More Awesome Than You!

The environment bar in all my greenhouses is totally red. I've tested my hacks. I systematically began removing hacks. After removing "Numenor_GlobalHack_OFB_Custom-objects-placeable-on-shelves.package" the problem was resolved. Then I installed Celebration stuff but it messed up my 12 hour clock so I removed it, removed my download folder, and reinstalled Seasons because after the removal the game wouldn't start. Now the problem with no environment in my greenhouses has returned. I started removing hacks until there were no hacks left. In fact, I removed the ENTIRE downloads folder. After removing the downloads folder I created a new family named "Test" and put him in a fresh house I built. The problem was resolved so I played with his lot for awhile and the problem returned. My sims mood bar can't get higher than halfway up in the greenhouse and their productivity suffers. I put my downloads folder back in and am left scratching my head. Is this a Maxis problem? Please help.

Bit elementary, but this can be very hard to spot...are you using sprinklers? Check them. They can break rather frequently but aren't terribly noticeable. Enviro score plummets. Since your Test family had a good enviro score at first and then it went bad, that's what I suspect.

*Quit making me miss the Tests, people, or I'll have to resurrect my laptop and clone the suckers into my current neighborhood. I miss Chuck & Saish v2.

We had a conversation about this earlier (can't recall the thread), but it boiled down to two things:

1. Sprinklers (mentioned above)

2. Floor tiles under the dirt. Yeah. TOTALLY counterintuitive. But I use a gravel-like floor tile which I spread on the greenhouse floor, THEN, using moveobjects_on, place the garden patches.

I NEVER even knew that sprinklers could break. I kept wondering why a certain area of produce always died.  I'm so glad to finally know what's happening with the environment. 2 of my sprinklers were broken at one house and one sprinkler was broken at the other house and I never even thought sprinklers needed maintenance. Thanks for responding.

Will Macrotastics... Repair work on sprinklers?  I don't have Seasons yet, so can't test this.

Yes, yes it will. Macro Garden is also capable of detecting whether or not a sprinkler needs repair, and uses this as part of the decision of whether or not manual watering is necessary: A broken sprinkler counts as "no sprinkler present".

I used sprinklers on my first gardens, but they were always wonky.  I finally got rid of all the sprinklers and do manual watering.  I know that manual watering will raise a plant's health;  I don't think the sprinklers give the same benefit, but I haven't tested lately.  Manual watering will also give gardening experience which is useful before you get the gold badge.

Since you can never be sure which plants need water and which don't, Macrotastics' Macro/Garden is very useful.  It causes your Sim to water plants that need it, without overwatering some poor plant in the process.

Hook

Another way to figure out when a plot needs water - if 'water many' is available, they need it. If it's not, they don't.

If you've got 10 plots that say "Water/Many", and none just say "Water", then at least 2 need watering.  The rest may not.  Which two?  No one knows.  But Macro/Garden knows, and handles it properly.  And *this* is the reason I got Macrotastics.  I got tired of guessing, or having a sacrificial plant.

Hook

I suspect that the largest sprinkler (360) breaks down a lot less than the smaller ones. I kept thinking that I was having less sprinkler repairs on my nine-plotter than my initial three-plotter back when I was doing gardens, but I haven't done a garden recently and haven't taken good notes on them. I suppose the repair rate is in the programming of the item, but SimPE and I are barely on speaking terms at the moment due to the fact that it didn't know how to compensate for my own idiocy during face template creation.

oh, that's odd. If I make sure I start on one of the plants with the "water/many" option (that is, the *first* plant you choose does need to be watered), the sim seems to know which (other) ones do and which don't. In any case, my farmers have never overwatered at that point.

That's the naturally expected statistical outcome, even if all sprinklers are equally reliable. Say a sprinkler has a 10% chance of breaking when it fires. For a single sprinkler, that means after one cycle, there's a 90% chance it works. For two sprinklers, each sprinkler has a 90% chance of working, but the chance that nothing breaks is only 81%. So the more sprinklers you have, the more statistically likely that something will be broken.

Your scenario makes sense, of course. However, these were different gardens with one sprinkler only. One garden had the smallest and was a three-plotter. The other had the largest and was a nine-plotter.

Eh. I blame it on sampling error. Two samples is hardly enough to form a conclusion on.

Don't you need at least 3 subjects/samples to test a hypothesis?

It's been a long time :-\…cause and effect?…*goes to make coffee…*

I'd guess you need a high enough percentage of samples to be statistically viable.

I wouldn't really consider 2 sprinklers a statistically viable sample, and there doesn't appear to have been an effort to conduct a scientific study on this in any event. Conclusive would be if somebody carried out a detailed study of the actual sprinkler failure rates, or dissected the code to determine this definitively. This, however, is not presently believed to be worth the effort, and sprinklers have not been found to differ substantively enough even on an anecdotal level to warrant the effort.

It's not, that why I said "I suspect" instead of being more sure about it. It would make sense that the more expensive one would break down less, and that happened the one time I actually paid attention, but one comparitive sample does not make proof. If I cared more about crop-growing, I'd really test it, but, alas, I don't. I will be doing some in my Alpha/Apoc hybrid soon, but no sprinklers as I'm categorizing that as Medical (running water).

There's no "more expensive" sprinkler. All sprinklers are actually the same price per unit area. The 360-degree sprinkler obviously has 4x the area covered and therefore costs 4x as much, but adjusted for coverage, the sprinklers are the same price. If you use 4 90-degree ones to cover the same 4x4 plot, you will pay the same amount. Of course, a sprinkler will be broken more often, but there is a lower probability that all sprinklers will be out of commission at once.

And also: You can never prove a theory, you can only not disprove it. Theories are, therefore, assumed true until proven otherwise.

... I've heard.