More Awesome Than You!

I hope I'm posting this in the right forum... I'm still learning the lay of the land around here.

I'm playing my latest re-install of the base game (I have none of the EP's at this time).  I'm concentrating mainly the Broke house, as usual.  With previous installations, I didn't have a problem getting Brandi to meet a potential hubby thanks to a walk by, but this time around it's pretty slim pickin's.  Most are either teens or women.  So I thought I'd send her to one of the community lots in search of a potential mate instead.  No luck.  If anyone besides her is there, it's the same sitch. 

Is there anything I can do to increase the amount of townies on community lots, or the likelihood of a walk-by?  Just thought I'd ask before I gave up and made a CAS Sim for her to meet and marry.

I just have her hire a gardener, who usually turns out to be the male gardener (I forget his name). I have her chat him up whilst he's on the lot, and then call him on the phone until their relationship is high enough that she can invite him over to woo him. If you don't get a male gardner on the first try, just keep calling the gardening service and cancelling out of the transaction until you get the male gardener.

Edited to correct typo. I've been doing this a lot lately. ::)

I didn't think of that.  I don't use a gardener that often.  Too busy decorating inside to think about the outside, usually.  Good idea, though.  I'll give it a shot.  :)

To increase the number of sims on a community lot you can add this code to your userStartup file: intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims # (where # is whatever number you think your computer can handle... probably no more than 10-20).

There is also a more frequent walk-bys hack on modthesims2.com, but I don't recall if it is compatible with the base game or if it requires some EPs. You could check that out, since it dramatically increases the number of walk-by sims.

You can also use Jeff's visitor controller (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,2271.0.html) to control the type of sims you get visiting a community lot. I use this mainly for my single's bar, children's playground and teen hangout community lots I have in my game :)

Why not use TwoJeffs' find a mate crystal ball if you want to get Brandi a husband?

Yes, I like to stick one on a Community Lot for instant dates...  Don't know how it would work without NL tho.

Yes it is (I swear: it's mine  ;D): here: http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=213064 and also here in Peasantry: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,6947.0.html.

This + twojeffs' Visitor Controller, and you'll have a parade of single male sims just in front of her house. A bit scary mental image, maybe, but it works.

There's also a 'call everyone' hack that allows sims to call anyone in the neighbourhood. I use the version that's for NL and up, but I think there's also one for the base game alone.

There's a very nice female gardner who always seems to turn up at my houses. 

I normally get a female gardener at all of my lots, except for the Broke household. I've often wondered if there's some sinister plot behind that, like maybe Brandi is meant to hook up with the gardener. I always play her as a black widow, so the gardener is always the first to go. Poor guy.

Create a male sim that fits Brandi by aspiration and interests - Brandi is an Aries, and mates Gemini or Taurus; preferably Taurus, who is attracted most to Aries.
Give the male the same interests as Brandi's: money/health/fashion/sports/travel/weather.
Aspiration - Brandi is Family sim, mates good to Knowledge, or Family males.
Put the male in a starter house, choose a job for him.

With cheat: use Inge's teleporter painting/bush, and summon him to Brandi's house. Try to befriend them thus, she will be able to invite him again. Success guaranteed.

Without cheat: the most successful strategy is, to choose for Brandi the same job as the male's job. If he doesn't passes-by, some day she will bring him home from work. It always works.
Another strategy: send Brandi each day to the community lot, they will probably meet soon.

Brandi is very pretty sim. Don't mate her to a townie, most of them are ugly.   

Wow!  So much helpful advice.  I really appreciate it!    ;D

I'll make a note of everything suggested here, and grab the mentioned hacks.  I've only just begun to get all the hacks here on MATY, so there's a lot I don't have yet, and what I do have, I've yet to install.  (I keep hearing they are all must-haves!)  Same with MTS2 hacks... don't have many & have none installed yet.

Where is the 'call everyone' hack... is it here on MATY, or somewhere else?

Gali... thanks for the pointers about the best type of mate for Brandi.  I will definitely keep it in mind.  And I agree... Brandi is a very pretty sim, and shouldn't have an ugly hubby! 

Crap.  It requires NL.  Is there a version of this for just the base game?  (I'm looking, but thought I'd ask anyway.)

Got it!   ;D  I may have to wait a bit on using twojeff's Visitor Controller, but this one will help bunches!  Thanks for pointing me to it, Marhis!

Gali, Gali, Gali. When are you ever going to realize that behaviors like this defeat the point? If I could just go and MAKE a perfect mate like that, I'd be married, too. UNFORTUNATELY, IT DOES NOT WORK THIS WAY.

Brandi always has 3 bolts with John Burb, and in my main game ended up married to him with 3 kids.  They made great-looking kids together.

JMP, creating the perfect match in the game is a legitimate move - otherwise,  why the official guide gives you all the "lies and propaganda" about aspirations and astrology signs?

Brandy is one of my favorite sims (because of Bob and Betty from TS1), and I hate to see her married to some Goopy, Benjamin Long, or Abhijeet.
 
Taurus doesn't have always the same interests as Aries, and I give the male to read magazines, to add the mutual interests with Brandy.
So, I don't cheat here at all.

Jsalemi, I know that -  but John Burb is married already, and my sims *never*  get divorced or cheat on their mates. So, John Burb is out of question.
Besides, John Burb is not a townie, and if I play the basic game - all the townies are ugly. Only in Nightlife EP they added some very pretty townies male sims, and I even matched some of them with my custom-made female sims.

Ah. Well, that would limit her options, yes. :)

What are these bolts I keep hearing about?  Is this an EP specific addition to the game?

The attraction system was added in NL, so yeah, it is an EP specific addition.

Thanks Venusy.  I don't know which EP I'll get first now.  I had planned on Uni just because it was released first, but I'm hearing a lot of things about NL I'd really like to put to use, too.  Hmm... decisions, decisions...

I'd get NL if your choice is between those two. Uni adds very little to the normal game: it is almost a separate game inside TS2.

Really?  I didn't know that.  NL just got the edge over Uni, then.  I'm most interested in something that adds to the game as a whole.

The best EP/SP IMHO is Glamour Life. Pound-for-pound, it has all the best improvements of the game and the most stable engine for about $20. You can't beat that with NL or Pets.

True. If you have only the base game, GLS offers the most upgrades in one go.

I like Open for Business - running businesses adds a whole new dimension to the game and avoids vampires, zombies and werewolves.  Pets adds a different dimension + werewolves.  I added OFB to base game and got life time wants, bolts and turn-ons.  I didn't get the full set of Life Time Wants for some bizarre reason.  People adding NL to base game did, so not getting them with OFB is bizarre.  I'm missing the non-career wants from non-family sims and one of the family sim wants as well.  If you just added Pets to base game, I'm not sure if you'd get the full set or not.  DK what you'd get if you added Glamour life to base game.  I thought Glamour life was supposed to be a waste of money and didn't work too well with Pets. ???

If you are going to add an EP, think about the career track you put your sims on even in base game - I got very frustrated when I added OFB and found my well played sims had suddenly acquired LTWs to do something completely different.  Antonio Monty was struggling to raise two kids alone and be a famous chef, as per the Maxis set up, but when I added OFB, he suddenly wanted to be a doctor - chef is NOT a knowledge sim LTW.  Nora had maxed two careers and was happily painting masterpieces - suddenly her LTW was doctor.  I haven't played her since - I don't want to take her through another career and I don't want to cheat and make her permaplat either.  Elders pretty much all have unachievable LTWs, so you're better off not aging sims until you've played them with the EP added.  If they have retired, they can't max a career - if they only had one child, marrying off 6 kids is tricky, if their partner died, golden anniversary is tricky too! 

FFS is OFB part 2, GLS is OFB part 3.
Both add the full engine upgrades prior to Pets to existing games.

Yes you will lack some LTWs, but you gain everything else.

If you already have OFB or Pets, GLS and FFS are probably not worth the $20, although I must say I like the GLS items, they're some of the best objects EAMaxis has made. FFS, not so much. But if you only have NL or older (or only TS2 core) they are worth it.


Personally I least like OFB of all the expansions. I don't like playing businesses at all, and never use them. Uni has little to do with the rest of the game (except that it brings LTWs, but those are also in all later packs); NL brings downtown (restaurants, dining); OFB only has shops as a unique feature; Pets adds significant engine improvements for builders, and of course the Pets (which I personally find less important).

Pescado has a hack that allows elders to get "real" jobs from the computer instead of elder jobs, and the elder jobs are still available from the newspaper.  This would make the career LTWs achievable.

I've recently decided that not every sim needs to be permaplat.  How many people in real life achieve their dreams?  So why must my sims ALL achieve their lifetime wants?  Playing to their LTWs has affected the way I play the game.  For me, LTWs have turned The Sims 2 into a goal-driven game rather than the story & character driven game that I played pre-Uni and in The Sims 1.  I guess it's the gamer in me - "if there's a goal in the game, I must achieve it!"  I'm trying very hard to let go of that tendency.

Hey, join the story-telling cadre of players.  If you play to tell stories, LTW are usually not at all important.  I think it's interesting how people play the game in different ways.  I've never 'got' the goal-oriented 'gamer' approach though.

I usually get the permaplat, then put the Sim on Power Idle so they pretty much do what they want.  Wish there was a "Macro->Artist" or "Macro->Novelist," tho.  I've got a Sim that constantly wants to crank out a novel!

Uni adds the ability to have 6 wants, 2 locks. This is absolutely vital for subsequent expansion packs, lest ye lose all your wants to clogbloat crap wants. A full 6 slots makes it less likely that something will consume all 4 slots for days at a time. NL introduced 8009 BHAVs. While we try to avoid using them when possible, and revert BHAVs to 8007-format for reverse compatibility, they sometimes creep in anyway, or are found in the works of non-awesome hackers and especially object makers, and cause problems when loaded in Uni-. OFB is believed to have added significant improvements in the LUA engine, and if you're not running OFB-engine, things that use this may not work at full functionality.

That's true Pes, but this is not RL.  The difference is that here, we get to play God, and playing God means doing whatever you want with your sims, whether it's to make them suffer or finding/creating their soulmate.  That's why I like to cheat in games like the Sims because if one is God, then there's no such thing as cheating.

When I put sims on power idle they sit on the couch, only getting up to take care of their needs, call friends, respond to the baby controller, or help another sim in the household with skilling.  That's hardly them doing "pretty much what they want".  It's pretty much them doing what Pescado wants.  I do this too, but I find it boring to watch.

Pescado used to have a mod called continuouspaint.  You'd click on the easel and the sim would paint, sell the painting when done, and start another painting, repeat.  They'd drop out of it to tend to their needs, so I use it in conjunction with power idle.  Get their needs tended to, then send them back to the easel.  He discontinued it, and said at the time he was going to roll it into macrotastics.  I still have this mod in my downloads folder since it hasn't been rolled into macrotastics yet.

I want my Sims to tell their own story, so I try to play attention to their wants. On the other hand, I have 300+ controllable Sims, and it would be boring to let every one of them excel in life, so I throw obstacles in their way. When choosing a job, they have to select the third one offered, and they have to work their way to the top of that one before they can start on a new job track. They can only drink the Elixer of Life if they are in Platinum, and only between 6pm and 10pm at night (10pm and 1am for elders so I dont eliminate platinum gravestones).

If I had my way with the game, there would be a lot more left to Chance. I think NL is my favorite so far, mainly because of the Attraction bolts. Instead of me selecting mates for the Sims, there's at least a pretense that they've got some opinions on the matter. I wish Sims had a disaster menu, like the Simcity games had, where the player could opt to really loose havoc on her neighborhood. (Image how much wonderful chaos an earthquake or a nuclear powerplant meltdown could create.)

Mailman Pao Mellon and Kaylynn Langerak threw a pretty daughter in my game. Don't know if Pao is in Pleasantville or not, but the mailmen are around on a regular basis.

Power Idle is for IDLING, not for WATCHING! Alternative approaches are currently being investigated to improve sim maintenance while still letting them perform some actions.

Add in ACR and they're always running off for a quickie!

You know, I almost got this one a few weeks ago.  After reading this post (and the one below it) I wish I had now.  And I wouldn't feel as guilty spending $20 on myself, as opposed to $30.   Even better!  ;)

GL takes the lead over NL...

Thanks for all the info.  I have a better understanding of what OFB is all about.  So far, I've been trying to play to their wants, so LTW will likely factor into that for at least the few families I've focused on so far.

I went ahead and read through the rest of this thread, and I gotta tell ya:  picking which expansion/stuff pack to get first is going to be a much tougher decision than I thought it would be.  I was all set to pass on Uni until later on, but having two locks would be wonderful.  I've wished for and needed another lock so many times.

I might be better off just buying them in release order and save myself from all the indecision.   LOL  The only thing I'm certain of right now is that I want them all except for the holiday stuff packs and Pets.  I might change my mind on Pets later on, but at the moment I don't care about it.

I'll keep everything said here in mind, and when I do get one, I'll let ya know which one I went with.  (In the form of many questions about it, I'm sure!)

I play only with TS2, Uni EP, and Nightlife EP. I have OFB, but uninstalled it (too buggy). Didn't buy Pets at all.

If I would be restricted to only one EP - I would choose NL, which is the best addition.
 
Uni adds the six wants panel (and 2 locks), but only if the sim graduated; pre-made sims remain with the old four wants, unless you use a cheat to change it. And, as I prefer to play mostly the pre-made families, Uni doesn't add much.

I would like to hear more about Glamour Life from Dizzy. Sounds interesting. Dizzy, which new features does it add?

Glamour Life seems to be the last revision of the OfB engine, meaning it's the most stable version. As such, it has all the bug fixes to OfB that Pets applied, but without the unstable features that Pets added. It also has the most complete objects.package file aside from Pets and the most complete Lua interface except Pets.

Basically, Glamour Life is like buying all the patches for everything pre-Pets all rolled into one. Plus, whatever features are considered "global" (I don't recall these off the top of my head) should also be in GL.

Since I mentioned above that I still have it, I've had a couple of requests for my copy of Pescado's continuouspaint mod. 

I really haven't used it much since OFB, as my sims now tend to roll up pet wants (which I ignore) & crafting wants (which I satisfy) rather than the "paint a masterpiece" want.  So I can't guarantee this still works in OFB or Pets.

So Glamour life has the fixes from NL patch 2 that didn't make it into OFB?

Yeah, but you still should patch every single XP you have installed, since later XPs only contain fixes for objects.package, not for the other files.

Wow! What a big improvement I've got, buying the Glamour Life stuff!

Before it, I had to wait almost 2 minutes to save a 5x5 lot, "heavily" furnished. Now the lot is saved in less than a minute - on the clock, 35 seconds! Not to speak of the cool stuff added to the game.
I won't uninstall this pack from my game, never.

Thanks, Dizzy, for the useful information. :-*