More Awesome Than You!

The thread about Red Green reminded me of something I ran into  recently:

I've got a farmer Sim - worked his butt off to maximize gardening badge (and was even a plant sim for a while until I got bored with it). He owns a farm and vegetable stand....good business, very popular. Once he got into his stride, all plants and trees were constantly thriving, and he was able to take care of minor needs quite quickly. As late fall approached, he fertilized and planted inside the greenhouse. Those plants were almost instantly thriving as well...but I would keep catching Farmer John whining about completely depleted environment scores. And yes, all the plots were used...Maxian grow lights added...

WTF? What am I missing about the greenhouse goodness?

Do you have a broken sprinkler in there? I've noticed that when a sprinkler gets broken, environment bottoms out for my sims.

LESS WHINY. USE IT, BITCH. And fix the sprinklers.

I DO use less whiny (and okay, Farmer John was not not whiny by maxian standards, but certainly by mine), and the sprinklers are fine (checked that first).

And there's no compost or empty plots. I have nothing else in there.

Actually, I noticed this last night as I was playing. I have a large greenhouse, with lots of nice things in it (fountain, potted plants, etc.), and the garden was thriving. Yet their environment score was at 50%. I started moving all kinds of things around, it would not go up. I do not have sprinklers in it. Out of curiosity, I closed off the part with the garden plots, and their environment score was suddenly up. Then I completely removed the greenhouse, and the environment stayed up. Something about the greenhouse seems to make the gardens bad.
I took shots of each, only unpausing to let the score rise and fall. You can see the difference easily.

Wall between garden and sim:
(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y249/necrobabe/1.jpg)

Wall removed:
(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y249/necrobabe/2.jpg)

Greenhouse (including roof) removed:
(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y249/necrobabe/3.jpg)

I can only hazard one guess: it all comes down to the fact that there is no carpet under the plants. when inside, lack of floor covering makes enviroment go down. When outside, you don't have to cover them. The greenhouse (I still don't know what parts of inside it takes and what of outisde) I guess wants the floor to be covered. Try placing them over tile with move_objects and see if the enviroment goes up.

Good idea....will try carpeting later tonight.

Talk about sloppy programming. Sheesh.

How funny. I mentioned a similar observation in Gali's colour-experimentation thread, but in my case the flooring (or lack thereof) cannot be blamed. It is very strange how either adding or removing partitions to/from an area can really affect the environment score.

I wonder if it could be the use of fertilizer on the garden? Well, you know... Stinky gardens... ;)

Partitions affect environment score by blotting out "negative" environment factors. In the greenhouse case, the reason this occurs is because the greenhouse is "indoors", and sims that are indoors do not like bare ground indoors. The garden plots can only be placed on "terrain", yet are "objects", resulting in bare ground indoors, albeit invisibly to the player. SIMS, however, perceive the bare ground indoors as an environment penalty.

Where did you get the dreds?

That actually makes more sense than it might seem at first. Greenhouses are not very pleasant places to spend a significant amount of time unless you are a plant.

Well, after a bit more testing, I have found that if all walls of the greenhouse are greenhouse walls with the garden plots (unless in a different part like above), it drops their environment. If one is a normal wall (say attached to a house) it is fine with the garden plots - even without any decorations or fountains.

But isn't there a bug where having a greenhouse with one wall attached to the house lets rain in?  How frustrating when two work-arounds clash like that.

I haven't had it rain or snow in any of my greenhouses. I easily have around 30 greenhouses, half of which are attached to houses, and all of which have a good 10 sim days of play each. It may be that they aren't putting the roof all of the way across? Or, perhaps you are thinking of the overwatering bug that happens when it rains? Indoorplantfixes by Pescado fixes that.

those are Nouks dread i think.
www.noukiesims2.net

 
Oh yes, somehow I managed to miss that. Sorry! Yes, they are Nouk's, and I actually got them at MTS2, but they are at her site as well.Thanks, Morrigrane.

So after an evening of experimentation, I can confirm that both the floor addition and the real wall methods both raise the scores enough to keep Mr Whiny Pants happy. To keep the look at the farm realistic, I used a gravel floor from Komosims...looks like just about every greenhouse I've ever been in.

Thanks to all for information/ideas.

I've noticed that, since I patched Pets (p2), the walls stick out past the normal roofline, i.e. when I built a flat roof, the walls stuck out past the edge of the roof, so I had to add extraneous floortiles around the edges of the roof to make sure the walls were completely covered. I believe it's been mentioned that some of the Seasons coding made it into the Pets patches, so perhaps this weirdness with the walls has something to do with the indoor rain and temperature problems that some people are experiencing. I don't have Seasons yet, so I'm talking out of my ass here, but the weird roof/wall thing seems as likely a culprit as any.