More Awesome Than You!

I thought I'd ask here so I don't have to be registered at dozens of different forums, and if no one here can help I'll bop on over to SimLogical and do the sign-up thing and ask there. :)

Anyway, I made my sim-hubby and sim-self and made myself a Family sim (it's the closest thing although I haven't wanted 10 kids since I was something like 18 years old, LOL) and made hubby a knowledge sim since that's the closest fit for him.  Well, my sim-me has a lifetime want to marry off six children and you all know how knowledge sims are with things like abductions and such.  So, I got a wild idea but don't know if this will actually work or not, so if anyone's tried something like this please let me know.

Okay--here's the plan.  I know to fulfill my sim's LTW she'll have to give birth to at least the first and last children in the family with at least four in between which means that some or all of those four could be adopted.  The thing is, I want my sim hubby to have some alien babies (oh if RL hubby finds out about this he'll strangle me! LOL) but I also want sim-me to be their mom.  So I was thinking that sim-hubby could get abducted, have a baby, then once the baby reaches toddlerhood I'd put it up for adoption using the teleporter-plus shrub.  Then I could call the adoption agency and adopt a toddler and that toddler should be the one they put up for adoption.

So, does anyone know if this plan should work?  I'd sure appreciate anyone's input. :)

It should work, but seems to me there's got to be an easier way. Since with NL the no longer have the Pollination Tech as the other parent apparently, it should be possible to add sim-you as the second parent. I know there's a relationship adjust with the Insiminator, or you could simply set the parent child relationship with SimPE.

Ah, I see Motoki's got here first.  Just in case you haven't got Nightlife, or there are still weirdnesses with the way the bush puts kids in the adoption pool, I'll post my reply anyway:

Yes.  Ish.

That will indeed be the toddler they bring when you adopt a toddler.  However I've run into some wackiness involving toddlers put into the adoption pool by the teleporter plus shrub.  (It could be just general wackiness with going into the adoption pool; I've never had the social worker take kids so I don't know.)  Sometimes they aren't marked as family properly when you adopt them (through the social worker).

I find I am able to fix this problem in SimPE.  The best time to do it is after you have put the tot up for adoption but before you re-adopt it.  In SimPE, remove any links it has to its father(s) in the family tree, and uncheck the family checkbox in the Relations tab.  Go ahead and mark the father(s) relationship as "Unknown" instead of "Parent", too.


I haven't done this in a while, so I could be missing some stuff or just plain crazy.  Therefore, the age-old warning: before even putting the tot up for adoption, back up your game.  Then try putting him up for adoption and re-adopting him.  If that gives you funny results (as has been my experience), return to the backup, put him up for adoption, do as I said in SimPE, re-adopt, and if that doesn't blow up in your face, you're home free.  If it does blow up in your face... I was never here, I never said anything.  Return to backup.

You might also want to look into Twojeffs' Have Child/Adopt Child Want Fixes:
http://www.variousimmers.net/vsimforum/showthread.php?t=555

I think it's probably just general weirdness with the adoption pool. I had issues with it a LONG time ago when I had two male sims that I wanted to have genetic children (this was before hacks) so I went through this convoluted process of making kids with the templates of them (I had made them in the bodyshop so their templates were still in the CAS). I made one into the female version of himself as the mom and the other the dad, generated several kids in CAS, deleted the clone parents, made a dummy sim mom, moved them in, had her killed, had the social worker take the kids away and then my male sims adopted them.

Only one got parented and for the longest time the other was never recognized as a parent until SimPE added that ability and I was able to do it in there.

Yeah, I never bothered reporting it to Inge because I figured it was just general adoption weirdness.  Good to know it's not just me, though.

Okey-doke!  I do have NL but will definitely take everything posted here into consideration.  I've never had kids taken away from their family.  The other day I did put someone's kid up for adoption but he hasn't yet been adopted.

Thanks so much for the link to that mod!  I'm going to put that in my game because the couple that's going to adopt the little boy (they're really his aunt and uncle) are wanting to have a baby and I always thought it stunk that adopting didn't fulfill that want.

I think the kid goes into the adoption pool ok with the teleporter - I checked them against kids that went there the usual way.  But when you adopt into the family with the teleporter, it frequently only links its family tree to the sim you had selected when you used the option, instead of giving it to both parents.  I usually advise to use the social services when you can as that way the whole process runs including the memory giving.

Thank you, Inge!  So just to make sure I'm getting this straight:  adopt them out using the teleporter-plus, then adopt them back into the family via the telephone and things should be set right.

BTW, this one little hacked object has added an immense amount of interest and fun to my game. LOL

Huh.  Strange.  I've always adopted them in via the social worker.  Maybe I'm just remembering things incorrectly.  I've got a mind like a steel sieve.

I guess if you do end up with any weirdness you can fix it with SimPE after you've adopted the kid.

But couldn't you, say, have the wife of an abductee adopt the baby via the shrub without having social services take it? The husband is already a parent and since NL there's no more Pollination Technician on the family tree so really all she wants in this case is to add the wife as the second parent.

I believe that after you adopt the child with the social worker there will be no difference between whether they were taken away in the first place by a social worker or whether they were put up for adoption by the teleporter.   The difference will remain that the parents who lost the child will not have a memory of losing it.   That might affect how they respond to the child if they meet it later.   But you seem to be saying you just want it back in the same family again, but set up right this time?

I am not sure whether it deletes all previous parents as part of the adoption process.  If it does, then it will end up only related to the mother.  But loads of times I did get a normal adoption with two parents on the tree.  I wasn't sure what the reason was, but I think if one of the natural parents was dead, then the process for removing them gets interrupted or something.   I still advise serious players to use the social services whenever possible :)

Pollination Technician is still shown as the other parent in my alien Sims' family trees, or does this just apply to new ones and if so, why?  Is it a glitch or "by design"?  I did notice that all his memories had been wiped clean.

From what I've heard, it's just new ones born after the patch. It doesn't delete him from the neighborhood or existing family trees, but he doesn't get parented to any babies born from abductions post NL.

I haven't heard anything official from Maxis on this, but the general concensus seems to be this is a "feature" to address the problem that many complained about that all their children from abductions were siblings and thus people could not breed aliens together.

I think first I'll just give it a whirl setting her as the mom using SimPE and see how that works out.  Hopefully that will count toward her six children for her LTW, which is my main concern here. :)

He's still there, but even for previously existing alien spawn he's gone from the tree. Bothersome. Needs fixing! Maxoid Tom, what did you do, why, and is it possible for us to change it back?

LOL Well I doubt Tom personally made that change himself. ;)

I suppose you could always change it back with SimPE, but that could get tedious if you have a lot of alien offspring in your neighborhood.

Why not just use the boolprop testing cheat to make the sim-husband pregnant with sim-you's child, and skip the abduction (unless you really wanted that part)? I do it that way for homosexual couples and whenever (for some reason, usually because I've decided the male sim isn't really respecting all the female is going through to give him all these kids) I want a male to have a child, rather than a female (unless I need the abduction want). That fills the "have a child" want (but not adopt a child without the hack which is silly of Maxis - should be acquiring a child to raise, no matter how it's acquired) and keeps both sims as biological parents.