills to do this.  You could sell a bridge in the desert so to speak.

Unscrupulous? Perhaps.  But it is still within the rules to do so, since your founder is still at Uni when this happens.  And you'd still walk away from it with more than you need to get yourself started after the fallout.

Not to mention, you have essentially an ulimited amount of time on your hands to do so if you take advantage of your business lot(s) while your founder is at Uni, since your semester time clock will not advance while you are on them tending to your business. 

:) :) :)
Ivy

I was thinking of skilling and making relationships downtown for the same reason.

I thought the premise was that only the local neighborhood was destroyed, because the founder was safe while at University? So anything at University can't have been affected.

Although, it does make a honkin' big loophole that ought to be plugged.

Well, the rules say that future generations will be affected by all the rules. You could interpret it as part of the challenge to make the absolute most of your time at uni.

Its also helpful to get on academic probation  :P Since you replay the whole semester, you get double the time at Uni, useful time for getting badges and perks and save up on the money. Oh, and just pass when you replay the semester

Skilling and making relationships downtown or anywhere other than your actual lot is an excellent idea.  Founder at uni on business lot with ticket machine on it can skill build, make money and gain relationships at the same time.   hehehe  Any time not actually spent is time spent wisely I think at a time when time is precious!

Pinstar already said to take advantage as much as possible of your founder's time at University.  These are the best possible ways I can think of to do that. 

The game limitation is that the business lots cannot be in the Uni neighborhood, they can only be in the shopping district, downtown or your normal neighborhood.  Storywise though, who's to say that the "shopping district" isn't a subhood of my University instead? It's about as likely as saying that my Uni wasn't affected by the 3 nuclear bombs that went off :p

Now, on the subject of what your founder should be as an aspiration...what do ya'll think of that? I can see strong arguments for fortune or knowledge.  You want your founder to get promoted as quickly as possible, and fortune simmies want that, they also want the skills and friends to go along with that.  Their downfall is that they also want to buy stuff.  Knowledge simmies are good for skill building; their downfall is their want to see ghosts and be saved from death.  Not so sure about others as much...family sims want to interact with their spouse/children too much rather than skill build to get promoted, eh? Good for getting their aspiration up quickly if their family members are home I suppose.  That is, if you choose to have their mate live with them...which is altogether another theory that we haven't yet touched upon much here...how do you plan on setting up the household? Would love to hear that!

:) :) :)
Ivy

I was thinking of going popularity at the beginning and making tons of friends (potential spouses or spice) and then changing, most likely to knowledge, just before graduation. The challenge doesn't say anthing about aspiration at all, so this seems like a legal move. Family might also be an okay aspiration - I am thinking in terms of sims who have easy to fill wants to keep them platinum for promotions. Knowledge sims can get a bit weird once their skills are maxed.

Hmmm...now there's an idea...just hit on all of them as your needs change.  Aspiration changes in Uni does seem like a good thing to do for your founder at least since they won't have any restrictions with the orb. 

Like in my case: Knowledge for when you want to build skills, going to fortune for your business, popularity for your friends and then before graduating end up as family (or fortune, still undecided)...

Ooo I like the way you're thinkin ;)

:D :D :D
Ivy

edit: sorry 'bout the edits...afternoon meds...bleh...

Grades do matter. If you graduate with a 4.0 GPA, most jobs in the newspaper will be level 3 and the ones that match your major will be level 4.

My founder will probably major in Literature or Political Science to get the maximum boost for Show Business and the possibility of picking up the Lie Detector or Obstacle Course without working. I'll make him a Popularity Sim in hope of getting 20 Best Friends as his Lifetime Want. If I don't get that LW, he'll be using the Orb as often as I can afford it to switch back and forth between Popularity and Knowledge until he gets either 20 Best Friends or Max 7 Skills. I plan on him finishing college with permaplat, all skills maxed, perfect grades, enough friends for any career, and probably finishing as a Popularity or Family Sim.

After my founder graduates, I'll use his final 72 hours to concentrate on business. I might start one sooner but 72 hours on the campus clock is plenty of time for him to get all 7 gold badges, establish a level 10 business that averages at least a million simoleons per day in net income, and find a manager for the business. After all, the clock is stopped while he's at his business or anywhere else off campus and all Needs can be restored without going back to the campus, so that 72 hours can last several weeks if necessary. The business lot can also provide storage for anything he wants to keep that exceeds his 3-item inventory limit.

When my founder leaves college, his diploma will be in his inventory since it's required. I plan to use the other two slots for a snapdragon bouquet and a Smart Milk dispenser. He shouldn't need to bring the business deed with him, since the business belongs to him whether he has a deed or not, so I'll probably just hang that on the wall at his business. If necessary, he can order a new deed after he moves into his new house.

Show Business seems to me to be the most important career to start with. Once its restrictions are removed, the household members will be able to have Outings with each other, which will take care of all their Needs including Energy. They won't need to cook so there won't be any risk of fire. They won't need showers or baths. They won't need to sleep so it's unlikely that any burglars will come by. This probably removes more of the problems than any other career. For the founder's wife, I'll pick one of the Sims he met at college, probably a cheerleader for the extra skills. I plan for her to do the Natural Science career so they can use the snapdragon bouquet to take care of Toddler hygiene and use the telescope to have a chance at alien abduction. As a side benefit, she'll only be working one day a week so it should be easy to schedule her pregnancies for her off-days.

The second generation will probably miss college. I'll have them look for Teen jobs a few days before they grow up, to give them a chance of starting their Adult careers at level 6. The Sim I choose as the heir can marry another college Sim after Mom or Dad asks the prospective spouse to move in, so they can get a third college career out of the way, probably Artist. Just because they don't go to college doesn't mean the second generation can't know anyone from college.

Knowledge sims would easily be able to get permaplat once skills are maxed, making it kind of a moot point.

Uni-clock does not move while you're off campus at a business. You have unlimited time when running a business, and money is really a nonissue. Of course, you won't be able to return to your business until you've unlocked Military, and can't open your business until Business is unlocked, and won't be able to transport large items until Athletics is unlocked.

And none of this matters in light of a few 0day exploits I've spotted.

We so need clarification on this jobs from the computer thing, because it definitely affects job strategery.

The permaplat in college thing occurred to me, too. Maybe the founder should be a romance or pleasure sim - they have some nicely achievable at college LTWs, too.

You need to lift Military to get off-lot, whether or not you are allowed to have outings. Military is definitely looking high priority.

Someone on

Of course, it looks like business is immune to the Life of Crime restriction so at least you won't suffer having to pay protection on anything you leave there until you can move stuff and so on. Not that I know exactly what advantage this gives you, I just feel it sort of should.


It's late and I haven't slept recently.

Ok, anything where it's interesting and fun just to plan out what one is going to do before even starting, and to read all about how other people intend to do it, is officially a great (but non-awesome, of course) challenge in my book.

I think I'll have anything off Uni-time be considered off-campus and lost in the apocolypse (no downtown and no business) and eliminate all the off-time advantages just for my game. It's not against the stated rules or anything, but it'll be more fun and challenging for me personally that way.

If I'm thinking what I think your thinking after thinking about this...eh yup. 


I stand technically corrected, thank you :).  They will get beyond level 1 with good grades from the newspaper and more so with properly aligned majors.  But in light of other more significant realizations that I've come to about this challenge, I still hold to my original theory that effectively grades don't matter.  Spending time on worrying about a 4.0 for your founder is IMHO wasted.

:) :) :)
Ivy

If I read it right "you cannot move in or marry in any sims" until Hopelessness is lifted.  So your founder has to hit top of their career fast before they can marry.  Permaplat at Uni is pretty much required.

Also, "Sims may not buy or use the flower-arranging bench, nor any of the flowers it produces" until Natural Science is lifted.  Does this mean the founder can't bring snapdragons from Uni and use them?

1. The Tongue (the part that touches the sidewalk and the space beyond onto the street) does NOT have to be part of the 8X8 area, but the rest of the driveway must be. See my "Witch Hut" safe house for how to include a driveway in an 8X8 area.
2. No
3. If they moved out via 'find own place' no. if they are returning from college. Yes.
4. Ressurection counts as moving a sim in. You could ressurect in a sim they would become a spouse to the family. Otherwise they can't move in (Remember, ONLY would-be spouses that are earmarked to bring in the next generation can be moved into the family)


In light of the potential abuse of the time-freeze of a Uni business, I'm going to rule that you may not own an off-lot business in Uni. Not because you couldn't for story purposes, but because the idea of the Apocalypse is that it happens at a specific point of time. Specifically: Graduation. The idea of Uni is that you are racing against a ticking clock, one that you cannot stop.

In regards to academic probation, I'm going to rule that you may only play 8 full semesters in Uni. Thats how long you have until the power plants blow. If you go on academic probation, that counts as one of the 8 semesters...forcing you to drop out when you reach 8. You must pass each semester in order to graduate.

What if they were never moved out, can they still be moved in?


Can someone be resurrected in even if Hopelessness is not yet filled, as long as your sim is able to use the paranormal reward?

Care to share with us mere mortals?

   If i may, i'd like to throw a new wrinkle into this challenge.   And no, i have no pre-set idea on how to benefit from it.

From the Challenge Scenerio:
    It's the super bowl and all across the region, people are watching.

   I take it you are referring to American Foodball's Super Bowl, which happens in Fed, and for most (if not all University's here) is the start of the 2nd smemster of the school year.
   In this case:
     1.  The Founder would be forced to move back to the Home Neighborhood at the end of his 7th semester, can NOT graduate.  (Since future YA's have to go to a desert/soil campus, that meant this campus was affected by the Meltdown's)
     2.   No Univ graduate may be moved into the home Lot until a Blood direct descendent graduates, there-by showing that the Univ is up and running.

  

What are we now, psychic guinea pigs?

Uh, according to the story we've been given, we don't know a thing about the effects of the Apocalypse until we return home.  You've even stated that our founder does not need to graduate.  Therefore, the idea that the Apocalypse happens at graduation is either false or the story we've been told is incorrect or you're telling us now that we have to graduate college...

Or plain and simple it's a loophole you're trying to now go back and close...

 ???  ???  ???
Ivy

Not to mention that time-freeze from businesses is the least of your worries, and Hook has already demonstrated you can leech hundreds of Ks in just tip-leeching from Uni alone. :P

Of course you can, but that's not the point here :p

:) :) :)
Ivy

Aaaaagh! Leeches!!

Still waiting on a ruling about moving people into the dorm.

I think we should stop asking questions about possible loopholes because this is resulting in them getting closed.

Why shouldn't they be closed? We're looking for a hard and interesting challenge, aren't we?

Hey everyone!  I have a question.  Until you reach the top of the Showbiz career, you can't practice in the mirror (aka no charisma points)  How do you can skills then in order to get job promotions?

You can practice in the mirror, you can't change your appearance.

O thanx!  I misread the rules and was like "How do they expect my sims to get to the top of Showbiz without charisma!"  I feel totally stupid now...

Hrm, as far as I know they can already practice charisma, but other ways to do it:

1) Make sure they have maxed charisma already as a toddler via the rabbit head.

2) Unlock Business before Showbusiness for the execuputter usage

3) Unlock Science before Showbusiness and choose the simvac as your only aspiration reward

4) Unlock Alien Technology.  Use simvac to suck points out of some unsuspecting person.  Granted, this is last-minute measure...but good if you need the points desperately.

:) :) :)
Ivy *goes back to playing nice* ;)

   If a teen has a job, leaves for Univ, would that qualify quiting that job, thereby blocking that career?

No, because it doesn't say you quit the job.

Well, the rules say "loses employment in a career for any reason".

Eh, it's not like teens don't usually take some random career they never intend to pursue now anyway.

3. How can you move back in if you never moved out?
I don't get it.

4. No. Think of moving someone in via Ressurection as just another flavor of marry/move in. If it is allowed for marrying and moving in, it's allowed for Ressurection. If it's restricted for marrage/moving in...it's restricted for Ressurection.

What if you're resurrecting a bloodline member? If a member of your bloodline dies, can you resurrect him anyway?

   Worst case scenerio, both my Founder and spouse fail to unlock Slacker Career, but do manage to get the Lie Detector from Criminal before getting fired.  Might end up being the only way to get the next gen's Creativity would be a teen job in Criminal.   Of course, it's entirely possible my Founder never unlocks a career and dies a lonely death.   Damn chance cards.  I'm thinking it's more vital to bring back at least 1 Elixer-Of-Life, to cover that possibility.  
   I've read that it's possible to get a YA abducted at Univ, would getting my founder YA abducted,  qualify for the Alien Technology unlocked?
   (From J. M. Pescado - What if you're resurrecting a bloodline member? If a member of your bloodline dies, can you resurrect him anyway?
   Are you thinking along the lines of, resurrecting one of your sims, who has already unlocked a Career, thinking they are now eligible to unlock a different career?

No, I'm thinking of something entirely different.

<< plays 20 questions.

Is it bigger than a breadbox?

You're not going to get anything out of JMP that way.  :D  I'd think that it would be fair to resurrect a sim from the bloodline as long as you follow the other rules regarding the object, and anything they were disqualified from doing when they died (like unlocking another career) is still disqualified.  But I'm not Pinstar so I can't say.

Unawesome little me has been trying this challenge.  I should have made my founder a female.

My founder (knowledge sim, LTW max all skills) was permaplat before he left uni.  He reached the top of career to lift hopelessness, so he could marry.  At that point, if female, the founder could have given up their job to have kids.  As it was, I had to wait until the wife had 2 days off in a row before I could get her pregnant.  By then it was quite late in her life, with no time for a second child.  The founder quit his job to stay home and raise the kid, since I couldn't have a nanny.

The founder died two days before the child turned teen.  The wife was at level 9 in the medical career, working until 6pm.  So I failed the challenge as without a hack (that I forgot to remove) the nanny would have taken their only child away.   A female founder could have quit her job upon marriage as they'd already unlocked their career restriction anyway before marrying, and had more than one child well before they died of old age or at least had a teen by then.

I'm still playing this family though, as a practice run before I try again.

I have some questions if anyone can answer them (not all are about the rules of the challenge):
1. The child was born with 6 outgoing.  I encouraged that to 7, so he could use the sink for a sponge bath, except he wouldn't.  Kids can't autonomously sponge bathe?  His other stats were around the same as his parents (except that he was nicer) and they were able to use the sink.
2. How the heck do you keep a toddler's hygiene level up without a change table or tub?  They're too old to be bathed in the sink.  The red hygiene meant he wouldn't play with his toys to skill.
3. The heir is now a teen, knowledge, ltw max all skills.  He has maxed all skills except creativity (he can't write novels yet, so can't do creativity).  His parents are both dead.  The founder unlocked military, so he can go to college.  If I send him off to college, there's nobody in the house.  Will I have to buy him another lot when he returns from college, or is he not allowed to go to college as the house will be empty?
4. Founder was in the military career, to unlock college and the body reward.  The reward takes 9 squares lengthwise to place.  8 for the object itself, plus one more square at the end.  I was going to place it on an upper floor - but it's too big.  I take it this means that politics needs to be unlocked before the military reward can be placed on the lot?  I couldn't even put it in someone's inv to save for future generations as it's too big before the athletic reward is unlocked.

Pssh, like there are supposed to be any social services after Armageddon anyway. Since this sounds like Awesomeware, you should be fine. Or I'll declare Pinstar to be sucky.

Well, of course it was Awesomeware.  I know I suck ... so I choose hacks that are more awesome than me.

The problem with the founder being female is that you need to get rid of the hopelessness restrictions before they're too old to have kids, which could be difficult depending on how awesome you are.

The size of the military reward was discussed elsewhere. Pinstar suggested putting it on the ground - then you can still use it because the additional running-around square is there, even if it is technically outside the area. However, that means making your house foundation a lot smaller.

Nothing wrong with that, there is always rooms for basements and you can always make the second floor hang over the course, so you're not really losing any space.

What potential abuse? Businesses are standard gameplay for anyone who owns Open For Business. How can standard gameplay be considered abuse? I'm sorry if the advantages of OFB didn't occur to you but it's rather unsporting to change the rules in midgame just because somebody else is cleverer than you were, especially when the rule-change goes against the primary premise.

The rules already cover this quite clearly. "None of the restrictions applies to the founder in college, as the disaster has not occured yet." That means the Business restrictions on starting businesses and purchasing community lots don't apply to the founder in college. It also means that the Military restriction on traveling to community lots doesn't apply to the founder in college. There's no reason for these restrictions to apply since the disaster hasn't occured yet.

The Business restrictions (which don't apply while the founder is in college) say, "Your Sims may not start their own business or purchase community lots." The Business restrictions don't say your Sims can't own businesses, only that they can't start or purchase them. This is reasonable, because they might inherit a Business when a friend dies, so they could own one without starting or purchasing it. It's also reasonable because they might have started or purchased a business while the founder was at college, before the restrictions went into effect. Similar wording is found in all the other restrictions on purchasing things. None of them forbid ownership since you might come into ownership without a purchase or by bringing things home from college. In fact, the rules make it quite clear that you CAN bring things home from college that you will not be allowed to buy once you get there.

The game itself prevents on-lot businesses (home businesses) at Uni, so you are effectively saying that the founder in college can't have any businesses at all, and for the most part isn't allowed to use OFB at all. Under this new ruling, the founder in college, BEFORE the restrictions take effect, is even more restricted than the founder in the main neighborhood AFTER the restrictions take effect. That's entirely unreasonable.

Not entirely.

In any case. Say you can own a business during Uni. It should be destoryed in the blast. You can keep all the money and perks you made but it seems unreasonable to think that you can still own and manage the building from home after the blast. Don't you think your customers and employees would kind of... feel the need NOT to go to work/go shopping after the Apocalypse?

Seriously.

It states in several of the restrictions the reasons why things are gone. Hopelessness, zombies, mafia, etc. etc.... Why should you happy shiny place your founder built in college be an exception?

Besides all that, the University/College Neighborhood wasn't protected in the blast. It was destoryed along with everything else while the neighborhood screen was loading after your sim graduated.

You obviously weren't alive when I was. In those days, we thought the nuclear flaming doom was right around the corner. Remember Cuba? Now that was staring armageddon in the face right there. All it would have taken is someone with an itchy trigger finger, and Pinstarland would have been real life. I was slightly disappointed it didn't quite work out. But eh, nuclear armageddon's kind of a bad thing, even if it is shiny.

Why, yes, indeed it is:

linky here (http://www.answers.com/cleverer&r=67)

If that doesn't help, we may need Elfie to reverse translate that...

And Uni+Ofb business wasn't something that I dreamed up overnight because of this challenge, heck it wasn't something I even dreamed up.  Maxis designed the game that way.  I merely laid it out on the table here as one possible way to play Uni to it's full advantage as Pinstar hinted at when the challenge was first talked about when he said to make to make the time at Uni count.  There's no better way to make the time at Uni count than to effectively stop time while you're there.  If not by business lot then a regular community lot will do just as well, and take advantage of your friends earning you money while you happily go do whatever else you want on that lot...again as designed.  In essence, since your founder is under no restrictions while at Uni, you are making money either way you look at it, you've still stopped time, are making the most out of it, and still haven't broken any rules.  Fortune simmies by design want to make lots and lots of money.  That alone is a solid basis for going with either strategy.

By no means am I saying anyone has to play this way.  And by no means am I saying any rules should be changed merely because we are discussing issues that weren't thought about when the challenge was designed; in fact I am completely against any rule changes after they've been published.  For some of us, the challenge is in "what's the fastest way to beat this challenge?" and in that is finding whatever loopholes have been left open.  In this challenge, why be miserable for one second longer than you have to? Isn't the entire point to lift the restrictions as fast as possible once your family is forced to live under those conditions? 

Every simmer sims differently.  Every challenge is perceived differently by every simmer.  What is hard to one simmer is a cakewalk to the next.  It all depends on your skill and what you perceive to be difficult. 

And the good thing about MATY: is everyone is entitled to have their own opinion...yay :)  Feel free to think it was rude for SketchElder to say what he/she did.  I happen to think it was spot on.  There are many things in this challenge that are left open to interpretation, and we won't all agree on them.  (Somehow I think we need a kitten picture... clicky here (http://www.thecatconnection.com/newsletter/aug03b-cathumor-a_files/2096984_image002.jpg) )  It's all good discussion nonetheless and makes you read and re-read what the rules are as stated to see if what you're reading is what it says it is and not what you think it says they are. 

:) :) :)
Ivy

I find it amusing that MATYians are more inclined to playtest the rules set than the actual challenge.

I don't mind that the rules get changed - wasn't planning on playing them that way anyway, and by the time Pes (et. al.) is done, Pinstar can rewrite them to eliminate a lot of questions, problems, and potential abuse.

ETA:
In the standard Maxian game, there's no advantage to earning money at Uni, yes? When you leave, you lose it and pick up the 20k handout... unless I've forgotten something (I avoid Uni generally).

It's fine-tuning, beta-testing if you like.  No one is perfect, to find every possible loophole, especially in a challenge this detailed.  Having some extra eyes go over the rules just makes it more interesting.  Most people are going to choose to play this specifically because they want something to make the game more difficult after getting bored with how easy "standard gameplay" is.

Yeah, maybe it would have been nice if Pinstar had said something like "This is a preliminary version--gimme feedback and after X amount of time I will update it to the final version."  But so what.  At least he is listening to the feedback and following up.  Most of the really good challenges evolve a little before they stabilize.   

Anyway, no one is looking over your shoulder, checking to see whether you are really following the rules.  Plenty of people play modified challenges to suit their own notion of what works.  It's not like anyone is judging the outcome.  Sure, if you are going to talk about your results, it's only honest to mention you used modified rules, but who knows, maybe some people will like your version better.

ETA:

Don't they get whichever is greater--20K or their accumulated wealth?

(It's been a while since I played pure Uni--now I just stuff their inventory with high-value loot so I can divide up shares the way I want.)

The one thing that is irritating to me is that one is almost forced to use a male founder.  I started off with a female founder and quickly realized that there was no way she was going to rise to the top of her career before the biological clock stopped ticking.  Let's face it, the first generation female will need to be a breeding machine.  I suppose I could have her boyfriend come visit and make her pregnant, but who knows how many genereations it would take before one could lift any restrictions? 

On a side note, like Pescado, I grew up during the time we thought that nuclear winter was around the corner.  Most of the strategies I plan to use in this challenge are what we were taught to do to hopefully survive after a nuclear blast.

I grew up believing the earth was doomed to nuclear winter....and that was much later than the Ancient Whaler. I had the "fortune" to grow up near a military base and nuclear silo.

<Edited? Certainly you're hallucinating!>

I grew up surrounded by military bases etc.  Cheyenne Mountain was west of us, Omaha (home of the B52's ) to the NE plus all the missle silos were scattered all over the Great Plains.  We were sure to die a slow, painful death.  Now days I live near a major defense plant and a nuclear power plant so I figure I'll die fairly quickly.

The whole point of challenges is to find new ways to get you addicted to the game. I for one, am thrilled as ... punch or whatever about this challenge and I can't wait to get my computer working again so I can make a Mad Maxian type of neighborhood.

Leather armor! Here I come!

Now if only I can find some trashy looking, post-apocalyptic cars....

The rules say you may not marry or move someone in before you unlock the hopelessness restriction. You may invite over people you are in love with, and best friends if you have a car. Female founder can definitely have kids. In fact, if you don't care about unlocking the second restriction in gen 1, there is no reason for a female founder to get married.

Technically, your female founder could have 7 kids with random walkbys and then get a job.  :P

Well, precisely. Not sure that is a SMART strategy, but it is a strategy. Or perhaps more of a strategery.

What if one of the items you brought back was the elixer?  You could get your sim to the top of her career - then drink the whole bottle, get married, quit job and start popping out kids.

As far as I can see, this is just one more argument in favour of Natural Science as the career of choice.

Mayhaps even TWO Elixiars, as that is something that is not replaceable, and as such, cannot be taxed by the mob. (Which is a mean restriction, btw, so Criminal Mastermind spouse FTW!)

Probably - that sounds like something I read sometime, but somehow sort of thought it didn't work in practice, but I dunno. As I said I tend to avoid Uni and don't think I've played without no 20k handouts since... well probably since about the time I got Uni :)


Yeah, that's how I feel too. The challenge is so much fun, I'm enjoying just the talk about it. All of it. I love reading about the different strategies.

In regards to the social worker... I admit there would be no 'social services' in an apocalyptic world. However, leaving young children by themselves is also a BAD idea, in a post apocalyptic world. There are much nastier things than little Timmy getting a bump on his head...like little Timmy wandering out and getting eaten by zombies or little Timmy trying to build a snowman out of the toxic ash.

Keep the social worker for this challenge... and pretend a parent needs to stay home just to keep the infant/toddler/children alive.
Maybe someone could make a mod where the grim reaper replaces the social worker when the kids get taken away.

In regards to the mid-game rules change. I don't like to do this, and for little tricks and work-arounds I chalk that up to player creativity.
However, spending effectively unlimited time in Uni kind of defeats the purpose. Several restrictions fall by the wayside if the founder comes home from college with an ungodly amount of money and powerful business perks under their belt. Don't expect me to make any more major rules shifts like that again. Just little tweaks and clarifications.

Next time I come up with a challenge, I'll be using you guys as my play testers. This board has a sharp wit for spotting loopholes.

Pescando has trained us well.  I'm still trying to find more of the intentional loopholes in his rules for the Ethiopian challenge.  I just know I'm missing something...  Finding unintentional loopholes is much easier.

I believe they can use those objects, as long as they don't violate the other rules.

Strictly speaking, Uni already gives an enormous amount of time. 8 Semesters at 3 days apiece is 24 days, nearly as long as the adult lifespan, and field tests have shown that even with the clock running, it's entirely possible to amass wealth in excess of 150K, more if you REALLY milk it. Money has never, ever, been a serious issue in the game, especially when your choices of what to buy are so restricted that you have nothing to spend it on anyway.

I'm sure Pinstar has average players in mind though.  :D

It's a bad idea to unlock Criminal Mastermind if you haven't unlocked another way of getting groceries or dealing with food issues.

Either:
business - to sell existing fridge (unless you have room for another fridge on your lot)
natural science - snapdragons, and ability to order groceries for delivery
military - ability to travel to community lots to buy groceries

While on the subject of the Criminal Mastermind - the buying and selling gets tedious.  Can we use the familyfunds cheat to take a percentage of the household worth?  In OFB you can go to build mode to see the net value of land + building + items.  Some sort of percentage of the total worth would work (but less than the % that depreciation is, as the depreciation only covers buyable items and not the entire worth of the lot).  You would of course need to balance that against the bills being lower as the buyable items would remain at fully depreciated.

Going back to my last post, the military reward.  My sim was in the SS (since I used DAC, all the dormies in his dorm were also in the SS, thanks to Maxis lack of randomness).   So I used the bomb shelter safehouse.  Counting the steps to the foundation, that is 8x8.  I was intending to build upwards to put it on a floor of its own, but there was no way I could do that.  If I'd taken out the foundation to place the reward, I would have lost most of my basement including items that were too big for my sim to move, such as the bed.  I guess I painted myself into a corner here.

And thanks Turtlemell for the idea to buy a bathtub as one of the 3 items that could come back from uni.  I was so happy that my founder's wife lost her first job and ended up in the medical career as her second choice.  The bathtub has made it so much easier.

I do consider that I've failed this challenge, but I'm still playing it to learn more about strategies before I start over again.

My game didn't like my founder using the grill to make breakfast.  He was at level 9 on his career when errors began to occur.  I managed to hit reset every time but one. Yup, I deleted him.  Now I'm saving every two Sims days instead of every 7 sim days.  He's also eating cereal for breakfast on work days.

Using the fridge to "Make one" ...."Group Meals"...."Hamburgers" is a way to grill burgers during the AM hours. I almost never make cerial...it spoils to quickly.




Your point about the long time at uni is a valid one. Tell me, can you skillbuild while on those off-lot businesses?



Also: About life of crime. I agree that even with the $100 or less exemption, it's still annoying.
Give me a little time to come up with a fair % to knock off the family's networth and I'll allow you to familyfunds it rather than selling everything. You'll still be able to replace the fridge to refill it.

Yes, but you can skillbuild at any other lots also, under the right conditions, and I find it fairly trivial to max all skills at Uni anyway.

I'm going to stick with my ruling on 8 semester strict timeline for Uni. If maxing all skills is easy, and money is a non-issue for an Awesome player such as yourself, then you shouldn't need any extra time. For us less awesome players, well, that just makes the challenge all the harder. Being a cruelly hard challenge is what the Apocalypse is all about  8)


Now about those snapdragons.... (just kidding).

You let them eat before work? At level 9 most of the jobs seem to do a very good job of feeding my Sims and emptying their bladder. Many of them also deal with other things as long as the levels are low enough.

Frankenbeasley, you clearly have the skills to play the email challenge.

There's a concept. Combine this with E-Mail and/or Ethiopian. :P

Heh. I was thinking of playing the updated Legacy rules with a handful of handicaps and my own little additions, including email. I miss my emailers. They had simple lives. Of course, now we have snapdragon technology and improved meditiation, email will be a doddle.

This challenge has got me thinking.  To tell the truth, as presented the challenge doesn't really appeal to me (specifically, it's a little on the compicated side and I'd prefer to unlock things by reaching goals that aren't already present in the game).  However, the premise and the idea of unlocking items and abilities has really got me thinking.  Perhaps I'll invent a doomsday themed self-challenge sometime.  It would make for a very interesting start to a new neighborhood, or maybe a story.  Thanks for giving me something to think about, Pinstar!  You have good ideas.

In need of some clarification here:

1. There's no rule that home lot must be timesynced with campus lots, is there?  I'm about to send a YA off to college - do I have to play his home lot while he's at college?

2. I've lifted military, medicine, law and culinary restrictions so far.  While at uni, my YA would be able to go to a community lot that has a fridge, a caffeinating station (espresso machine + dishwasher) and a bathroom.  What about going to a comm lot at uni that has a cook - can he do that, or does that count as hiring a service under the business restriction?

3. The rules state that before the Science restriction is lifted, I am only allowed to purchase one computer.  Does this mean he needs to take the family computer to university with him?

4. Will future generations of YAs be able to go to the lot I build for this sim to live on* while he's on campus?  Or does every generation of YAs need to move into an empty lot?

5. Only future spouses can be moved in, and they must be townies or NPCs.  Presumably this means I can move in a townie teen, skill them up, then marry them to the heir when they're adult?

* he won't actually be living there ... he'll be spending most (if not all) of his time at the community lot.

This is my interpretation of some of your questions with those rules:

2.  As long as it's not YOUR employee, it would be the same as eating at a restraraunt.

3.  I was reading this as per lot.  Also, i thought the computer would be covered under the 'Protection Money' and replaced each week.   It does bring up another question tho, if the computer IS covered by the mob, would you have to go back to your lot at the end of each semester, to replace the computer?  You wouldn't be able to take your own computer to a community lot so is it worth taking the computer with you.  Without Politics, you can't influence someone else to do your term-paper.

4.  I was reading it to mean 'Each' future YA has to be on a different empty lot, If 2 go at the same time, each would have to be on their own lot.  But since you won't be having them actually 'live' at that lot, all you'd need there would be a phone to call the taxi. 

   This does bring up a question tho.  What do you do with Family Members who move-out/not join the Family Household after Univ?   Do you have to play them or can you leave them in the Sim Bin?  You've already stated that blood-line family members who move out to find own place, can't unlock any careers.  I'm mainly thinking of Elders who have already contributed all they can and might just be in the way of future generations.

I think that you're probably okay to do anything you want with them, because once you move them out they're effectively "out of the challenge".

I decided he would take the family computer with him, and the family gnome for fun.  (Brought back from uni by the founder.  Has survived three generations of kicking, and one theft before I remembered to lock the area he was in).  I'm addicted to the sport of kings ;)

But Pinstar said:
I've bolded the relevant part.  So it looks like siblings going off to college around the same time can use the same lot, which means the family computer is available to all of them.  It's needed before you unlock some sort of creativity allowing restriction, as they can't learn creativity before YA or adulthood otherwise, and you need at least one point of creativity for any degree.  My question is can future generations use the same lot?

GayJohn, on the elder question - with the first generation of elders I sent them off to an empty corner of the lot to meditate once they'd done their duty and unlocked their restrictions and raised the next generation.  It kept them out of the way and ensured I wouldn't have unmoveable tombstones in icky places in the house (like blocking access to the toilet or something).  And no ghosts in the house, since ghosts can't cross the required foundation.  I'll be doing the same with the next generation.  I hope I didn't miss a rule about a restriction on meditation ...

EDIT: to fix a mistake

Worth noting: Ghosts cannot use elevators successfully. If an elevator is present on a lot, the ghost may *TRY* to use it, but he will simply fail, causing horrendous game lag instead. A soon-to-be-released hack prevents the lag.

I think a good thing for bloodline family members that unlocked a restriction should spend the rest of their days cloud watching and stargazing, for that whole "Alien technology" thing.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before....
the Law Enforcement restriction states that Teens with less than 10 body skill can't leave the house for any reason, which means no school, so can I school them at home using Inge's school at home object - a desk that generates a workbook?

That has already been addressed.

Teens are allowed to go to school. No Community Lots.

You could also carry the love tub back with you in inventory to make it a little easier.
(I just started thinking about strategy so this may not be a worthy enough item you would choose to take)

ETA-

Okay, but is using the school at home objects legal? I'm thinking that since doing the workbooks at home only takes a sim hour or two, you can use the rest of the time having the child/teen skill build instead of spending 5-7 hours in school.

This thread needs to be added as an attachment to the rules on the Legacy sight.  :D

One could argue that the bus ensures safe delivery of children to and from school. Just like owning a car enables you to invite people over (because your sim goes and picks them up, supposedly).

NOT going to school makes the challenge a lil easy. Besides that, you cannot invite the headmaster to get into private school, so post-Apocalyptica is even harder on the youngins.

Besides... no school, no college, natch!

The school at home object allows the kids/teen to get grades, so college would still be possible.

1. You don't need to time sync College and home. Just remember which generation the Sim(s) in college belong to, and keep in mind the 1 spouse per generation rule still applies to them.

2. You can eat food made by a cook on a Uni lot without unlocking business. Business prohibits you from hiring service sims, but if they're there already you didn't hire them.

3. You can only have 1 computer on the lot. You may purchase a 2nd computer for the college lot... however you must leave it there when the sims graduate.

4. YAs from the same family can combine onto the same lot. No other sims may move into this college lot. ONLY sims from the family can combine into it. Future spouses are still prohibited from joining the lot as they were with the founder.

5. The moment you move a townie teen into college they become a player-sim... and thus they cannot join the family.




Regarding school. The school-at-home object would fall under the 'mods that give an unfair advantage over those who don't have it'.

In the next update, I'll be putting up some more flavor text explaining why the school system is operational.

Okay, thanks for the clarification. If this were to really happen I wouldn't send my kids to school, but hey, maybe the government has to keep tabs on any new people born into the society and this is the way to do it or something.  :P

Pinstar, I'm assuming TwoJeffs Casual Romance would be a legal hack, as long as I turned on "always try for baby" until I unlock medical. Is that correct?

I have only just found this thread...

Pinstar, I really wish you had shared your ruling on businesses at Uni over at the BBS.

I started the challenge earlier on in the week and my founder sim started some businesses while she was at Uni.  Not only that but the businesses are a integral part of the story.

My founder sim was a knowledge sim who had a LTW of maxing out all her skills (and a rather curious interest in money for a knowledge sim.)  She decided to study biology and after working on her skills she headed downtown looking for eligible bachelors...  she had a rather keen interest in finding out what everybody did for a living.  She eventually became engaged to a medical researcher.  Her first two years were divided between socialising downtown; meeting people and dating her fiancee and Uni where she studied, worked on her skills and made more firiends (some of whom had some interesting secrets).  She rarely slept, her aspiration points were spent on thinking caps and energisers, once she dipped into the green or she didn't have enough aspiration point to buy another thinking cap or energiser it was time to go downtown and have another date with Leonid her fiancee.

Halfway during her University career she discovered a mutant strain of snapdragons  that some rather interesting therapeutic properties and developed a biotech idea that would greatly benefit simkind. She pitched this to some leading businessmen.  Nobody was interested and she decided that if anybody was going to make her ideas fly it had to be her.  She needed to learn some business skills and since she didn't want to change her major (there was still stuff she needed to learn in biology) she decided to open her own business downtown.  Her business was moderately successful and she earned some awards that allowed her to improve the lot like adding a hottub.

Then her lot got crumplebottomed. She decided to sell up to get alway from the old bat and bought a lot outside town in a location she called Sanctury (as in sanctury from Mrs Crumplebotton).  (The lot was in a subhood that's a lush duplicate of main hood, since the poo hadn't hit the fan yet)  She decided to buy a large 5x5 lot envisionaging that eventually it will the home of her biotech industry. Meanwhile she built a store on it.  Store had some interesting architectural features in it. 
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/JanetCone/apocalypse/interior.jpg) Note the location of the stairs and small rooms and the distance between the two. Again the business was moderately successful and she earned gold badges in sales, cash register and restocking and then took up floristry where she eventually found a way of encorporating the mutant snapdragons into floral bouquets.  Again she divided her time between working at the store (and dating Leonid) and studying and skilling back at Uni.

She maxed out all her skills (thereby reaching permaplat status) and graduated summa cum laude.  There was a superbowl game on TV but she was tired and decided that she wanted to get an early night instead (she was tired of the energiser up all night thing).  She went to bed dreaming of the glorious future ahead of her...

She was wakened by an almighty explosions, the nearby nuclear reactor had exploded.  She ended up in a red cross camp dressed in someone else's discards contemplating her tattered future.  She could join the stream of refugees fleeing from the area but that would mean the end of dream of her Biotech dream.  She had some savings in the bank but a lot of her money had been tied up in her business and that had been trashed by a horde of zombies.  If she stayed ...

She had the chance and the skill to make a difference.  She had a vision of making the desert bloom again...

She went back to the site of her business to see what she could salvage; the building had been trashed but there was enough on the site to create a usable dwelling that would comply with the mayor's strange new ordinance and have room for a car.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/JanetCone/apocalypse/interior2.jpg) (showing the ground level, I placed a new 5x5 lot in the equivalent location in the main hood and built the house from scratch; putting it in the same location and keeping some of the architectural features of the original store)

It's now about 20 days into the challenge, she eventually found a job in the natural science track and reached the top.  She married her fiancee Leonid and they have a son Joshua (who shall be a mighty man of valour!).  Leonid has all the skills required to become a chief of staff and should get that promotion the next time he goes to work.  She is pregnant with her second child

Having reached this point I find that there's been a ruling made against businesses at Uni that we weren't informed of at the BBS and that is not found in the rules for the challenge on your own site.

I think the idea that visiting business lots at Uni creates a time distortion rather silly.  Visiting any community lot creates a time distortion that can be exploited by the player.  Remember also that the founder can only study and increase their skills on a Uni lot.

My thoughts on this are:

1 Any business is going to be trashed at the time of the disaster.  So any business owned by founder at the time of the disaster should be disposed off.  For example they could be sold back to the community and familyfunds used to deduct the profit from the sale, it could be sold to a townie at discounted price (maybe the cost of the bare land and a few extra K because there are probably usable building materials that could be salvaged) or SimPE could be used to delete the lot.

2 To stop business lot being sold just before the disaster if a founder has bought a business lot at uni she/he can't sell it while at Uni, the lot has to be trashed.  If the business is sold the founder must have a business that is of greater or equal value in her/his possession at the time of the disaster.

3 To stop expoiltation of what is known in Prosperity Challenge circles as the Open Venue Loophole (If you have a sim mediate on venue that they own you can basically walk away and leave the game running on it's own for a while and come back to a big profit)  the founder must be actively played while at the lot.

Does that sound fair?  If it does I need to deduct some money from the household with familyfunds.

I really don't want to go through the uni slog again.

More questions ...

Current generation is male heir (and his wife) + younger sister.

The sister is at college.  I understand from an earlier post that if she moves back to the familly home from college she is eligible to lift a restriction, but if she sets up her own home she can't lift any restrictions.

1. What if she moves back home from college, lifts a restriction, and THEN moves out?  Does the lifted restriction still apply?  If she has to remain in the home for the rest of her life I don't mind, even if she is too playful to meditate.  The family has a cowplant now.

2. If she returns from college to the family home and stays there, and then produces children (with or without marrying) then can her children born in the family home lift any restrictions?  None of them will be the heir - her older brother and his wife will be providing the heir.

3. Going back to an earlier, unrelated question.  You said that a townie teen sent to college becomes playable, and therefore becomes ineligible to lift any restrictions.  What if I move in a townie teen with the intention of marrying the heir, skill them up, and never send them to college.  Can I do this?  The teen wouldn't be leaving the lot to go off to college and would fit the criteria of "The ONLY Sims that may be moved into the Legacy family are Sims that will directly contribute to the birth of the next generation".

4. Related to question 3.  Does the spouse have to be married to lift a restriction?  In an earlier generation my sim proposed to and then moved in his college girlfriend.  But I forgot to marry them straight away, they didn't wed until after she'd lifted her restriction and was pregnant.

5. Another totally unrelated question.  And this one is a bit nitpicky and silly, I guess.  "No sim in the household may sleep outdoors".  Does this include a sim passing out?

If you already did a Uni business, then keep going with the challenge. Because it's not yet on the offical site, you don't need to call it a broken rule. The site should be updated today.
It's just easier to say "no businesses in Uni"

If you are keen on opening a business early, then have an early generation unlock the business restriction.


1. Once a restriction is lifted, it is permanently lifted. She can come home from college, lift a restriction then move out and you would be fine.
2. None of her children could lift restrictions. Only one sim per generation can be an heir, and only their children can unlock restrictions. The heir's sibilings can also unlock restrictions, but their children cannot.

One exception (and I'll post this on the offical site) Alien babies can always lift a restriction, regardless of who produced them. (must be pregnancy by abduction)

3. The moment a sim becomes playable, even if you don't play them, they become a player-sim

4. They need not marry. Just keep in mind they must be that generation's one spouse to lift a restriction.

5. If they pass out wake them up and you'll be fine.
The rule serves both a flavor text and balance purpose. It prevents people from making "furniture on the ground" houses, and any sim sleeping outdoors would most likely die of exposure.

I've been playing challenges of one sort or another almost since the game came and most of my sims are sent to college so I am very used to playing uni under challenge conditions.

In a standard unhacked Maxian game the returning sim will get either 20K or the household funds divided by the number of playble sims in the household whichever figure is highest.

For example four sims are sent to Uni together and by the end they have 48K in household funds. 
for the first sim to return home the second figure is 12k (48k/4) so he/she is given 20k.
for the second sim the figure is 16k (48K/3) so he/she is given the 20K
for third sim the figure is 24k (48/2) so she/he is given the 24k which is deducted from the household funds
For the remaining sim there is 24K in the household and she/he takes all of it

It's very possible for the founder sim to bring back more than 20k with a bit of hard work and planning.

Glad to here I can keep going as it now 36 days into the challenge and Joshua has been joined by David, Jonathon, Daniel, Matthew and Nathan (Janet my founder had a bottle of elixer, a smartmilk dispenser and her diploma in her backpack when she graduated.)  Unless I feed either Janet or Leonid to the cowplant the next restriction to be unlocked has to be military.  Joshua maxed out his body, charisma and mechanical skills and is now in the recruit training corps.  He will moved out once he lifts that restriction and so will the others once they lift a restriction.  The last boy left will be introduced to Robin Shaikh an acquaintance of their mother who just happens be a business tycoon... (I made a careful note of the occupations of all the guys Janet met but it's all gone out the window because she had all boys! - grrr)

I still think that being allowed a business at Uni on the proviso that it is destroyed once the disaster happens is more in keeping with flavor of the challenge.  Money doesn't really help with a lot of the restrictions, you are still restricted to 8x8 house, still have to pay protection money (and to reduce that the less you spend on objects the better), still can't move any heavy furniture and so on...

Are you sure one of them isn't gay?  ;)

Are the items brought back by the founder still subject to restrictions?  Earlier on this thread someone mentioned bringing a bathtub from Uni, but the medical restriction prohibits use of tubs and showers.  Elsewhere people seem to agree that snapdragons brought from college can't be used because of the Natural Science restriction.  What's the consensus?

I don't think there is one. I mean, according to Pinstar, you can bring back and use an aspiration reward as long as your sim earned the points, but aspiration rewards are restricted. I've also seen comments that you could bring the flower arranging bench, but not use it until you unlock Natural Science. So I am confused.

I think you could bring back snapdragons but not use them until Natural Science is unlocked. I brought back expensive items that I could use: double bed and computer or else a fridge. Depends on whether your sim maxed creativity while in college.

I want to know if there's a hack that randomly assigns toddler hair so I don't get stuck with the stupid boy fuzzy head, the girl pixie or animal heads. Animal heads would almost be better since apparently the fuzzy head is maintained throughout a sim's life.  :D I admit it. I'm shallow.

You're a custom hair addict, you mean.  ;D

Well double beds aren't restricted, and computers are only limited to having one.  My question was about bringing back items in order to circumvent a restriction - like the bathtub, or a guitar, or a fire alarm.  Pinstar did make founder exceptions with aspiration rewards and personal electronics, but these can't be used by other sims.  I'm wondering about the other stuff.  Unless I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume restricted items can't be used if brought back.  Which means that unless you think the family is going to be dirt poor when the medical restriction is lifted, there's no point in bringing back a bathtub (or whatever).

Yes, I Songsmith am a custom hair addict and have been a custom hair addict for 2 years. Have some coffee!

I don't care if it just randomizes Maxis-made hair. That would be in keeping with the spirit of the challenge. I just can't stand the same haircut through all life stages! *G* At least, that's what seems to happen with the fuzzy and pixie cuts.

Joined spouses can't contribute to the next generation.  If anyone was gay they would have to be one of the ones moved out so he could find true love.  I'm keeping the male high flyers for Janet's granddaughters.

I don't mind the male hair as much as the female hair.  I really loathe the female pixie hair.  That hair is the reason I downloaded toddler hairs ages ago - so I NEVER have to see it on my playables.  The first three born into my challenge were males, but now there's a female born into the family I'm seriously lifting the show biz restriction earlier than I planned to just to be able to change the hair.  I was going to leave that one until near the end.

When I play this, I'm going to cheat on hair. I'm not going to allow myself to choose it, but I will roll a number and pick that number hair, even if it looks really bad on the Sim. That way everyone won't look exactly alike. There's only so much I can put up with aesthetically :P.

I might do that, too. I'll even stick to Maxis hair. *sighs*

I can stand the toddlers, but I cannot stand seeing the same hairstyle for a sim's lifetime!

So make your CAS starter sim with hair from the custom bin instead of "normal" hair.  That's why I've always preferred the less awesome unbinned hair -- my toddlers are less funny looking, as they always inherit their parents' hairstyles.  In this case you will only get decent-looking toddlers half the time -- only from the gender of your created sim -- but it's still an improvement.

...but if you don't like having the same style all the time, I guess Show Biz is going to have to be a priority for you.   :-\  I'll probably do that one last, personally.

I've got one -- must a Sim's urnstone remain where s/he dropped it even if it's blocking something like the toilet or fridge? I don't mind sharing the house with ghosts, but having them in the middle of the floor in everyone's way is silly. Couldn't they manage to drag the body over in a corner?

Or is the point that I should be building pens for my elders to die in?  :P

Any does anyone know of any good post-apocalyptian custom content? Particularly some burned and grungy outfits. I want my Sims to look like they're suffering.  ;D

One way around that would have been to create a female founder with custom hair (look for one that has it for toddlers to elders).  All of her daughters will have the custom hair and half of their daughters will have the custom hair.

 :P But then again if your game is as contrary as mine she'll have all boys and her heir will have all girls - all with the pixie cut....

I have a question, can you move out the founder/heir if they have a) lifted a restriction and b) produced the next heir old to take over the house? (assuming of course the military restriction has been lifted.

I've been sending my elders off to meditate in a corner of the lot on their last day.  I have a collection of gravestones there now.  The rules state that graves can't be moved, and that "you may not place any items outside of this 8x8 area".  Since I'm not placing the graves there, I figure it's within the rules.  So far all but one sim have been serious enough to meditate.  Sadly the parents of that one sim were too playful to encourage her to be serious enough to meditate ... but she's not an heir, so I'll be moving her out once she's lifted her restriction.


The problem with that is that I prefer custom hairs that have been correctly colour-binned, which means that the kids get the standard Maxis hair.  I think I might just randomly select a Maxis hair upon transition to childhood, and not change it again.  There's only a limited selection at childhood anyway, so it's still a restriction.  Who would have thought that custom hair would count as a hack that gives an advantage in a challenge?

Kyna, I'm with you. I only use the CC hair that is correctly binned because I like to see how the genetics play out. Toddler hair assignment has always seemed to be an obvious game annoyance/flaw. When you create a sim using the random dice, it doesn't just pick one hair style. If you have CC binned hair, it even selects from those. So why can't the darn game select the different types of toddler hair. It's dumb.

And, no, I am NOT going for Show Business just to get hair. But I think if I limit myself to one choice of a Maxis style that that's in the spirit of the restriction.

I wondered about an urnstone blocking an important piece of furniture, as well. I plan on unlocking Politics in the 2nd generation, so it really won't be a problem. I foresee loads of trouble with several people all trying to have beds in an 8x8 house no matter how many levels I have! :D

Yes, I got sick of having to build more levels.  After Nat Sci, but before I got business, I built another floor just to hold all the flowers from the crafting station - and it still didn't hold all the flowers made by one sim as he trained his way to snapdragons.  This is just a practice run (since I would have failed this in the first generation if it wasn't for a hack I forgot to remove).  Next time I'm doing natural science first, and my founder sim will be getting that gold badge before he leaves uni.

Before I got politics + athletics I had: basement, ground floor, first floor, second floor, flat roof.  Five levels, all full of stuff, very cramped.  Now the house is a much more playable two levels (although I still have the career rewards on the roof, so that makes three levels).

It says specifically that aspiration rewards brought back by the founder can be used. The idea being is that you can use them, even though the knowledge of how they are made is gone. With a shower, you can't use them because there is no clean running water.


Having a sim meditate just before death is a viable strategy. I made a basement with no stairs for my test family and had elders close to death meditate and teleport down there to die.
If a sim dies in a bad spot, you still can't move the marker until you have lifted Paranormal. If they die blocking a vital area, you'll just have to re-arrange the house around it.


Snapdragons cannot be used or placed on the lot until Natural Science is lifted. The idea being that NO plants can survive anywhere until the natural scientist invents the soil converter to allow plant life again. This is why Natural Science also restricts the Slacker career reward.

...but they're potted, and if armageddon were to happen, hydroponic and potted planting would be the ONLY thing to work. That's why I use hydroponic potatoes in the bunker.

   Now you've got me confused again, the way you phrased your answer, you've inferred that Elders may NOT meditate to die outside the 8 X 8 Family plot?  Otherwise, why would you take up valuable space in the basement?

Presumably because the basement without stairs operates as a ghost containment unit. If you are selling their beds, do you really want them roaming around the house?

Ghosts can only traverse floor-boundaries in the same way sims do, and cannot use elevators (although by default, they will TRY, causing horrific game lag).

Interestingly enough, my ghosts seem to be bound to the ground floor. They've never even attempted to go upstairs.  :-\

OO thats lucky!  My stupid ghosts scare the crap out of everyone sleeping upstairs!! 

Only one of my ghosts goes into the house.  He was out haunting the night his grandson was born, and he appears to have been called upstairs to see the new baby.  Since then he's continued to go upstairs whenever he haunts.  The rest stay outside, apparently unable to go up the few steps to the foundation.

My legacy ghosts mostly stay in the yard, making it a thrilling adventure for anyone who goes outside at night. Occasionally one of them makes it up the steps onto the ground floor.

My ghosts go anywhere and everywhere, unless I put water around them. Balconies, basements, third floors, whatever, nothing deters them. They like to break things and scare small children and pregnant women. They also cause intense lag in my game, so I send them off to the cemetery.

Which reminds me of another question I had.

Once paranormal is lifted, do graves need to stay on the lot?  I'm asking because the ghosts slow my game down (particularly when several of them are out at once) and I'd like to send them off to the cemetery.

I would think so, since you are allowed to both move and sell gravestones after you lift Paranormal.

Well, I don't know any apocalyptic CC, but I plan on making some Fallout esque leather armours once I get my pc back...

You just wait till you see my mutants.  :D

I downloaded some zombie skins from MTS2.  I was going to turn them into S1-S4 default replacements and use custom skins for my founder and spouse from Uni (using SimPE to edit the future spouse's skin DNA once identified).  Heirs will have to marry zombies though.  I'll take out the zombie default replacements once the medical restriction is lifted.

I assume vampirism is ok.  I'm thinking about trying to get my female founder bitten when she's ready to start having kids.  It will make for easy pregnancies and she won't age.   Maybe she'll bear all the sims I'll use to lift all the restrictions.  Haven't decided.  If she's lucky and makes some cash on a chance card, I might not even have to get her married (I'm assuming that she'll lift a restriction first then get pregnant and quit the job).  That way she can have 7 kids on the lot, although having a non-vamp spouse might be very useful with many little ones running about, and he'll lift a restriction too.

If I ever get my first heir to teenage years without his parents dying, I'll almost consider that an act of God.  I've got to get another adult onto the lot soon. 

Zombies are sterile though. =p

For those interested: It's not Apocalyptic, but it's nice and sci-fi and would fit.

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=189686

I need Road Warrior outfits!  But that link is close enough, at least for female sims.  And by zombies, I didn't mean real ones, just townies with zombie skins.

I know, I was teasin'

=p

Well, I promise to make some Road Warrior Outfits once I get my PC back. (might be awhile)

If you want to help me hunt for textures.... *whistles*

Hmm, I've never had a zombie, so I don't know. Are the males one sterile, too? Or just females? I don't mean the pregnant part, just the actual impregnating part.

TreyNutz, have you seen Enayla's new, gross pixie skins? They aren't zombie grey, but they are kinda gross. (I actually have one as a zombie replacement.)

kutto, From what I understand, all zombies are sterile.  I've never actually tried to get them to mate, I just assumed neither way would work.

rohina, yes, I have Enayla's pixierot skin.  I was going to make it a default skin for S4.  I have 3 other zombie skins for the other skin tones.  I saw her other horror skins, but ultimately decided on 4 radically different zombie skins for my Apocalypse neighborhood.  My favorite is this one (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=62897).  I have it as a zombie replacement in my current game.

I'll have to set up the neighborhood, then play a sim there to run a clothing shop so I can clothe all the townies Road Warrior style before I start the challenge with my founder.  It didn't take me too long to do most of Pleasantview with a couple of vampires and the sethour cheat.

Jelendera, textures?  Sorry, I've never made clothes.  The most I've ever done is change the HSL values to recolor the Captain Hero outfit to make my SSS suit.  But any Road Warrior outifts you make would be awesome.  I'd probably use them outside the challenge too.

I'm really looking forward to seeing some pix of this apocalypse hood. We can have a mutant-off.  :D

I took all of Enayla's new makeup for her Unholy Collection and modified it to make it mix & match with the others in my game to be layered with others, or with each other, all ages, both genders.

Kinda hard to explain in words (so pics below), but literally it opens up those makeups to be used in ways they originally weren't intended to be.  Especially helpful if you are doing a Legacy and want to show thru makeup that you have a Black Sheep (Alien-Zombie-Vampire)...you can wear all 3 at the same time and layer other makeup effects all the while too.

Here...like this clicky here (http://home.comcast.net/~ivy5551212/ivymakeupexample.jpg) or this clicky here (http://home.comcast.net/~ivy5551212/ivymakeupexample2.jpg) .

I suppose as well just because I thought it would be cool and interesting to do.  hehehe.

I do have the Unholy Collection now as the defaults for my aliens, zombies and vampires as well.  I really thought they were neat.

:) :) :)
Ivy

That is awesome! Share!

*Ivy sneezes*

I must've caught Blue's cold...she's always coughing you know... ;)

Why thank you  ;D

So glad you like them!

:) :) :)
Ivy

BlueSoup's constant coughing and sneezing comes from the fact that a head so round and fat has the ability to contain a great deal of snot, and she never has it cleaned out. There must be a pound or two of snot in there.

Ew. Now I have a mental picture of Pescado measuring snot in some kind of olde-fashioned scale-type device.

Ewwwww...and double ewwwww...I think I'd much rather have Blue's cold than JM's snot measuring bucket anyday...

*can't help but giggle anyway at the thought of JM doing that* "No, that's snot enough I'm telling you, you MUST produce more!"  JM do you say that to all your simmies?

:) :) :)
Ivy

Although, I have no desire to make a mutant hood, that is cool makeup. I wouldn't mind me some of that either.

*sighs* I just hope bills this paycheck are nice and light so I can afford fixing my pc.

I especially hope the guy at the mabob can save my sims backups.

As for textures, just links to good, clear examples of what you would want is a good start.

Right now all I can think of is making the leather armor and the Vault 13 suit from Fallout.

Thanks Jelenedra :) Glad you guys are getting a kick out of it :D

I hope you get your computer fixed quick!

:) :) :)
Ivy (who feels another sneeze coming on...)

Oh and thanks for pointing out Enayla's new set of pixie skins. I wuv them. Shame I'll download them and probably never use them...

And I just look at the whole computer fiasco as an excuse to start legacy challenges. I just don't want to lose all my precious, precious skintones, eyecolors, and hair styles that are all binned and coded. THAT will make me a saddykins.

Ivy, me too? please! As soon as I can play for more than five minutes without crashing, I'm on this challenge in my slow little way.

*hugs Jelenedra*

Although I AM upset I lost my Bachelorette Challenege Story. I had FINALLY finished writing it.... Over 200 pictures... and the perfect setup for the Asylum Challenge. Three of the Singles got into a fight with the lonely sim and started gang fighting her and they promptly fell into aspiration failure.... *sighs*

Anyways.

Cannot wait for my pc... I miss Photoshop.

Oh yeah, found this for those of you who don't want to wait for me:

http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=99051

The creator also has a nifty catsuits for dudes and a nifty trans am that you could squint your eyes and pretend is either Mad Max's or the Punisher's.

*achoo!*
Oh bless me! It must be that darned cold...

I'm glad you like!

:) :) :)
Ivy

Aren't you not allowed to change the uniforms or hairs of sims until much later, so they'll be stuck in their mops and afros and ugly Maxis age-up outfits for a very long time?

At least for the clothes part, is there an easy way for the Founder to bring different clothes home from the University?  I know with just the Univ EP, when i had my Founder bring a dresser home, clothes didn't follow, but i've yet to retry with OFB/NL.

   Sorry for not including this in the other post, but i just remembered it (again).  Why should 'change appearance' be forbidden?   As far as i know, sims don't roll up wants to change their appearance, unless a sim's fun mood is raised if they cheer if they like their new appearance (tho i've heard the cheering/shrugging is purely random).

I suggest you make the challenge out of black people, because not-black-people look very strange in an afro.

There's not much point to bringing clothes home from uni (even if you could), as they can't buy or use a wardrobe until the show biz restriction is lifted.  Get used to seeing them in their sleepwear if you go for Natural Science (snapdragons!) before medical.

I've finished my first attempt at this, failed it, but went through to the end anyway.  On my second attempt, I notice that my sims are spending a lot of time in their pyjamas.  Founder unlocked Natural Science (and got her gold flowermaking badge before she graduated), and made lots of snapdragons before she died.  I haven't unlocked medical yet, otherwise they could take a shower and spin into daywear after their shower.  The snapdragons mean that their hygiene never drops low enough to autonomously take a sponge bath.  The only time they spin out of their sleepwear is to change for work, school, or for exercise/meditation.

EDIT: Typing with a psycho cat between you and the screen is fun ;)

If you had CR installed, they would be in their undies all the time. Oh, no they wouldn't, since the shineyness has increased.

I am custom-making mutant townies for my neighbourhood, so they can have makeup from the beginning.

Doesn't Pescado's clothing tool allow you to do that?

I think the clothing tool might be a grey area with regard to the rule about using hacks that might give you an advantage.

I feel that making your simmies more destitute looking isn't against the rules. I think that any appearance changes that make your sim fugly is okay. Like dirt makeup and messy hair.

As long as they aren't perverse enough to enjoy it.  :D

Anything that lets you get around the fugly hair styles and awful clothing is an unfair advantage. Part of the pain of the Show Business restriction is having to look at fugly sims.

Fugly is not so much the issue, it's that they will all have the SAME fugly hair.

Well, is it against the rules to make your sims fuglier?

So you are confirming that giving your founder an unbinned downloaded hair is an 'unfair advantage'?

I've been selecting a random Maxis (non-hat) hair upon transition to childhood, using a random number generator.  14 female hairs, 10 male hairs, if you exclude the hat hairs.  I'm still getting fugly hair on most of my sims.  Personally I don't mind the male default hair, to me it looks neat and reasonably well-kept, but I've been randomising for the males too.  If I roll up the pixie hair (that I can't stand) for a female then she's stuck with it, but not EVERY female is stuck with it.  In fact the current generation's spouse has that hair ... but she was a Criminal Mastermind, so my heir married her anyway in spite of her lack of style.

For me the issue is the same as Rohina: it's that they will all have the SAME fugly hair.

Do townies already at the top of their career count for lifting that particular restriction? For example, if my founder marries a townie that's already a professional party guest, is Slacker automatically lifted?

As long as they are not Mr. Big or the Diva, then yes. Or is that a Show Biz restriction?

*frantically checks rule book

It's not in the rules on Pinstar's website, but he said earlier in this topic:

As Kutto pointed out, under the Show Biz restriction "The Diva and Mr. Big NPCs may not be moved into the house for any reason."  So your heirs can't marry either of them to lift the Slacker restriction unless you've already lifted the Show Biz restriction.

With further playtesting I found that snapdragons are utterly broken and make the challenge way too easy. However, my intent is not to squash the strategies of those who were clever enough to fill their houses with snapdragons.


I'm thinking of adding the following to the Business restriction
"Due to lack of supply chains, you cannot use any work benches"

You would be able to bring home 1 or 2 snapdragons from college and keep them in inventory until you unlock Natural Science...but you would also need to unlock business to be able to manufacture them and fill the house.


Those that started with a house full of snapdragons wouldn't have to change or delete them... just follow the proposed rule going forward.

This also adds another couple teeth to the business restriction, which could benefit from a little harshening. What does everyone think?

Sounds good to me. Snapdragons make this challenge a LOT easier, and the whole point is to make this as difficult as possible.

I think the rules should be left as they are even though I'm not following the Natural Scientist route myself. The NS restriction on using the Flower Arranging bench and its products is the only one that makes a really significant difference and I don't want to see any of the college careers become meaningless. Natural Scientist has two chance cards where either answer can get the founder fired, and make it impossible to follow the NS strategy, so this stragegy is already a gamble.

Making snapdragons is only practical for Sims who already have a gold badge in Flower Arranging, which limits it to the founder and possibly some spouses. Other Sims would produce large numbers of bouquets while earning the gold badge and have to do something with all of those bouquets. If the Business restrictions apply, they can't sell them. If the Athletic restrictions apply, they can't keep more than 3 of them in inventory. If the Politics restrictions apply, they can only use the 8x8 section of the lot for storage, so their house will become extremely cluttered. That already makes producing snapdragons, or any other crafted objects, impractical for most Sims until at least two restrictions have been lifted. I think that's sufficient.

I would have to agree that snapdragons make it too easy.  I'm not too far along yet, but my sims are in the green all the time from the snapdragons -- even if I make them exercise until they reach hygeine failure, it's not enough to put them in the red.  My founder got her gold badge in college and as soon as she unlocked the Natural Science career, she bought a flower bench and put three snapdragons on every floor.

Keep in mind, Sketch Elder, that if snapdragons also require Business to unlock, that doesn't make NS useless.  You need NS if you want to unlock Alien Technology.  NS also unlocks the hydroponic planter, which gives another way to increase creativity.

I'll keep going with my current family for now, but the new rule sounds interesting enough that I might start a new one.

Booo to all rule changes after the fact. In principle.

Rule changes have to be more demanding, otherwise people are too tempted to use the loopholes that make the challenge less fun.

I thought about those before I posted. Natural Scientist unlocks telescopes, stargazing, and cloudwatching, but it doesn't unlock the Alien Technology by itself and there other ways of training Logic. You still have to lift another restriction, a particularly difficult one since it relies on low probablilty events, before you get access to the aspiration rewards. Likewise, Natural Scientist unlocks the Hydroponic Planter but doesn't give it to you. Someone has to take a job in Slacker, a different career, in order to earn the Planter. Even the cowplant doesn't really matter since you can use vampirism to extend your lifespan. In my opinion, the only thing Natural Scientist unlocks by itself that really matters is the snapdragon bouquet.

If you honestly believe the snapdragons are making it too easy, put them where they won't do you any good. The challenge can be as hard as you want it to be, since you can impose additional restrictions on yourself whenever the mood strikes you.

Okay...well you asked for it...

Oh for pete's sake, quit changing the rules just because there are folks out there who come up with different and clever strategies that in and of themselves already take a lot of work to accomplish.

Not to mention, you are further handicapping your Legacy Players who choose this as a handicap already to play...double whammy on them.  You are making it even more difficult for them to start a Generation 1 business by eliminating an entire category of options for a home-based business when you eliminate all workbenches.  What's the point of going after all your business bonuses then?

When you turn a challenge from "hard to play" into "not fun to play" you are going to turn folks off from playing the challenge at all. I
think you are forgetting that a challenge should be FUN as well as challenging. For some folks, watching their simmies with mood bars
dropping below green with no way to quickly counter it or prevent it isn't fun at all.  I'm talking your average sim player, not a power player here.

Not everyone plays the same way, and not everyone will use the same strategy.  This is where simmer's adaptations on whether or not to use a certain strategy come into play.  They can choose to handicap themselves further or not.  

If you're going to rule against snapdragons, you may as well rule against meditation as well.  Meditation is even easier to gain than snapdragons are.  Your first simmie can merely meditate his way to the top of whatever career path he wants.  Send your elders to the corner of the lot and make them meditate until they die.  Easy way to plan where their graves will be, and no worrying about where their graves will end up at.  Meditate your way thru pregnancy, no worries about hunger.  So shall we now rule out meditation now too?  

And while you're at it, you may as well rule out vampires as well.  Heck they're even easier to take care of, they don't age, and they can still reproduce.  And becoming a vampire is a piece of cake.  So there ya go, guess they're out as well now too?

Instead of rewarding clever simmers for thinking outside the box, you think everytime someone comes up with a "new" strategy that a rules change MUST be implemented or OMG it's a bad challenge now because of it. It isn't. Why can't you just let them play and be happy that they were clever in figuring out a different way to play it?

This challenge still has too many loopholes left open.  But for the sake of those not wanting to work the loopholes, just give it a rest and let them play it out and have FUN figuring it out.  Those finding the loopholes are having FUN finding them. They're going to find even more ways that this challenge should have been written from the get-go that you'll sit back and say "Now why didn't I think of that?"  Let them have their fun, let them discover ways to work within what you've already given them.  Perhaps at some point down the road make The Second Coming of the Apocalypse Challenge that includes the rules changes that you want to make after *carefully* evaluating what you've accidentally left out of the first one.  Give it a few months and give folks time to play it thru to the end.  Gather feedback and then decide what should be changed or not.  

Just remember: Having too many restrictions severely limits the paths that can be realistically taken during a challenge and still succeed.  In a challenge that already has so many restrictions, be careful what you restrict, or you'll lose more players than you gain.  When it's so restricted that only one path is the right path to take, the fun factor bottoms out, and it merely becomes a chore to follow that path to get to the end.

My 4cents, doubled now for mob inflation rates,
:) :) :)
Ivy

edited for spelling and formatting

Hear, hear! Hoorah for Ivy for expressing in more detail what I (and I think, others) are feeling.

I originally suggested that Pinstar revise the language in the spouse rule, because it seemed like the intent wasn't clearly enough expressed, but all these rule changes every time someone thinks of a loophole are silly and annoying.

It's quite clear what the intent of the challenge is, and people can play "pure" if they want to, but the rules really need to stand at this point.

Rohina I know without a doubt others are feeling the same.  Thank you for echoing it as well.

:) :) :)
Ivy

Well, I said it again on Shoo Flee, one voice in the wilderness of yes-sheep people.

Rohina, good for you!

Even a whisper can be heard above a scream, provided the right person is listening...

:) :) :)
Ivy

Looks like I'm going to go against popular opinion and say the restriction on craft benches sounds ok with me.  Snapdragons practically break the game.  I use them everywhere and everything is much much easier.  It's almost gotten boring.  I'll play the challenge with that rule regardless of whether it's ever made offical or not.  It fits in with the theme anyways.

I haven't started the challenge yet - won't until next month for various reasons.  But I wasn't planning to unlock NS soon anyways.  I'm curious how close to death I can keep my sims and still survive a generation or two.   :P

The workbench restriction doesn't bother me, because it does make some sense from a role-playing perspective. Unlike the not moving graves or furniture restrictions, or the no changing your hair restriction, none of which I would follow :P.

Yeah, apparently, even monkeys believe in personal grooming. :P

Point is not the restriction so much, as the tinkering.

I'm going against popular opinion as well.  I think restricting crafting benches is a good idea.  And I also don't have any problem with refining the rules as more playtesting is done.  It is rare that anything comes out perfectly in the first edition.  Almost everyting needs updated as new holes appear. 
This works the other way around as well.  The simmer can decide the hell with the rules and play the challenge as he feels fit.  It is just a game for fun after all.   :)

I generally feel this way as well. I tend to play how I want and don't worry too much about it. However, a lot of people are more particular about playing by the rules than I am, and I know people have started over three times so they're playing within the new rules. They'll get frustrated.

Soooo, I'm gonna hafta go with the crowd - leave the rules alone for awhile. Anyone who plays with snapdragons knows they're too easy (I've banned them for myself in regular gameplay too) and if they want it harder, won't use them. Let it stand for awhile and let everyone play and have fun while they're excited and write up a new set of rules later on, after everything has been examined closely.

There's no real competition in this challenge anyway, so it doesn't matter if we aren't all playing the same way. What's fun to compare is strategies, and by now we all know about meditate, snapdragons, and vampires. Let's see how people who come up with some other ones do :) Could make lists - easiest strategy, most within the theme strategy, stuff like that :)

(PS: Someone like JM won't ever play the challenge at all. What he likes to do is read the rules, think up a way that'll let him "beat" the rules with some "infinite points" or "never lose" deal and declare it 'owned' ;)

Actually, there is a competition: Getting a score of as close to zero as possible. Remember, each day after move in, you earn a "point". This is obviously a penalty point, since clearly the achievement is to beat it as fast as possible, not simply drag it out never filling the last restriction indefinitely. Therefore, the competition is to come up with a way to beat it in the minimum possible time, with naturally the 0-day victory being the most highly prized.

Well, yeah, once you get to that point, where you have a trivially implementable strategy, everything else is just mundane, sundry details I've done a million times before. Once you've got it down to the level where a brain-damaged chimpanzee could beat it, it's over.

I agree that these rule changes are annoying and I apologize. I'll play test my next challenge much more in depth next time.

I'm going to keep the restriction. The reason? Without it, Natural Science creates a 'perfect strategy'.

My goal was to make many different 'paths' of unlocking restrictions not only viable, but effective as well. My idea seemed to work out, as people were coming up with all sorts of combos.

Then along came the snapdragons. The snapdragons prove so powerful; they take the sting of many other restrictions. They become SO powerful that Natural Science becomes the only "Priority #1" career to unlock first. This removes a strategic dynamic of the challenge. The ability to have your motives stay in the green eliminates the sting of most of the other restrictions.  Why would you need to unlock high-fun objects, or showers... or high-level food items when you can just meditate near a snapdragon?

This change won't completely eliminate snapdragons. You can still get a lot of oomph out of bringing a pair of snapdragons home and unlocking Natural Science first. It just makes you choose them over other items if you wish to pursue that strategy. THAT is a more dynamic decision.

For now this will be added to the business restriction
"Due to supply chain cuts in the region, Sims cannot use any crafting benches. Sims may still bring home crafted items from college. Flowers and Robots must be kept in inventory until their respective restrictions are unlocked"



If you've been making items on workbenches, don't scrap your challenge. Just don't make any more until you unlock business.

You haven't eliminated NS as the #1 priority, you've just made Business the #2 priority and moved the point where most people will start following different paths to the 2nd generation instead of the founding generation. The new 'perfect strategy' is to get Natural Scientist with your founder and find a high-level Business townie as the founder's spouse. If your goal is to have people following many different strategies you've just made things worse instead of better.

Actually, the new perfect strategy is still to beat it as close to 0-day as luck will permit. :P

This is the problem with big complicated challenges. It isn't so much the inconvenience of remembering all the rules or making sure people understand them correctly as much as it is the process of revision necessary and all the little things required to make the essense of the challenge work later on. Using loopholes can kill the fun of a challenge, but part of the fun in a challenge is also in finding loopholes.

The entire POINT of sim-challenges is to find loopholes and abuse them. Anything else is just boring and repetitive grinding.

The entire game is just boring and repetitive grinding if it's played as a strategy game.

   Something Pinstar said earlier keeps nagging at the back of my mind. 

   "With further playtesting I found that snapdragons are utterly broken"

   In what way?  Were they originally written to only last for a certain period of time/use, like the LoveTub?  Not as effective?
   Or did you just mean they've broken the challenge?

They break the challenge, in the sense that since Pinstar has restricted everyone to a confined space, when a sim is near about 3 of them, he'll never need to do anything except sleep.

So now expanding on that a bit, have your permaplat vampire founder get to the top of natural science and then spouse go for business as soon as possible.  Once the top of your career(s) is reached, quit your job(s).  You of course have already earned all your crafting badges in Uni (since you can use workbenches without actually owning a business) and since you played your time there well, you have a nice nest egg to make plenty of snapdragons, pay the mob and your bills to boot.  Since crafted items aren't taxed by the mob, snapdragons are ideal replacements for home furnishings.  Not to mention, people will come to you that you can socialize with if that's your thing if you actually open a business.  With the unlimited life span of a vampire now you have all the time in the world then to pop out spawn to unlock whatever other restrictions in whatever order you wish, as Frankenbeasely first stated so eloquently back on Sept 6th.  Said spouse/spawn can be vampires too, making it necessary to only get to the 2nd generation to get all 14 careers unlocked.  Death is a part of life eventually, after all...even for vampires...

This does take some planning and work and a little bit of luck on the part of those chance cards...not to mention, you are still limited to 8 sims in a household at a time, which is more planning and yes work coordinating that many at once. 

Does everyone want to play this way? Probably not.  Creative thinking or abuse of the rules? That's for each simmer to decide.  Unless of course vampires, permaplats and not to mention meditation get ruled out next...  ::)

This is of course if you're not bothering to go for the ultimate 0day perfect strategy.


You are now laying down a path for simmers to follow logically to maximize the use out of one item that can be placed multiple times.  It's not a dynamic decision.  Well let's see...unlock natural science and business and abuse snapdragons, save money and abuse the heck out of it until the other restrictions are unlocked...sounds more like a no-brainer to me.  You're trying to compensate for a relatively small portion of simmers that would actually do this strategy.  As you have seen by reading the many forums, some folks get tired of them and choose NOT to use them at all.  If you'd go back thru this thread, snapdragons were mentioned here in this thread as early as Sept 6, after which you decided to eliminate businesses at Uni instead of snapdragons.  Hrm...something doesn't settle right about that to me...either you're not reading what we're writing here, or something is getting lost in translation...you were warned about them at any rate by more than one person.  And it's not like OFB just came out either...there are snapdragon strategies posted as to how to best maximize them, and how to best use them when combined with a business. one such link (http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/sims_2_ofb.txt) (copy shortcut and paste and open in a new window if you have a problem with the link...silly gamefaqs)

Along with snapdragons, you eliminated toy making as well.  What the heck do toys have to do with snapdragons????  Robots are already covered elsewhere, but toys? What could anyone possibly gain from a toybench besides some fun from the products? You couldn't sell them until business was restricted anyway...so honestly, what's the reason behind restricting toys?


Playing this within the Legacy Challenge as a handicap, unlocking Business was already one of the top items to get unlocked if you wanted all your business points, however...you are now handicapping your Legacy Players even further.  Without unlocking business as one of your first options, you can't possibly begin to start any of your simmies (other than your founder at Uni, and hey looky there, you can't get all of them either since you restricted businesses at Uni...) towards those 7 talent badges (unless you happen to play free-range style, which not very many folks do).  So way to go on restricting the choices even further in hopes of getting that perfect Legacy Score if someone had chosen the Apocalypse Challenge as a handicap >:(  Even with 10 generations to get your points in, it's now become a case of "all that work for one point????"  (Only two ways to earn points in the business category...the "family business" and via the 7 gold badges-then-die-a-platinum-death simmies).   

Of course, the strategy that I first posted technically falls within the rules, it's do-able, but how much appeal does it really have? 

With all these additional business restrictions being placed within the Apocalypse Challenge...it's really starting to drain my fun meter...

Ivy
edited to explain linkage

*Writes down info*
 ;D interesting!

Thanks for that link, i NOW understand what you guys meant, when you said Business's can make oodles amounts of money.   :)    I just got done having one of my Merchant Sims (from a Medieval Royal Challenge) get his Gold Sales/Gold Flower Arrangment/LVL 10 Venue Business from scratch.  Tried out that (A Good business) the second one, and made 200k in the last 2 days.  At that point, i sent my sim home, that was more than enough for that families needs.   LOL  He wasn't even a PermaPlat sim and no money/mood cheats other than stuff from here.
(Edited for spelling mistalkes/misquotes by John)

Which is precisely why I didn't bother starting this challenge.  I don't have OFB, and won't have it for a while.  It's not hard to realise even without play-testing that snapdragons will be a powerful advantage.

A challenge of this complexity will need refinement, but why must it be 0 or 1?  Add progressively more difficult revisions to the Apocalypse, say bronze, silver gold, add flavours for different combos of EPs, whatever.  This way, a decent interval of time passes between significant revisions, rather than changes that fall down from the sky capriciously.  Let people who have started their challenges play them out with the rules they started with, or have the choice of starting over.

Of course we can all play however we want, but a huge part of the fun is being able to talk about the game with others and have a glimpse of how *they* play.  For that discussion, we have to have a common launching point.  That's where challenges bring some of the fun of multi-player environments to a profoundly single-player game.

Actually you may not need vampirism to unlock all restrictions in two generations. One of reasons why I started with NS first wasn't snapdragons (because at the time I didn't realise they would have the effect they did have) but was that since alien abductions were such a random thing the sooner the stargazing started the better.  As it happened it was the third restriction unlocked and my founder has been living on elixer since then.  She could have produced enough 2nd generation sims to unlock all the restrictions (her ninth born has just become a child) except the third generation made a surprise arrival when one of her sons arriving home from college decided to do some stargazing...  Which delayed the return of his younger brother until his sister Hope could go to Uni.  Sometimes the game delights in throwing our careful planning and coordination out the window!.

Currently there are seven sims in the main household (my founder and her husband, her son Matthew, daughters Faith and Aroha, granddaughter Astra and daughter in law Robin), two kids in college (Nathan and Hope) and four households founded by the sons that moved out after lifting their restriction (Joshua, David, Daniel and Jonathon).

Are you playing these, and if so how?  By that I mean, do they found their households with the original challenge restrictions, a subset or none at all?  It doesn't matter to the challenge, of course... just curious.  :)

I haven't really started playing them yet but I intend to (been too interested in developments in the original house  :) ).  Leonid, their father, is a family sim and he shall get his 20 grandkids IW. (For the same reason Janet, my founder is pregnant with her tenth child and will give birth a day after her daughter in law does.

Joshua fell in love with Brandi Le Tourneau (a downtownie in the military career path he brought home from work.)  They moved into a prebuilt house on a 2x3 lot but aside from that they be following all the restrictions.

David fell in love with Meadow Thayer while he was in high school so when Joshua lifted military I sent her to college.  She moved into a bare 1x3 lot, built herself a 2x3 house to put her bed and a toilet.  Apart from using familyfunds (to give her the scholarship money she would have got if she was originally a playable sim) and the education adjuster from the insiminator (to shorten her semesters) all existing restrictions appiled to her.  It was harder playing her without snapdragons but fortunately she had enough romantic visits (can't really call them dates) from David to keep her aspiration high enough to use the energiser (alien technolgy was the third restriction lifted) She graduated magna cum laude and since she was a SS member I moved her into the shotgun shack where she moved in David after he lifted politics.  The shotgun shack got extended...

Both Jonathon and Daniel were SS members so I moved them into the other two ss lots.  They moved in and married their college sweethearts.

It's going to be interesting playing these lots with the restrictions since they don't have the plethora of snapdragons the main lot has.  Joshua's and David's lots have 2 each while the other two have none.

Culinary is the next on my list (after crime) but I can't lift that one until Aroha goes to college.

It just doesn't make sense to play the other households in the neighbourhood without the restrictions!

This is the sort of challenge that makes me wish TS2 had some sort of proper scenario-creation facility; I'd like to play this challenge, but would probably forget the rules at some point and do something illegal without realizing it. It'd be great if you could set the game up so that it actually prevented you from breaking the challenge rules.

There are so many rules, you are bound to break one without trying  :) I would like a summary of the rules. I'm forever going through my bits of paper....can I do this... oops I did that  :)
I'm finding it a fun challenge though. I have achieved some things I have never done before...such as have a platinum sim, and found uses for the maxis options I have ignored. Such as yoga, previously I was a heavy user of the UnlockCareerRewards cheat  :D
Now I have culinary unlocked, uneaten meals are going in the inventory....no more wasting precious food for me  :) I find myself thinking 'what would we do in a real disaster'. I suspect we would not waste water with all the hand washing we have to do to keep hygiene up, but as there is no option to fill a bath and share, they just have to. 

Having been in a situation where there were no showers or bath I can tell you that we would all be having spongebaths irrespective of all our neat levels are. Actually, having a private bathroom in our homes where we could take a shower or bath everyday is a relatively recent phenomenon  Once upon a time public baths were pricisely just that, a place that people would go to to not have a swim but also have a bath.  Maybe in a realife disastor they would bring back public washing facilites.

Do you mean you apply all the restrictions to these other lots and they have to lift them for themselves? My reading of the 'rules' was that the lifting of the restrictions are presented as global so I would imagine that the new households would only have to abide by the restrictions the main household hasn't lifted. I haven't actually started this challenge yet so I'm simply explaining my interpretation of the scenario as described in Pinstar's original charter.

No, like you I interpret the restrictions as being global. If they are lifted they are lifted for all the playable sims the neighbourhood and if they haven't all the playable sims have to abide by them

They are played with any restrictions not yet lifted by the main household.  So when I played Meadow at college, NS, medical, alien technology, military and politics had lifted by the main household but all the rest still stood so I played her by the remaining restriction.  So Meadow could actually go to college, build her 2x3 shack on the ground, have a shower, put her items we ever she wanted on the lot and use the energiser but all the rest still applied.

Now science, slacker and business have been unlocked at the main household the other playable are free to use technology etc.

I wouldn't.

When my founder was fresh out of uni and still at a low level in her job (i.e. still poor) the burglar came.  He stole the bookcase - fortunately she was a slob and had left a book on the floor.  I didn't replace the bookcase, all she needed was the book.  He did her a favour, he reduced the protection money she had to pay.

I think Pinstar is agnostic regarding the 'spare' households.  Like in Legacy, the extra households cannot contribute to the challenge so the player can do what they like with them, or nothing at all.  What I was wondering is what other players are doing with these households in the early stages when fewer restrictions have been lifted.  Those families can't lift any restrictions, so if the restrictions are global, I'd think their little sim lives might be sort of grim since they can't do anything to help themselves, and yet are deprived of the usual opportunities.

Anyway, since I'm not playing the challenge yet, I thought I'd ask.  :)

I'm going to feed my spares to the mutants.

   
   If you're going to use your spares as decoys, make sure you set up a house at the other end of the Neighborhood, far, far away from your playable house, that way the Mutants flock to that area thinking it's a rich feeding ground.     ;D

Or set them up in an abandoned Church, Police Station, or Hospital. According the the Zombie Survival Guide, those are the worst places to go during a zombie outbreak.

I'm having my spare households live at the same restriction level as the main family.  At least I've made it to generation 3 so far.  Four restrictions gone, 10 more to go.   :P

Question for Pinstar: is it legitimate for the founder to bring back a crashed satellite from college? I sure hope so because otherwise poor Stephan Lawson's sacrifice will have been in vain. :D

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha. That is hilarious.

That brings to mind something that I've been wanting to point out.  Pinstar, when using the comments of people in this forum in order to decide whether or not something is or is not allowed, it's good to keep in mind that there are a lot of Awesome people here.  Specifically, we're a rather inventive bunch that can find creative ways of doing things that your average person would have never thought of.  It is my contention that this should be allowed because it's not only an unreliable strategy if you're trying to do it on purpose, it also wouldn't occur to most people.  Perhaps if you're worried about copycats, you could have a few rules like this: "(Whatever they did) is a valid strategy.  However, it took a great deal of creativity to think of it so (the person that thought of it) is allowed to use it and anyone who came up with it themselves can as well, but if it you're just hearing about it here you're not allowed to use it."  That would seem perfectly fair to me.  Even so, if someone finds something like this that makes the challenge too easy, it won't be fun and they'll probably decide the strategy isn't worth it.  It's the more obvious flaws that you should worry about.  Of course, all this is just my opinion and it's your challenge so my opinion only matters as much as you want it to.

I'm sure it is. The Satellite isn't exactly a USEFUL item, so why you'd be bringing back that useless thing is unknown to me, though.

Feeling a wee bit full of yourself? Sims players aren't "average" people anyway and there are creative simmers all over the place. Trying to write rules based on who thought of something first - that'd be fun. Fortunately it doesn't seem likely anyone wuold try to set it up that way.

Anyone know if Maxis did away with the penalty for being late to work? I sent my challenge founder on her first Monday, which made her a couple of hours late (after she waited for the paper and found the job) and no problem, immediately promoted. Then later in the week, she came home at 4 promoted to a position that would have kept her at work until 6, so I sent her right back again (about 6 hours late, I guess) and she got promoted again. No messages about being late either time. Made for quick work reaching the top of the career.

I don't *think* I have any hacks that would do that, but I guess I could - should remove them and try it again, but those're the only sims in the neighborhood at the moment (well, other'n zombies and reavers and a few left-over townies) and I don't wanna mess up my challenge testing it.

It is when your female founder's intended hubby is a downtownie who's a mad scientist. Since I don't have OFB with all its uberl33t coolness, I have to slog my way through and, if I hafta slog, then I'd rather have the bunny inside.

Call me slow, but I still don't get it. You're using the satellite to fulfill a want? If the hubby's already at the top of the career line, does't matter much if their wants are filled or not - the spouse is only useful for unrestricting stuff and providing as many simlets as possible. After they reach the tops, they can be as miserable as you can stand (stop yelling at me, I don't care if you're dirty ;) without issue. (Well you do have to make sure the female lives through the pregnancies, but it doesn't have to be really fun for her.)

Of course, it's as useful as what I brought - an energizer and an elixir. I haven't touched either. Just didn't need them. Meditate works as well as snapdragons for the founder (not for the kidlets, of course, but that's another issue). My founder came home plat, and just stayed that way by meditating through the first week, with the occasional fill-her-up from her fiance (she's family, so she had plenty of wants with him). Hit the top quickly, married and pregnant immediately, quit her job and her hubby's already at the top of his - so he's pretty useless other than to create spawn. I'm gonna put him in crime because he wants it and when the kids are teens, they can get a crime teen job and use the career reward. I wish she'd have twins. I also wish I'd brought a smart milk. Toddlers take too long to train and it eats up 3/4s of their want slots. Might unlock science quicker than I intended to get one.

Sending a Mad Scientist to work with a satellite in his inventory will unlock the alien technology restriction, so you won't have to get your sim abducted, which is a huge gamble.

Oh I forgot about that, thanks :)

Don't the rules already cover this?
"This satellite must originate from the family's lot."
I don't see how you can twist that into "this satellite can be brought from somewhere else."

Well, duh, yeah, the moved-in dormie was killed on her lot (I even erected a monument to the poor guy ;D). The fact that it happened while she was at University is irrelevant. Now maybe you think that this restriction applies to the so-called "legacy" lot and, if so, that's okay by me, but that's not what Pinstar said. I take this restriction to mean that if you find a crashed satellite elsewhere than where the family is living, you can't use that one.

Yes, but the rules don't state you can't bring the satellite with you.

You moved in a dormie who got killed by the satellite? 

Looking at the rules:

"The ONLY Sims that may be moved into the Legacy family are Sims that will directly contribute to the birth of the next generation"

"This satellite must originate from the family's lot"

My take on this would be if you're going to define the family lot as the pre-disaster lot at college, then you also have to use the same definition of family for the 'who can move in' rule.  The dead dormie would have to father the next generation.

Well, the problem with that rule is that it doesn't cover the obvious case where someone is moved in with the intent of contributing, but manages to die before making the contribution. Obviously that rule is clearly flawed and vague.

Also, the college lot is free from restriction, as the disaster has not yet occured.

Actually it's not.  There are some rules that apply to the founder at college.  E.g. the founder may not found or join a Greek House, and then there's the new rule about the founder can only have 8 semesters at college.

I think the satellite thing could work though, if you resurrected the dormie at the SS lot, and they became the founder's spouse.  Unless Pinstar rules otherwise of course.


I've found a couple of flawed and vague rules.  I'm not sure if they're deliberate loopholes or not. 

As an example, the business restriction stops you from selling items via buy or build tab, or using the sell interaction with objects such as the workbenches or easel.  But it doesn't restrict deleting from the inventory, for which you get cash equal to the current sell value of the object - effectively selling the object.  Any object you can place in inventory (i.e. only 1 tile objects before athletic is lifted) could be sold this way.

Another example - the crime restriction says you must replace objects with the exact same objects when paying protection money.  But it doesn't say they need to be placed in the exact same position.  So before you lift the crime restriction you could use that to get around the athletic restriction that stops you from moving large objects.

I decided to replace cheap items with more expensive items.  I figured the "Family" would want a bigger cut of my Sims' money. I also thought of the same crime work around that Kyna mentioned.

Only five more careers to unlock! 

I've nearly finished this challenge, I have 1 restriction still to lift (paranormal). I sort of lost count of the days but I think it's been about 80 days so far.

The restrictions were lifted by:
1 Janet Keen (founder) - Natural Science (and of course hopelessness)
2 Leonid Keen (founder's spouse) - medical
3 Leonid Keen (founder's spouse) - alien technology
4 Joshua Keen (2nd gen) - military
5 David Keen (2nd gen) - politics
6 Jonathon Keen (2nd gen) - slacker
7 Daniel Keen (2nd gen) - Science
8 Matthew Keen (2nd gen heir) - crime
9 Robin Keen (2 gen spouse) - business
10 Hope Keen (2 gen) - Show Business
11 Nathan Keen (2 gen) - culinary
12 Aroha Keen (2 gen) - Athletics
13 Faith Keen (2nd gen) - Law
14 Astra Keen (3rd gen - Daniel's alien abduction daughter) -art

Which leave either Michael Keen (3rd gen - Matthew and Robin's son) or Epiphany (2nd gen) to lift the final restriction.  I think for poetic reasons it will be Epiphany.

Just had to crow.

J.M. sees the same loophole in the rules that I did. I used the "intended to marry" clause to move in the dormie then proceeded to stargaze with him until he got mashed flat by falling debris (gosh, I just love that death -- it's always such a surprise. Ka-pow and it's Reaper time!  :D) He wasn't her intended so if he failed "The Test", he would've suffered burnination before she graduated. Look at it this way: the guy was a Romance sim and he thought she was the bomb.  ;)

I'm very sure Pinstar didn't intend for you to bring back a satellite. What I'm really trying to do is get him to clarify the rules. Not so much that it eliminates clever strategies but so that players can understand them without hair removal. At my age, loss of more hair is something I prefer to avoid.  :)

In my "sneaky" attempt at the challenge (with Uni+NL, no OFB), I'm in Eclectic Energizer cruise mode on Day 34, having unlocked 8 restrictions (in order, Medical, Science, Slacker, Military, Athletics, Culiinary, Life of  Crime, Business). I could grind on but, barring disease, there's no way the founder will die (six tanks of elixir stashed in the attic) and it's literally a matter of counting days now: infant 3, child 5, teen 1 and return from college 1-3 depending on job offers for six more children. The second generation heiress will add two kids then she and her hubby will move out and the founder will have the final two children. I make it about twenty days more so 55-58 days depending on circumstances. An unfortunate birth of twins at the fifth conception slowed my overall progress as I had to wait for the first teens to finish out before the third generation heirs could be birthed. Family has 500k in the bank (and all the useless junk from the 2nd gen hubby's move-in dumped into the first move-out's inventory so no more 8k/week protection money) and there's no need for anyone to work except to unlock tracks. All chance cards get ignored so there's no chance of the level 9->10 finish out promotions getting screwed up. Rather than spending time watching my sims meditate at speed 3, I'll try the challenge again.

College life was a joke: my first two attendees each took a cell phone with them and dropped an eclectic energizer on the roof of the carport (house had no walls since no one was ever required to sleep). They owned a driveway, a car, a phone and a mirror that one of them wanted to filll a want -- okay, so I had one wall tile -- plus some stairs and posts. Their rent was 19 simoleons and the protection money for the car was around 250 per semester since they spent so much time at the LFT student union. It got boring once the Popularity sim permaplat'ed since he could grind out assignments until both students were ready for their final, then they'd mediate at warp speed until end of semester. Didn't take too long real-time but University is boring and this was exceptionally so. Rinse and repeat for the twins who followed them two days later.

One thing is certain: once you have the ability to travel downtown, your teen Sims can skill to their hearts content without time passing at home. This is handy since you need no skill items at home and once Culinary is unlocked allowing access to coffee and food, they go downtown and stay until all their required skills are in hand, then it's off to college with little or no time passing at home. Parents teach the children with unlocked career rewards then as teens they head downtown to finish skilling. It's efficient and takes little game time. Also, having teens go to college and re-appear back home on the same day feels...um... bogus ("Wow, Eric is back from college and all grown up and in less than a day!"). The lack of time synchrony between the "family" lot, downtown and college makes gameplay in the challenge feel artificial. I'd like to see some time synchrony rules added but I suppose others will not. I can play it either way.

One thing I did learn (again because I've learned this lesson before): Popularity sim with LTW "20 best friends" is a good aspiration/LTW combination. That, and Knowledge w/Max 7 are what you want for your teen sims. If you have the Orb, use it to get one of these two. I suppose you could make 100k w/a Fortune sim and permaplat in college that way but it takes too long in terms of your play time, IMO.

Very sneaky, Alvaron, very sneaky that business with the satellite, at least I lifted alien technology honestly!

Did you use elixer to accelerate the aging of the first bunch of teens? (before you lifted military and could send the younger teens to college.)

I found science (combined with the ability to send kids to college) to have a really dramatic effect on the speed that restrictions were lifted.  Most of the kids sent to college graduated summa cum laude with a major that would help them with their chosen career and maxed out in the skills needed for that career, once science was unlocked they got level nine jobs in their careers via the computer.  Hope, Aroha and Astra were only back in the household for a day before getting the big promotion.  Faith took a bit longer, she missed promotion on the first day and had to wait for the weekend to be over before she had another go.  After that I made certain that the returnees were platinum when they returned and sent them to meditate in a circle of snapdragons until their carpool arrived.

Rather than returning sims from college the same day I had the opposite situation I had to wait until  a slot was freed up in the household, either by sending a younger sibling to college or by a older sibling lifting their retriction and moving out, before I could sent a sim home from college.  When that happened I waited fro the returnee's chosen career was listed on the computer before they were returned.

How did your teens skill downtown?  You might need to check your downloads folder, apart from the uni lots I didn't think you could skill on a community lot without a hack. 

Alvaron I was also wondering how you got your teens to skill downtown, or was it only the hidden skills (dance and pool) that your teens trained downtown?

I took out comm-lot skilling as I figured it was a hack that gives an unfair advantage, and my founder couldn't skill downtown while she was still at uni.

You can also meditate downtown - handy, since it takes so long to hit the teleport function.

That's me, Mr. Sneaky!  ;D

I did. If memory serves, I burned three tanks of elixir force-aging the first 2nd gen heir through puberty into adulthood. Her hubby was a high-level military type (with an inventory full of pricey junk ::)) so he unlocked Military not long after they married.

I agree that Science is critically important. It does little good to skill like crazy as toddlers and children then whip through university to graduate summa cum laude if, upon their return, they can't find the job they need to unlock their chosen track. The computer is insanely important and the newspaper is incredibly limp in terms of job offerings.

I probably have Pescado's comm-lot skilling hack in there. I don't play without FFS's and Two-Jeff's critical bugfixes and it's likely that some of their hacks are in my downloads too. I'll wander through that folder and yank out the hacks but leave in the fixes.

It does and that's why I'm gonna yank it as well.

I don't skill much on downtown lots actually. With aspiration points readily available to the founder from dating, it's faster in terms of play time to use the energizer and thinking caps while skilling at the founder's campus house. It takes less than 24 sim hours to max your coursework bar so you've two days to skill. You can do a lot of damage in terms of skill gains in two days, especially with Knowledge sims if they spin up skill-grinding wants.

(sigh)

I love tough challenges...
But this one is
A) too hard to sort out and remember all the rules
B) the rules are too unclear.
(C- Kinda) I searched google, etc for the Lots and Zombie families mentioned in his rules, but not linked for some stupid reason, and couldn't find them anywhere
PLUS

I started the challenge yesterday, and when finding a rules omission or discrepensy was picking what seemed sensible to fill it in.
I searched google, etc for the Lots and Zombie families mentioned in his
I printed the rules around a week ago. I come HERE and Pinstar posted LOTS of rules clarifications that are NOT in the rules I printed out, despite the fact that rules that ARE in my printout are from AFTER the ones that aren't. (sigh)

I would keep going with my original challenge, which is going wonderfully and just ignore the things I've done that don't match the rules (Deciding the driveway, since there was no way to have it completely on your 8x8 lot, since it had to intersect the road, and it didn't need to be kept clear of possible ground pollutants anyway, counted the same as the mailbox/trash can/newspaper/homework and could be not counted in the 8x8 section, for instance.) except there is ONE rule I goofed up on that is severe enough to fail me on my first try. I forgot, and used the computer (AKA Typewriter) to get the founders jobs...  he reached the top of my chosen career in 3 days.
So... I guess I need to restart. (*I DON'T WANNA!!!* {cry} I have little enough time to play as it is! and I know I'll give this up and never come back when they introduce pets!)

I have another couple of questions though...
---Other than the snapdragons, is there ANY way to raise a childs hygeine?
After I realized I'd goofed up, I played a little bit without bothering to produce snapdragons (both flowers and business were unlocked) - When my toddlers hygeine was so low all he'd do was scream, only a slight problem...  Take away the potty so he'd wet his diaper, then change his diaper... Even without the changing table that gets you halfway up the hygeine bar.
But.
Once that toddler became a child, he was screwed. He would not spongebathe like his parents... he would 'wash hands' but even repeating the handwashing for an hour, it wouldn't make enough of a dent in his hygeine for him to be willing to do anything... it never made it from the red end of orange.
He wouldn't do his homework, failed school, and was taken away by the social worker.
(again, how do you explain THIS in a post apocalyptic world? Pinstar explained the need for constant supervision meant 'death' to the unsupervised child...  But what about not doing homework? what's the explaination there?)
Since this was a quick runthrough, (that ended up not quick, since I fought the boys hygeine the entire 3-4 days it took him to be taken by the social worker) I quit without saving, and now have a first day toddler again. (sigh)

-- Also, Is everyone playing towhere only the black grill can be used? I didn't realize until today that the grill that's only a couple simoleons more is the cheapest grill that can make ribs... I still followed the stipulations.. but since both it and the cheaper one was HUNGER 1, I wondered.

Must go sleep now...
but, for pinstar..

PINSTAR!!! PLEASE!!!!
Make sure all your clarifications get put in the rules!! And fix the NOT printer friendly version of your rules page so that the HERE's on the SS houses actually POINT to a way to find them!!!

I built a house on stilts, above the driveway.  It's similar in design to Pinstar's witches house. 

I'm sure I saw the link to Pinstar's BBS page in this thread somewhere (near the beginning), the houses are on his BBS page.

The hygiene thing troubled me too.  I learnt that for me it's essential to make my founder or spouse medical. 

In one of my attempts (I've played this through 3 and a half times), the founder's firstborn was medical (this version of the challenge was done with a single female founder who was vamped, I made her military when I should have made her medical).  It took that firstborn sim FOREVER to hit the top of her career, as her moods were never good enough for daily promotion, and as a teen she didn't earn enough in scholarship money to go to uni. 

The thing that REALLY irritated me about they hygiene issues was having to use free will so that my sims would sponge bathe.  This challenge reminded me why I never use free will.  I started sending (teen and older) sims to the 2x1 room with the sink and locking them in, then turning free will on.  Not letting them out until they washed themselves and I'd turned free will off again.  Otherwise I'd find nearly full sims would head for the last plate of gelatin that was intended for a hungrier sim, or doing some silly, counterproductive action that Maxis thought we'd find "cute".

As for kids, I found they spent hours handwashing every day.  An hour or so before school, and several hours after they'd done their homework generally kept their hygiene in the yellow range.  Weekends they spent a good chunk of their days handwashing.  There was the odd day when they didn't do their homework, usually near the end of the week, but they caught up on weekends.  Once their hygiene gets into the red its very hard to lift it out, so I went to a lot of trouble to avoid that.

No doubt there's a more awesome solution to the kid hygiene issue that escapes me (besides snapdragons).

The houses are here:

http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/uploads.php?user_id=131247&nstart=1&asset_type=lot

For the handwashing thing, try using the 'groom' interaction and see if that'll help. I don't know how much hygiene it gives (probably not enough) as I lifted medical first, but it's worth a shot.

Whew! Talk about a fiery ball visible from space! That nicely describes my second try at this challenge, this time w/o "sneaky satellite" foo. I got to learn the painful lesson again that SketchElder on the BBS pointed out: you take care of providing hygiene and food first by whatever means necessary then go from there. Well, I didn't take of the food supply and paid the price. In my previous run-through, eclectic energizers got me over that hump but this time I didn't have them. In the second try, the moment of epiphany came when the lack of a meal portion caused the spouse of the 2nd generation heir to miss his promotion to Mad Scientist because he couldn't finish the eighth cooking skill point he needed. That goof caused a five day delay which then, of course, snowballed into all sorts of problems. College graduates had no computers with which to search for jobs so what was the point of graduating ASAP and returning home to a house already short on food? None.

With the week's delay at around Day 36 or so, I realized the blunder I'd made when I chose to unlock Medical and Military first. It looks sexy as your sim kids transition to college very quickly but the lack of food at home hampers the children from getting the skills they need. I parked that bunch and decided to try again.

Here's what I've learned:

1) Make intelligent use of the downtownies and townies for rapid unlocks. Ignore any downtownie level 8 and below because you can grow sim kids who'll return as summa cum laude graduates and get level 9 jobs in their intended track with computers unlocked. When you make your initial survey of the downtownies in your founder's first semester, concentrate on befriending those who have level 9-10 jobs already as potential spouses for generations 1, 2 and 3 (and four if you need to go that far).

2) If you have OFB, NatSci is a great choice. If not (and I don't), then Medical is your best bet. Sure, the Medical career track is maddening with badly-scheduled days off in levels 5-7 but 8-10 are not too bad. Just be careful of the chance cards and choose the "right" answer as shown in J.M.'s chance card guide. Without hygiene, your sims at less than platinum aspiration can function but sponge baths aren't efficient. Unless you like picking up dirty diapers, I highly recommend the changing station. Culinary is also tempting. Just remember that you need to unlock Medical quickly and getting the first 2nd generation heir to skill without hygiene isn't easy.

3) Science is IMHO the best track to unlock next. You get an aspiration reward immediately and computers unlock. Better still, there are usually multiple Science Level 9-10 downtownies to pick from. My third attempt at this challenge had two Mad Scientists and another downtownie at level 9 Science. If you go this route, take the elixir of life as your aspiration reward. Eclectic Energizer is tempting but will force a long delay in getting your first heir to adulthood. Use the elixir to force-age the first heir through puberty so they can work their creativity. Focus the heir's skills on Culinary, doing logic as a toddler and being taught cooking as a child by the spouse (you have computers; surely your spouse can find a job in the culinary track by the time the heir grows into childhood). Yes, it's painful with only novel-writing as an adult to build creativity but, if you bring back two thinking caps with your founder, the pain is reduced considerably. I suppose someone will pop up and say that the child can't be taught cooking using the career reward. I beg to differ. The restriction says only sims in the Culinary track can use the chocolate-maker but it does not limit that use. Teaching cooking is one of its functions so I will use it that way. I'll even go so far as to require the adult in the culinary track to initiate the session.

4) Make room in the house soon with a Military unlock. The spouse of the first 2nd gen heir is ideal for this. In my game, I had one male downtownie at level 10 and two female downtownies at level 9 in Military so gender wasn't a problem. A fast unlock on Military opens the door to cell phones (with Science unlocked) and college so that your teens can get out of the house and off to college. Spouses and heirs who've done their bit can depart the lot to make room.

5) Visualize the problem when thinking about the challenge strategically. What that blather means is this: once you have the basics covered (food, hygiene, finances and access to college), what is needed? You need skilled college graduates and downtownies at high levels to unlock tracks quickly. Since there's no time synchrony between the "legacy" lot and college lots, you have essentially unlimited space for sims, up to eight at home and certainly six more in college. There's no requirement that any of them graduate immediately, you can do it when it suits you. With three females of child-bearing age (founder plus two generations), they can be raising five simkids at the "legacy" lot simultaneously (just move their husbands out once Military is unlocked if your finances are good). It won't take long for those three females to punch out eight simkids. It requires you to ignore teen skilling and attend college on a shoestring. Big deal: go tend bar or work as a barista since Culinary is unlocked for all the cash they'll ever need. Sure, it's mind-numbingly boring but isn't that what challenges come down to?  ::)

The elixir of life is the best aspiration reward choice in my non-OFB world. It neuters the paranormal restrictions since no one ever dies, prevent stupid annoying ghost attacks since there are no ghosts, and gets you over the hump of no college for the first 2nd generation heir. Unless you think spending 15 days as a teen is fun in the dismal world of the Apocalypse, I highly recommend forced aging through puberty. Your founder and spouse should have plenty of aspiration built up if you had them go on dates a lot in college. I did one date per day and amassed 250k aspiration on my founder, over and above what was used buying thinking caps and energizers for skilling. My founder's spouse dropped about 10k worth of  goodies which helped her reach her target financial goal of 25k to start the "legacy" lot. Now, if I'd only known that turkey would have about 30k worth of crap in his inventory when he moved in....  >:( Let me just say that we had a large bonfire on the third floor that involved some plasma TVs, DJ booth and more.  ;D It was a slow day so the sacrifice of the daily food ration wasn't too painful.

I had an extremely close call on Day 17-18 PA. My founder had just delivered her second child and I had underestimated her hunger demand, allowing her to sleep too long. She couldn't grill anything because of the time of day and couldn't meditate. Desperate to keep her alive, I expended the next day's food ration near 0500 on cereal. Big mistake as she was so tired by then she couldn't stay awake to eat. Cereal spoils so quickly that she barely got half a bowl. The only thing I could come up with to save her life was to get her a job. Thank God for the computer as she found a level 8 position in business with an immediate take off for work. She was dead tired, starving and urgently needed to pee. But like the trooper she is, she got into the car, went to work and lived. Her poor husband skipped his prep cook job that day to watch the kids and that cost him his job. But, hey, better that than a dead wife who's permaplat, max skills, summa cum laude graduate in Biology and pretty nice looking for a Knowledge Sim.  ;)

It messed up my plan to have him teach the 2nd gen heir cooking so the founder will have to take on that responsibility. She found a job in culinary after work that day and switched. All of these gyrations derailed my plan for a third 2nd gen child right away but that's life in the Apocalypse. As soon as she finishes teaching her son cooking to level 8 or so, she can quit and get back to birthing more kids. The detour into Business for a day wasn't a total bust since she did snag an Execuputter.  :D

So far, it's been a fun and challenging ride. Your comments welcome. Have fun!

I"m closing in on unlocking my last three careers.  Of course, it only took three tries to get this far.   I discovered early on to find the townie sims who had the careers I wanted to unlock.  I'd send my college student to downtown to befriend the adult sims.  I never worried about atrraction bolts as I know I can make any sim fall in love with any sim I want.  I'm sure in a post nuclear disaster genes and skills would be more important that "true love" aka three bolts.  The founder unlocked medical (yeah bathing).  The spouse was a townie who came in at the top of athletic.  Culinary and military were unocked in the second generation.

Just how hack free are we to be in this challenge?  I certainly don't want any game stopping glitches to show up because I pulled every hack I have in my game.  In my reading of legacy stories, I notice an alarming tendancy for glitches to occur.  Since I have been there, done that in reglular game play, I don't want to subject myself to such problems again.  I would appreciate any comments on this.

The rule is no hacks that give an unfair advantage.

So a hack that enables something that is not in the vanilla game - such as comm-lot skilling - is definitely an unfair advantage.  Or increasing the odds of telescope abduction (although I kept that one in, since I'm not competing against anybody except myself).

Hacks that stop your game from blowing up are essential in my opinion.  And they don't give an unfair advantage, unless you count not blowing your game up as an advantage ;)

I kept the anti-annoyance hacks (e.g. lesswhiny) and the control hacks (such as macrotastics, phone hack, baby hacks) in my game.  They basically replace a lot of tedious clicking and pausing on my part, without allowing unfair advantages.  Admittedly the phone hack does stop that annoying 4 o'clock phone call from your friendly neighbourhood stalker... but I could avoid that annoyance by putting the phone in an inventory when not in use, or putting it on the furthest floor away from the main living area so that the sound doesn't annoy me.  These hacks don't add new features to the game.

Hacks that make life harder could be kept in, although I took out harderjobs on my third or fourth run-through.  ACR falls into this category in my opinion, as it reduces fertility as the sims age.

I"m not a challenge purist.  Most of the time I tend to play "Legacy style games" or "Prosperity style games" because I'm not prepared to be without hacks in a lengthy challenge.  I don't actually consider I'm playing the challenge, more that I'm playing that style of game.  Although for this one, being a relatively quick challenge, I did remove some hacks.

Bottom line is that it's your game.  If the game is unplayable without certain hacks, use them.  If other hacks reduce the fun of this challenge, take them out.  Up to you.

Another couple things I've been wondering... I'd like the answer before I restart the challenge.

1) - The Toy Oven. Allowed? or Disallowed? I don't see it in the rules, but I assume it's like an EasyBake oven that uses a light bulb to cook....  But then again, it COULD be Solar Powered...  Did you know you can make your own with a cardboard box and some aluminum foil?

2)- Things such as the Stairway up to your home... The 'empty space' at the end of the stairway, does it have to be part of your 8x8? Or is it like the military reward, where the 'empty space' can be off the 8x8 because it doesn't really exist?

3) Pinstar stated that College age Bloodline siblings can move into the same Uni Lot... He didn't really answer someones previous question about if succeeding generations can move into the empty lot with a tiny house built by their predecessors. I don't see why they should be unable too... The place existed AFTER everything else was burninated. All objects are gone, presumably stolden by the other survivors, and have to be replaced, but the walls should still be there. (and I hate building houses repeatedly)

4) When using this as a stand-alone challenge, I think there are a few rules missing that are 'assumed' to exist...  For instance.. everyone keeps mentioning the chancecards as if they HAVE to take them... but I'm not finding in the rules that they have to be taken. I treated it like they did, just in case, and my unskilled level 9 not qualified for promotion downtownie spouse chanced her way to level 10 in a career I initially did NOT want to lift. (I ended up liking it better than expected though) - I'd appreciate any 'assumed' rules to be added to the rules if the indeed exist and are not just assumed.

5) IS the hot-tub allowed? I'd assumed it as NOT because of the shortage of clean water/electricity both of which are used in a Hot Tub...  Then again, the Electrical part could potentially be Solar again... ;)

6) The other questions I asked in another post on this page.

I'm sure I'll come up with other questions... But I found a lot when I looked through here last night.

Now to try my 'first day of toddlerhood' first try, now test family again to see if my toddler can survive childhood without plummetting hygene/visit from social worker today.

1) Pinstar said that the toy oven is allowed but making A SINGLE MUFFIN counts as the meal for that day (if culinary isn't unlocked)

2) No idea

3) I agree with you but the rules are that they must start on a BLANK LOT which sucks but it's Pinstar's rules not mine

4) In the Slacker restrictions it says you MUST answer chance cards (no ignore option) Once you unlock slacker though you don't have answer the cards

5) There are no rules that say the hot tub is not allowed.  If you are playing for realism though I wouldn't use it.

Hope these are accurate and that they help!

2) I think if the space is not technically occupied you are okay.

5) If you get that nice rock pool hot tub from Holy Simoly you can pretend they are radioactive hotsprings.

The official rules are the ones posted on Pinstar's official website. Anything he says here (or anywhere else) that's not in the official rules can be ignored until he actually changes them. He said so, himself.

Child hygiene can indeed be maintained without snapdragons. Lift the Show Business restrictions, so you can have Outings. Have one of your older Sims ask the Child to form a group for an outing. Raise the outing score by at least one level, then end the outing (anywhere from Fun to Rockin'). This will also take care of hunger, energy, comfort, bladder, fun, and social, and even give them an occasional skillpoint.

I've only been using the black grill. It's perfect for starting fires and my Sims haven't ever needed to actually cook anything.

I don't think objects left behind disappear from University lots. This is because you don't own the lot, you're only renting it, so the furnishings don't belong to you.

Creativity has been easy. My founder earned the Lie Finder while he was looking for his first job (honors bonuses), then switched to Show Business. The kids have all started their Teen careers as Criminals and one of the townies, a Cat Burglar, has been invited over to give them lessons. Took about 3 hours each to max Creativity. Everyone involved was in the Criminal career at the time of their involvement.

I'm currently putting my first student through college with only 4 restrictions lifted (Hopelessness, Show Business, Slacker, and Military). He maxed all his skills as a Teen and also earned scholarships for school, work, dancing, and billiards. I started him on a 1x3 lot, bought a coffee table and phone, then organized a group with his older sister (the General) and sent him off to earn some tips with Freestyle. I later bought him a table, chair, and computer. The computer is the only thing he's paying protection on. He's completed his sophomore year with a 4.0 average and has about §19K in cash. Thanks to the Outings with his sister he's been able to spend most of that time on community lots and hasn't needed to eat, sleep, or bathe. However, with all the restrictions, there's nothing really productive for him to do once his performance meter is full, other than earn a few hundred more by Freestyling. This is the first time I've ever been bored with Uni. I'm planning to lift the Business restrictions before the next student goes, which should make it much more interesting.

If he was popularity or romance, you could be working on a LTW.

I'm surprised you lifted show biz so early. 

I've played this 3 times all the way to completion, and the fourth attempt I got bored after I'd lifted 12 of the restrictions...  each time show biz has been one of the last ones (along with art and paranormal).  Personally I think lifting medical is a better way to maintain hygiene  - you don't need to have other sims available to get clean.

I tried playing from a role play view, it was more fun than a strategic "win the game quickly" style.  Military control would be one of the first things to be re-established in the wake of an apocalypse (calling out what's left of the National Guard).  Food supply and medical services would also be very high priorities.  Rediscovered technology (science) and new ways to produce food from the scorched earth (natural science) would flow from the developments in the military, medical and culinary areas.  Then you might see a little black-marketeering (business and crime) and a re-establishment of law and order, not to mention jockeying for power in a political vacuum.  I felt that show biz, like art, would be a low priority for a family intent on restoring the area.  With some minor variations, this is the way I played the challenge each time.

I look at the roleplaying method in a different order, with Athletic first so that the mafia (Life of Crime) can be overthrown.

Then citizens found government (Politics) so reduce the corruption that still exists in anarchy.  Government then would found the Military, and influence people that this government is OK by getting rid of the Zombie problem.  The citizens would then create the police (Law Enforcement) to deal with burglar and fire problems, in addition to protecting "virtue" and "morals".  With the fear of having their stuff stolen people have enough comfort to cook their own food more often and improving the taste (Culinary).  Now that people are no longer as hungry, they dive into Artistry.

Artistry eventually leads to the Scientific Method (Science) being developed again, which creates innovations to make life better such as medicine and sanitation (Medicine).  Certain people now decide to make a profit off of scientific discoveries by founding their own Businesses.  The children of these Tycoons decide to exploit money in a different way than their predecessors, this time by entertainment (Show Business).  These Celebrities now feel they have a "Civic Duty" to give certain rights to the non-famous, and cause the government to allow for the creation of labor unions(Slacker).

While all of the Business stuff is happening, Scientists finally finish a project called "SotHM" which allows them to develop technology even more rapidly (Paranormal).  Children created using a "SotHM" gene discover that they can turn the unfertile ash into fertile soil.  Continued development of Technology catches the eyes of the Progenitors, which then abduct a sim and teach them their secrets.

The order is essentially Athletic & Hopelessness > Life of Crime > Politics > Military > Law Enforcement > Culinary > Artist > Science > Medical > Business > Show Business > Slacker > Paranormal > Natural Scientist.  The only reason I shoved Alien Technology last is the fact that it seemed to last step, and the fact that you probably bother with it until you have everything done since it's a time waster to get.  Hopelessness is linked with being the first Founder getting Career LV10, which would be Athletic.  This order does assume sort of a Civ-style progression, and also assumes that there's no place unaffected by the apocalypse.

As for playing the thing, I would actually lift these in a much different order.  Natural Scientist would not be the last thing I would unlock and Artist would be much closer to the end.

Thanks for all the answers...

I played my test family a bit today to remind me, because I KNEW there was an improtant question I was forgetting.

When you're inviting a best freind over (you have a car) and that freind wants to BRING a freind along? Can you say YES?

Almost everyone I've invited has wanted to bring their pals, and since I didn't know the answer to this, I kept saying 'no'... but If you think about it.. if that freind is already visiting your best freind and you're driving to their house to pick them up anyway... why can't you pick up their other freind whomever it may be too?

This challenge looks great apart from all the rules and the amount of time it takes to play as i cant get on the sims much.

I would say if you have a car, then yes. If you don't have a car, and you are inviting a love, then I'd say no.

See the Slacker restrictions. Chance cards may not be ignored until those restrictions have been lifted.

You can choose not to unlock a track if you wish when the sim hits the top of the career.

Yes.

The love tub unless unlocked by Science and/or Alien Technology restriction removal must be deleted when the candles burn out. IMO, hot tubs should be disallowed until Medical is unlocked but that's not what Pinstar ruled.

I'm confused. How did you manage to get a Level 6 job in Crime w/o computers unlocked? The best you can get from the newspaper is level 4 and that won't get you a Lie Detector. Or did you spend time in the criminal career then switch?

Going for show business first is an interesting path. I discounted it because it seemed to me that the boost in the bars was too low to be useful but apparently my estimate is incorrect. One thing I do know: if you need to put a spouse's mood meter into platinum for a promotion or want to spin their wants, an at-home date works wonders. Maybe I'll give show biz a shot next time out.  :)

Whatever for? He can only unlock one track and even the most demanding careers don't require max skills. I suppose being permaplat might be useful but when my male Sims have done their unlock, they're out the door to make room for more kids. They're your Sims so play 'em as you wish. I don't just understand your thinking here since the challenge is scored by days spent. I choose not to spend time max'ing skills on sim kids who won't be around that long once they're back from college.

Well done!

Those were my two picks also for the 2nd gen bloodline heir and his spouse. She's unlocked Military and is now pregnant with the first 3rd gen heir, he's working at level 7 in Culinary.

The lack of food is maddening as it's preventing my Sims from skilling as much as I'd like. I think it's the need to schedule the day's activities around the one meagre meal that really crimps my style. With luck, Culinary will unlock in a few days and life in my Apocalypse will get, much easier.

If there had been a male downtownie with a Level 9-10 Culinary job, I would've unlocked Medical and Culinary as my first two picks and brought back two tanks of elixir to help force-age the first heir into adulthood. There was no such downtownie so I did Medical and Science, knowing that Culinary had to be the first 2nd gen heir's unlock. It's worked mostly but there have certainly been some close calls (as in "Stop whining, I know you're starving. The school bus will be here soon.")

They will pry the phone hack from my cold, dead fingers.

I refuse to play without J.M.'s and Twojeffs's fixes. I've already had to load up and evict once in this challenge due to a bug in the meditation teleport function (take my word for it: you do not want to teleport into the middle of the house when a toddler is growing up with moveobjects on). I simply will not play with the buggy code that Maxis serves up by default. 'Nuff said.

Criminal career reward is at level 4. My founder majored in Literature, so he got the level 4 job from the paper, instant Lie Finder.

Why not? He had plenty of time and little else to do. He was going to be a Teen anyway until he grew up or his sister unlocked Military, which only happened the day before he would have grown up. I had planned on him unlocking Science, and he'll probably still do that. I only sent him to college because I chose Knowledge for him (mistake, should have stuck with Popularity) and he had a fear of growing up uneducated. Besides, all those skills will be very useful once Science is unlocked. He should easily pick up all the career rewards the family is missing. As for scoring, I'm more interested in doing things my own way and enjoying the game than in getting the best score.

My strategy seems to be working quite well. Promotions for the family have all been through permaplat, so far, but I haven't had any difficulty with training skills, doing homework, or getting A+ in school or college. Randy just finished college with a 4.0 in Mathematics and he doesn't have permaplat. It will be interesting to see whether he can get all his promotions without it. He moved in at 8am Monday and left about noon on Thursday, based on the bills he received (second one arrived while he was taking the last final). That's just over 3 days on his home lot. He finished with only 15 friends and §27K, both of which are extremely low by my experience, but I'm satisfied with him not needing a handout.

Actually in my game culinary was usually unlocked around 4th to 6th.  In one version of this challenge my founder and spouse raised 3 children before culinary was unlocked.  Many days they didn't even turn the fridge around to get food out.  My founder and her spouse both meditated a lot on their days off - only coming out to tend to the needs of any babies or toddlers - and the kids and teens only needed to eat on weekends.  On the weekends one serving of gelation per day - 2 plates each for the kids - was enough.   I can remember when the firstborn was pregnant I had her and her spouse and her parents all meditating around the lone snapdragon on the lot so that the younger offspring could eat enough to study for scholarships.  Nat Sci had been unlocked by that point, but business hadn't.  I found scholarships were critical for the first few going off to uni, as they had to build the uni lot and they had to deal with protection money more often.  Of course protection money at uni can be minimised by spending time at community lots, and by keeping the three most expensive single-tile items in the inventory when not in use (i.e. shower, mini-fridge and computer) so that they don't lose any value.


Off-topic here, but on another game forum, I remember someone whose sig was "they will pry my mac from my cold, dead fingers".  Did you ever play any games by Spiderweb Software?

I finished the challenge at 1 a.m. today.  I thought I would NEVER have my show biz sim get through that career.  Stupid me actually answered a chance card for her (I didn't have to).  She was demoted to cartoon voice.  It wouldn't have been so bad except she was an elder.  Luckily for me, I then discovered I couldn't save, change lots, neighborhoods or exit the game.  I became rather hysterical when my geek hit the reset button as I didn't remember when I last saved the game.  I lost two sim weeks so I basically had to do the last three careers over. 

Besides the whining over not bathing and food, plus the ghost everywhere, what I really didn't like about the challenge was having to look at the default Maxis hairstyles for so long.   :P 

I'll be honest about my hacks:  the only ones I pulled were the smart serve and harder jobs.  I'm selective about which hacks I use.  The phone hack is a cricital hack as far as I'm concerned.

I'm still going on this challenge... I'm actually continueing with my first family.. I decided while the results won't be 100% valid due to my error with my founder using the PC to get his first job, that I was having too much fun and didn't want to restart. :)

I got tired of the same old Zombies wandering around trying to find brains, stealing my papers, and eating out of my trash can, so I made my own lot full of them. :)

- Then I made them available for download. - so if you want more annoying zombies shambling around, punching your sims when they look through the telescope, enjoy! :)
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=435197 (http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/lot_detail.php?asset_id=435197)
These Zombies are actually set up with everything they'd need if you wanted to start play with them, if you wanted to do more with them than simply have them shamble around.

(note.. since they do NOT have to worry about zombies, their home is not an 8x8 area...  but they ARE limitted in their tech and running water. They've taken over the basement of an old ranch, and use part of the corral for brains-on-the-hoof as they can catch them.)

If you check them out let me know what you think. :)

My founder married Nolan I'veforgottenhislastname, a townie who was a celebrity chef and she unlucked medical. I'm not at all convinced this was the best strategy, though it seems like the most obvious one. (and even so, my stupid founder would autonomously cook lobster if I didn't turn the frig around and run the thing out of food before the week was up) Next time I think I'll do show business and military or show business and science instead. Dates and outings are a powerful tool.

I've made some dumb mistakes (a poorly designed house, didn't change the spouse out of his first career fast enough thinking I wanted the money, so he didn't make it to the top of criminal which would have put him permaplat, forgot he had to quit when he got to elder but she didn't (she maxed all skills easily in Uni) so I didn't put her in another career fast enough, and various other stuff) but I still don't see how you all are maxing the teen's skills so easily. I can't even work on creativity unless they get a teen career in criminal and they can't do that until they have 10 body. Even using yoga (which they can't do until they're teen) 10 body takes too damn long.

The oldest kid made that with 4 days to go before she became an adult. Then it took her 2 days to get the career in the newspaper :p That leaves 2 days for all 10 creativity points, plus whatever else isn't maxed yet. It'll take her around a week (a bit less) to hit the top of the career even not missing any chance cards and by that time her 2 younger brothers will already be adults. So tops, the 4th kid will be able to get a teen job fairly early (and even he's already a teen). Only the youngest two are really going to have enough for all skills. And she can't get married until she hits the top of her career (she's doing military) so her parents can move out (her father just transitioned to elder and her mother hasn't yet, so they aren't going to die that soon, unless I kill 'em off.)

Sooo, how are you training your kids? Without smart milk and thinking caps, mine manage 5 or 6 charisma as toddlers, good numbers of logic, cooking, mechanical (they have the medical career reward), cleaning and the 3 body for yoga as kids, but then they get stuck working on the rest of the body (and some amounts of the other stuff) as teens. Oh I'm not using snapdragons.

Maybe I had too many kids and too fast, as the point is how many weeks, not how many generations?

I don't know of an overall best strategy since randomness in job offers and chance cards has a lot to do with it. I do know this: with Medical and Culinary unlocked, you have two of the four basic requirements for happy sims in hand. The trick is figuring how to get the first heir into adulthood quickly so that Military can be unlocked. Once that's done, you can birth simmies as fast as you like and park 'em in college until you're ready to send a batch (4-5) of them through university. With multiple students on a small lot, protection money isn't a problem, particularly if you spend most of your time on university community lots since your items at home don't depreciate much each semester.

Agreed.

Um... I'm not maxing the skills of the children. I look at the intended unlock track and do the 3-4 skills to scholarship level required by their career. As far as I know, dancing, pool, zombiefication and alien abduction aren't required by any career track so I ignore them. What matters is summa cum laude graduation in the right degree program.

As soon as my simkids grow into teens (and I do mean, the day they grow up), they're off to college with whatever scholarship money they have. Unless you're playing the Apocalypse Challenge as a Legacy handicap, it serves no purpose to crank on skills your sims don't need for their unlock. The exception might be those sims who need to teach their siblings and their children but, since I use elixir to keep my permaplat founder alive, I don't need other fully max'ed out sims in the house.

Sounds about right. My toddlers manage 5-6 charisma or logic, depending on their ultimate career choice, then I work them with career rewards if possible. Since I know they will leave as soon as they're teens, I don't worry about the 10 body requirement for teens. With the elixir unlocked, there will be never any elders so it's moot. It'll really be moot when Law Enforcement unlocks. My teens have no need to go downtown and they won't have teenage jobs since they don't need them. If they need a cell phone, they can get one when they get to college. Money in college really isn't a problem since they can park in a downtown lot until Hades becomes icy and tend bar or sell coffee until your brain overloads from the utter ennui of another "clunk... +16 simoleons".

It's not possible to have children too fast in this challenge. It's Day 37 PA in my current attempt and my founder has birthed six children and has one grandchild. Four tracks are unlocked (Medical, Science, Military and Culinary) and it is literally down to counting days between pregnancies. Nothing else that will unlock will have any bearing on how fast I complete this challenge so the order in which the unlocks occur is irrelevant. Oh, having some more tracks unlocked will make simming them easier but it won't speed up the completion of the challenge. This is the flaw in Pinstar's set-up: once the basics are covered, the rate at which you birth the first heir of each generation balanced against the rate of siblings produced by previous generations is the overall governor on completion speed. Since you've unlimited room in college for YAs, there is no need for more than 3 generations. That gives six unlocks so you need eight siblings and you're done. Do the math and you'll get a fair idea of how long the challenge should take.

I plan to batch my YAs through university in clumps of 3-5 students at a time. Beyond the skills required by their degrees, most of them actually have little skill work to do so I don't expect too much difficulty. To avoid wasting time skilling, I select their degree program as soon as they hit campus.

At first, I allowed the illusion of time synchrony to muddy my thinking. Don't let it muddle yours. There is no required time synchrony between your college lot(s) and the home lot. Your last unlock could be by the second child of your founder because it really doesn't matter once hygiene, food, finances and access to college are available. And that's too bad because it should matter. It should make a difference that you had to choose to prep a sim for NatSci before one to unlock Slacker or Politics or Business but it doesn't. If you want an additional challenge over and above the rules-as-written one by Pinstar, try this: play one semester of college for each sim day at home and maintain all of your "legacy" sims in strict time synchrony. Maybe I'll give that a shot some time.

Got it. Thank you for reminding me that not all career rewards come in at level 6.

And I've no problem with that. With my starting unlocks of Medical and Science, it was tricky figuring out how to avoid the 15 days of enforced puberty until Military and/or Culinary could begin to be unlocked. I did it with forced aging using elixir since I am trying to see how quickly I can complete the challenge.

Ah, gelatin. That explains a lot. I followed Pinstar's dictum (made somewhere, don't remember where) that gelatin was disallowed. Had gelatin been available, things wouldn't have been quite so desperate in my challenge household of four adults and three children without Culinary being unlocked.

When my celebrity chef pulled into the driveway (after slam-dunking the top-end culinary chance card to boot on his promotion day), he served up pork chops for the entire family. I kicked back and watched my poor hungry simmies munch down in the dismal drabness of their family room on the 2nd floor of their hovel. The silly game made me feel proud of my little virtual people for having survived all of the abuses to which I put them and it made my heart glad to hear their murmurs of contentment as they ate. If nothing else memorable happens to them in this challenge, that one evening with its simple pleasures of eating good food prepared by a top-quality chef after countless days of near starvation made it all worthwhile.

I'm sure I have though offhand I don't remember the names of them. It's that old accelerated decrepitude creeping in.  ;D

And, yes, I paid $8000 for a fully-equipped Macintosh II back in the day. Sheesh, what an idiot I was.  :-\

My founder brought a Smart Milk dispenser with him from college, so my kids are learning faster than normal. Thanks to the Smart Milk effect, my Toddlers have been managing 9 Logic and about 4 to 5 Charisma. The Children have added at least 3 Body, 7 Cooking, 7 Cleaning, and 7 Mechanical. Maxing the Body skill has taken about one day using Yoga, the Lie Finder took care of Creativity, and that just leaves a few skill points in each of the other skills. Logic has been the difficult one until now, but they just bought a chess table. I've been doing my best to keep the protection costs down but the businesswoman my heir married needs the Logic.

Teens can get a job without max Body skill as long as they don't actually go to work. The purpose of taking the job is learning the skill that goes with it, so I don't mind if my Teens have to skip work.
Any Sim can max skill pretty quickly with the Lie Finder or most other career rewards. Ask another Sim for a lesson. When the lesson starts, ask for another lesson without stopping the first one. Continue asking for more lessons until you are satisfied with the learning speed.

I believe Teens need 10 Body skill to leave the lot for any reason, including college, until the Law Enforcement restrictions are lifted.

Jello was disallowed?   I don't remember reading that anywhere! 

Alvaron, I think what you're saying only works if you have unlocked science (or natural science and aspiration rewards) with the founder/spouse or if you brought elixir from college (and have enough of it). I'm just starting week 6, which means I'm around day 35/36 or so. I unlocked medical and culinary and didn't bring either elixir or smart milk from uni (another dumb mistake, but still ;)

My founder hit the top of her career and started having kidlets as fast as she could - so there's 6 of 'em basically 3 days apart - baby born, immediately pregnant again. The oldest was stuck with the entire teenage period - no Uni and no elixir either, and her siblings will be as well untill she unlocks military. As they're only a few days behind her, at least 2 of them will have to go through the whole period (one's almost there, and the other right behind him).

The 4th child has also already transitioned to teen so will not be leaving the day he transitions either :) As I didn't have any way to force age the teens, I'm wondering if I wouldn't have been smarter to space them out more and give the eldest time to grow up.

Why do you need 3? Seems like 2 should do it easily. (Or are you counting the founder as 1?) Founder and spouse and 6 kids = 8, one child's spouse = 9, that child needs to have 4 kids, one of whom has a spouse and that's all 14 unlocks. Once military is unlocked, as each of the generation unlocks something, they move out, leaving room for the heir to have the 5 babies. And if you have elixir, the heir has plenty of time anyways.

From other posts:
If they skip work for any reason, they have to quit their job and if they quit, they aren't currently working in the career so they can't use the career reward. Could fudge around and get several days, but I'd put that on my personal 'cheating' list myself.

Until military is lifted. If I'm correctly understanding, when his eldest child hit teen, he had him/her drink elixir in green or red or something and lose years of their life... does that really make 'em turn into an adult immediately? (has never tried it) but anyway, he made them an immediate adult in military and then ran through that career quickly enough that the rest could move on to Uni as soon as they transitioned (they must have been farther apart than 3 days tho - I don't believe it took less than 3 days to max the military career :)

Here's a clarification from pinstar in this thread...
So, unless you are ignoring it because it's not on the official site yet... You made an oopsie. :)

ALSO

Someone else mentioned they hadn't gotten their sim up to the top level of a career before they turned elder, and that they'd forgotten the elder would have to quit the job.
Untrue.
Elders can KEEP their job... they just can't RETIRE. It's keep the job, or quit.
That is actually clear enough in the original rules as I have them printed off the site.

I'm glad I perused the rules today... My simteen firstborn CAN'T go to college.. But I'd planned to get him a job and actually let him attend. I'd forgotten about the 10 body requirement applying for jobs too. (I rememberred it applied to college) I don't think that lazy (2... and both his parents a 6 or above) good for noting can build up to 10 body points in his LIFETIME much less how much (a week maybe?) teenhood he has left...  I'm trying to get him a spouse that already has body to unlock military for his much younger siblings.

Sorry about that, there's a lot of rules :)

The 10 body thing is law enforcement, going to uni is in military, so I guess they need both to go to college?

I was the one talking about the elder having to quit his job. He's a spouse, started at the top of his career, and I wasn't paying attention to him. He had to quit because he doesn't have 10 body. I could have had him get it, but like I said, I wasn't paying attention.

Ah! Gotya. :)

I thought you were referencing the "can't retire, must quit" rule without remembering the "If they want to stop working" part.

Yeah, to go to college, they need either Military and 10 body points, or military and law enforcement.
As I said, since my teen's spouse is to unlock military for me, I wasn't worried about body points...  But I do need to remember he can't get a job either. His dad wanted an overacheiver, so I thought I'd get him a job at about 4 days to adult.

Now to decide if to torture him trying to get body, or just let him wait until he's an adult before getting a job. (except maybe for getting a criminal job on his day off so he can get some creativity, If I'm lucky. His mom's going to get a criminal job to get him the reward, I think.)

Your teen's spouse? I smell a hack that could be defined as giving an advantage...

OK, I'm confused.  What good does it do for the founder to bring back the smart milk dispenser or the elixir since no one can use any aspiration reward until alien technology is unlocked, which needs natural science unlocked so someone can use the telescope to be abducted, or stargaze/watch clouds to get the satellite?  It seems to me the first job should be natural science.

I'm in the middle of my second try, because my first founder didn't graduate perma-plat and was always coming home from work in the red, so he seldom got promoted.  I didn't have him date in college, which was a big mistake, but my next one is doing better.  In fact, is it even possible to do this challenge without the founder being perma-plat?

You can use aspiration rewards brought back by the founder. You just can't replace/recharge them when they run out.

Gotcha.  Thanks, Rohina! ;D

I have 2 careers unlocked, and (admittedly I made an error and used the PC to get his job) my founder wasn't permaplat... neither is his spouse. their firstborn is a teen.

I haven't had any issues with their aspirations. Even tho they can't date any longer, if you pick an 'attractive' spouse, flirt/check sim out generally will add at least one acheivable want that can add more as it's done. my sims have rarely hit green.

--As per the aspiration rewards from the backpack.. I did think only the founder could use those... no one else. - smartmilk could be used if he made the bottles, but otherwise I thought other sims couldn't benefit.

It may be however that the same rules don't apply to them as apply to the personal electronics.

Or else you're smelling like you didn't read the previous post where I spoke of this. :)


Followed by:
I can see the confusion.. but as you see, no hack is involved.. I simply omitted the word 'future' as an 'understood without saying'.

He's now friends with his FUTURE spouse, working on best friendship, so that he will be able to invite her over, flirt, and propose within a day or 2 of adulthood.

About platinum founders:
My founder and her spouse aren't permaplat either. She's a family sim with the LTW to reach golden anniversary or whatever that silliness is. She came home with all skills maxed except one, full platinum and a locked want to max cooking, and the gain a cooking skill point want that just kindly rerolled up (I left the last on purpose so she'd have a nice big boost if she needed it.)

The first week and a half, while she was getting to the top of the medical career (took a few days to find the right job, then she jumped 2 levels on the same day twice, but there was some 'not working time in there), she really didn't do anything but meditate. And I played it all on speed 3 :p. She didn't even sleep, much except if she was really tired when she came home. If she needed to top up, I invited her hubby to be (they were already engaged) over and filled a few 'flirt' and 'kiss' or whatever wants, and let her finish up the last cooking at some point.

Her hubby's Fortune (which I could have done without) but he was already at the top of his career, so I didn't care very much how happy he is, really. And he hasn't been so bad. I bought him a couple of things that were legal and he asked for (a frig, a shower (after she unlocked medical), a chess board, a high chair for the baby, junk like that - oh I think I put a bar down face to the driveway at some point, and I've never been able to decide if they're allowed to play pinball, so I gave him one but don't let him play it) and he's not too bad otherwise, though he insists on rolling "get the kids into private school, kids be overachievers, kid go to college junk - I let them apply for scholarships even tho they aren't going to make him happy and he's good about rolling a want to write a best-selling novel and some flirt stuff for his wife here and there :) He'll never get his LTW as he's the one I messed up and didn't get to the top of criminal before he became elder without 10 body pts. Oh well.

About rewards from Uni:

I looked and looked in the rules and all the boards and didn't find anywhere it says only the sim that brings them can use the aspiration rewards (though I could easily be missing something) - it just says when they're gone, they're gone and you have to delete them (suits me, what use is a used up energizer taking up space? :) I thought that way at first though, so I had my sim drink all the elixir (so she had enough time to have lots of babies) - if it would work to age them up past teen quick, it'd been smarter to give the oldest child some of it. But oh well. I've done lots of dumb things now :) An energizer was really almost no use at all - I'd *much* rather have smart milk.

So the teen is unlocking Law Enforcement and the spouse-to-be is unlocking military? I guess that's what I'll have to do if I want some of them to go to Uni, but it's not what I intended <sigh> too many things to take into consideration :)

I haven't even decided for sure which kid is going to be heir. I think I'll have the oldest, a female get to the top of her career as her mother did, then marry and start birthin' babies, as I have to get some of the folks out of the house anyway before I can have the other 5 kids - by that time, either Uni will be open, moving will be, or at the very least, the founder and her hubby will die and then she can (like her mom) quit her job and take care of the little ones. Tho if her mom's still around, she could do that and the heir can get a 2nd job for the reward items.

Another question - good strategic use of being poor and buying the right things back first to pay the mob will let me not have enough money to buy back stuff I don't want anyway and is just taking up space. Is that cheating? It doesn't say (so far as I can see) anything about what order I have to buy them in (I'm not using the money thing, I'm literally deleting and rebuying) so when the spouse showed up with 3 expensive telescopes and I didn't have that much money, obviously I bought those back last and only kept 1, and then when I had a 3rd crib and wanted to get rid of it, I just didn't finish the novel until after I paid the mob and bought everything else back first - so I didn't have enough to rebuy the extra one. It'd even be possible to, for example, buy some expensive 1 tile counters (so you can move them around) to make yourself too poor to rebuy a bed or some other big thing so you can't buy it back and later buy a new one and put it where you want it.

If you have a female founder, before hopelessness is restricted, can you get her pregnant?  Or do you need to wait til their spouse moves in with them?  Sorry if this is a stupid question, I was just wondering...

You can get her pregnant, but you can't hire a nanny, and you can't miss work for any reason (including the pregnancy days and toddler days) or you have to quit your job and can't take that career again. If you time it right, you can go to work the first day, have the next two days be weekend days for that job (whatever they are, in the right careers) and immediately go back to work, but you need someone to take care of the baby or she won't go.

PS: There's nothing that says your founder has to lift a restriction at all. If you wanted, you could just get her pregnant and let her quit jobs and have babies at appropriate times and not lift any restrictions until the babies were old enough... but I think that'd be hard :)

Actually, he's probably going to do politics. Maybe slacker. Something that doesn't require body points.
His younger siblings have more activity points, so should be able to build a 10 body. :)
His dad (now an elder) HAS 10 body.
His Mom doesn't, but is bugged so she cannot get a job anyway. (sigh) I even tried on the computer to see if it was just the newspaper that was bugged, after she'd tried repeatedly to get a job.

That's correct. My founder unlocked Medical and her spouse unlocked Science, choosing the elixir as the unlocked aspiration reward.

Medical+Culinary is a good pair of initial unlocks, so long as you've a plan to get the first heir through puberty quickly so that Military can be unlocked. Lack of computers makes me crazier than I already am  ;) so Science is a must for me. Being stuck with only level 3 jobs for non-college adults and only three job offers per day is maddening. Gotta love it when you grab the paper and the only offer is one job, and one that  is in a track already blocked by the Slacker restrictions. After that happened to me in my second attempt at the challenge, I swore I'd unlock Science as soon as possible.
 
Maybe. Unless you've unlocked computers, there's not a whole lot of difference between college graduates and high school graduates with respect to job hunting. Were I in your shoes, I'd've done the same thing: had sim kids as fast as possible.

Yes, I'm counting the founder as the first generation and your math is dead on.

That's correct. It took longer than I thought it would because I couldn't get him to spin off "Grow Up Well". His aspiration meter was hovering near red and zoomed up when he grew into a teen. It was painful having some of his fears come to pass but necessary to get him into the red so it wouldn't take a zillion tanks of elixir.

It works just like you expect: once his age bar hits zero days left, "Grow Up" appears or you can use a birthday cake to transition him into an adult.

Close. He was Culinary and his wife was Level 9 military. She unlocked the Military track the day after they got married by going to work in platinum aspiration.

I used encourage when my sims had kids that lacked the ability to meditate or spongebathe or were just too damn lazy.  Fortunately it was only one or two that needed encouragement.  Later in the challenge when the remaining restrictions are reduced to mere irritations, it wasn't necessary.  In my second attempt there was one spouse that I really wanted to encourage as he couldn't meditate ... and I was worried I wouldn't be able to send him to the rooftop on his dying day to join the rest of the family, but this was late in the challenge and fortunately his kids lifted the remaining restrictions before he died.


Pinstar said that gelatin wasn't permitted?   He's made some clarifications and rule changes in this topic, but I haven't seen that one.  It also wasn't on his site last time I checked, which was today.  If gelatin is no longer permitted, that does boost culinary into the top few to be lifted first.  (In my third play of this challenge it was the 8th one I lifted ... or if you only count careers, 6th).

I don't know where this rule is, but I have seen people quoting it. I wish Pinstar would update the rules on his site to match all the changes.

Alvaron, I just meant it won't work for any other strategy but that specific one :) I do wish I'd used elixir for that though... those painful teen years were beyond useless for the first kid. At the very least, when I try again (I intend to try several different ways and this is still my first one - I'm slow), I'm *not* trying to build all that body for the first kid or kids. I'm quite enjoying your posts, btw :)

Other topics:


If one of my founders were broke, I would use any hack or cheat necessary to fix them without feeling the slightest bit guilty. Did you try deleting her and resetting her and the lot debugger and everything? <has the lot debugger on every lot and refuses to do without it in much the same way others can't live without the phone hack - sorry but a broken game is *broken* not an "advantage">

It's on Shoo Flee. Link here:

http://z13.invisionfree.com/Shoo_Flee/index.php?

You hafta sign up to read the posts. Some people apparently can't just sign in for a few days or something but I personally had no trouble - filled out the form and there I was, so I dunno... maybe it's cuz I used the same nick I use everywhere - that's supposeda work right.

Anyways, there's 'modifications' and 'expansions' on the rules all over the place. I've traked down some, but I know there are other boards I'm missing. I wish there was *one* place where Pinstar put everything. It's fun to have him discussing it here, but it's hard to tell which parts to pay any attention to and what to ignore. I'm kinda... independant... anyways though, so I just play by the rules I like. I don't want snapdragons (too easy), I do want jello (too hard without) <shrug> so that's the way I'll do it (I had culinary all along tho, so I mean for next time).

Also, is there any rule against using the changing table to change the toddler's clothes? When I've got 6 kids, Maxis at least gave me 6 outfits (1 for each of them), and as medical is unlocked, I've got the table, and I can't find anything in my printed rules that says I can't choose different ones for them so I don't have silly bear head suits or whatever they are...

Yep. I blundered in my challenge by bringing back two thinking caps to help my first 2nd gen heir get the creativity he needed by writing novels on the computer. A smart milk dispenser and something else (probably an eclectic energizer for real emergencies -- like your pregnant founder is almost starved and you can't eat for another two hours) would've been a better choice.

So long you remember the Slacker restrictions, sure. The teen has to quit that job when they miss work and are locked out of that career track as teens, adults and elders until the Slacker restrictions are lifted.


Another fine example of Pinstar speaking out both sides of his mouth at once. On the one hand, he says "Teens and elders cannot leave the lot for any reason..." but then he turns around and says, 'but it's okay for them to leave the lot to take the bus to go to school.' So we find out that "cannot leave the lot for any reason" doesn't really mean "for any reason", it just means for some reasons. Since I'd rather play the game than spend countless hours searching three different forums for all of Pinstar's vaunted pronouncements because he hasn't deigned to update the official rules, yeah, I sent my first two teens to college without lifting Law Enforcement first. And it doesn't bother me one bit. If he really wanted the Law Enforcement restrictions to matter, he'd have "for any reason" mean for any reason with no exceptions. That would certainly make Law Enforcement and Athletics more important than the also-ran restrictions that they are now.

Had I felt the need, I could've held them back one day and had them trained to level 10 on the punching bag. Their intended careers don't need the skill so I didn't bother with it.

While we're on the subject of ambiguities in the rules, anyone want to hazard a guess whether or not the alien technology restrictions are auto-magically lifted if your founder gets abducted by aliens in college?  ::)

Probably not, since the disaster hasn't happened yet.  Unfortunately.

Sagana, thanks for that link about the gelatin, I'll be heading over there later to take a look.  I probably won't be playing this challenge again for a while though, as I've been reading the topic about establishing a Sim Economy and yesterday I started work on establishing one in my game.  Maybe by the time I get back to playing this challenge again the official rules will have been updated.

EDIT: I just went to that link and when I tried to register I got "The board administrator is no longer accepting any new registrations at the moment."  So I guess I won't be able to read any rule variations that are on that site.

Oooh, if you're doing an economy thing, there's another challenge in playtesting right now called the Real Life Challenge that sounds perfect for that - the idea being to make a neighborhood that closely resembles a real town with some other challenges and restrictions to add to the fun. I'm looking forward to trying it. :)

It occurs to me it would have been politer to link to the thread with the info, here:
http://z13.invisionfree.com/Shoo_Flee/index.php?showtopic=5221&st=70

and copy the quote, here:

and not just provide the website link.

I've got some half-formed ideas of my own I'm working on.  I think I'd like to develop those first, see what works, and decide which ones I want to keep, before trying a new challenge.  But thanks for letting me know.

Thanks for the direct quote.  I would still like to read that thread in it's entirety and see what other rule clarificiations and variations are over there but not here or on his website.  Guess I'll have to try again later to register.

I don't have the lot debugger... actually have never heard of it.. I currently have a fresh install of the game with NO additions, after having to reinstall due to defunct hard-drive.

I'm not sure it's worth fixing her at this point. she most certainly does NOT have a level 10 body, and due to the glitch and zombie issues has been unemployed about 2 weeks, and ages to elder in 4 days. In order to get her LTW of Mayor, I'd HAVE to use the computer...  Then again, she would have had it by now if it wasn't for the bug. I'll have to think.

It was really weird how the newspaper was working. (or NOT rather)

The first day she had a problem, there was only *2* jobs in the paper...  I thought that was odd, but that it might be a 1 time glitch due to it wanting to offer a college job, and her being a non-grad adult.
The next day, she was tired and I thought when she looked at the paper and then put it away without it showing job offers that she was just too tired to job hunt.
The next day or several a zombie stold it out of the yard before she could look for a job.
The next day, as she carried the newspaper into the house a zombie walked by and picked the paper off the ground, and it disappeared out of her hands. (THAT was annoying)
By that point i'd forgotten that the paper had glitched on me previously, and only rememberred after another day of thinking she was simply too tired.
When I realized what had happened, and verified by testing that my other sims could look for a job, I was going to try the "delete her and reload the house" fix, but A) I had a sim once that hadn't worked on, and B) my Mother called me needing a favor done ASAP, so I exitted the game.
I may try tomorrow.. and see if I can race to get her 9 body points with the radio in 3 days. (yeah, right.. even though she does have 5 or 6 lazy/active points.)

Yeah. I bet she'd have been mayor by now. All appropriate skills are maxed.

I DO hate bugs.

I could've refreshed her bars using moveobjects on but I felt like that violated the spirit of the challenge. Besides, I messed up by letting her oversleep so it was incumbent on me to figure out something, and I did. I had some anxious moments while she waited for the carpool, I can tell you that. My founder is my rock and my challenge household wouldn't work half as well as it does without her. If she'd died, I would've soldiered on and the paranormal track would've suddenly become a lot more important in my scheme.  ;)

I understand. Your use of J.M.'s lot debugger doesn't bother me one bit. I had to evict my family once in this attempt when the middle of the 2nd floor family room (only the most highly trafficked area in the house) developed a "black hole" of four blocked tiles due to a bug in the meditation teleport function. I curse Pinstar for his injunction against using birthday cakes because everyone knows that the infant->toddler grow up code is buggy. Well, I found another one. Never ever teleport into the house while someone else is holding an infant helping them grow up. It screwed up my house thoroughly and I wasted two hours trying to fix the broken tiles with buyable fire, raising and lowering the floor, and every other kinky thing you can imagine. Nothing worked so I ended up having to "cheat" by loading up and evicting them.

Here's a newsflash: after that meltdown, I started to use birthday cakes to grow up my infants because I will not put up with more bugginess from Maxis. I didn't allow anyone to eat the cake but I used them and I'll do so again rather than tempt the fates.
[/quote]

I tried to login there to get the URL for that posting but the site refused my login. They must be having problems.

In theory, that's what the official site is supposed to be. But that's only a theory.  :D

And that's what you should do. It's your challenge and I think that, as long as you play within the spirit of the challenge, the minutia of the details are unimportant. I know you're not supposed to do "sneaky satellite" foo and that having your founder get abducted while she's still in college isn't supposed to unlock alien technology but Pinstar's rules are ambiguous. They need clarification and that's why I bring up these weird ideas.

To be honest, Pinstar needs a dose of Pescado to make the challenge... well, challenging. I think Pinstar wimped out when he relaxed the Law Enforcement restrictions on teen Body skill requirements. You can bet El Presidente wouldn't have cut us any slack.  ;D

None of which I'm aware. If you want to change them into their everyday wear, you can. You can plan outfits for them if you wish.

You're braver than I am. I absolutely will not play the game without the critical bugfixes from J.M. and Twojeffs. I guess maybe that's because my first four attempts to do the Legacy Challenge back in the early days of TS2 all ended in failure when the lots became too buggy to play.  ::)

Those things are normal, as far as I know.

Edit: I take that back. If you're willing, next time you play your challenge house, do an experiment. Have an adult get the newspaper and try to do a "Find Own Place". If that action fails (as in, the sim folds up the paper and the taxi never comes), then it's my sad obligation to tell you that your neighborhood has become corrupted. If the move out works, then it's not a problem with corruption of the neighborhood files. Just move the sim back in and use the familyFunds command to reconcile your family's bank account.

Pause the game after the paper boy delivers it and put it on top of your house until your sim is ready to job hunt. The zombies'll have a tough time stealing it off the roof.  ;) If you have a proper roof on your house, make an attic by painting the floor tiles of the top level with the roof already on and park the newspaper in there 'til your sims need it.

Dunno about that one. Might be a bug.

Amen.

I've either been very lucky, or too limitted in my playing time to develop the really serious bugs. I've had sims 2 since day 1 and never encountered most of the horrible bugs I've read and dreaded about... I DID have the bugged car portal that prevented jobs and school busses from arriving several times, however. (cursed buggy Maxis Book Cleanup code!)

Can I get a link to this fabulous, can't live without it hack/fix? :)

3 jobs is normal for a newspaper.
Tired Sims, the normal is "I'm NOT in the mood to do that! Uh-Uh!".. not opening up the paper, looking into it, folding it up, and putting it back down.
Not unless my game is NORMALLY ab-normal. ;)

I also tested with her having full bars with the same result. Even with the computer. She'd sit at it, and lose the 'look for job' interaction.

I might start doing that.. but I generally make my sims do everything for themselves, instead of moving things around for them, which has occaisionally resulted in a bugged object for me.

Maybe.. :)

Amen Amen!! LOL

Check The Armory (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/board,5.0.html) for the critical UNI/Orig TS2 fixes. I'd install those for sure. Peruse the other offerings there for the other hacks and fixes. Unless you like the friends of your Sims driving you crazy with their idiotiic "Why haven't you called me?" bleats, I highly recommend the phone hack. Look in The Firing Range (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/board,3.0.html) for the latest and greatest modifications and improvements by FFS to the game. It's been my experience that most of the mods by J.M. and Doctor Boris are safe to install into your game. If a mod can cause a fiery ball visible from space in your game, J. M. is very good about saying so.

I also recommend checking Twojeffs' area on this site. His work is quite good also and I love his Casual Romance mod for those trailer trash 'hoods I play.  ;D

That doesn't sound good. Try the experiment I outlined in my previous post (I editted that posting after I thought about what you said). I do hope your neighborhood isn't bugged because I've been there and done that.

I admit to a certain amount of micro-management when I'm playing a scored challenge because the Maxian notion of 'free will' is a frightening concept. Whatever it is that 'free will' decides to do, you can pretty much bet that it's the wrong choice for the situation at hand. For example,

"No! Get out of the bathroom. You really don't need to play in the bathtub right this instant since your daughter needs to shower so she can do her homework."

Or, "Um... did you really need to hold the baby for five hours while the children asked repeatedly, 'Where's supper, mom?'"?  ;)

I'm not compulsive nor obsessive. Just let me queue up another six or seven commands for each of my li'l virtual people and I'll be right with you. Anal, you said? Nah, not me. I'm not anal, everybody should play TS2 this way!  ;D

There's another way to play TS2?  What an astounding idea!

I had that same problem with a sim who wouldn't find a job in the paper.  Other sims could, but she couldn't.  I even clicked her mood bars to full (I always play with debug mode on) and she still wouldn't, so it wasn't a matter of being borderline "I'm in a bad mood".  She'd pick up the paper, sit in a chair, open it, fold it, put it down.  In the end I just had another sim look at the paper every day, and when her chosen career track came up I cheated her into it at level 1.  I think it's ok to cheat to work around glitches ... and I did wait until the day her job came up.

I have the end of the challenge in sight. It's Day 54 and the first clump of five graduates from La Fiesta Tech has returned home, unlocking Athletics (3rd gen heiress' husband), NatSci, Slacker, Life of Crime and Politics. My heir who's degreed for Law Enforcement is at home, ready to unlock when that career shows up on the computer. The last toddler will age into a child tomorrow so I could finish as early as Day 62 but it'll probably be a day or two after that given the vagaries of what jobs are offered.

I suppose the biggest surprise for me was the 2nd gen heir's wife getting abducted by aliens the night following the NatSci unlock. I really didn't expect it and had no particular need for the aspiration rewards (though I certainly won't hesitate to use a SimVac to snarf up skills off visiting YAs at the college house -- I just love popping the cow with that thing  ;D. I mean, why kill it when you can steal it blind? "Ventrilofart me, will you?  ;)).

I think I'll do some fiddling with house designs. I love the floating stilt house that I used for both the "legacy" lot and the college lot but I hate stairs so I'll happily demolish it in favor of something more to my liking. I'll package the house and upload it to the Exchange if anyone's interested before demolition. My handle on the TS2 BBS is alvaron53.

Some random thoughts about the challenge:

a) With OFB, Culinary+Military can be a very fast track. Think about it and you'll figure out why.
b) Stink won't kill your Sims (though they might wish you were dead  :)) but starvation will.
c) I still want to investigate Show Biz + Military as an opening pair of unlocks. With six 2nd gen males who all look alike, I wanted to 'change appearance' so bad I could taste it.  :D
d) If your strategy involves birthing lots of simkids, is there anything better than Smart Milk to bring back home with your founder?
e) The Paranormal restrictions are pretty limp in the face of elixir, at least with a YA start. I'd like to see Paranormal be more important, perhaps like the cross-linking between NatSci and the Slacker career reward.

Have fun!

Even without elixir, paranormal is pretty limp.   Most ghosts won't use the stairs, so the foundation or stilts rule is counterproductive if Pinstar wanted paranormal to have any bite.

In my first run-through my elders all died at a remote corner of the lot - and I had no inside ghosts except for one ghost who was out the night his grandchild was born, and he was called up to the nursery floor to see the birth.  After that he would occasionally come inside while none of the other ghosts were able to cross the foundation.  But he didn't get a chance to do it too often as I was able to put in a water feature around the graves soon afterwards.

Second run-through the founder was a vamp.  Nobody died - she never married and her kids moved out after they lifted their restriction.  Paranormal was the obvious last choice.

In my third run-through, the elders meditated and then teleported to the flat roof to die.  No way to get down to scare anybody.  Paranormal restriction was worthless.

Athough most of my elders died at the far corner of the lot, I had ghosts who CLIMBED the stairs.  I saw every ghost in the bedroom/bathroom  area (3rd floor).  They were annoying me to no end so Paranormal was unlocked sooner than I had planned.

This seems to happen when the Sim looking for a job is a nongraduate and all three jobs in the paper are University. My Sims have always been able to find a job in the next paper.

Have to agree that Paranormal is almost meaningless. Most people unlock Military pretty early, which means the Sims can move out when they get close to death. There's no reason to even have ghosts if you don't want them, unless you have a surprise death. I like the idea of teleporting to the roof, though.

Unlocking Business was great. Got rid of all the things they can't use, including a burn-proof EDS that's been there since the founder married. Upgraded the car. I'm now allowing Outings with anyone instead of restricting them to family members. Also, the family is finally collecting the remote income from the founder's business, almost §300K the first two nights. They hired a maid to pick up the old newspapers and clean the toilet.

Turns out that the founder's business really wasn't much help. I only spent about §50K building the house and my founder had that much before he started the business. The remote income wasn't available after the founder moved, until he returned to the business, but the family has been gaining money without it. I expected huge losses from the 'protection money' and the chance cards but that never happened. I unlocked Slacker early (2nd) and they only had to play one chance card (lost 2 Charisma). I've also been very careful about buying anything over §100, so the 'protection money' has never been a problem either.

In my case, the sim WAS a graduate, and couldn't find any jobs in the paper.  It was definitely a glitch as her sister could find jobs in the same newspaper on the same day.  It was her sister who eventually saw the politics job that the glitched sim was after - the glitched sim couldn't see any jobs in the paper that day.  It was CLEARLY a glitch.  So I felt no guilt when I cheated the glitched sim into level 1 politics (even though she was summa cum laude political major) on the day her sister saw politics come up in the paper.

I didn't mind playing the chance cards.  I thought of them as free cash and I still answered them even when I didn't need to (after all, once you've unlocked slacker it doesn't matter if you lose your job).  I played the cards carefully using the idea of "only gamble what you can afford to lose" - if the losing option on either answer was loss of job, then I took the other answer.  Apart from the loss-of-job cards: for the 50/50 cards I weighed up the losses (e.g. stats loss is worse than cash loss, so avoid), and for the 85/15 cards I went for the 85% chance.  In one day I had a husband and wife bring home 90k in chance cards, and I found that always playing chance cards reduced the crime restriction to a tedious irritation I had to do each week that wasn't anywhere close to hurting my sim family.  When your family are millionaires (from chance cards, no business involved) then how is a few thousand in protection money going to hurt them?

I don't mind the chance cards - I've always thought they were kinda fun, and I almost always play them normally anyway (rather than skipping). I don't have anything that tells me the consequences and some of them I know just from playing a lot, but I'm old and forgetful and forget most of them anyway. I just choose whatever I think that particular sim would be most inclined to do in that situation. One of mine lost 2 body, which was rather a hassle and once we lost all our money and were down to 0, but it was right after we'd paid protection and was just kinda interesting making sure we earned enough before the next sunday.

Haven't lost a job yet, which is good - I wouldn't like that. I'm playing much slower than you all though - I've still only got the oldest two kids (generation 2 I guess if you count the founder) that are adults yet, and neither have maxed their career. And this is still my first playthrough - I'm planning on doing it again, possibly several times, but at least once as I'm not bored with it yet :)

I guess I just like to make life hard on my sims - for the challenge of making it work anyway.

I'm glad this thread is finally back! :)

Anyway...
I was finally able to get the mom her job...  3 days prior to elderhood.
During the end of that day, and her next 2 days off, and the day she was supposed to go to work, she worked on her body.. I'd HOPED I could get her to work LATE with 10 body points...  but no such good luck. She was still 1.5 short when I got the 'you missed work' notice and she had to quit.

That night, her son grew from teen to adult, and while he flirted with the new sim I'd decided he'd marry instead of the original I'd planned on, her husband got abducted. If he'd been abducted ONE DAY earlier, she could have made her 10 body!! Energizers and thinking caps would have made it a non issue.  oh well.

The next morning, her son married his new bride, and got the 3rd generation started. (good, cause dad wants 6 grandkids.)
That night HE got abducted, and got member #2 of generation #3 on the way. :)

Days later, no births quite yet, but he STILL doesn't have a job... and his wife has managed the top of the politics career.

He's still trying to get his job in militarty.. he was originally going to do politics, but SHE was already high in politics when he married her....  The paper hasn't yet offered either military OR politics. I missed having him look one day, because as he looked at the paper to get a job, it disappeared again...  Dang Zombie Mutant paper teleporting abilities.

anyway.. my sims are enjoying the recharge offered by the energizers, and the fast learning offered by the thinking caps. :) my heir has even obtained level 10 body for his lazy 2 point activity self. :)

For extra Crazy Challenge goodness, combine Apocalypse with Sleeping Through College. ;D

Done, challenge completed in 63 days. The game apparently decided to torture me one final time since it refused to offer Show Business for two days.  ::) The challenge was fun though running two more batches of YAs through college was terribly boring and took too long.

I'm off to install OFB and then argue with my Downloads folder until I get everything properly updated. Have fun!

Well I'm certainly not winning on time. I'm just starting week 8 now, 4 things unlocked (medical, culinary, military and law enforcement) and my heir is pregnant (2 bumps). The 3 youngest kids got sent off to college the second the heir got to general and got married (her now hubby was cpt. hero), and her parents moved out of the house.

Her next youngest brother lost his job to a bad chance card :( (he was in politics) - so now he's an athlete. Bit of slow down unlocking with that. He also lost his opportunity at perma plat, but too bad for him. I am finding that (still without aspiration awards) I can't always manage the platinum and promotion every day which messes up the schedule badly. If they get the promotion, they usually don't have too many days off (weekends), but without it, we're sometimes stuck for several days :(

Next after that (Veron) is my only knowledge sim - he took a huge aspiration hit when he went to adult without Uni, and I couldn't *quite* get him to max out the skill he was working on first (he just refused :p), but fortunately he wanted the science job, it was easy enough to find, and maxing the skill put him back platinum. Only had to listen to him cry for a few min.

Next time I play, I'll run the 3 kids through Uni. So I still have the 5 babies of the next generation to go - all the pregnancy, infant, toddler and child before they're teen and could immediately send them to college and home again, then get to the jobs.

That's a lot more days. Having to live through the teen years slowed me down a lot, but even so, you were amazingly fast.

I'm not editing my previous post as this one is differenter :)

I've been playing around with numbers, and the fastest I see that one could do the challenge within what I see as the rules is 54 days (I have not been counting the days in Uni, only after the apocalypse). Start with a male heir who marries a female already at the top of her career (so she can have babies). She gets pregnant on the first day and has a male that is the heir.  That sim goes through as fast as possible, marries a female already at the top of her career who needs 5 children. When that 5th child reaches the top of his or her career, all the restrictions are lifted.

Founder's wife & heir
Pregnant - 3
Infant - 3
Toddler - 4
Child - 8
Teen - 1 (then force aged to adult)

So far: 19 days

Heir's wife, married and pregnant day 1
Pregnant through 5 kids - 15 days

So far: 34 days

The last baby:
infant - 3
toddler - 4
child - 8
teen - 1

So far:  50 days

Let's say this kid goes to Uni - I'm not sure how to count it, but I added a teen day for both teens so let's say 1 day
Gets a job from the computer, far up the list, so 2 or 3 days to hit the top, counting 3

That's a total of 54 days - skipping all the teen years, and assuming no one loses jobs and gets behind the last kid and he gets to the top that quickly and all pregnancies come 3 days apart, and everything works perfectly etc. A best case scenario.

Hmm, twins would make it faster. Anyone see any other way to cut the time? Am I missing anything?

If you play the teen years rather than skipping them, the best case scenario is 30 days longer - 15 days for the heir as a teen and 15 days for the last kid, or only 15 days longer if the last kid immediately goes to Uni. So either 69 days or 84 days.

I suck at math, so if anyone notices an addition error, please mention it :) I'm also undoubtedly failing to see some big strategy... what'd I miss?

Force aging toddlers and chidlren a day early as soon as you get the message about their birthday will save you a day at each life stage.

Ah good point, so that's 50 days would be a top score? Is pregnancy 3 days or 4? I've always counted it as 3, but I'm not sure if the birth comes on the 4th day?

You aren't the only one taking it slow, sagana. My founding generation (gen 0) has just died, the first two kids in the first generation have completed careers, along with the first generation spouse, making 5 careers completed (Show Business, Slacker, Military, Business, Science). The third kid from gen 1 is in college. I expect she'll complete her career a day or two after she comes home, since it's already on the computer. The heir's wife had her first baby a day ago, so the second generation has just begun. Currently at 8 weeks and 2 days (58 days).

---

Are you ignoring Hopelessness? The earliest that can be lifted, that I can see, is on Wednesday, two days after move-in. You would have to start with a level 4 Natural Scientist on Monday, get two promotions in two days, then get lucky on a chance card. That means the founder can't marry until at least Wednesday afternoon, which adds at least two days.

There's no reason to spend a day as a Teen. Do Military as one of the first two careers. Apply for scholarships and send the Teens to college the same day they grow up if you're trying to minimize time. The other first career should obviously be Scientist, so that your Sims can start at level 9 and complete their careers in minimum time, then move out to make room for someone else. Of course, that means your founder can't be a Natural Scientist so you'll need more time for unlocking Hopelessness, probably at least 6 more days.

I only see 9 Sims in your calculations (founder, founder's wife, heir, heir's wife, 5 kids) and there are 14 careers. You'll need at least another four, even if there's a third spouse. There's also a household size limit of 8 Sims, so the extra 5 kids might require extra time.

There's no requirement to have three generations. It might be faster if the founder and spouse produce all the children, using Elixir or vampirism to remain Adults.

---

Thought I'd point out a few of the restrictions which aren't quite as restrictive as they might first seem to be.
"Showers and bathtubs of all types may not be purchased or used at home or on a commmunity lot." Other places, such as the Secret Society headquarters, would be okay.
"Sims may not purchase robots, including Servos. Servos may not be moved in or activated." No restriction on using robots, other than Servos, if you already have them. (Maybe you'd want to bring a Munchiebot with you from college?)
"No items from the 'Wall Hanging', 'Sculpture' or 'Rugs' tabs may be bought." No restrictions on use if you obtain them by other methods, such as Date and Outing gifts.
"Sims may not purchase aspiration reward objects." No restriction on using them. Your founder might as well stock up the Secret Society headquarters before leaving college, since he's not likely to ever need those points afterwards.

I assume the wording of all these restrictions is deliberate. It would have been much easier to just use the same wording throughout, and always restrict both the purchase and use of things, but it's obvious that Pinstar put much thought and care into deciding exactly how severe each restriction should be and exactly where they should apply.

Yep, I forgot to add in the days for that - I'd count 3 days for top of the career at least, so adding 3.

Well I'm playing you hafta lift law enforcement as well as Uni to go to college (but not school on the bus) - but if you aren't playing that way, this would work. The other way is to use elixir to force age the teens to adult the day they grow up. Ok, let's take out the 2 teen days, and add the 3 for hopelessness (or 2 if you prefer), so I'm seeing 50 or 51 days as a top score.

The rest of them are there, it's just that there's no need to count the time for them. They're the founders other kids. The founder and spouse have 6 kids - that's 8 restrictions, and the heir and spouse have 5 (with spouse, a total of 6 more) for all 14, and probably alien tech as well, if you can get an abduction.  By the time the heir starts having kids, the aunts and uncles are in college - so all that really counts is the heirs last child - the last time restriction (and making sure they move out fast enough, so the heir can keep having babies.)

I'm trying to think if it'd be faster if you had the founder have all of them. If you lifted military (and law enforcement if you're playing that way) first, so all the kids could go to Uni the minute they hit teen. The timing is pretty good - 18 days for 6 kids and the oldest hits teen at 15 days, so moves to Uni and there's room for another. You need enough elixir brought back from Uni to keep the founder (or spouse) young enough to have them - you could bring 3 containers. But as you have to bring them back from college and keep them there until they unlock their restriction, you might get stuck with a too full house. I'm not sure, it might be another was at uni leaving a space every time. Would require careful timing, and my (sucky) math skills aren't this good :)

Let's see, if you can work out the timing and life-extending stuff, let's say the founder or spouse has 12 kids, 3 days apart. So 3 days to lift hopelessness, 3 days each for 12 children, that's 39.  The baby's life is the sticking point so 3 days he or she is an infant, 3 toddler and 7 child (growing them up as soon as possible.) I'm counting 52 there. Then let's say 3 days to get him to the top of his career, that'd be 55? and we're at 50 or 51 for 2 generations? Seems longer to me, unless I missed something?

EDIT: Actually I need to add 3 days to the "heir" part for the 2nd generation as the next generation can't have a child until the next teen is old enough to go to college (3 days later). *AND* that would be having a child without moving the spouse in until the *next* child goes to Uni, so it could be 6 more days. I'll amend to - I think a top score would be 55ish days either way you played it.

I was assuming you'll have the Sims max Body skill as Children, since you'll have the Obstacle Course available, so Law Enforcement doesn't prevent them from leaving the lot as Teens.

54 is a good estimate. The challenge can be done faster with OFB and the correct unlock sequence. And, no, I'm not talking about l33t solutions a la J.M.P. and his magical mystery tour Day 0 wins either. Think about it and you'll figure out why.

Cheers,
--Alvaron

I was going to post that I'd been thinking about this since you last posted that OFB + culinary + military was a good strategy and I hadn't figured it out yet ... but then the penny finally dropped.  That's "too cute" as they say on the BBS ;)  Juggling the house size limit would add some time to your alternate strategy though.

hm, the limiting factor is the aging sequence - pregnancy, infant, toddler, child. Grow up cheat would be a cheat, I'd think. The birthday cake gives you the same day 'grow up' does (and it's not an OFB thing, is it?)

Ok, I don't get it...

Your calculations are assuming that all the births are single births.  I did put a hint in my last post.  I've been pondering this for days, and only got it as I was writing my last post (which was going to be the same as yours "I don't get it")

Now I get "too cute."

Ah I see. Yes that is cute. (and I did at least mention that would make it faster ;)

But how do you ensure it happens? You would have to unlock culinary early.

You could also ... I don't THINK it's prohibbitted? but it MIGHT be.. I'll look later..
Bring a "too cute" cake back from college?

That's going by the assumption I've seen here that things the founder brings from college do not count as going against the rules.
Just pull it out as needed... that's a lot of twins.

There's the no food in inv rule, and the rule about desserts that isn't here, but is on another forum.

The first time Alvaron mentioned this he^* referred to OFB in conjunction with Culinary/Military for your founder & spouse.  The second time he said "The challenge can be done faster with OFB and the correct unlock sequence"  So yeah, culinary would be a given.   And military to send them off to college to make room for more.  Once you can start sending your teens off to college, always have 7 sims in the house (your breeder and 6 growing) leaving one slot free for a sim to return & lift a restriction.  Move the founder's spouse out once he's lifted his restriction, then invite him over when you need him to father the next pair of brats.

The founder would be fertile for 6 pregnancies - 6x3 = 18 days.  Factor in a few days until you could send the first pair off to uni, to make room for the next pregnancy.  Doable without vamping or elixir for a female founder.  But you might want to have her fall in love with a vampire anyway, to hold in reserve, in case you need to vamp her to keep her fertile.  Doable, but I don't think I could do it, I'm not awesome enough.

^{* My apologies to Alvaron if I should have used she instead of he.}

EDIT to add: Darn ... now you guys have gone and done it.  I was going to play with the careers I've been downloading this weekend.  Now I want to play this challenge again instead.

Hee hee... just when you thought it was safe to go back into the simulation, the challenge pulls you back in!  ;D

I'm still messing around with OFB, learning how the business lots work (and don't work  ;)). Earlier in this thread, somebody (Ivy, I think) mentioned that sims could gain skills on a business lot. Other than talent badges, it doesn't happen for my sims. Am I doing something wrong?

Barring a gender change while I was sleeping, Alvaron is a he. :D

Going right back to the beginning of this challenge. 

I know my founder can't have an off-lot business pre-apocalypse, but there's no rule stopping her going downtown and working as a dj is there?  Now that's she maxed out creativity, if I put a dj booth, grill, espresso machine and bathroom with shower on a downtown lot she'll be able to stay there ringing up simoleons for as long as I can stand it.

The person earlier in the thread had the community skilling hack, and had forgotten to remove it, if I remember correctly.

And no, gender changes don't happen while you sleep...  Isn't that when you drink a yellow potion?  ;)

(PS...  I remember gender changes in some game...  Not the sims... but that SURE would be a fun addition as a backfire!)

I don't think the no desserts would matter from something brought back from Uni (as everything else brought back is ok, even though it's restricted) but I guess you couldn't put it back IN inv after you took it out, so only one set of twins without lifting culinary. Still even one set would help.

I sure hope that's legal. As I've lifted military, even my not founder YAs are doing it. They can't have parties, dates and outings yet, but they can go to community lots now and I can't find anything that says they can't work as baristas and djs and whatnot. Unless I'm missing something and then, oh well, I'm planning on doing it again anyways.

Skilling on business lots is limited to Cooking and Body skill, and I believe that Body skill is limited to 6. These two skills are used in restaurants to control Chef and Server performance, so they can be learned the same way that badges can, including the lack of a progress bar. Other skills can only be trained at business lots if you're using a hack.

It seems to me that it's alright to bring a 'too cute' cake from college, but the 'no food in inventory' restriction means you'd have to place it on the lot immediately, and it would probably spoil long before you were ready to use it. You'd risk food poisoning with every pregnancy, but if you meditate through pregnancies and start with high Comfort and Energy, the food poisoning should be cured by the time of birth. Keep the serving platter on the roof or behind a locked door to prevent the Sims from throwing it out after it spoils.

There's still no rule on the official site regarding businesses in college and Pinstar has updated the Apocalypse challenge at least twice since he made this comment. I'd say that pre-Apocalypse businesses are allowed.

 :D This is so disgusting. "What treasure did you bring back from college?" Some runny green goo that used to be a cheesecake. mmmmmm.

This restriction in the Natural Science block:

"-Sims may not buy or use the flower-arranging bench, nor any of the flowers it produces."

Does this bar them from visiting Community Lots that already had snapdragons placed?

Combining the above...

And since my name was brought up yet...lol...I will add my additional 2 cents worth.

Speaking of your founder on a business lot, and aside from comm-skilling/traditional skilling items, and aside from the above mentioned ways of earning skillpoints, you can also gain skillpoints two more ways that I can think of on a business lot: outings and the sim-vac.  Yes, the sim-vac...one of the most overlooked aspiration rewards for this challenge IMHO.

Not only can you suck skillpoints out of those simmies you aren't planning on using or other unsuspecting simmies along the way, you can also suck their aspiration points for a quick boost to yours.  There's no restrictions on aspiration rewards for your founder at all, and whether or not you use the sim-vac on a business lot is a moot point...it can be done home or business lot. 

When you think about it, that's really a powerful item to consider unlocking as your one aspiration item to unlock when you unlock Science.  Then you don't have to worry about which sim is in which career for which reward item.  Just go around sucking the skillpoints out of other simmies.  And if by some weird twist of fate you run out of sims to suck points from from your "other" pool, why not start sucking from those that have already reached the top of their careers?  Really those folks should be just as much fair game as anyone else.  And it's not that hard to repair the relationship hits from the sim-vac anyway.

Hrm, sucking seems to be quite a theme for this challenge...vampires, sim-vac...hehehe.

Just another angle to consider on this challenge...suck your way to the top!

:) :) :)
Ivy

I've just started this challenge, and skill points by dating and vac are high on my list of strategeries. My founder is a romance sim, so I am also working on getting her permaplat.

I considered the simvac but didn't bother as I thought I might want the sims with good skills for spouses later and it was just too easy to max all skills for the founder. She didn't have anything to do at Uni but skill.

She went downtown, dated, earned, money, dated some more (for the extra energy hit) or caffeinated, called all her profs and friends, etc. The only things she did at home were the occasional class (plenty of influence so the dormies did her assignments and term papers except the last few min. for the aspiration pts.) and skilling. Well and jumping in the energizer. She left the last cooking skill because she rolled up a want to fill it and that and the corresponding "gain a cooking skill pt." were a nice easy platinum when she got home.

The vac would have been nice for the heirs tho. Call up all those worthless losers in the romance game and vacuum them all up. Can kids use it?

I was planning on vaccing the dormies, since there is no point AT ALL in marrying them.

True enough, and they're annoying and ugly besides. Sounds fun even. I turned most of mine into zombies when the apocalypse hit.

I made a zombie family in the main hood. They run a florist shop, and they might just happen to hire a promising undergrad as a part-time flower-arranger.  ;D

Err, I tried that on my second run through the challenge.  Doesn't work, business owners can't hire young adults.

However,playable business owners can very useful in other respects.  I mean why fill up your founders valuable inventory slots with fripperies like snapdragons, munchiebots and cheesecakes of doom?

When you can sell said items to the potential spouses of the founder and fill their inventories.

At least the cheesecake will be fresher...

My business owners get dormies come up on the hire menu all the time.  The last dormie I hired in one of my businesses was also in the process of being pledged to my Greek House to be the placeholder until the next generation was ready to go to uni.  So he became playable, and kept his job as an employee while still being a YA.  I also had Mary-Sue Pleasant hire Angela to work for her while Angela was at uni - that was to satisfy Mary-Sue's want to hire Angela.

The ability to hire YAs is a product of the "no lame hires" hack, and perhaps a few others from less awesome people. It's not standard behavior, not that this makes much of a difference, as who you hire is largely irrelevant.

That sounds cool... I may have to look up said hack.

When it's not broken, I tend to prefer keeping standard game behavior, because otherwise it's too tempting to make things too easy... But I despise the fact that young adults, the age group most likely to have lousy part-time jobs, can't be hired.
 I do also dislike the fact that you can't actually hire ANYONE part time... everyone you employ is actually full-time, as you see when you play a family with one member emplyed by a business. - any hack to address this? :) yeah.. I know.. doubtful. But I'd love to employ, say, teens, and then find they work 3-6 instead of 9-5.

OFBp2, teens work 1500-2000 instead of 0900-1700.

Heh, I thought that because Mary-Sue rolled up the want to hire her YA daughter that it must be possible in an unhacked game. 

Silly me.  I should know by now that just because a sim rolls up a certain want doesn't mean the want can actually be satisfied.

The want can appear because the hack makes it possible to do so, so it becomes wantable.

Well, quite. Denise Jacquet regularly rolls up the fear of catching her husband cheating. That's her DEAD husband, ladies and gentlemen.

Actually, a lot of the OFB dead exist in an indeterminate state of not-quite-deadness. I saw one of them walking around and was like "Wait-a-minute, isn't she supposed to be dead?", and flagged her properly dead this time. Also, sims are routinely known for having unreasonable fears, something that makes them hard to torture. Popularity sims are prone to fearing nothing but becoming enemies with 3 random 100/100 friends, a Herculean task that would be harder than becoming friends with them in the first place!

Well, you could always make them fall in love with your sim and then cheat on them.

That's how the Popularity Sim in my Bachelor Challenge went mental. Was in love with the Single, then saw her kissing another bachelor and went off the deep end. Got into three fights with the Single then went stomping after the guy once the Shrink had set him back to sorts.

I love the hiring of YAs because it is soooo realistic. All my students work in shops or as wait-persons. So a big thank-you kiss for JM! I love those business fixes.

I thought that was fixed in the latest patch.

Denise is still married to her husband. Very annoying.  I tried to pair her up with Malcolm Landgraab in one of my hoods and kept wondering why I was getting this weird reaction from Gilbert and why Malcolm only had the option to move her in not get engaged to her...

As for the hack that allows you to hire YAs, doesn't that fall into the category of hacks that allow an unfair advantage over players that don't have them?  I mean your YA founder can get all their badge,cooking,and body skilling done on their employers time not in their valuable Uni time.  (can you get body and cooking skills on a business lot you don't own and aren't employed at?)  There's also a money loophole if the YA employee returns to the lot as a playable sim.  If she/he uses a workbench the costs for the raw materials comes out of the owner's pocket but if they sell the items after they are completed it goes into the playable sims pockets...

But apart from this challenge my opnions are pretty close to the rest to you on hiring YAs.

If you're getting a weird reaction, you might not have installed the Romance mod. Maxis apparently left a lot of sanity checks out of the "weird reaction" checks, resulting in, well, weird reactions. It's utterly incomprehensible and I never did entirely understand what was going on.

I believe so, yes. I think you can gain skills on a lot where you have to pay for it.

Completed items go into the owner's inventory, not the employee's.

Not strictly true, completed items only go into the owner's inventory if the "make many" interaction is selected.  If the "make one" interaction is selected or if a sim is completing a partly completed it is left on the bench when completed and must be manually moved into the owner's inventory, moved to a location on the lot or sold.  If a visiting playable sim does the latter the money goes into their household funds (Believe me I have tried this, it works).

Has anybody else realised how a visiting non-employee could take advantage of this loophole?

You mean there's a shoplifting loophole?

Visiting employees can use a workbench, not have to pay for raw materials, get the full price of the item if it is sold, and work towards their next badge level.

Visiting non-employees can use a workbench, have to pay for raw materials, get the full price of if it is sold but the time spent on the bench doesn't go towards their next badge level (at least according to the Prima guide).

But what happens if the business owner left a partially completed item on the bench the last time he was on the lot?

That's something I must tryout the next time I fire up the game.  (of course to be really profitable for the YA founder he/she has to get a gold or silver robotics badge on top of everything else.)

A visiting playable cannot enter buy mode without cheating.

There's no need to enter buy mode, a visiting playable can click on the completed item on the workbench and select "sell it".

Running away to get my Prima guide... a couple of paragraphs are relevant here.

 "When a playable sim makes a single product, it appears on the bench, not in inventory.  To get it off the station and make the bench usable again, the product can be moved with the Hand Tool in build/buy mode as a regular object, sold for the Average Price level with the product's sell interaction or placed for sale with the For Sale Tool."

"If your sims travel to a community lot and use crafting stations, they neither receive badge level increases nor any products they produce on the station.  They can, however, sell the items from the station for their standard resale amount."

Basically selling the item is the only thing the visiting playable can do with the item to make the bench usable again and is the only point of using the bench at a community lot anyway since they get no other benefit from it.

Which is yet another piece of evidence that this challenge is really not that difficult as long as you are willing to do monotonous repetitive tasks ad infinitum. As long as there is caffination and a bathroom on a lot decorated with snapdragons, you can essentially do this forever, or until you have as much money as you want.

Or until boredom sets in...  But if my loophole works the way I think it does the process of earning as much money as you want should be a lot shorter...

True enough. As soon as Pinstar allowed your founder to go downtown without restriction, he opened the door to infinite simoleons on the carry back. It's too boring for me however. l tip-leech some and bring back $30k-$40k because I don't need more than that.

I hope someone can help an OFB rookie. My bots don't work. I turn 'em on and they just sit there, never leaving their stands. The cleanbot has piles of garbage to pick up, the hydrobot has flowerbeds to water and I'm sure some evil sim is thinking of breaking into my shack so I'd like the security bot to do something. The munchiebot doesn't provide any munchies either. I thought I'd seen a posting on the board somewhere that talked about this problem but I can't find it and multiple searches using the search engine haven't borne any fruit. A pointer to the proper thread would be much appreciated.

Having punched three businesses to level 10, I'm about to decide that OFB is... um... droll. Getting a retail business to the top level is predictable and it matters not what craftable you sell. In fact, with the proper perks, it's better to sell catalog items since you don't waste time crafting. Given the stupidity of shopping Sims, exorbitant price gouging is the order of the day. Show/dazzle/restock almost as boring as "clunk +16 simoleons". I guess I'll mess around with a venue and see what that's like. Zapping the unwary for thousands of simoleons/hour should be absurdly wicked.  :D

Maybe I'll skip it and run the challenge again, at least that's interesting. I still can't figure how parking the tombstones of dead heirs on a business lot speeds things up but I'm sure there's a way.  ;)

I've had the same problem - sim still married even though spouse died - ever since installing OFB (just took me awhile to notice) - I've used simpe to fix them. I have all your death fixes and romance mod.  :-\

Just finished my fastest playthrough of this challenge.  Done in 58 days.  Military/Culinary founder and spouse.  Used cheesecake once culinary was lifted.  Founder had 7 kids, her firstborn went off to uni as soon as she turned teen, and the firstborn had the remaining 4 kids as 2 sets of twins.  The military reward was very useful.

I had some bad luck at the start.  I was going to make my founder culinary, so that she could start popping out twins as soon as she lifted hopelessness.  But not a single downtownie or townie was in military (I checked in SimPE).  The best she could do was a downtownie with lvl 8 in culinary who was underskilled.  I had to make my founder military instead.  As a result, she had to wait until her spouse hit the top of his career before she could force twins.  She started with single births in the meantime.

I am never, but never, playing this challenge again without unlocking medical with the founder or spouse.  It wasn't so much the hygiene (although that was a pain), as the fact that sponge bathing is only available as an autonomous action so you have to turn free will on when their hygiene bottoms out then hope they'll be good little sims and take a sponge bath. Free will + 8 sims in a bad mood because of low hygiene is NOT my idea of fun.

Well done.

A question: how often did the lack of a car come into play early on? Did you miss any "Daily Double" promotions (full work shift -> partial shift, for two promotions that day)?

I send them singly to community lots with good sinks and do a run of forced hand washing to 90% clean. It's extreme but better than turning on free will.

I agree that the lack of hygiene is so debilitating that one of the first two unlocks of the 2nd generation has to be Medical. Either the heir or the spouse can do it, depending on the townie draw.

Maybe Medical+Military is OK iff you run the first 2nd gen heir through University by themselves. I'll try it and see how much it slows me down.

Kyna, any idea on the bot problem I'm having (see my prior posting for details)?

Hygiene is merely a nuisance factor if you have permaplat from college, as hygiene is not generally a critical motive that forces an abort of most activities. Plus if you have a spouse, you can do "monkey hygiene". Did you know the "Groom" action raises hygiene?

Grooming and primping are a good way to raise hygeine before work.  :D

It's generally kids on a weekend who have the problem since they've dropped out of platinum. Groom does raise hygiene but it's slow and is limited to spouses.

To be sure, kids aren't very efficient at raising hygiene through hand washing but they're shot anyways since they've reached the point where they won't skill so better to freeze time on a community lot than sit at home accomplishing nothing.

You could always use Holy Simoly's "Hot Springs Hot Tub" It's all natural!

Not limited to spouses, just those with high lifetime. I've seen mother/daughter, brother/sister, and just really good friends do it.

Ah yes, Daily Doubles. I like those. There's at least one career track (Science) where you can do a "Daily Treble" - Science Teacher -> Project Leader -> Inventor -> Scholar.

The heir was medical, but she got promoted to the 6pm-1am level on that job's day off.  If you're going for three generations (counting founder as the first generation) getting the first heir to top of her career is critical for the timing so that she can get to work on producing the last born as quickly as possible.  It doesn't matter as much for the rest of her generation, as you can switch them in from college and then out while the third generation is being raised.  I sent her off to college by herself, then did 2 more batches in the first generation (a pair - one of whom lifted science, and a group of 4).

My biggest problem with the heir was keeping her platinum from college.  I had her meditating to keep the platinum from graduation.  Her youngest siblings were twin toddlers.  Her mother was an unemployed elder who I had on power idle.  The baby controller kept calling the heir from meditate to tend to the toddlers, even though I was cancelling the mother's queue (e.g. phone calls or bed) and sending her to tend to them.  I'd put the heir back to meditate, but she would be called out of it again and go to see to the kids before her mother could get there.


The batch of 2 that I ran through college went through before their sister had lifted medical (because the science job was available in the paper).  They did it on a comm lot.  I didn't want to send them home then send them out singly to a lot that only had sinks, as the loading of home lot, loading of comm lot, etc would slow me down.  One of this pair would stubbornly refuse to sponge bathe, I'd send him to the bathroom and he would wash his hands instead of bathing. Then he'd come out and try to sponge bathe in the sink by the espresso machine - shooing everyone out of the room in the process.  I spent a lot of time monitoring his queue, cancelling the sponge bath icon whenever it appeared for the wrong sink.


The townie/downtownie draw in my game really sucked.  For the first two unlocks in the 2nd generation I wanted to lifted science and medical, but none of the townies/downtownies were high in either of these.  Most of them were in slacker or culinary, or were very low in their careers thanks to sadorandomness.  So I unlocked slacker earlier than I'd planned to, with the heir's spouse.


I'm just a player, and not very awesome, so I don't know what causes it.  I find that sometimes mine stop working, so I turn them off and then turn them on again.  That usually fixes it until they stop working again.

The obvious answer is to simply murder them until one shows up. Just keep killing, and you'll get a level 9/10 in the right career eventually. Your acts of murderous mayhem can even be performed during the Uni phase. Who says violence isn't the answer? The Gypsy is useful for this, since she will summon townies for you to murder. Pay minspec, query job, if wrong, murder.

Add in running a couple of relationship builders. If they don't know you, stupid sims get all pissy if you ask them what their job is, like it's a state secret or something.

This would make a hilarious story plot. It's also useful for finding the gen 2 spouse, and townies who don't make the career grade can then provide cowplant food and its health-giving milk.

Takes too long, especially when your score is dropping as you drag it out. You'd want to commit your murders in advance to line up the eligibles before leaving Uni. Borrowing the SS cowplant would help, too.

*laughs* Would make it very Fallout/Mad Max esque.

"You're not useful?! OUT TO THE WASTES WITH YOU!"

Heh. I'm going to have my elders that have just moved out die of old age on another lot and thus give some much-needed inheritance money to their broke relative in Uni. :D


It worked for Pamela Anderson.  ;D


That sounds like a MST3K movie I once saw, Red Zone Cuba.

I've also had the problem of townies not wanting to 'disclose' what their job was; however, some of them made their career field pretty obvious when they walked past the lot in their work uniforms. That's how I got Brandon Lillard (Business) and Goopy (Military) without having to ask them.

I've restarted this challenge for the third time (last time I made it through in 66 days) but this time I'm going to play my founder household as a Legacy family (with the additional handicaps of Patriachy, Strict Family Values and True Love for that particular family) and I have also added some additional families:
The Larsons (from OFB)
The Jacquets (also from OFB, the household also includes Gilbert's employee/girlfriend from the bakery - They escaped from Big Shit Happening together)
The Dantes (downloaded from this site - http://www.jennthesimmergirl.com/fellowship2.php (http://www.jennthesimmergirl.com/fellowship2.php))
The Burtons (downloaded from the same site)
The Vegas (The second Vega family on the site)
Malcolm Landgraab IV (zombified and stripped of his wealth)
I will be playing those families by Prosperity Challenge rules (including playing a strict rotation of those households, the Legacy family and any other spin off households from those households) and any apocalypse restrictions not already lifted by the legacy family will apply to the other households in the neighbourhood.

So in other words I am playing a combined Apocalypse/Legacy/Prosperity Challenge.

I must say that playing the other families have changed my priorites for what order to lift the restrictions. My founder was going to lift Natural Science and his wife to be was going to lift military but having played the other household under the full list of restrictions I might have gone for a medical/culinary combo instead.  However the OFB sims all have snapdragons in their inventories all ready to pull out when NS is lifted (and so does my founder's future wife) and the downloaded families are going to acquire some once NS is lifted.  Law and Paranormal are also much higher on the list.

The downloaded families are all rather, um, interesting families to play even in a normal hood.  I challenge you to add them to your Apocalypse hood!

   Hello all, i'm obviously missing a hint/trick.  All of my YA/Knowledge sims that i start out at College, (with the LTW of Max 7 Skills) other than the first few skills, they rarely roll up any more after the first day.  Is there some trick to set their personalities a certain way that i'm missing so that they consistently 'want' to learn new skills, and there-by keep those asperation points rolling in?   I've tried various allocations, serious/active/etc?

It's not all that good a rule, but usually, if you fulfill skilling wants, they will continue to roll them up.

Strangely enough, I consider college to be the worst time to be a knowlege sim.
Once a sim's an adult, they get the 'gain logic skill 5' '6' '7' train going... but in college, they get points for 'earn a skill point' but I never get them 'on a roll'.. I think they have too many other distractions that roll easier for them, like do homework, go to class.

What I tend to do now, I start them as my second to least favorite type of sim... Popularity... they learn a little, get good grades, make friends and best friends, and get the points for doing it... then when college offers an aspiration change I change them to knowlege.  - now they have the friends already made they need for SS or just to invite home later, and they can start learning skills. I max out the most critical and hardest to earn skills, then easier things like cooking, creativity, logic, I have them max at home. that puts the telescope 'abduct me please' time to best use... :) and gives good aspiration boosts with minimal effort when they're really needed.

======================UPDATE=======================
Hi everybody, rather than perform Necromancy, (even though this is a good thread, well worth resurrecting..) I decided to put an update in this thread....

I think this was my last post in the thread...  hence where I'm putting the update.
Earlier, my challenge was going very well, when my hard drive crashed...
I completely lost all my hoods.  :'(
That's been a while back.

I'm now considering restarting the challenge... and have been looking through the pets additions and seasons playtesting changes.
(skimming more than studying so far.)

I have a few more mini challenges to finish first, but then this will be my next challenge I'll do.
I was really enjoying it before.

If anyone reads this update, I have had a thought that raises a question, however.

We all know the 'no food in inventory' rule that would cause nice green cheesecake...
One thing I'm wondering, however...

Someone a page or two ago mentions selling snapdragons to potential mates so they will be in their inventories.

Well, with the update of no business owned by the YA founder, (If it exists, I'll have to look later... too tired to verify now.) you can no longer SELL the flowers..

But you can 'GIVE GIFT'.

It seems it would be nice for future spouses to have snapdragons AND cheesecake in their inventories..
Sure, the food would need removed the first day if the proper restriction is not lifted, but lets say your sim is a female..
She gets preggers BEFORE marriage..
as she is about to get really sadly hungry, she marries her mate.
She then stuffs herself with cheesecake.

2 good things brought about. Food, and Twins.

Legal, or not?

Oh.. and the PETS restrictions look.. fun. :(

Fortune sims are also quite good in college because they will have lots of big power wants to get good grades.

Knowledge sims are effectively broken in college. After the initial round of grade-related wants is done, expect to get absolutely nothing purposeful worth doing.

J.M.'s right so what I do if I need to keep their aspiration meter gold+ is find them a lover. One dream date/day will put them into platinum and provide sufficient aspiration points to drive the thinking cap and eclectic energizer. They'll usually roll up "Do Term Paper" at the start of the semester and "Do Assignment" after attending class so that'll provide any additional aspiration points that you might need. With this technique, it just doesn't matter whether they roll up skill gain wants or not. Sure, it's mechanical. Sure, it's about as romantic as a hike through a garbage dump but points is points. Without breaking a simulated sweat, it's no big deal to permaplat a "Max 7" LTW Knowledge CAS Sim before the end of their first semester as a junior.

Oh, and here's a silly trick you can pull when they spin up "Buy Drum Kit" or "Buy Bass" or something similar. Buy the item and stuff it into their inventory. When they spin up the want again, buy a new one and sell off the one you've stashed. Stash the new one then rinse and repeat. Lots faster than running a date when you've plenty of aspiration points built up and just need to zoom back up into platinum.

You take that long? By then you miss your free change-asp. I like to max out before then, so I can pick another ASP if I want. Crack that whip!

Junking an object from your inventory incurs no ASP hit and returns your money immediately, no need to keep it there. This is a great technique for children, also, since children often have nothing but stupid, unsatisfiable wants.

Is the ability to delete items from your Inventory an OfB feature? I've never been able to do it, and I only have Uni and Nightlife.

Yes.

A couple questions for you apocalypse players.

1. There is no restriction on the orb while the founder is still at Uni, is there?

2. Is there any way to get a car and the obstacle course(military career reward) placed at the same time?  You can't place either one of them anywhere but the ground floor because of the 8x8 rule until politics is lifted.  Do you have to make a choice of one over the other?  Do you just keep the course in someone's inventory until you need to get a sim up to 10 body?

3. When using the crafting tables after business is lifted, do you have to stick max 3 items in inventory?

1. There are no restrictions on the founder while they're at Uni.

2. If you can fit them both under the 8x8 house on pillars, then yes you can. I personally haven't tried building a house on pillars yet, though, so I can't tell you for certain if you can.

3. Yes, unless you've already unlocked *goes to check* Athletics.

The driveway is 8x5. The obstacle course is 8x3. If you put them side-by-side, that's 8x8 which will completely fill the area you're allowed to use, leaving no room for stairs or elevators. You'll have to use teleportation to get in and out of the house. Sims aren't allowed to sleep outside. Babies and Toddlers will need to sleep, so your Sims will need to give birth inside the house. Children can't teleport, so they'll be stuck inside and miss school, leading to poor grades and a visit from the Social Worker.

It might be practical to use both the driveway and the obstacle course for a short period of time but you'll need to get rid of one or the other after a few days. Go for the punching bag, it's much more practical.

Thanks for all the responses.

To me, the obstacle course is the best skill builder bar none.  Since I can't find a way to put the course and a car beneath the house, i'm going to have to play around with them switching them back and forth.  The car(as I understand it) is basically so you don't miss a day of work by being late.

I have a female founder and my plan for her is to unlock the natural scientist, and have her spouse unlock business.  The next 2 I plan on unlocking are science and military in that order.  I plan on getting thinking caps when I unlock the science restriction unless I get abducted first.

I'm trying to figure out what 2 items I should bring back from college.  I am thinking about 2 snapdragons or 2 smart milks or 1 of each.  I need to unlock science and military as quick as I can so should trying for the stuck smart milk emitter be my main goal?  I usually have great luck in getting it.  Only 1 or 2 babies that my sims have had, have not had it.  What do you think?

My founder knows the Count.  I haven't decided if I want to make her a vampire or not but it's a definate possibility before she graduates.

What is the best way to determine which of the townies are near or at the top of their career track?  I want to pick out my spouse before I leave uni.  I know you can ask them what field they are in, but I want them near the top of it.

They will tell you their specific job. If they're not at the top, either L9/10, kill them and get another one.

The main purpose of the car during the early part of the challenge is allowing you to invite Best Friends. This means you can wait until after college to choose a spouse, which means you can change plans after you've had some actual experience with the restrictions. Without a car, you can only invite Loves (even Crushes don't qualify) until the Military restriction is lifted. That makes it essential to choose your future spouse and fall in Love before leaving college if you plan to start without a car. If you don't have a Love or a car, you'll have to take whoever walks by and hope to get lucky.

A car also makes it possible to go back to work after some promotions in order to get a second promotion the same day. This is possible whenever you have at least two hours left in the new job schedule.

Switching back and forth between a car and the obstacle course isn't something you can do very often but you can do it a few times. You need to lift the Athletic restrictions before you can put either a car or the obstacle course into your inventory. You need to lift the Business restrictions to sell them. Since you plan on lifting Business early, so you can probably start with a car and earn the obstacle course with your founder before she gets a job in NS or after she finishes the career. The founder's spouse could also earn the obstacle course after finishing Business. That would give you two obstacle courses to use for the second generation. Sell the car and put in one course. Train everyone you can. Sell the course and get another car. One of the Sims you trained should go on to finish the Military career and then the car won't be needed, so you can sell it and put in the other obstacle course. Keep in mind that anyone using the obstacle course before the Military restrictions are lifted has to have a Military job and if they don't stay in the Military, they can't come back to it later until the Slacker restrictions are lifted.

If you have lifted NS you can replace the pillars/stilts with walls just making sure you keep the ends of the obstacle course and driveway free.  The best place for the staircase is on the right hand side.  It will block the passenger door of the two door cars.  What happens is that any passengers will stand at the back of the car and do a weird hop into the car.  I'm sort of cool on that, in reallife my sister's car has way more junk around it (she's staying at home after her marriage broke up and my step dad is a real pack rat) standard stragedy for anybody wanting to sit in the passenger seat next to the driver is to stand to the side and back of the car while she gets in the car and backs it out two metres and when she has backed it out hop into the car.

As to getting snapdragons into a house once NS is lifted and business hasn't remember that the founders inventory is not the only inventory contributing items to the household, the psouse has one too.  Pinstar is agnostic as far as to how other households of playable sims should be treated in the Apocalypse neighbourhood, the only comment fromt he creators on the topicis that not having neighbours seems rather silly.  So having other playable sims in the neighbourhood is alright.  what I did was while my founder was in college I got one of the Bluewater playables (Florence Delarosa) up to a gold badge in Floristry.  She and her husband (I married her off to Chester Gieke) checked out all the townies and downtownies and sold snapdragons to the high flyers.  After all this intelligence gathering I was going to get Florence to introduce my founder to the most likely candidate but he run into her on his first trip into downtown.  They turned out to be a three bolt couple...  With the aspiration boost my founder got from dating her he only slept once while he was in college.

She had three snagdragons in her inventory when she married my founder

Very sneaky! And clever.

I completed the challenge in 45 Sim-days using an initial unlock pair of Culinary (founder) + Military (spouse). Unlocked Medical (first 2nd gen heir) then Science with her husband, choosing the elixir as the aspiration reward. The other of the first pair of twins unlocked Slacker. The remaining tracks unlocked in the following order: Slacker, NatSci, Athletics, Politics, Life of Crime, Show Biz, Business, Law Enforcement, Art and Paranormal.

Reducing the number of required pregnancies by using cheesecake is a boon. I had studied the Culinary track in detail and decided to place a driveway and purchased a car for my founder. That was the correct choice as she topped out the track very rapidly with three doubled promotions, allowing a quick start to the family. To be sure, NatSci+Military or Medical+Military or Show Biz+Military might be less stressful simming as each offers a method to raise hygiene but none of them can compete with cheesecake-powered pregnancies. The first generation spouse took a job in Athletics for a punching bag and all of the heirs max'ed their body skill as children so the Body 10 requirement was never a problem.

The three spouses provided auto-unlocks for Military, Science and Business (Joe Carr, Benjamin Long and Ivy Copur) and only five pregnancies were required in total. Having four toddlers to care for was stressful at times but an efficient 8x8 layout made coping not too bad. I batched the heirs through university in three clumps, the first set of twins, then two pairs of twins and a final two pairs of twins. As usual, University was mind-numbing and not terribly exciting. Money was never really a problem either at home or at university. The founder had 39k when she returned from college (it was quite tedious working as barista before she began skilling toward permaplat, LTW Max 7).

I never did manage to get anyone abducted so the only aspiration reward available was the elixir. The founder's carryback of two Smart Milk dispensers and her diploma was perfect. Other than the rare kitchen fire, one burglary at college, and one electrocution during computer repair, the play was uneventful. Having food available on demand more than compensated for being stinky early in the challenge as it made managing the pregnancies much, much easier.

It's an interesting challenge and I enjoyed it.

I found out that with snapdragons my founder and spouse managed to max their motives easily plus got my heir/esses and spairs to unlock restrictions plus a good combinaton for unlimited travel is military and law enforcement as you don't have to worry if you're teen or elder is 10 body points inorder to go to work!

Anybody know where to get the safehouses mentioned in the rules?

The original Rules page had this link, which I used to get the houses.  Don't know if they're still there, can't access the site from work.

http://thesims2.ea.com/mysimpage/mysimpage.php?user_id=131247

They are. Thanks for that.

I really loved this challenge, though I failed it the first run-through.  I may have bit off more than I could chew by starting with an adult.

Looks like culinary is a better strategic starting profession than medical, but I have a question about autonomous sponge-bathing -- are neat or messy sims more likely to do it?  My sims waited for a really long time before heading for the sink even if they were miserable.

Sponge-bathing is too unreliable, just go with primping, grooming, or permaplat which renders even red hygiene largely irrelevant.

I liked your story, very grim.

You are supposed to start with a YA, why did you choose not to?

Thanks for the hygiene tips and the compliment on my story.  I think I'm gonna try to start another run-through of this challenge tonight.  It's really nice to play with sims who live in a larger context than just whatever happens in their house.

With my last pair of twins at University, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not an onrushing freight train!  :D

It's Day 68, and I expect the last two siblings of my founder to complete the challenge in another sim-week or thereabouts so about 75 sim-days to do Seasons Apocalypse with the strategy I used. I enjoyed the challenge very much and learned some things from doing it which is IMO the mark of a good challenge.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of this challenge follow.

The Good
It's... um... quite challenging which good challenges should be. I would not recommend this for the casual Simmer, and if micromanaging isn't your thing, I'd advise skipping this challenge. In Pinstar's description, these rules are termed playtest rules. They are certainly that. The multiple interlocks on the abilities and objects you need to make rapid progress in solving the challenge make it extremely difficult to get off the ground and get going. The constant winter weather is grim and depressing, and you will likely grow to hate sim-snow. I know I did.

I do not have the Pets expansion so none of what follows applies to those rules. If you analyze what must be done to solve the challenge, you discover that there are twenty (20) career tracks total that must be unlocked. 10 of those are the original careers, four are from University and six are from Seasons. What you also discover is that no NPC will ever have a University career nor will they have a Seasons career. The only career an NPC (and thus a spouse) can ever have is one from the original set of careers. This leads us to the first strategem: if the founder and the siblings all do University + Seasons careers while their mates do original careers, the maximum number of children required to complete the challenge is nine (9). Unlocking Culinary relatively early makes cheesecake available, and using it to force twins gives the likely number of required pregnancies as six. Assuming you unlock access to college first (see below), that bounds the total number of sim-days required to approximately 4 x 6 = 24 child-bearing days. Other factors such as lot crowding, difficulty of conception, etc. will make your mileage vary.

The Bad
In one respect, Pinstar's Seasons Apocalypse rules are bad because they eliminate multiple paths to victory. Any solution which does not begin with Education + Military as its initial pair of unlocks is non-optimal. Simply put, if you do not gain the ability to launch Sim teens off to college ASAP, you cannot solve the challenge in the minimum number of days. If that's not a problem for you, do as you will but for those of you who wish to test themselves against Pinstar's challenge, this pair of careers is your starting point.

From a challenge design standpoint, that is an unfortunate outcome because good challenges encourage multiple paths to victory and promote multiple strategems in so doing. Pinstar does a fine job usually but, in this case, he blew it. The real challenge as the player in Seasons Apocalypse is to figure out how to proceed from this initial point. Your founder does Education and their spouse does Military but where do you go from there? All you've managed to do at that point is get your Sim kids eligible to attend high school and go to college (iff they have Body 10). Your Sims still stink, their food supply is severely limited, their phones and computers don't work, career rewards are useless, and they're stuck in an 8x8 floating dung-heap of a house in the middle of a never-ending blizzard. ;D

The Ugly
So much rides on the townies and downtownies that to succeed in this challenge, you must carefully inventory each and every one of them, even the butt-ugly ones (isn't that most of them? :)). You must find those who are L9 or L10 in their careers and befriend them before your founder leaves college. Previous experience with the Apocalypse Challenge has taught me that a Female Knowledge Sim with LTW Max 7 Skills is the ideal founder because it's easy to permaplat her before the Apocalypse begins. Being permanently platinum is invaluable since stinky is irrelevant, fun isn't absolutely necessary and she never blows a Smart Milk feeding.

To inventory the available NPCs, take your founder downtown and interact with townies and downtownies. Ignore service Sims, elders, young adults, teens and children if any are present; you only want adult townies and downtownies. Once the short term relationship hits 20 or so, ask them what their job is. Make a list and check it twice, recording gender, career and level. Level 9s and 10s are preferable but keep track of the male and female with the highest career level in each job track. Be prepared to move on to the next lot when you've interacted with each adult Sim present. Rinse and repeat until you have at least one Level 9 of each gender in each career. This process will take a long time so don't be in a hurry to finish it. Befriend any Sims that qualify as spouses for your founder and her children.

Choosing the order of unlocking careers is where the challenge gets interesting. Without Culinary, it's difficult to keep everyone fed. Without Medical, the lack of hygiene causes difficulties, particularly with Sim kids. They can wash their hands until the hide comes off, and it doesn't help. Their hygiene desperation move is to wash their hands. It's useless. The best thing to do is keep them in platinum aspiration as best you can, and keep them busy skilling. Without Science, your computer is useless except for writing novels. Even with Science, if you haven't unlocked Gamer, the phones and computer are only useful on Tuesdays between midnight and noon. Note: this is the only day of the week that Sim teens can legally depart for university until Gamer is unlocked so plan ahead. Moreover, it's the only day of the week you can use the computer to search for jobs.  All other days of the week you must use the newspaper, and without unlocking Journalism, you may only take the first job offered.

I have no certain answers as to how to proceed. Each solution has its advantages. My preference is to unlock Gamer + Science next followed by Adventurer + Culinary then Art or NatSci + Medical. Here's why: without phones and computers, you're screwed. You can't find the jobs your Sims need nor can you maintain your friendships. But most importantly, you need to be able to "Find New Place" to move Sims out of the house, and you absolutely must have the Elixir of Life to keep your founder from aging. If you keep your founder young and healthy, she can bear every sim child you'll need to finish the challenge. No other Sims will need to permaplat and no other Sims will be required to stay in the family home after unlocking their track. They can move out right away to make room for more siblings.

After getting the computers and the phones fixed, Adventurer + Culinary is good. Unlocking the Adventurer track is very nice since the career reward acts like a snapdragon but better still, now you can use the Super Bookcase from Hell. Your founder can teach using any career rewards she has access to, and your Sim teens can make use of the Sensotwitch Lie Detector as teens to gain creativity (they're still prohibited from using the super bookcase to gain creativity by the Artist restrictions). Best of all, you get a second aspiration reward for unlocking Adventure. Eclectic Energizers are the obvious choice since they fix all manner of problems (like hygiene) though Thinking Caps aren't bad either. Unlocking Culinary is a stress reliever. It's stressful simming when you have to constantly watch their food supply though saving leftovers has made this much easier. Tip: buy an early fridge and grill if you can afford it and grill a batch of burgers every day even if your founder isn't hungry. Stash the leftovers in the fridge and build up a stockpile of extra food for the lean times when she's pregnant and needs extra portions to keep fed. As always, meditate when she has nothing better to do to save on food.

My fourth unlock pair is less certain for the sibling. Medical is the obvious choice for the spouse but NatSci, Music, and Art all have positive benefits. Music breaks the grip of permanent winter but NatSci enables gardening underneath the house on the land not used by the driveway. Fresh produce and juice have positive benefits so NatSci is a good choice. Art stomps the creativity problem once and for all. It makes the simming less stressful, and you can't go wrong with that choice. Music is perhaps the weakest of the three choices but then again when you've endured endless days of blowing snow, maybe it's not such a weak choice after all.

Managing the Household
With the Pets expansion, the limit on the max number of Sims per household increased from eight to ten (10) but it's a spongy ten. The two slot increase is intended to be used for Sim pets. If you have eight Sims in the house, you can't add another non-pet Sim until someone moves out. If you have seven Sims in the house, you can add up to two Sims by pregnancy so cheesecake-created twins will work just fine. Plan for the slots needed to bring the siblings' spouses into the house via marriage and make certain that you leave adequate time for them to unlock their tracks before launching another round of pregnancies. For those who wish to experience true Sim hell, download J. M.'s "harder jobs" hack and install it. It'll make you ponder the joys of dropping out of university early. ;)

What I do is batch my sim kids through University in groups of two or three. This helps pay the Mob protection money on their stuff, and minimizes the total amount of time I have to spend at University. I find the time spent at Uni to be mind-numbingly boring so I want as little of it as I can manage. With 9 sim kids, three batches of three isn't too bad though the early unlocks are so important that you'll probably end up doing a batch of two, a batch of three and two more batches of two each.

In conclusion, I get the sense that not many Simmers have tried this challenge. Perhaps that's because Pinstar labelled his rules as "in playtest" or perhaps it's because this is a gonad-masher of a challenge that's not for the faint of heart. I've seen a couple of variants on this challenge on the TS2 boards (the Jericho challenge in particular) but few people have had the urge to try Pinstar's version. If you do, I'd love to see what you come up with.

Happy Simming!
--Alvaron

For even more fun, try with the required degree hack. Business and Medical will then require Uni.

Female knowledge w/Max 7 skills is not the only option. Actually, a male sim works better because he has more breeding time and therefore the time that you spend getting to top career level is moot, plus you have a good 20 extra days of fertility at the end of the cycle. If you marry in a townie female at level 9 of her career, you could possibly wait either one or no days to get her on the baby track, depending on work schedule. Also, any of the non-career, non-baby/marriage LTW's can be done beforehand. Ok, that's really not many. Popularity's "Have 30 best friends", Romances "Have X simultaneous loves" or "Woohoo with X different sims" or  Pleasure's "Have 50 Dream Dates" can work.

I've done Apocalypse in the intended style and honestly I didn't care for it. Stink annoys me and the restrictions and their unlocks don't always make sense to me. Plus, I can't see how you could possibly have a medical profession before educators or how there can be enough running water for sinks but not for the bathtub. I have modified and bastardized it to merge with other challenges, though.

Yeah, actually this surprised me, too.  Many choose a male founder for exactly the childbirth reason; he can still have kids even if he's an elder.  From what I understand, it's even more important with the Seasons rules before Gamer is lifted, because you can only move Sims in on a Tuesday.  If you lift Hopelessness on Wednesday and it isn't Gamer, you're stuck for six more days.  The people I know who have done/are doing it (admittedly not too many) have chosen Popularity, Romance switching to Popularity at the sophomore year, and Knowledge switching to Popularity sophomore year.  Twenty Best Friends and Fifty First Dates are also really doable (and I suppose you could even do Make 100,000 Simoleans). 

If it were me, I'd pick Romance or Popularity + car.

PB

I started this challenge before all the INSANE rule changes, with a Romance female who wanted to woohoo 20 sims. It was easy to get her platinum before the aspiration deadline change, at which point I switched her to Knowledge. As far as I can tell, the pets rules made this challenge impossible because there was some cyclical rule about "you can't have a pet before X, but to achieve X you need a pet".

I liked the idea of the challenge before the apparent point of the challenge became about how Pinstar could tweak the rules to make it impossible.

The pet crap is idiotic, IMO. No way does my pet reaching the top of their career have anything to do with teaching a kid to do their homework. Most of it (and the Seasons rules, really) fall under the "throw in some restrictions to make it look like I considered all the EPs" category. I changed some when I did it. I have a spreadsheet at home with the revised rules, but I think basically it was that food delivery couldn't be unlocked before business, military, and culinary. Crops had to be used as the only food source until then, and had to be kept inside until Environmental Science was unlocked. There was a whole lot of other stuff I tweaked just for common sense reasons.

Since success in the challenge is measured by the number of days required to complete the challenge, the time you spend getting to the top of a career is never moot. If the number of sim days you take to do the challenge isn't important to you, so be it.

With regard to male pregnancies, you must be using a hack that I do not use because the only way my male Sims can become pregnant is alien abduction. That's hard to do with little or nothing unlocked since telescopes aren't available unless you unlock NatSci. I have no hacks that increase the chances of alien abduction so males conceiving that way is a very low probability event. If you unlock NatSci with your founder instead of Education, you're screwed because your Sim teens cannot go to high school. How does one grow them into adults if they flunk out first?

I do all Knowledge Sims since they routinely spin up wants to gain skills, do homework, write term papers and do college assignments, all things I want my challenge Sims to do. If you want to make friends or woohoo 20 or whatever for your permaplatness, have at it. I don't consider those options better nor more useful than LTW Max 7.

professorbutters commented on founder gender and aspiration switching in college:
Aging isn't a problem if you take the Elixir as the aspiration reward for unlocking Science. It allows you to leverage the time investment made in the founder and ignore the Paranormal track, unlocking it as the last career done. Insofar as switching aspirations in college, it's not necessary. You can spend all the time you want downtown with your founder doing every social interaction you wish, building friendships and establishing relationships, without the college clock ever moving. What's the point of changing aspirations when you can have as many dates with your founder as you want to get all the aspiration points you'll ever need? There is no point to that. You can make all the money you'll ever need as a barista even though it's mind-numbingly boring at 16 simoleons a pop. I usually call a halt at 30K or so before I yank out the rest of my thinning hair.

Your point about the car+driveway is well taken. Leaving space underneath the house for the obstacle course used to be a viable alternative but the Adventurer restriction killed that strategy.

rohina pointed out the brokenness in the Pets Apocalypse rules:
Unleashed didn't light my fire in TS1 so I skipped Pets in TS2. I don't have that expansion so I ignored all rules dealing with pets in the challenge. It's too bad that Pinstar hasn't fixed the Pets rules.

I agree that his Seasons rules lack that special something. They make the challenge incredibly difficult but I wouldn't say that they make the challenge more challenging. That's the point, after all, isn't it? It has to be more than an exercise in Simmer stress testing; the challemge should be enjoyable, with multiple paths to victory. After 50 days or so of staring at blowing Sim snow, you begin to ask yourself just how much fun is this? I do hope that Pinstar will spend some time polishing his rules and bringing some fun back to his Apocalypse challenge.

The music restriction is incredibly retarded in my opinion. Should I get around to this challenge (someday :P) that is one rule that I am skipping/changing.

"Oh hai guiz. letz hav a consert."

"woah dood, the snoe is meltin."

"hurrrr, kewl."

Where are these new Seasons rules? They aren't at the top of the link. I want to see if the 0day exploits are still valid, heh.

Have a go at it. (http://www.legacychallenge.com/inplaytesting.html)

Time spent is never moot, true, but reproductive time is. Children can be used for unlocks, as well as the spouse of only the heir. Restrictions for moving in a sim is that they are used for breeding. So, Sim A is a male. He moves back from Uni and takes, let's say 8 days before he can move in another sim (unlocks the hopelessness lock & it's Tuesday--stupid rule--). He still has 22 days of adulthood + 20 or so days of elderhood of fertility for creating spawn. He moves in Sim B (at level 9 of career), she breeds until elderhood. She meets with an early demise. He moves in Sim C (at level 9 of her career), she breeds until enough children have reached adulthood and unlocked their restrictions.

Unless you are Pescado and somehow have discovered the super secret zero day method, it's going to take you more than the one sim's lifetime to complete. More children = more consecutive work on unlocks = less days.

It was my understanding that only the spouse who was the parent of the next heir could unlock a restriction.  So while a second spouse could continue to breed more sprogs, she couldn't unlock any restrictions although her offspring with the founder/heir could.

This was a rule change, but yes.

I was planning on starting this challenge, but have only just realised there were Seasons rules as well. They look like a pain in the arse for the most part. Can anyone tell me how much worse the challenge is (bar the secret 0 day method).

Though I did have a quick go earlier on with a CAS Adult because I couldn't be bothered going though college. Upgraded him with the Debugger... and he died in a fire. Making his first meal, no less.

Tell me, did that happen before or after you chose that avatar?  :D  I'm wondering if you jinxed him...

Happened after :P It's entirely possible that I jinxed him since that's the first fire death I've ever had. I didn't even have any in the I'm Surrounded by Idiots challenge!

How did he get a stove? Stoves have to be unlocked with culinary.

I suspect the cheapest grill.

You know what they say-cheaters never prosper. (Translated in this case as-your sim will be burnt to death. Haha) ;D

The grill is allowed, though ;)


Not a good idea to use it indoors, of course... :D

Eep, that teaches me not to skim posts, I only read Zaza's :D

It was the cheapest grill :P

Problem was, though, anytime I told him to extinguish the fire, it dropped out of his queue so he could panic about said fire.

Sounds like you could use the firemod, although I'm not sure if that would be "allowed" by the challenge.

That would probably be a good idea. I assume it would be allowed as it stops stupid behavior like burning themselves to death by panicking.

Still, no-one's answered my first question. How much more annoying is the challenge with Seasons rules?

I never tried it without the seasons rules, so I can't answer.  It is quite difficult, and temptation to cheat must be fought a lot in my case.  I've been considering using pre-seasons rules.  Anybody know if Pinstar is going to update for bon voyage?

Because of the whole spouse loophole, I've decided to add a few difficulties: only every other generation may marry, and each unlocked restriction will necessitate generating one uncontrollable sim (using boolprop).  If the house becomes full, the heir cannot have children or get married until an uncontrollable sim dies.  Furthermore, it is not permissable to kill an uncontrollable sim intentionally.

It's annoying period, and the Seasons rules make even less sense than the earlier ones. Use it as inspiration and do your own.

The Seasons rules aren't as annoying as the Pets rule.  When I did a Seasons playthrough of this challenge, I ignored the Pets rules.

The phone restriction and the jobsearch restriction can be a hassle (it makes it harder to plan your path).  I had my founder call her lover over on a Tuesday and get knocked up before she found a job.  My founder didn't look for work until the kid was a teen.  I wasn't going to wait until she'd hit the top of her career and then wait for the next Tuesday before she could move her spouse in.  That would have meant too long a delay before the second generation. 

The not going to school thing for teens makes their aspiration drop within a few days, so it's easier to force age the first teen to adult with elixir.

Money was no problem for my last founder, given how easy it is to make cash in the game before the challenge starts.  She spent a lot of time fishing at a downtown community lot before she finished uni, which made her a lot of friends as well as a lot of cash. 

Before she graduated, I had her invite over sims who were high level in high priority careers (i.e. potential spouses for future generations), and had her fall in love with them.  That way she could invite them over later and introduce them to her children & grandchildren.

Hmm, I think I might play it again ... this time not getting my founder a job at all, just getting her pregnant every Tuesday until she's too old.

I've started this challenge and modified the rules a bit.  I'm ignoring the pets rules (and pets).  I just can't be bothered with that.  I am also ignoring the season rules, because I think the original rules are more than enough. However, I am going to respect the restrictions and career paths that unlocks the new features of Season. 

The one fun addition to the challenge that Season brought is to change all the season to winter.  That's an awesome. idea  I am going to only change it back, only once the challenge is accomplished.  That seems to make sense to me.

When I did my pseudo-apocalypse in the sixth generation of my alphabet family, I went with constant summer instead of constant winter. But then it wasn't a nuclear event that did the 'hood in, it was the Oversoul killing all life in a rain of fire. But I changed the rules around a lot. No environmental until medicine (water for raising plants) was unlocked, plus all food had to be grown on lot, beyond that provided in the first fridge, until military (supply chain) was unlocked. Kind of made it harder, kind of not... I chucked pets restrictions as well as a couple of Seasons ones that made no logical sense.

The concept of this challenge is great but there are TOO MANY RULES.

I read other people's challenge stories with great enjoyment, and even printed out the rules for myself. One day, I would love to try it but logistically, before you do anything, you have to go through 5 pages of rules to check if whatever-it-is is permitted.

I'm having fun with this challenge.  Yeah, there are a lot of rules, but you quickly get used to assuming something is restricted until you've done a good search and find it isn't.  And if you make a mistake it isn't as if you fail the challenge, as long as you fix it.  And I certainly have made some mistakes.  I'm not doing the Pets rules- those can pretty much be ignored, especially if you pretty much ignore pets anyways- but I'm not sure what I'll do about BV restrictions, since I started the challenge before that EP. 

Add me to the list of "don't play pet and seasons rules".  I just completely ignore pets.  If they roll the want to get a bird cage/womrat cage, I might indulge them but never fill the cage.  Basically it just becomes another piece of furniture you have to sell and re-buy if you haven't lifted criminal (which I haven't yet).

I'm also ignoring the new Season's careers.  Since I'm doing that, I do allow the computer to find jobs but ONLY if I get majority seasons jobs when using the newspaper (so 2 seasons jobs means I get to use the computer).  As for growing food, I didn't allow it until Natural Science was unlocked and the planting has to follow the building restrictions still in play until I lift politics.  So the McNut family has a few growable plots along the side of the driveway.  They aren't allowed to sell the produce, so it just sits in inventory.  Most of the produce is pathetic, so there's no reason to do anything with it.

I did end up cheating a bit when generation 2's spawn came along.  I was in the process of lifting Medical but the toddlers/children were doing horribly without being able to get clean.  So I'd wait until they were totally red for hygiene then bought the most expensive tub.  All kids got washed and then I tucked it in my "penalty box" (the fourth floor of the house, not accessible to anyone).  The penalty box is used to penalize myself when I cheat (either accidentally or on purpose).  It currently has about 6 of the most expensive tubs (all from cheating before Medical was lifted), three baby beds, two tables, a changing table, and easel.  I have to sell/re-buy it all due to not having criminal lifted, so I figure it evens out.

I'm getting ready to begin generation four and have already lifted:  Hopelessness/Nat Sci/Alien Technology (all with the founder), Medical (founder's wife), Athletic (gen 2 son), Slacker (gen 2 daughter), Military (gen 2 son's wife), Law Enforcement (gen 2 daughter's husband).  Gen 3's son (of gen 2's son) just graduated college and returned home while his cousin headed off to college.  The household consists of three elders (all gen 2--one moved out due to divorce), 1 adult, and 1 child.  I'm thinking Paranormal and Culinary will be the next two careers I go for.

I know there's some debate over how heirs work.  In my challenge, if you live in the main house and have the founder's last name (McNut) then you can lift a restriction (exception being only one spouse per sim--so if you divorce, that's it for you).  There is no "one" heir.  That rule was just too stupid for me.  If it was REALLY an apocalypse, would they restrict themselves like that?  And, the "one" heir rule makes the apocalypse challenge nothing more than a legacy and I've been there, done that.  

http://madame-ugly.livejournal.com/tag/apocalypse+challenge  (if you want to see some pics of what's happened so far)

I forgot one fun thing I added to the challenge, doh!.  It's what prompted me to start the challenge.  I installed JM's apocalypse zombie hack.  Before the game started, I used that annoying Traveller's family and killed them off.  I had the daughter resurrect them and turn them into zombies (I spawned the aspiration reward using the boolprop cheat).  Then I zombified the gypsy (lol, I enjoyed that) and a couple more unfortunate got zombified, who happened to drop by the lot.  You could also use JM's hack "make me a zombie". I discovered that only after I did all this.

So now there really ARE hordes of zombies in the neighborhood and they WILL eat your brain, if you loose the fight.  Make sure you got 10 body points lol.

I also installed one of Danny's multi-pc hack that allows you to phone the police to stop a fight.  I tested it and it works fine.  If you call the police they will stop the fight and take away the zombie.  Zombification only occurs if you loose the fight. Of course that can't be used until that restriction is lifted.  I also downloaded a dezombifying potion, but that won't be available till medical is unlocked.

I tried running a shop in college, before I noticed the rule against it, and let me tell you, zombies makes that near impossible.  They are constantly trying to attack you, so I had to prevent them accessing my sims, whose actions was constanly dropping from her queue trying to respond to the "attack" action.  But then the zombies attacked my customers instead lol.  Fun!

oh, here is a litle trick I learned reading a story.  Don't toilet train the toddlers, so when they poop their pants, you do a "change diaper" and that fills their bar halfway.  I'm hoping that my sims' husband will reach the top of his medical career soon, because I'll suffer with the kids, as there is no way for them to be clean.    It's really hard because his needs are too low to get promoted.  And there is no way to make him permaplat. Then I remembered meditation doh!.  I might actually get somewhere now.

I had to cheat and break the eat only once a day rule, because my sims would have starved.  That was before I remembered about meditation as well.

I haven't seen any update for BV, but I'll just ignore the whole expansion for now.  It's not like people trying to subsist in an apocalyptic world can have a nice little break away from it all :)

MadameUgly, your interpretation of the rules seem correct to me.  It specificially states"  Only Sims part of the bloodline and the spouses to heirs can unlock restrictions.".  To me that indicates clearly that any child of your founder can lift a restriction.   You are also limited by the fact that no member of your family can move out until the Military restriction is lifted. 

The way I see it, true blood children can lift restrictions, but only heirs can continue the bloodline (or at least for the purpose of lifting restrictions). The last doesn't seem to be stated anywhere but that's how I will play it.

I have a mod from MTS2 that allows for plots on foundations/upper stories, so I was using those but they had to be inside the house (tower, as it were) and hence take away precious living space.
Plots:
(http://thesims2.ea.com/sims2_exchange/story/00/164700/thumbnail_f365f9d2_b366e9ca.jpg) (http://thesims2.ea.com/sims2_exchange/story/00/164700/snapshot_f365f9d2_b366e9ca.jpg)
Tower, in early stages:
(http://thesims2.ea.com/sims2_exchange/story/00/164700/thumbnail_f365f9d2_93660a48.jpg) (http://thesims2.ea.com/sims2_exchange/story/00/164700/snapshot_f365f9d2_93660a48.jpg)

I've been reading Apocalypse-a-go-go by Toast recently, and he made an important "discovery" in the third generation. One of those things that you probably noticed when first playing the game but then took never let a toddler go low on bladder again and forgot. If you let them crap their pants and then change the diaper, they get half their hygeine back.

As for the zombies, I had approximately 20 Romance sims in the 'hood. I rolled new aspirations for them, and those who got Romance or Cheese were killed, zombified, and changed to Cheese. Would have been much more fun with Pescado's mod and then changing to cheese. Seriously, there's just something about the undead jonesing for a cheese sandwich that cracks me up.

Grr, this is making me want to do this again, and I already have a legacy/prosperity thing in the 3rd generation.

They get it all back if you use the changing table. Is that outlawed anywhere?

Yep.  Changing tables not allowed until Medical is lifted.

I finally unlocked the damn medical career.  It took FOREVER.  phew.  Guess what turn off all my sims will have this generation.  Stink!.  Should be a piece of cake now.

PS I just love Toast's stories.  They are hilarious.  I just finished her apocalypse story and am starting to read his Uglacy.  Are you sure it's a him? His/her? simself is female.

Doi. Toast's a she. Her avatar over at Boolprop is of some low-resolution monkies, and for some reason that says male to me. I have to remind myself that Assmitten's a girl all the time, too.

I thought I had everything planned out when I started my apocalypse (what careers I would go for in what order) and Medical wasn't one of the first.  Until I started playing.  It ended up being second because I couldn't get anyone to do anything if they were dirty.  And in order to sponge bathe, they had to chase everyone out of the room, which meant a pile up at the stairs and a lot of arm flailing and gnashing of teeth over having to wait.

Last night I was playing the McNut abode and I had a flu outbreak.  It's all because Amin (the guy who got divorced and evicted from the house) keeps knocking over the trash.  I finally had to set up a quarantine situation, where the healthy family members ended up sleeping in the living room while the sickies took over the upstairs.  Chick (gen 3 who just graduated college) missed his first day of work (paranormal) because I had him locked in a room (he was the last sicky and there was no way he was re-infecting the household--took the door off the room and everything).

I tried to plan the thing out, but I quickly discovered that with Journalism in place you just have to take what you can get.  And in this challenge, esp. in the early days, meditation is your best friend.  I'm a bit worried about this upcoming generation- they are all too Playful to meditate and neither Medical nor Culinary has been unlocked yet.  So far I have managed not to just kill them off.

I wanted to plan it out too, inspired (I should say copied) by Toast's Apocalypse strategy.  I got my founder a gold badge in flower making and planned to get her in the natural science career path to unlock the use of snapdragons bouquets.  Unfortunately that career was not in the paper, so I got her another job instead, hoping to see the natural science show up eventually.  But at the same time I was also conscious of the fact she had to reach the top of a career fairly fast, in order to move in a husband and get started on unlocking a second path. Eventually I had to settle on science, as that was the only half-decent choice.  I figured it would at least unlock the computer so I could have a better selection of jobs for her spouse, still hoping for that natural science career.  I managed to get her husband into medicine, but it took a long time for him to  get promoted, struggling as I was to maintain a half decent mood. 

If I had to do it again, I'd choose medicine for my founder.  It's so freaking miserable without hygiene.  The adults do ok with sponge baths, but it take so much longer than a shower, and you can't direct them to do it.  The less neat sims will either not do it at all, or do it only when they reach failure.  For the babies and toddlers a diaper change does the trick.  But for children, there is no way to get their hygiene up and being in failure makes them obessively wash their hands to no effect.  Which hogs the bathroom and prevents the parents from doing their sponge bath.  And stinky kids will refuse to do any homework.  (how unatural is that!).  I wish I'd find a hack that lets kids sponge bath.  It doesn't seem to make sense that they don't.

Hmm, am I missing something (or am I just cheating and don't know it).  I thought you could have the computer to start with.  Now, I'm working with pre-pets and pre-season's rules (that were re-posted onto another site, so something may have been lost in translation).  Either way, I've had the computer from day one but only use it for novel writing (only way to get creativity points) and since I have seasons but I'm not using the careers, I allow job searching on the computer if the newspaper is full of seasons careers.

I think it's key to start with a male founder.  That way they can still produce a spawn as an elder, should things not go as planned.

For even more horror, try this with the Uni careers hack  (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6773.0.html)by Syberspunk. That changes which careers require degrees and adds required specific majors for some, so that + Journalism restriction = more difficulty.

I'm so failing at withstanding the impulse to do this again. Ugh. I'll make a handy-dandy guide to restrictions like I did for myself last time, but without modifying rules, for sharing today over lunch.

EDIT: Grid attached. One sheet is for rules up to Pets, the second is modified for Seasons rules. I just find it easier when all the restrictions are in one column. I also made notations under each restriction as to whether they require degrees under normal game mechanics or whether they do with Syberspunk's mod. And since I just cleared out my photo folder for Queen's Cove after uploading the second chapter of the Ridges, I don't feel so guilty doing two things at once. It'll be a nice setup to switch from uber-rotation with too many dang kids and a fully decorated 'hood to one little household and brain-eating zombies. And I'll be rolling for which restrictions get lifted first, just for added drama.

Haha, I knew you wouldn't be able to resist!  You should try the zombie eat brain hack too.  Fun fun.

MadameUgly, the computer is allowed, but not using it to search for jobs. That's why I waited for that restriction to be lifted.

PS.  that spreadsheet is pretty cool.  Nice summary.

Can someone explain to me how that satellite in inventory thingie works?

Thanks Zazazu for the shiny spreadsheet  ;D

When I have finished my current legacy (which has hit the turgid 3rd generation is at college stage...)  I am SO going to try this.

IIRC it works as a typewriter only until you unlock Science

This may be the challenge that gets me past the limitation I've had since Sims 1.

"Eh, I'll make a family. Ooo, pretty family. Ooo, pretty kids. Eh, family's boring. Neighbourhood go die now." Rinse. Repeat.

I've started with a sim completely made of custom content, for storyline purposes. It doesn't hurt the Show Biz restrictions that her hair stops being pretty as the novelty of a silver chick with white hair wears off. The storyline is, the apocalypse happened before she was born, scientists fished out a pregnant zombie from the devastated region, and the zombie's spawn grew up to be my founder. The government eventually decides that peace should be brought to the region, and it just so happens that Evelyn is immune to further zombification, and any of her kids that inherit any of her custom genetics will share that immunity.

Two bugs have happened so far. The first one...her energy won't go down. It's maxed out and staying that way. I have a mod or five that maxes out energy, but none of them are active on her. 's what the game says, anyway. It'll probably fix itself when she moves into the Pocky Lips main neighbourhood. (Yes, I called it Pocky Lips. It was cute. I was more sleep-deprived than usual. Shut up.)

Second one, I sent her on vacation to Twikki Island so she could pick up a Mr. Mickles doll. (In exchange for this, she's lost a semester at college. When she moves to Pocky Lips, I'm waiting until Paranormal's unlocked before her family can use Mr. Mickles again.) She finds the proper map, goes to the Mysterious Hut, fixes the Witch Doctor's crap, and waits to get a Mr. Mickles doll. Suddenly the action is cancelled. Like, the Witch Doctor was waiting too long or something. Okay, so Evelyn decided to take a bath because she was stinky. I cancelled it long before he got to the hut, so it shouldn't have mattered.

Anyway, I internally wept since I either had to restart from the last save when she didn't have the map, or save and basically waste the damn vacation.

...despite all this, I still love this challenge.

The 'present' action dropping out of queue is annoying, but he WILL instigate it again in a little while.

*baahs at Zazazu*

Thank you so much for saving my lazy self from having to make one of these from scratch.

Science is much more useful early on than Journalism.  In my last challenge I lifted Science before Gamer.  Allowing cellphones meant that instead of the household having 12 hours per week (7 hours effectively, since between 2am to 7am you can't call anyone but vampires or potential enemies) to maintain friendships, they had 7 hours per sim per week.  Gamer wasn't long after, and the lifting of the computer restrictions by these two careers made the tough part of the Journalism restriction irrelevant.  The only real benefit to journalism is the career reward, and then only if you've already lifted adventure.

Snapdragons have been made tougher than they originally were.  It's not just natural science you need to lift - you also need to lift crime (otherwise you can only have one on the lot or in inventory).  Then there's the business restrictions that restrict any training of badges, or making more snapdragons - you cannot use any crafting benches.

I have played this challenge under both original rules and Seasons rules.  I said some pages back in this thread that I am never playing this challenge again without lifting medical as an early unlock, and I haven't changed my mind on that.  I tried leaving medical until later with the hope that my super-neat founder could groom her kids.  She could groom her offspring when they were teens, but I found she couldn't groom them when they were children.  Having the family get into mutual grooming sessions worked well for keeping hygiene under control, apart from the child stage.

On culinary: There was talk when this challenge was new about whether gelatin was allowed.  On some boards Pinstar stated that it was against the rules.  However, when he did the promised rule update, gelatin wasn't excluded.  This indicates to me that gelatin is allowed - it may be a bit cheesy, but it works.  Between gelatin and meditation, I found food wasn't a problem, especially once sims were old enough to meditate.  If the offspring are too playful to meditate, then get their parents to encourage them to be serious (preferably low enough that the offspring can then encourage their offspring in turn, if needed).  The big advantage of early culinary is the ability to make cheesecake, to force twins.  Useful if you're trying to see how fast you can complete the challenge.

It doesn't include the unofficial BV changes. Which I'm thinking of going ahead and doing (sans stupid Pets stuff)...not exactly with the Journalism thing since I'm going for more difficulty, not less. Life of Crime has always been more of an annoyance than a hinderance. Money is beyond easy to get beforehand, because Pinstar forgot to restrict one very, very important thing...you can move your founder from dorm to dorm, stripping them of furnishings. Cheaty? Sure. But completely within the rules.

My founder is currently in his Senior year. Dang, I hate Uni. 14 best friends, kinda low on the skill points because he's had to focus on going permaplat. Mine is actually set on a colonized moon (not any specific moon) and everything looks like your normal background at the moment. But the main 'hood...it's the Maxina terrain  (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=249999)from CardiganAnjel at MTS2, with a crater-ridden one for the post-apoc uni. He's the child of two botanists, going after a career in Medical with a specialization in organic contraceptives (seemed to fit with the no-non-try-woohoo). Bringing home his degree, a cheesy picture of himself at a nightclub, and his computer, which he shows an alarming attachment to.

I'm rolling for which restrictions get unlocked next, which could get very interesting. I'm most worried about Culinary (no degree requirement, but raising a family on 1 meal a day is tough), and Education (since it also requires a degree I'm focusing on befriending all Uni students, which comes with the added challenge of low skill points). No rolling until the intended is in the family.  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to reroll if the rolled career is not possible at that point, or just let them be dead weight. Zombies? I have 25, waiting on standby for their ration of brains.

Is this in Uni? I've had that issue before, way back when, and I believe it fixed itself randomly when the sim in question went to the secret society lot. It was in a Greek legacy, and she became the girl who did everyone's homework...I'd just have everyone else drop theirs on the porch and at night she'd sit out there with a snapdragon and get everyone A's.

Damn, the "old rules" seem so much easier than the Seasons rules.  Glad I'm playing by old rules.

I did decide to add in the Seasons careers to my exisitng Apocalypse house.  I'm going to tie them to other careers (so you have to lift both careers to lift the restrictions).  Law will be tied to Politics (since I already lifted law enforcement, where it would match better).  Education is tied to science (since I already lifted Military, again, it would fit better there).  I'm also tieing gamer to science (can't play games without elecrticity).  And music will be tied to art (since neither are that big a deal). 

I'm also adding a restriction where the joined careers have to be lifted by spouses or siblings.  So Science/Education/Gamer will be next up to be lifted, either by Rufous (who's in college) or Aerie (teen who I haven't decided if he'll go to college or not) and their potential spouses.

Yeah, for the life of me, I can't find rules with Seasons included. Then again, I'm not looking that hard.

So it can happen in anyone's game? Sweet, I thought I'd have to start over. Somebody's going to leave joining the SS to the last minute...

Also, found a BV exploit (like there aren't heaps already, but this one beats my half-arsed makeshift rules)...if you take your founder from dorm to dorm to dorm to dorm, selling all the crap in each dorm until you get, say, 40 000, and then create a new Uni that allows beach lots, then make a beach lot and move your founder in...you can put the huge-ass ship on the lot, then in their inventory. Yes, you'd have to move into a beach lot when the founder graduates, but then the first time you pay money to the mob, you definitely won't have enough to cover re-purchasing that ship...but it'll still be worth tens of thousands. You can't swim in the ocean because it's contaminated, but you can swim in the money. Never mind, the sleep-deprived idiot forgot the 8x8 rule. Doh.

But yeah, BV makes the Seasons rules a little easier to swallow IMO.

They are still under the "Playtesting" (http://www.legacychallenge.com/inplaytesting.html) section, though Pinstar's already come up with new rules for BV, so who knows when he'll update the website.

So...even if Jeff still has his job as a Professional Party Guest when his firstborn spawn reaches the top of the Law career, he's still only suppressing it? That doesn't really make sense to me.

I suppose Evelyn still has time to break up with the Mr. Big, find some other townie who's a Professional Party Guest, romance him, and take up Law instead of Show Biz. But then, my strategy was going to be dating up the motives and swimming in cash so the spawn had little to worry about when they took up Medicine and Culinary.

That really chaps my caffeinated arse. I suppose I can try to get three spawn from Evelyn's shrivelled, wasted eggs and make the first one of them a lawyer, and the second one can go be a Slacker like Daddy. Third one can go cook 'n stuff. Culinary's slightly more important than Medicine because I should bring in some cats, and pets can't have their motives dated up. They need to be fed. And cats are superior since they take care of their own hygiene motive.

Are the BV rules posted anywhere? Anywhere at all?

ETA: I can answer my own questions, kthx. (http://bbs.thesims2.ea.com/community/bbs/messages.php?threadID=8a348c7d863c3e24251a7d19246d1a8a&directoryID=128&startRow=1&openItemID=item.128,root.1,item.43,item.61,item.104,item.41,item.23#812f0f4e6376ecbf684a95cfb2c55255) There's lots of cries of YAY! and AWW CRAP! following that link.

Ok, that just had me giggling.
Yeah, and that has me worried. I rolled Law Enforcement for the first marry-in. Good news is the Gods of Randomness gave her a corresponding degree in the eyes of Syberspunk, so it's totally doable. And Medical's unlocked, so no more stink...though Jaden was a good little spongebather and she didn't hit me as the type who would care if she stank; she certainly didn't in college. But now it's two sims surviving on a plate of bologne sandwiches, with spawn to come. There's going to be a lot of meditating going on, but dang am I wishing that I could have unlocked something that would allow an aspiration reward right now so that I could suck skill points from all the zombies.

Couple interesting things I never really noticed:
1. You can dig for fun, and if hygiene is already bottomed out you aren't hurting anything. Since most of the digables are only one tile, you can place them on the roof to keep them out of the way. Maps can go on the wall and add fun.
2. Two ways to build social when alone: daydream in bed, and write in diary. Jaden keeps the delivery holograms* on the lot as long as possible each day. I also let him greet the zombies, since with 10 body points he thumps them all.

*well, how else do you explain having a couple sims coming over every day when everyone was supposed to be killed in the cataclysm of your choice?

If your sim is outgoing enough, he/she will talk to a garden gnome and build social that way. I presume gnomes are banned, though.

Obviously - try Hejira's post (#519) on this very page

Does anyone know of a list of rules not listed on the BBS? It's blocked'd'd'd for me.  :'(

Sure. If you'd like, I'll put together the questions that have been asked and answered by Pinstar in a separate file.

Ugh, I just found out that you can't suppress restrictions that aren't explicitly listed as suppressed until another is unlocked. This makes me very sad. I have a three-sim, 2 pet household with just Medical unlocked, Law Enforcement suppressed. Parents have to meditate because there's not enough food, and son rolled Music, which has little immediate benefit. This rolling thing is killing me, but otherwise it wouldn't be challenging to me.

For what it's worth, there's another way (easier for me) that I found reading the The Ragnarok Apocalypse (http://www.forums.boolprop.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=26079) thread by Felicia1066 over at Boolprop.  Have your founder purchase a ton of dreamcatchers (I don't know which EP they came in) at §50 each and sell 24 hours later.  You get §1,200+ for each one.  Do that for a semester and you're loaded.

ok, ive done a bit of editing, for my own peace of mind...

Attached is the challenge, ordered by careers, with a handy index. Ive combined his pets, Seasons and the test rules for BV into one document. I find it easiest to keep open in the background, as its searchable. Its made with office 2007, so you will be needing that i think, to get the formatting right.

Cool. I added BV for myself, but didn't want to on the original spreadsheet because at that point the new rules were very tentative. Seems like they are going to stand.

Correction. You'll need Office 2007 to open it. Anything before that doesn't support the .docx extension.

oof, sorry.

Ill get it saved in a backwards compatible state as well and add that.

BTW, Zazazu... I read your Dark side of the moon thingy, and I gotta know. Any chance you know where you got that glass toilet from? Ive been searching high and low, and can't seem to locate it...

ok, compatible version up. It goes back to office 97 and 2003 versions... (according to the program.)

Shockingly, it's Peggy, and not pay.

Epilepsy warning! Site link (http://freearea.peggysims2.net/objectsbathroom.do?direction=thistenpage&pagemethod=last&pagesize=2)

Oddly, I heard that comment in the exact same accent as the hospital announcer voice in Theme Hospital. Weird.

Thank you very much. Like i wrote, I read your Dark Side of the Moon story, and am feeling quite inspired into playing the challenge. But I am also feeling quite inspired by your house, so I figured id best stock up on goodies before i start out. Thanks again.

*Wanders of to rest her eyes after the Peggy site... Sheesh*

Everyone likes that house, but I can't stand it. Mostly because I know where I want it to go, but because Politics & Law aren't unlocked, I can't build out. So instead I'm building up, and it's looking like a dumb glass tower. It's even more towerific now that it's a full 8-sim, 2-pet house. I should be updating by the end of the weekend.

Zazazu:  How in the world did you get your two pets?  My founder has been attempting to adopt a stray since his first day on his lot.  His eldest child is now an adult and he is well into elder stage and still no pet. Strays rarely show up and once befriended I never see them come back. 

I went to another lot where I just let the family live pretty much autonomously for a week while I watched the front yard.  In that week three strays showed up. The first one was befriended up to 30 daily points on the first day.  By the end of a week it had not returned.  In all the neighborhoods I have played since installing Pets I have never been able to adopt a stray. 

Because Jaden's so hot they can't resist him.

No, when Pets first came out I had the same problem. The trick is to catch them the moment they get on the lot and then razzle (or cat-comparable play). Cancel as soon as the interaction begins and repeat. You'll build relationship points super-quick that way and can then adopt them before the stray poops out. It really has to be the first visit...otherwise the buggers never come back.

Do you know if the really shiny glass john came in this set:

http://www.peggyzone.com/html/Item20201__.html

or if Peggy has moved anything slightly interested to pay while she was playing with the free files offline?

Any chance that one made it to PMBD?

BTW, I enjoyed your story.

Well.. I only just found the "official" seasons rules, and I've already made up my own. I was without Uni for a while, and don't have Pets, so was planning on playing the challenge with a CAS adult - and changed some of the pets/uni career unlocks to Seasons careers - so I still have all the restrictions and I just had to unlock them with different careers. I also added/changed a couple of restrictions.

To get around the fact that all jobs were available to all sims (ie, I didn't need to graduate them) I decided to make this MUCH harder for myself. I'm really not fussed about points or the challenge in itself, I've modified the rules so much for my own game that it seems irrelevant and anyway I only wanted to adopt it as a starting point for a new hood. So to get into a particular career, sims now have to have particular personality/interest levels. I'm still playtesting this as a lot of the restrictions are too strict and all my sims are starving :-\ but hopefully I'll iron them out soon.

Again because I'm not planning on playing for points as it were, I've changed my mind about the beginning - instead of starting with one CAS sim, I picked a random number, 9, so I have 9 "families" to play with. I'm keeping them in strict rotation and I randomised everything about them - even down to days left in age. I never use 5x5 lots, so I plonked 9 randomly sized lots onto my neighbourhood and randomised their money so each family was left with between about S3,000 and S6,000. This is about enough to buy foundation, walls, a toilet, bed, enough doors and a fridge, in some cases a bit more. I've played on each house for 2 days so far. It really is a challenge.

The biggest things I have noticed are that if you have a family with more than about 3 people in, it's almost impossible to keep them fed. The gelatin is the only doable option and they're all nearly starving by midnight. My biggest challenge at the moment is keeping the kids from the social worker and keeping at least one adult alive to take care of them. They can't meditate because nobody has enough logic yet. (Those newspaper crosswords are slow!) Hardly anybody has got a job yet because of the strict limits I put on them. To get around the food restriction at the moment I'm "cheating" a bit and saying any family with children or pregnant ladies is allowed extra rations (Once per 12 hours instead of 24) because the government are trying to preserve the next generation. One of my families is a little old lady on her own who I can't control because I've converted two of the pet restrictions into education, but I have changed the rules that I'm allowed to get elders to find a job. If they miss work I will still make them quit, though.

Another thing I found out is that decking is more flammable than I thought! And instant meals are useless. Any tips on getting around the food restriction in a non-cheaty feeling way?

I remember food wasn't as much as problem as annoyance, because I was doing burgers and they always burn if the cheap grill is inside. So, you send one to burn your burgers, there's much squealing and panicking but they eventually extinguish it anyway and then the family happily chomps on charred remains. Also, if you send a starving Sim to work/school, they stuff themselves full there and it really helps through the day.

That's true, but charred remains don't fill up the hunger bar as much as proper food. Also most of my sims can't get work because of the requirements I set on all the careers (like 8 interest in health for medical, and 6 nice points etc) so the ones at home are starving and the kids won't go to school at weekends.

simsfreq:  I hate to have to tell you but I think you will be waiting a long time for a doctor.  In my largest neighborhood (over 700 characters, descended from 14 CAS sims)  I had only one sim with an 8 interest in health and that was one of the CAS sims.  EVERY born-in-game sim had a 4 interest in health as an adult.  And EVERY one of them had an 8 in fashion, work and weather.  There was only tiny variations in the other interests also.  Children start out with a low number in most of the first 12 interests and high numbers in the last 6.  At either teen transition or adult transition they gain or lose 4 points in nearly all of those, and always the same ones.  I too wanted my sims to select careers according to their interests in that neighborhood.  I finally resorted to randomiziming their interests myself with dice then using either InSim or Simpe to make the changes.

Zazazu:  Thanks for the tip on how to adopt strays.  Since using that technique I have managed to adopt several in different houses in the neighborhood.  Then I had two of them gift a pet to the main family.

I was playing this challenge, and had a really good start going long and long ago...
Stopped for several reasos..

one, I had used Gelatin, and found out I shouldn't have.. (but that seems allowed again?)
2 I messed up on some other rule... minor...

3, and most importantly, I got a new ep and couldn't figure out how to continue playing it around said EP...
By the time the rules came out I'd forgotten what I'd unlocked, and what my plans were...

So, I still really really want to do this challenge, (although I dread it now too, after reading about how bad pets rules are.. I may go the 'ignore everything pets' route.. I don't think much was added with pets that can't be ignored)

But I want to start with all the rules.

I have all the EPs including Free-time..
Does anyone have any idea if freetime rules are in testing yet?

Thanks!!

The legacy challenge website says the apocalypse rules are coming soon but that was dated March 2.

BV rules negate some of the nastiness of Pets rules. Check out BoolProp (http://forums.boolprop.com/viewforum.php?f=50&sid=fd08a5e53c52b42bdfb49217466d59a9), as their apocalypse section is really active and they have the new mostly-official rules posted there.

I know this is an old thread, but I was wondering if anyone here has the lots that Pinstar made for the secret societies (you know, the bomb shelter, witch house, etc.). I know they're available on the exchange, but I can't register there, due to not having a valid registration code. Does anyone have a link to another website that has the houses or something? I'd make my own versions, but the pictures on the page are small, and I'm a little blind.  :P Please and thanks.

Sure; I can host them on my 4shared. Bomb Shelter (http://www.4shared.com/file/54938049/55fed655/Bomb_Shelter.html), Shotgun Shack (http://www.4shared.com/file/54938323/e1372694/Shotgun_Shack.html), and the Witch's Hut (http://www.4shared.com/file/54938467/8779310c/Witch_Hut.html).

There are magazines to get round the interest problem :) But I had noticed that there didn't seem to be much variation so I may resort to the randomising and changing them manually method.

After having killed off almost the entire neighbourhood twice I decided to add a clause which says if there are any kids or pregnant women on the lot, they get to serve food twice a day. The killer is having that hack in which makes sickness actually deadly, since I have a few mean sims who kick the trashcan over and I don't notice until it is too late and they are screaming about the roaches. And then the low-energy beds slow down recovery, they can't take time off work and they keep getting woken up by the ghosts. And I never play with free will off anyway, but I don't think you could because as far as I know they can't sponge bathe without it. Anyway, it makes it harder, which is always more fun.

I always wondered what happened to the original houses since the links I had for them didn't work.

My sims will autonomously have a sponge bath, if it's Inge's hack we are talking about.

I was talking about free will being on or off, in relation to the autonomous sponge bathing. I can't remember who made the real sickness hack but it might have been Inge.

No, it's not one of Inge's, the sickness hack. I do run with free will on, always.

I play with free will off, but when I want them to take a sponge bath I send them to the bathroom (which in the early stage of the challenge just has a toilet and sink), lock them in, and turn free will on until they've had sponge bathed themselves.

I found that just having them wash their hands several times filled up the hygiene bar. Took a while, but then they didn't have much else to do in the early stages of the game.

So is getting a car and using the radio to build up fun considered cheating? I'm not sure, cause normally to have the radio, and thus the music and fun points, I'd have to unlock the science career, right?

Pinstar made it pretty clear that any clever work-around of his rules was cheating because when he wrote the challenge, he changed the rules several times when people thought up ways to work around restrictions. So the question really is, do you want to play completely within the letter and spirit of the rules? Because in that case, your solution is not legal.

Okay, then. I think I'll go with the spirit of the rules thing... Besides, my sim has to work on bringing up her creativity, so she can eat dinner tonight. So no music.

Looking at the rules that I printed out when this challenge was new, I see the following under Science:
"Sms may not purchase or use anything from the electronics category except for a single computer, a single phone, and a single boom-box (the $99 one)."

So, unless this rule was changed by rules for Pets or a later EP, they are allowed music from the start without needing a car to get around the Science restriction.

Right. I'm an idiot.
< Needs to read things more carefully.

That's true. I tend to make them do other things for fun, anyway, like play chess, which gives them skill points as well, and logic is useful because it means they can build up to being able to meditate. The cheap stereo is only useful for getting body points and if they are non-platinum or non-green mood.

Good point. I usually end up with my sims playing chess for hours on end, and the stereo sitting neglected in the corner. Another question, I didn't see anything in the rules about buying and selling dreamcatchers to get money. Is it legal or not?

I think that's illegal due to the Art restrictions. Let me look.

ETA: Yup:

The only time they aren't illegal is at the beginning of the challenge during Uni as no restrictions apply

Am just starting this challenge. I've got a college graduate Sim to torture... wish me luck! :) (Gonna need it.)

Question: I am bringing a couple of aspiration rewards home in my inventory, which you're allowed to do. What are the rules on bringing home things prohibited by the restrictions--say I wanted to bring home a fire alarm, for example? Keep, but not use, right?

So long as you don't use the item before you are permitted to use it, you can bring it home and keep it in your inventory.  Although I don't think I'd bother wasting one of my three inventory spots on a fire alarm.  It's been a while since I played an Apocalypse challenge, but IIRC by the time you can use one, you can buy one.

Yeah, kind of figured that. It's all "you can't buy or use", so bringing it home to keep but not use would be legal. I thought fire alarm because I had such trouble with unskilled cooking in the Asylum challenge; but realistically, a founder with maxed Cooking skill shouldn't have a lot of trouble with fires, and by the time the founder dies, somebody else will have the skill you need.

I just wish I'd gotten a Founder with a max 7 skills LTW; that would have her in permaplatinum by now. She wants to reach the top of the medical career.... bleh.

Any way to tell the aspiration of somebody before you move them in or marry them? I guess you could ask them "what do you want" and deduce it from that; anything more direct?

Dating is the easiest. Won't give you LTW (the only way to is to cheat a bit and make them selectable).

Maybe I should pick another college grad for this... I haven't even scoped out the townies yet...

Nah, I'll mess it up the first time anyway. Finally got some time to myself (I'm helping a friend move, so NO free time, basically), so I'll start this one through the challenge today.

BTW, is it normal for slower computers not to be able to handle 8 Sims in a small lot with only a few items? I did fine with Asylum (8 sims on a simple lot) only because I was never able to turn the speed up past the slowest--watching for fires will do that. Uni loading times are murderous on my computer... I almost never play uni.

I might have to add an additional limitation to my own challenge--no more than 4 Sims on the lot at any given time--so I don't have to play the entire time on slow... Is that an 'unfair advantage'?

Expansion packs available: Nightlife, Pets, University. So no snapdragons or cheesecake... At least I have experience with uncontrolled sim elders. Thank you, Asylum.

What your computer can handle depends as much on amount of memory  and your video card as it does on processor speed.   I had a 6 year old computer and could run 12 or more sims on a medium lot with no difficulty.  It was an AMD 1800+ with 768MB Ram and a GeForce 4 video card.  Texture display was blurry but I rarely had lag when playing.  But then I normally play on slow when I have a large family since I am a heavy micromanager.   With only 256Mb Ram it was Very Slow.  Adding extra Ram helped tremendously.

Yeah but you can really only do that with the founder while in college since you can't date until you unlock Show Business.

That's why you have your founder do a lot of dating while in college.  You can find out useful things about potential spouses for future generations - their career & level, their aspiration, etc.  Depending on which restrictions are lifted early, your founder may also be able to introduce the potential spouses to the first or second generation heir.  Plenty of dating while in college also helps with the startup cash, as your founder can sell the date rewards.

This challenge is hellish.

Someone should have made a mod that implemented all of the rules.

So hard to remember...

Dizzy made a hack that implemented all the Asylum rules, maybe he'd be interested in doing something for this challenge. Ask him, he's at the Laden Swallow. :)

Problem is, you'd have to have a hack to cover every possible EP combination.

I'd be happy for one that auto-deducted funds for the Criminal restriction. I don't play the Sims to do maths!  :-X

Regarding the criminal restriction--If you're using method 3, paying $150 times the number of weeks, and you don't have enough cash, what do you do? Do you have to switch to one of the other methods, or can you sell off items for the money? That should be prohibited by the Business restriction normally but I get the feeling that it's more realistic to give the mob your extra furniture than to say "I don't have enough"... Technically, using the sell-and-re-buy method you'd end up not having enough money to re-buy stuff... opinions? any official word?

Yes, I believe you can sell furniture in this instance.  Since method 1 involves the selling and re-buying of furniture, I don't think it breaks the "Business" restrictions.

Let's see what the rules say:

That was under method 2. But yeah, I can't very well refuse to pay the mob, so it's got to be something like that. :P

I'm doing something I'm not sure is legal--but is it permissible not to lift Hopelessness with your founder? I have an adult-start with a Pleasure sim founder and bad luck with jobs. She's female so she can have an heir without moving anyone in. I've just never seen it done before so I don't know if it's legal, but most people start in college...

Well, I don't see what point it would have. To lift hopelessness, you just have to reach the top of any career. So, unless you don't want your founder to unlock anything at all, what is the point?

Plus, part of strategy is finding a high-level careered mate to move in and unlock a second career.

Yes, it is legal. It will delay everything by a generation but you will have longer to skill up the child, and get them friends, thus improving their chances. You will also be stuck with a useless, senile elder on the lot eating food and taking up one of the places.

I have just completed the first stage of an adult start- unlocking hopelessness and adventure. I have played an adult start now about six or eight times. It relies on a high element of luck. This time I used a female knowledge sim. She took 5 days until adventurer came up. Adventurer or medical were my first two preferences for careers, so that was the first piece of luck. In the five days she made 8 friends by talking to almost every walkby. A game of snowball fight or water balloon gets them close to friends status, then talk-gossip or talk about hobby. I try to stop at about 60 -70 points as there is a greater chance of them visiting again. I also managed 5 body points, 4 mechanical and 2 charisma, so she could take advantage of promotions immediately.
Fortunately this time I didn't get any of the bad chance cards- I had a couple of games killed by them. If you get several demotions or fired there is not enough time left to get to the top of your career before senility sets in.
She reached the top of her career by day 27, chose the elixir as the career reward. Meanwhile she found a partner who is a GP. On the next Tuesday he moved in. This is as far as I have played. I am still trying to figure out a set of rules incorporating Free Time, as I don't think Pinstar is planning to update them.

I don't really see how FT rules would change anything, other than you can't sell craftable hobby items. Sewing and pottery, at least, would be something that wouldn't have restrictions on it as it is all manual. Bird watching and star-gazing would be restricted until the Science? (the one that clears out the skies) restriction is released.

Wouldn't sewing be covered by restrictions on decorative items (artist) & clothing restrictions (show biz)?  Pottery would also be covered by decorative restrictions.

The bigger question around FT is the perks.  Given that the perks are mood boosters, they can't be available early in the challenge but would need to be lifted at some time during the challenge (as all restrictions are by the end), so when would they be lifted?  I suppose looking at their effects and the restrictions you could work out something in keeping with the challenge: e.g. a perk that reduces hygiene drain couldn't be chosen until medical was lifted.

Some of the FT perks are overpowering for the early stages of this challenge - e.g. the food value of the family perk comfort soup (since it requires no cooking skill), not to mention the knowledge perks for faster skill building or to pass skills on (particularly if your founder had been a highly skilled YA).

Then there's the "boo yeah, what a great week" updates - they also generate an ongoing mood effect, and cannot be avoided.  Given this, it is likely that FT broke this challenge.

Comfort soup would obviously be covered by the Culinary restriction. As for the knowledge perks... Education?

Didn't FT add new careers too, or am I getting it mixed up with another EP? At this point the challenge would just be crazy complicated.  ::)

(As for the "great week" mood boost- you survived a week in a fallout zone. I guess you'd feel a bit accomplished.)

Yeah, there's several careers, like oceanography, , architecture, intelligence, and dance. I don't even want to try to think up restrictions for some of those.

I don't know all of the rules for this challenge. It's entirely possible that these restrictions are already covered by other careers or rules.

Oceanography = No beach lots
Architecture = No houses/no houses other than a small box/other restrictions on houses
Intelligence = No school? No telescopes? (They can be used to gather intelligence on neighbors activities during the day)
Dance = No clubs or no stereos

Here's my thoughts:

• Oceanography - no beach lots makes sense, but in a residential sense it could never be lifted, since you're not supposed to move your Apocalypse family.  They're supposed to stay on the same lot until the end of the challenge.
• Architecture - it makes a lot of sense to move most of the Politics restrictions to Architecture.  However you'd have to come up with new restrictions for Politics.
• Intelligence - "No school" couldn't be done, as you'd lose your 6s to the social worker.  "No telescopes" is already covered by Natural Science.  Maybe instead you could limit the skill points that 0s, 6s and 12s could earn to no more than 3 or 4 in each skill?  Another restriction could be that you can't ask other sims any of those ask questions - e.g. what is your job
• Dance - one stereo (the cheap boom box) is allowed by the original rules, as this was the only way to train the first few body points.  AL introduced skipping for equipment-less body points, but if you only had up to FT (and no AL) I'm not sure how you would be able to train body as yoga isn't available until you have 3 or 4 body points.  You could move the restriction on better stereos from science to dance.
• Entertainment - some of the Show Business restrictions could be moved to Entertainment, such as the restrictions on parties, outings and scored dates.  The vanity related restrictions (i.e. change appearance, change clothing, buy clothing, makeover chair) would stay with Show Business.
  

As far as I can tell, the "great week" updates are, at best, 1% antimotive decay. A sim would need to experience 80+ great weeks to really make a difference. The motive decay perks only serve to slightly differentiate sim motive decays. At 7% or so apiece, they do not represent any major shift in planning, other than perhaps giving your sim an extra hour or two before he pees his pants.

No fishing? I believe that's covered by a past restriction, but it could be one that has to be doubly unlocked.