More Awesome Than You!

First of all, I think it's the stupidest thing in the new EP. Have you ever seen a cat breaking a big double wooden bed into pieces only by scratching it a few times? Smaller objects, as toys from the box, yes. But big pieces of furniture? It would be a lot better if the scratching or chewing lowered the Environmental score of the object, even to negative values, thus forcing player to replace it. But I doubt if a fix like that is even possible, anyway.

But what will happen if a pet destroys a crib with an infant inside? I've just had this situation... well, in fact I was curious and directed the cat to do it. :D The crib falls into pieces and the baby disappears. Its icon stays in place, it's still selectable (due to non-awesome Squinge's hack, now I'm going to replay this situation without it), there's still an option on Insim to grow it up. But there's no options to change its diaper on the changing table and no option to take the bottle from the fridge. When it's starving, no crying is heard and no Social Worker shows up to take it away. And FFS Lot Debugger has no option to retrieve a missing Sim.

I know I can train the pets or get a "No Scratching anything" hack from MTS2, but I do really want to have some of them scratching or chewing inappropiate objects. Is it possible to make beds and sofas unbreakable, but still having an option to scratch them?

That is definitely weird.  Since you have InSim, did you try using the option to restore family?  It's on the destination menu under Other...  You can use it if you delete a sim and you don't want to save and reload the lot to get them back.  I have a feeling that the baby isn't really gone, it's just in limbo as if you had deleted them with moveobjects on.

I've just reproduced the whole situation, making two babies, so I can compare. After one infant dissapeared in destroyed crib, I made them both selectable by Insim. I can right-click on the icon of the remaining baby to center on it, but I can't do that on the icon of the other one. Restore family didn't work, save&exit didn't either.

They are testing family, anyway, so nothing bad happened. I just wanted to warn about this bug and ask for a fix.

If it was possible to make a hack where scratching/chewing just lowered the environment score (even going negative, as you said), that would be great. I know I'd use it.

How about the lot debugger?  Odd..my pets scratch and bite the furniture yet it looks just like normal.

No, that's the way they programmed it.  The furniture looks just fine until a certain amount of chewing/scratching is done, and then it just falls apart.  And that chewing/scratching has to be all in the same session -- the furniture magically repairs itself when the pet stops damaging it.

Yes, I do make my sims come running to scold the shit out of the little demons. I wont have it!  :P

Well, good to know that. Now I need a hack making them stop scratching/chewing just before that certain amount.  :)

If I don't have time to go chase them around scolding them for bad behavior I can just stop the behavior by clicking on the pet and choosing, "Scold... whatever" and the pet will stop destroying the furniture (or whatever) and wait patiently to be scolded. If my sim then goes to do something else instead of scolding, the pet will wander off and do something else also. I still have to keep my eyes on the monsters, but at least I don't have to spend all day chasing them around.

On public lots I usually "borrow" (make selectable) one of the cashiers and give her the job of protecting the property while my sims are trying to socialize.

Don't know if this works if you've got a build/buy mode enabler... but I've had strays destroy objects on Community Lots, and when another Sim came to visit, those objects were back in place, so I don't worry about pet damage.

Yes, on community lots, nothing is saved when you leave, so I wouldn't worry so much about that.  But I wish my own pets would sit and wait patiently for me to come scold them when they are being naughty, especially when I have to chase my dog through the neighborhood because she got away.  >:(

That's good to know. I suspected as much but, especially when it first came out, I didn't want to take any chances with my customized community lots.

that would be an excellent hack to have, i agree.  i have three cats and i KNOW they cant actually destroy my coffee table, even over decades (with different cats of course).  i have SCRATCHES from that long ago, but the table still exists.

Well, you know they make stuff more cheaply nowadays.  ::)

i was laughing until i realized i AM old enough for that to have real meaning!

It's very sad.  We still had my parent's dining room table until a few years ago, and even though it was showing signs of wear, it was still sturdier than the stuff in the furniture stores nowadays.  I just remembered, the dog we had years ago when he was a puppy had almost chewed through one of the rungs on one of the dining chairs, and my dad fixed it.  He said no one heavier than a child should sit in that chair.  We gave the whole set away when we moved though.  My grandma's table is very old, and some of the chairs aren't as sturdy as they used to be, but the table is still holding up very well.  Some of the chairs I saw at the furniture store that went with the wooden dining set looked so delicate I thought I could break them with my bare hands.  >:( 

They make wussy furniture nowadays. You have to really dig to get the good stuff. My stuff is made from steel and tungsten. It is indestructible and dog and cats cannot even dent it. You would need to hit it with a sledgehammer to produce any kind of meaningful effect, and mostly your effect would be this loud ringing noise. If you ran into it with your crappy plastic car, you would total your car.

i thought you once said that you made computer 'tables' from stacks of old manuals...  even my crappy car could dent that.