More Awesome Than You!

I'm playing in a nice clean, custom neighbourhood so only have one nanny. I don't use her often but when I do she's not particularly good at her job - great with an endless supply of milk but not so hot at nappy changing, bathing and general cleaning. I was wondering what skills/abilities/personality etc I could tweak in order to make a new, improved, shiny nanny. I do run with several mods that affect toddlers/children and am not sure if and how they will affect nanny-sprog interactions. The list is No Baby Harrassment, No Smart Milk Drag, Anti Baby Lecture, Baby Wants Fix, Toddler Potty Fixes, Toddler Play With Toilet Fix and Toddler Toy Death Fix. I always make sure that there are sufficient cots as while nannies are fine with picking up babies from toddler blankets, they don't seem to know where to put them afterwards.

If you want a nanny that doesn't suck, you need Lobonanny with Baby Controller.

*sings*
If you want this choice position, have a cheery disposition,
rosy cheeks,
no warts,
play games (all sorts).
You must be kind, you must be witty,
very sweet and fairly pretty.
Take us all out and give us treats.
Sing songs.
Bring sweets.
Never be cross or cruel.
Never give us castor oil
or gruel.
Love us as a son and daughter.
And never smell of barley water.
If you won't scold or dominate us,
we will never give you cause to hate us....

*looks around*
Oh, am I the only one who thought of Mary Poppins? Nevermind. 8)

I've considered using the baby controller before, but I think it's got just a bit too much control for my playing tastes - I kind of like the chaos factor of not quite knowing what the nanny is going to do next (as long as it includes bathing and cleaning as well as feeding). I've got a very finely tuned approach to baby/toddler care which requires as little adult/teen sibling intervention as possible unless of course baby/toddler interactions are what the adult or teen want. [I also ensure the toddler has at least one adult/teen friend for homework help and mood boosting red hands games on reaching childhood.]

Without baby controller, there are really only two options that I've ever heard of:

1) Potential chaos and misery
2) Micromanagement with a selectable nanny

I thought chaos and misery was assured. It is much less entertaining than it sounds.

I was always lucky with my pre-lobo/bc nannies. I only had occasional chaos and rare misery.

3) Leaving kids on their own with no nanny  ;)

I completely control the nanny with the Merola's Mind Control Mirror - for babies, and for toddlers. I do it since the original TS2. Just make her selectable, and order her to do the needed jobs, including her own needs (toilet, shower, hunger, and fun). She plays a lot with the baby/toddler, and at the end they are friends.
Never had any problems.

That's a good example of my solution number two.

I like the chaos factor, like when the nanny fed a pregnant sim cheesecake before I noticed.  ;D

Looking in SimPE my nanny's stats are:
Aries with Neat 4, Outgoing 6, Active 5, Playful 1, Nice 6
Cooking 6, Mechanical 10, Charisma 6, Body 2, Logic 5, Creativity 2.58, Cleaning 5
Aspiration is something called Reputation which I've never noticed before but assume that it's a NPC thing
Not sure how relevant interests are but work is a low 1.3 so maybe she's just not interested in doing her job well.  ::)

I was hoping just to tweak a value or two to make her more included to bathe kiddies and do housework.

I think part of the sadorandom nature of nannies is that you will occasionally get a competent one who doesn't try to burn the house down, but there's nothing you can actually do to make it more likely. Well, except killing the ones who hang around after hours to sabotage the headmaster visit by constantly stealing his espresso.

I think 'Reputation' was the original name for Popularity that still shows up in some older characters.

You want her more likely to do housework? All my nannies ever want to do is housework! They regularly put a meal in the oven, then stalk all the way across the house to empty a potty, or scrub a sink. The only competent nanny I've ever had was high outgoing, nice and playful, and low everything else.

As for bathing kiddies, Sims have two settings: obsessive and ignore. Ignore is far better. I like to get the kid fed and bathed before the stupid nanny comes, so the stupid nanny doesn't have to interact with it at all.

I would recommend christianlov's all in one NPC, including the nanny, but it seems like it's slightly borked with Seasons, and c. said they wouldn't update until April. This worked perfectly for me before, but now the nanny is constantly interrupting the toddlers from skilling by picking them up and putting them someplace random. Suck! And the babycontroller is unclickable for me right now.

I am seriously considering making all my couples gleefully childless.  :D

I love using my playables as babysitters. If the kids are sleeping or playing quietly by themselves, they can skill, read a book, whip up some desert or do housework. If the kids need something, they can take care of it. They can help the kids learn skills and read to them, bathe them if they need it. And if I want them to do something ridiculous, I can just quit telling them what to do and they do all the ridiculous stuff sims always do.

It might be a bit cheaty - but it's so realistic to have a playable teen babysit and do their homework or skill up some while the kids are asleep. And eat everything in your fridge :p

But the fake wife who is supposed to be there just to be the nanny has risky woo hoo, and then goes mental.

huh?

My nannies don't do cleaning at all, and I wish they would.  I'm using expensive NPCs, and my sims are basically paying the nanny to sit on her butt and keep the social worker away, and then have to pay for a maid as well (if they want the housework done).  I assumed it was lobonanny that stopped my nannies doing any housework.

I have a Servo that I made when OFB first came out who is my playable nanny surrogate.  Any time I have a working couple about to spawn I move Rosie Jetson into the house and she takes care of the kid while they're out.  She is a family sim with no job, most skills maxed now, and some badges.  In the family she's currently in she's acting as gardener as well.  When the kid hits Teen Rosie finds her own place again and waits for the next baby.  Rosie also has a full complement of child care stuff in her inventory and a variable amount of cash she brings in, which is useful for other reasons.

I really dislike NPC's because they do amazingly dumb things that bother my Sims.

Laura

Yeah, and what happens next, anyway? I still hope there's a dire fate in store for Paris.

My vanilla nannies do an okay job. They're definitely better than my non-directed playable Sims at the diaper changing. (For some reason my regular Sims will almost always opt to bathe a baby who needs changing, which takes longer and still leaves the kid with a full diaper. The nannies opt, correctly, for the changing table.) Now if I can only stop them from feeding the toddlers half a dozen milk bottles all at once.

One of my Family Sims got a three bolt attraction for one of the nannies. Since his lifetime aspiration was to have lots of grandchildren, I thought it made for an amusing dilemma for him, so I married him off to her. They've got one adopted kid, but that's as far as I'm going to go for him. The nanny has tons of cooking points, so at least he'll eat well. I'm thinking the best nannies should probably have high cooking, and for personality high nice and activity points with low fun. (A couple of my Sims got so furious at one of the prankster nannies that I felt obliged to let them fire her.)

BTW, does anybody know of a hack that will have the nanny track the schedules of all the adult Sims in a family? Seems wasteful to have her hanging around for several hours after the first adult gets home from work (or arriving hours before the last adult leaves). I know they can always dismiss her, but best option would have her automatically leave.

The nanny only tracks one sim's schedule, so if you want to go that way your best option is to have the one that leave later schedule the nanny and have the other one send her home after getting off of work. I don't think the game can track more than one schedule to try and figure out what hours there are no teens or adults around.

 ;D This is the most sensible option, considering how kludged-together the whole multi-gen design is.

In the Official Guide is written, to track the schedule of the sim that goes to work *earlier*, to make sure that the nanny comes early, and if she doesn't come - the second sim has the time to call her "just for now", and at the end of the working day - to make a new "track schedule".

Actually, that's not quite what the guide says.  Page 212 of the guide says "If parents work differing hours, consider having the earlier-departing adult call the Nanny.  Thus, the later-starting adult can work on Skills or Wants or socialize rather than taking care of the minors." 

The guide doesn't say anything like "if the nanny doesn't turn up then you can use the other parent to call the nanny" - I would have been surprised if it did, as that's effectively saying this is bugged so this is the workaround.  Remember that the guide was written before the game was released and therefore before the bugs in the released version were known.

:( Yes, I did buy the guide for the original game, before I realised that the guide is basically garbage.

Yes Kyna, you are right - the explanation why it make sense to track the earlier working sim is my own, because I have many failures choosing the later-working sim. Nevertheless, it writes to choose the earlier-working sim, and that's true.

Personally I think it makes more sense to schedule the nanny to the parent who has the later schedule.  Then when the parent on the earlier schedule gets home they can dismiss the nanny.  I use expensive NPCs, so it saves my sims some money, but the real reason I do it is to minimise the time that horrid creature is on the lot.

I think this is another example of the guide not offering the best advice.