More Awesome Than You!

I've been using the skillinator to build dance skill in my sims in order to obtain the scholarship.  I always do this when they are kids to avoid the hygiene-induced zits on my teens.

Recently, I had a house that ended up with three sim kids, all building dancing skill over the course of the weekend.  The three sim kids dancing together seemed to build dancing skill much faster than the normal situation of one child dancing alone.

So, do multiple people smustling build dance skill faster?

And does the same thing apply to building pool skill?  Is it faster for one sim alone, or with multiple sims playing together?

Far as I can tell, nothing affects the speed of dance-skill building, it is constant and static.

So it was just my imagination?

What about pool skill?  Best to have one person on a pool table, or will multiple people playing pool help?

One. Sims do not gain any pool skill while standing around during someone else's turn, nor is there a bonus for having an opponent.

stupid question:
how do I see the skill at those things?

I'm sure there are other ways, but I use the insimenator Sim version, which adds a personal menu on the sim.  The pop-up box shows a bunch of info on the sim, such as if they're pregnant, their gender preferences, and the level of the 'hidden' skills.

Pool skill: click the pool table in debugging mode. Dance skill: dunno.

Or check their tokens in SimPE.

I'm almost 100% certain that manually running trick shots is quicker than just letting them play. But you have to keep half an eye on them, so that you can set up another run when they finish the first half dozen. I've had good results doing it this way with mine.

Seriously? Sounds like something to explore in the Skillinator. Run some empirical tests, "present skillinator" vs. trick shot spam. Report results and if your method can demonstrably produce faster increases, it will be implemented.

Haven't checked it thoroughly yet - just a gut feeling I've got, based on my setting sims up to do things, then dipping in to check progress now and again. I'll do some spading tonight.

Posie Flump did some experimenting on gaining the pool skill and found that performing trick shots is the quickest way to gain pool points. 

http://www.simposieum.net/content/view/50/8/

Those are the kinds of numbers I was looking for, yes. Skillinator will be refitted for straight trick-shot pool skilling by tonight. The next question, obviously, is which trick shot is BETTER, and when?

Okay - results are in from a session of spading.
Quick summary: Do trick shots. There doesn't seem to be any real difference between them, so I'm requesting the cup rather than the xylophone. Why? The xylophone noise irritates me immensely. No other reason. ;)

Pulled from my attachment:

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Observations:

Skillination gave a pretty smooth progression. It looks like they get skill points based entirely on time at table. The RNG kept the numbers from being identical, since sometimes they did one animation, sometimes another. However, only 1 set of numbers for each Skillinator is given, since those using it only varied by a couple of points in each run-through. Finish times for skillinators varied from 1:30 am to 2:45 am. It doesn't seem that personality is a factor whatsoever. This could be run again with more extreme variety, but I doubt that it would matter.
Manually running the trick shots gave a jerky skill progression. The skill only increases after each cycle is complete. 2pts for a failed trick and 3pts for a successful one. Thus far, I have never had either more or less than this. Success rate on tricks is dependant on skill, but it only really starts to show right at the end. Since the scholarship only requires a score of 80, but a sim can learn up to 100, skill based success is almost irrelevant. Maybe the last 2 hours at best? The also doesn't seem to be any differewnce between the xylophone and the cup with regards to success, so if you're going to incorporate trick shots into the Skillinator, can I please request that you use the cup, because I can't stand the xylophone noise. Due to the jerky nature of skill progression, the random success rate, and the various animations, sometimes a sim was only minutes from completing a cycle when the hour came, and sometimes the cycle was already over. All this means is that a graph won't be much use! Also that I can't say exactly what point 80 was hit, since I just checked hourly. Still, the earliest that a trick shot passed the 80 mark was 20:00, and the latest was 23:00.

Recommended change made. Switched Skillinator from random trick shot to Cup-only.