More Awesome Than You!

I was not aware since Seasons playable sims can actually die while on a community lots!  And I have pics to prove it.  It can happen to non-playable too btw.

I sent a sim on a community lot on which there is an expensive hot tub.  A thunderstorm started and sure as hell my sim got hit by lighting not once but twice to make sure it would finish it off...  I post about that on another site but I was curious to see if it was a hack I was not aware doing that so I removed all my downloads and try it again.   :P

And it happened again and this time I took pics.  The grim reaper came, the pop-up asking if I wanted to go back and change the odds did come too but I could not do anything, the option were blanked... but the weirdest is that the sim that died turned into a ghost, changed into everyday clothes (because it was in a swimsuit when it was hit by lightning) head to its car and drove back home!   ::)  WTF is that... Once the residential lot load, the car appeared from the left side of the lot instead of the right side and was empty... it just kind of parked itself, it was really spooky and no sim ever came out of the car.  And the sim did officially died since even without saving the residential lot, the sim was not there anymore.

The odds of sims getting struck by lightning is ridiculously high while they are in a hot tub.  So far my average is 100% (on comunitly lots, I did not test on residential lot yet) whenever a thunderstorm starts, I barely have time to move them out of the tub!  I did put lightning finial in hope it would help but it did not change a thing.  Sure as hell the lightning always hit the hot tub.  I want to remind you I had NO hack or mod at all in game when I took those pics. 

Is this some kind of silly joke Maxis put on us?  Can this be fix with a mod?  Cand the odds be reduced in any way?  I do not like that so many sims can die now.

Here are the pics:


(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/MissDoh/thunder1.jpg)

(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/MissDoh/thunder3.jpg)

(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/MissDoh/thunder4.jpg)

(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/MissDoh/thunder6.jpg)

(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/MissDoh/thunder7.jpg)

(http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/MissDoh/thunder8.jpg)

I really hope something can be done at least in regards of the odds.

I'm surprised Squinge doesn't have a hack for this  ;)

Lol Aussieone. ;)

Sacre bleu, Miss Doh! That's a rough go!

Mental note: hot tubs on comm lots only where there are annoying Sims I definitely want to get rid of.

My next test is with the regular hot tubs on community lots and then on residential lots to see if the odds are as high.

If I would have let it go, at least 2 playables and 5 unplayables would have died already.  But the thing is, my townies are selfsims and I do not wish for them to die and certainly not that horrible way.

EDIT:  They seem to be well protected against heat stroke while on community lots though, my sim can stay in the hot tub for 5 hours if not more without any chance of it consuming.  ::)  I will not try that on a residential lot without Pescado warmth fix in though.

EDIT2:  The odds are the same with the regular hot tubs on community lots.. 3 townies got hit my lightning and died and silly them after one died they are just heading in hot tub while the thundestorm is not over like if they would wish to die.. Silly sims!!  Silly Maxis EA!!  I guess my only option for now is to remove all the hot tubs from my community lots until a fix can be done if this is at all possible.  I sure hope the odds are not the same if they are in swimming pool while a thunderstorm starts!  :o ???

What about placing the pool/tub indoors?

Wow - that is great.  Can I use that in a story - ooo even better, I'm going to give it a try.  Thanks for that.

I've been putting lightning finials on all my lots, but still seeing lightning strike.  Maybe the problem is they have to be at ground level.  I've been putting them on rooftops. You know, where you'd normally see a lightning rod? :D

Hook

Just tried it myself on a residential lot and got my test family killed. Better stay out of the hot tubs when it's storming...

I wonder if the Aspiration reward love tub is immune to the storms? One of my stupid townie kept going in during storms (hell, they actually jog during storms, whaddya expect) but he never got fried. All my lightning strikes are with the hot tub, but none with the love tub. Fluke?

I thought of that, to give you an idea, I put 3 lightning finial on that perticular community lot: 1 on the roof, 1 in the parking and one on the grass.  It still insist on hitting the hot tub.  :-X


Knock yourself out, this "bug" isn't my property.


Thanks, I won't need to try it myself this evening.

BTW the main problem here is that my playable can die on community lots, I cannot do anything about it (other than either removing all my hot tubs or try the ffs debugger to regain control) and are driving back home looking like a ghost.  This should definitely not happened and for me it is a major bug.  Before I ressurect that sim, I loaded the community lot and indeed the tombstone of the dead sim was there.  Once resurrected, it was no longer there so the process of resurrecting does work properly.  Yes I could put the hot tubs inside but my lots are not design that way and hot tubs should go outside not inside.

The main interest is that you get the car going home by itself - that'll go in a story.

I saw three townies get hit with lightning on a community lot with the same hottub recently. The third townie got hit twice - straight again after climbing out - and died. It's the first time a non-playable has died on a community lot for me. Lightning rods are becoming a must and apparently too much of a requirement. The percentage of lightning strikes in hot tubs needs tweaking.

I've had the same experience...only in dorms. I am the proud owner of 6 tombstones of dormies on just one lot. 5 died from combustion from the hottub ( I didn't extinguish, as they were polluting the gene pool   :P ) and 1 lighting strike. What ever happened to dormie invulnerability?

ETA: this happened in one play session lasting approx. 4 hours and I can't even count how many times my playable had to extinguish burning Sims.

Purplehaze, Pescado made a mod so sims won't combuste that easily, it is called warmth fix.

You should take a peek at it.  :P

I haven't put it in because this is a nice way to cull the fuglies from my dorm without me having to do the dirty deed. What I am more interested in is the change in gameplay from invulnerability to kill mark.  Maybe the game code is seeing fugly and zapping the blighters!  :P  BTW...I am also having a lot of dormies struck by lightning. One in (about) twenty seems to die.  I'm a Uni player, so my experiences come from that type of gameplay.  I've done quite a few outings Downtown, and haven't witnessed your problem... yet. But, I will keep an eye out for it. I'd hate to lose a playable that way.  And the ghost car...that's just bizarre.

Incidentally... and anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong... but I think the dormie "invulnerability" is a bit of a misnomer.  I don't think that dormies couldn't never die... it's just that, the way the dorm controller code worked was, it always sent dormies to "bed" at certain times closer to the evening.  While dormies are in "stasis" inside their rooms, their motives are all pretty much automagically refreshed.  So, they are hardly ever hungry or sleepy.  I think the nodormieinvulnerability hack simply makes it so that dormies' motives aren't always refreshed like that.  So even when they go into their rooms, they can come out and actually be hungry and tired or have full bladders, leading to the constant passing out, pissing themselves, and sometimes even death (typically by starvation).  This pretty much happens usually when more than one motive is totally depleted (in the red).

Anyhew, I definitely would like to see a fix for this extreme lightning death situation as well.  That just seems really ridiculous... on the other hand, it was kind of amusing, so merci beaucoup for sharing MissDoh.  I especially like the spooky ghost car thing.  Hehehe. :D

Ste

Until/unless they fix this, don't visit either P.U.R.E. or Lulu Lounge. Both have unprotected hot tubs (4 in P.U.R.E.'s case). Visitors to community lots seem to be immune to both hot tub overheating and exercise overheating, which is good. One of my favorite custom lots has six hot tubs and a few treadmills.

Oh I must admit I lmao at 1st but after seeing it again and again, the joke was getting old.  I knew the pics would speak for themselves.  :P  Glad you enjoyed them  ;D

Did anybody try swimming while there is a storm? I am concern about the odds of that situation too.

I had a sim gaining body in a swimming pool at the time of the incident mentioned above, and lightning never struck the water (weird, considering it is a larger body of water). The lot was wolfsim68's Stoneyville Community Pool (http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=42902). I'm going to stick a few lightning rods on community lots to avoid problems.

Well you could go, but leave when it starts raining, or go in a less wet season (fall and winter rarely have rain, right?)

If this happens rather often, isn't it a VBT, contributing to larger numbers of sim files than one might wish?  I wonder if they took the lid off that sort of number to accommodate this?

Would putting the glass awning sort of a thing over the pool, hot tubs, work?  I haven't tested this yet, as my game is out to lunch while I participate in my first hair and clothing binning retreat.

I don't know about the odds (the only lots I've really played much since installing Seasons have a huge greenhouse with the pool and tub inside it) but a swimming pool has the potential to be even worse. According to Prima- so take it with a grain of salt- in the hot tub, only the specific person being struck is effected. In the swimming pool, everyone in the pool is effected.

I dunno about the odds, but I've personally never had a sim struck by lightning in the Love Tub.  Or anywhere, ever.  I'm starting to feel left out.

I just mentioned this a few posts up, and no one has refuted me, so I guess love tubs are immune to lightning strikes.

It used to be some low number, like 800 or so character files, but that limit was raised with at least NL, and maybe Uni, so you'd have to go a ways now to hit it.  There's still a limit, but from what I've read here it's so high that the odds are your hood will blow up from something else, or you'll abandon it and move to a different one long before you get close to it.

That said, you could always put Pescado's notownieregen hack in the game, and keep it from mindlessly replacing the dead townies until you explicitly create more to fill the diminishing pool.

Yeah, my post was part "me too" and part "but I can't say for sure because I seem to have gotten the special death-proof edition of TS2."

I was just curious to know if anybody is actually working on a fix for this.

If no one else makes anything, I might dig around... but I won't make any promises.  The next few weekends are kinda busy for me, and I'm just too brain dead when I get home from work nowadays. :P

Ste

I truly hope that you (or somebody) can find the time to make a fix for this, Ste. I've decided (again) that I'm not buying Seasons until this type of stupidity has been burninated. What was EA thinking when they coded this thing?!!

I have a community lot with six lightning rods and have still seen frequent fires and sim strikes. Thankfully, no hot tubs there.
Overall, we need a hack that tweaks the probability of lightning strikes to a reasonable frequency.

I don't think I ever had a sim killed by accident in my game before getting Seasons, and now, thanks to the hot tub, my sims are dying in droves.  My favorite community lot has a hot tub on it, so I send my sims there a lot. But not that's not really feasible, because it's too deadly.  First them catching on fire (which there's a fix for), now the lightning. 

It's funny when it happens once. When it happens a dozen times, it gets really really annoying. And it happens to love tubs, too.

Update on the Love Tubs - I've just seen a splendid picture posted by someone on the public newsgroups of a sim zapped and fried in a Love Tub.  Krakkkoom!

Ugh, I think I'll definetely wait to get Seasons until lighting can be disabled.  I play with the sims and make sure they dont die.. last thing I need is uncontrollable lighting.  :-\

Or you could, you know, keep them inside when it rains? Or at the very least, out of bodies of water? It's no worse than trying to fix the computer on, say, 5-6 mechanical points: not very smart, but you have to be in a crappy mood for it to kill you, and you have to be stupid to do it in the first place

So, you want all of your sims to live in the dark?

"Lighting" does not equal "lightning".

Lightning can strike and kill sims in the love tub, at least on private lots.  I had a storm at my legacy greek house and two sims died from consecutive strikes in the tub.   

I think the point is more that crappy programming is causing lightning strikes to be way too common. People shouldn't have to alter their normal gameplay just because some nimrods at Eaxis have their heads up their asses.

Nimrod - mighty hunter, denier of God, builder of the Tower of Babel.  I'm missing something, aren't I?

Edit - oh, I get it.  Bugs Bunny.

Hmmm, perhaps I'm using the wrong term, though I could swear I've heard it used in this context, meaning a stupid person. English isn't my first language. *shrugs* Also, I'm not christian, so I'm unfamiliar with the bible. My bad. Still, my point is valid.

Nope, Nimrod is slang meaning a silly or foolish person.  That use of it originated with Bugs Bunny, as maxon mentioned, and probably did have a biblical source, since Bugs used it to refer to Elmer Fudd while he was hunting. :)

yes, but...

do YOU sit in a body of water during a thunderstorm? I mean, it seems like a no-brainer.

People shouldn't have to alter their normal gameplay? Because, you know, nothing about having weather alters gameplay in the slightest  ::) We have to adapt to sims having temperatures now, we might as well adapt to the possibility of getting killed by lightning.

It's sad, but there you go.

Sims are too stupid to:
1. Check for a pool ladder before diving/sliding into a watery death,
2. Unable to simply get out like a normal person by hoisting themself up onto the surround.  (I guess their arms are strong enough to paddle and swim, but not leverage.)

So, it's not a shock when a sim continues to bubble away happily in the hot tub (though perhaps with a quick jump out to say "Wow, it's raining") without ever once displaying a shred of intelligence, and running like a frightened gazelle to "indoors" to avoid lightning strikes.

In the short time I had a hot tub outside at a dorm, two dormies died, and several more got fried.  Granted, I found it all quite funny (especially when my sim avoided getting hit), but eventually I placed corner greenhouse walls and a matching roof just to keep the pain and suffering down.

People can say all they like the phrase "shouldn't have to" but we all know it doesn't work that way with Sims 2.  It's the modders who make sense of the tortured illogic of Eaxis.

So, what... maybe Dizzy includes this sort of thinking into the autonomous behavior whatsihoozit?  Or is it too much...

I can adapt how I play my sims to accommodate weather and the risk of getting struck by lightning, but without a hack or cheat I can't do much about sims that are not currently under my control that haven't learned that sitting in a hot tub in a thunderstorm is now dangerous, short of moving all hot tubs indoors.

The problem is right now that storm are so sudden sometimes sims do not even have time to get out of hot tub before they get hit.  I did put all my hot tubs inside on community lots until something can be done about this but I have no place on residential lot to do so.  I do not have to move thins around all the time because EA miss on a bug as obvious as this one.

And silly townies keeps wanting to go in hot tub on home and community lots without us being able to do anything about it without mods in.  Gee even after they got stike by lighting, they insist in going back in!!  And the storm is not over! Talk about silly sims that are asking to die.  ::)  My townies and downtownies are all selfsims so i do care about them.

Maybe their all vampires   :P  Ok I meant lightning

 :P

/me hands ScoobyDoo a dictionary.  :D

Ok, dyslexia is in full force now. LOL  ;D

I was definitely surprised that the non-playables didn't make a run for shelter when it was raining, the one time I was on a comm lot when it was. I guess a few of them eventually ended up crowded in the little park pavilion, chatting, but that may have been a coincidence...

I'd personally love a pie menu to toggle the tubs on and off altogether when it's winter or raining, etc. I forgot about a couple of visitors the other day who sat out in the tub during winter and eventually went home all pale. It's the same house where I had someone struck by lightning in the hot tub as well; it's a big lot so I can't babysit them, but they just won't leave it alone. It'd also be nice to make the hot tub unavailable when you don't want your visitors making a beeline for it and just sitting there being boring all the time, too :P

That's why Awesomespec calls for hot tubs to be located in rooms or fenced areas that can be locked down.

We may have rain now, but it doesn't seem to actually effect much that the sims do.  Having seen a pizza left outside in the rain still get eaten, and watching sims paint in the rain with no damage at all to the pictures...  the rain seems largely irrelevant to them.

I concur - I had this happen today (for the first time, actually) and it took me completely by surprise. It was on a residential lot and they were using the love tub.

The interesting thing to me is that there were two people in the love tub but only one died.  It left her a widow with three young children and there wasn't even time to try to plead. I was most amused.

Every time it's happened to me (normal hot tub), only one person gets nailed, regardless of how many people are in it at the time.  Weird, huh?

Kind of sad in a twisted way.  No newspaper headlines screaming "Mass Hot Tub Death at Downtown Singles Club!"

Just a thought, but you could make a little "gazebo" for it, with walls full of floor-to-ceiling windows and a roof over it (what I'd do cause of lightning) or, just a small fence around it with a gate. Then you could lock 'em out when you want to. :D

Yeah, a gazebo or roof is the safest way to go, because even if you reduce access, if you don't pay attention for a minute, the weather can change and "zap" a sim is dead.  Just now, I was away for a minute, wasn't raining when I left, got back, and found the Grim Reaper paying a visit. D'oh.

If you cut off access, I fail to see how sims can get in there at all.

I had a sim hit by lightning on a community lot, whilst waiting for the taxi home by the payphone. Prior to the strike, his energy was just about totally red, with other motives at yellow or higher.

He did not die, however. His bladder and hygiene motives were totally trashed, but his energy motive leapt up to about 0 (half-full). Other motives may have been reduced, but not drastically.

I didn't think too much about it at the time (after all, Sims supposedly can't die on a community lot), but having read this thread, it seems odd that he didn't die, if c/lot deaths have been enabled.

Just another case of Eaxian logical coding, I guess.

My point was, just reducing access to a sims hot tub isn't good enough, you also have to watch them like a hawk when they are in a hot tub because a storm can spring up suddenly, and zap, they are dead.

Unless you completely cut off their using the hot tub entirely, at which point why did you even buy one?

Does putting the hot tub indoors stop lightning from striking it, or is EAian coding so borked that lightning can strike it anywhere at any time? I'd check myself, but the game doesn't run so well on this computer (combination of Vista, 512MB of RAM, and a graphics card that is listed as having "oddly poor performance" (or something along those lines) in Graphics Rules.sgr).

As far as I can tell by reading the thread, they only die from it if they were in the hot tub at the time.

Yea, indoors is fine -- lightning only strikes outdoors.  They got that part right, at least (for now, anyway).

Well.... that's not 100% true, but close enough. Just don't fly a kite inside a greenhouse. I had a kid get struck by lightning that way, which pissed me off because I'd placed it into the greenhouse just to avoid that.  But all my Sims now have hottubs either inside or in greenhouses. Because trancejeremy is right, it only takes a second for the weather to change. I had a new CAS Sim just moved into a house, and he was in the hot tub with the welcoming committee when it started to rain.  I tried to get him out immediately (I was honestly in a panicked "OMG, RAIN!!!!" mode), but you know how slow Sims are about getting out of the hottub when you cancel the action, so the lightning got him as he was crawling out. It then systematically struck all 3 visitors. It killed him and 1 visitor, the other 2 managed to live. Luckily, his wife was there to plead for his life.  That was the very first time I've ever had a truly accidental death on my lot.

Later on another lot, the Nanny spontaneously combusted after being in the hot tub, but I just let her die- she'd pissed me off enough by being in there with a baby screaming in its crib because it needed a diaper change. One of the teens had gotten home by then (and was changing the diaper), so I just let the witch burn, and good riddance!  ;D

How would you "reduce" access without cutting it off? Access is a binary thing: Either you have it or you don't.

Not for them to decide when to use it, that's for sure.

I did some tests during a thunderstorm.

You'd expect from all the info we're given that a lightning rod will keep Sims from being struck during a thunderstorm.  If this is true, it doesn't work for hot tubs.

They don't help if they're on the roof.  They don't help if they're on ground level.  They don't help if they're on ground level away from the hot tub, or if you have multiple lightning rods around the tub.  It didn't help to put one on a table on ground level.  No matter what I did, I had a Sim struck by lightning in the hot tub.  While I have seen lightning strike a lightning rod at ground level once, it doesn't seem to happen often, and certainly didn't protect my Sims who were in the hot tub.

A couple of amusing things.  One, a very outgoing Sim who got in the hot tub naked had burned pants on when he got out.  Lightning does strange things, but putting clothes on someone I've never heard about before.

Two, a stray dog on the lot at the time got a memory of the Sim dying, along with the Sims who lived there.  Well, the ones who *still* lived there, anyway.

One test, two Sims were stuck by lighting at the same time.  They both got out of the tub, and one was struck again.

If you have a playable Sim struck by lightning, they'll get out of the hot tub.  But if they have the little feet icon like they get when they're going to walk somewhere, they'll get hit a second time immediately.  If they don't have that icon, they don't get hit.

The final test I ran had 5 lightning rods.  One on the second story roof of the house, the highest structure on the lot.  A second on the roof of the greenhouse.  Two at opposite corners of the hot tub, and one on an end table near the hot tub.  Nothing helped.

Hook

More testing.  And more fun stuff! :D

A gazebo roof seems to protect the hot tub.  An awning will protect it as well.  The first awning in the catalog looks like a flat glass roof, not unlike the greenhouse walls, and looks pretty good over a hot tub.  It does cast a shadow, so it's not as attractive as it might be.

I took the lightning rod off the lot for a couple of the tests, and discovered that lightning will strike other objects, like trees, when you don't have a lightning rod.  With the lightning rod (on ground level) I don't think I've ever seen a tree struck.

One funny thing, there was a grave on the lot (Poor Joe Carr, pissed off one too many Sim in my neighborhood, and he's a MEAN ghost, too).  It was about 4:45 PM when his tombstone was struck by lightning.  He came out of the grave, complained as usual, wandered back and forth for a few minutes, then went back into the gravestone.

I ran a test with a swimming pool, and it wasn't the lightning magnet the hot tub was.  The cheap hot tub was just as dangerous as the expensive one.  I had a couple of my Sims play Marco Polo and saw a bunch of new swimming pool animations.  For example, they'll jump off the side of the pool.  Never saw that before.  But they didn't get struck while in the pool.

I did see The Cheat get struck once.  It didn't complain. :D

Hook

This thread is making me want to build a lot with nothing but hot tubs on it, and then proceed to greet any sim that passes by....

SaraMK, try that on a community lot, it is more fun.  :P  Espacially if the idea of your playable sim becomes a ghost and drives itself back home attracts you, you will have a blast.

Hook,  I seen trees hit by lightning even with lightning rod on residential lot, I had one on the ground level and one on the roof.  Trees get hit way less with rod on residential lot but it still can happen.  The expensive telescope got hit a few times too.

I will try to put a gazebo  roof or awning thanks for the tip.  ;D

The funniest thing that happened to me was a sim coming back home from work with a guest while there was a thunderstorm.  The guest got hit by lightning shortly after it got out of the car and decided to go back home right away.  That sim was not much of a host.  :P

I think this hot tub death is a myth.  Last night I left Brandy (Broke) Dreamer and hubby in the tub for six hours.  Their thermometers were in the red but it had no effect.  Switched from the above ground tub to the in-ground tub.  Same result.

My game is not patched for Pests or Seasons.

Ziggy my game is indeed patch for Seasons but I do not have the pet ep.

Did you saw my pics in the 1st post?  I doubt it is a myth.  :P

I've only had that one spontaneous combustion, the evil Nanny, despite hours and hours of Sims in the hot tub, and I do have the patches.

The lightning, OTOH, seems to be a sure thing.

Love your pictures, MissDoh; my petulant (jesting) post was because I'm jealous.  I thought maybe death-by-hot-tub would be a quick and clean way to some selective population control.   

I've built a pool.  Maybe I'll get lucky tonight and a major thunderstorm will roll in. 

I've since removed the hottubs on my dorm lots ( death rate too high from combustion and lightning), but before I removed them, I had a dormie get out of the tub, wander into the dorm to play pool and combust. I thought "That's It"...no more hottubs. I've pretty much cleaned out my fugly dormie pool. The new shiny game generated dormies are not as hard on the eyes.

You can always place the weather machine and MAKE a storm roll in.  :D

Or, have your Sim fix a trash compactor in a ladderless pool while running with scissors and flying a kite.

Hook,

Thank you so much for your grand experiments.  And thanks for thoroughly testing the glass awning.  That was what I had wondered about earlier in this post, but hadn't tested, as I am busy culling cc and learning to bin things, so my game has been out to lunch (I am near completion of my restored, utopian neighborhood thanks to the incredible information at this site).  I just couldn't imagine that the game would now have been designed to require buildings around all these lightning attracting things, but then you never know with The Sims 2, do you?  It’s bothered me no end, these burning trees.  Upon re entry to my neighborhood, I will place those rods, no matter how poor my Sims are, community lots not spared, either. 

Would you have tested the weather vanes, by chance, or has anyone else and I’ve missed it?  I have had a feeling they may be what is needed for the higher structures.  Either that, or they would be something to strictly avoid.

I really appreciated all your descriptions of the funny goings on, as well.  I can now understand why people were so glad you'd returned, and let me add, "Most pleased to meet you."  :)

Now that would be a sight to see!

Thanks LadyLiberty.  Pleased to meet you too. :)

This was my first custom neighborhood.  Joe was a menace to everyone there.  First time I saw him, he'd wandered past the house of a Sim who was near the top of the athletic career.  Max body, max fitness.  He insulted her.  Bad move.  She beat him like a cheap rug and sent him on his way.

Joe keeps complaining about the toilet when he's haunting.  Apparently I sold his favorite crapper to replace it with a Flushforce 2000. 

In another hood I had a Sim based on a particularly obnoxious poster on the BBS.  I'd made this particular Sim specifically to make him miserable.  I wanted to see if a Sim could die from low hygiene.  Joe came by and annoyed him, and he got a want to "See the ghost of Joe Carr."  So I decided I'd let him, and fenced Joe off in a corner and let him die.  First time he saw the ghost, it scared him to death!  Poetic justice.

I thought about the weather vane, but decided not to mess with it.  Maybe someone else has some experience with the thing.

I guess Maxis never intended Sims to use the hot tub during Spring and Summer. Too bad they didn't give us the option to drain it.  I had a jacuzzi attached to my swimming pool, when I had one.  It wasn't exactly a hot tub, but the water was always warmer than the pool itself, and we used it a lot, even when the weather was a bit cooler.  No problems when the weather was warmer.  One Sim house is based on that house, and I don't like the idea of putting an awning over the pool.  At least I don't need it all year.

Speaking of pools, the pools are body temperature the year 'round, so you can use them to cool down in Summer and heat up in Winter.

Hook

Combustion from hot tubs is eliminated in the warmth fixes, along with other temperature-related nuisances, like phone-freezing lag.

Yes, that's the plan. Now that I've thinned out the population it's time to insert the fix. I just didn't have any time today to get much done. In the meantime, until I got the fix, I just moved the tubs out. They'll be back...as a lightning rod, I'm sure.  I've had my fair share of bolts from the sky deaths also. But then again, what idiot goes swimming or hottubbing during a freakin' storm? I'll tell you who: a candidate for the Darwin Awards. Those deaths were well earned. Stupid Sims.  :P

Well, sims lack any sort of deductive reasoning ability.  They aren't human, for all their outward appearances to the contrary.

They're actually dumber than Pets, even, because Pets can be trained, but sims are incapable of learning.

That's always been a gripe of mine. Someday, maybe AI will be advanced enough to take the stupid out of Sims. Wait a minute...that could be a bit scary.

I did just that, Kate.  Brandi turned it on. Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire!  [Programmers must have been listening to Jerry Lee Lewis when creating the weather machine.] 

The house didn't catch on fire but Brandi did.  Bye, bye, Brandi.  Oddly, she didn't leave any insurance proceeds to her kids or hubby. 

Next user was the new widower, Darren Dreamer (by that time he was in red) but there were no direct hits so he survived this round.

Maybe he'll have a hot tub woohoo with the town slut, Nanny Poppins, for some extra heat.   :D

I thought that you only recieved insurance proceeds if your sim died of old age.

Yea, that's true. Though Monique has an insurance hack that pays it out for any death, even townies.

I hate the new dangers with hot tubs that Seasons has brough to the game.  Spontaneous combustion?   >:(

I have a brothel in my hood and one of my girls has died three times to lightening strikes in a hot tub...  I don't know why Maxis loves to throw this bull crap into the game.  I am always very careful to keep my sims alive and now this...

I dunno, why do you send your sims to a hot tub anyway? Then they tromp about in their swimsuits all day. Don't let 'em mess with it.

My game must be broken because although I tried over the weekend in various households and dorms, couldn't get one Sim to cook in the hot tub.   Even with six Sim hours in the tub after a workout on the treadmill. 

Maybe if I patched, the feature would be added.

The game is programmed not to do it if you appear to be trying to make it happen deliberately.

Of course you are correct.  I've always been suspicious that it was second guessing me.  Damn EA!

I spent almost an hour trying to get all of the captain crunch out of the nooks and crevices of my keyboard!  ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)

That would be like removing the white off rice, possible, but what a bitch of an undertaking!

I am going to try the fence fix, then, to at least keep them out during winter and storms... I wonder if there are any invisible gates, because the "room divider" fence strips that came with Pets seem pretty useless as is but would be much more unobtrusive than a real fence outside.

In case you've missed it, Syberspunk has a hack (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8125.0.html) in testing that won't necessarily eliminate hottub + lightning deaths, but should lessen them. It makes them exit it during the rain based on their logic points and memories of past electrocution.

Gee, maybe I'll ask for one that increases the odds since my Sims seem to be hail proof, heat proof, lightning proof, and electrocution proof. 

Bless the updated SimPE - at least I can again have precise control over my elders' life spans.

how do you get that to happen miss doh as it never happens to me, although i only use them at home lots both inside and outside, i also use mostly the expensive one too, barry.

Hang on ironside.

I have to help you before someone stomps you.


That is what you did.  THis is what you should have done.


There.  Try to be correct with your grammar so certain people (rohina, ElfPuddle) don't come and stomp you.