I was halfway through a rebuttal of jaldeer's post, having done a fair bit of Science to be damned sure that I knew what I was talking about. Good thing that there's that preview function!

Thank you, Myskaal. I'll check out the new link now.

I installed the residential version, since I wanted to rummage around and see what was there. However, loading it up, I noticed that there was something missing - the houses. Not only do both of those links lead to the same file, but they're actually the same link, duplicated.

Heh. Is this an intelligence test or a mistake? I'm just amused that nobody has posted anything about this.

Let's do it simpler still...

In-game or out, delete the Maxis neighbourhood that you want to reset.
Find the folder that you originally installed the game into and hunt down the relevant N00x folder:
  default is (C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\The Sims 2\TSData\Res\UserData\Neighborhoods) But everything before TSData depends on where you put it.
Copy the relevant N00x folder to the neighbourhood directory. The one that's next to the directory that your downloads go in.
Run game.

N001: Pleasantview
N002: Strangetown
N003: Veronaville

Not that you need these neighbourhoods in the slightest. Your question was ambiguous, so I'm not sure if you want to play in those neighbourhoods, or if you just expect them to return and that you can't do anything about it. If you don't want them, they won't regenerate unless you force the issue.

I hate to ask this laeshanin, but did your sims actually Want to gain skill points in the first place?

Oftentimes when a sim moves out, they lose their permaplat status, however, I've found that if I just leave them alone, it comes back again. Usually on an hour change, or possibly the next time said sim gains aspiration points. Basically, the next time that the game calculates their aspiration bar, it suddenly notices that they have the permaplat flag, and then boosts their mood up again.

Until then, it's extremely annoying. Especially because you can sometimes wait for hours. The best bet is to simply retoggle using the debugger.

If your friend brings a family over with her in order to play, you'll need to clean it in order to safely install it. Since she cares about the family so much, she'll probably play it on your computer, then want to take the new, more recent family back with her. To do that, it'll need to be cleaned again. Installing this family into her neighbourhood will then be unpleasant, since the family will have no connections to anybody. I'm not sure, but I suspect that there'll be problems since due to one-sided relationships that her other sims have linking to her wandering family.
On the whole, it sounds a very bad idea. The 'best' thing to do, from her point of view, is to bring the entire neighbourhood with her, although, since she'll have different CC, there'll be more problems. So she'd need to pretty much bring her entire install over and simply replace yours for the duration. Still not good.
Is she willing to play with her family, then delete it? I'd be surprised.
Just let her play with a new family that you set up for her. Give them some nice goodies and tell her that she's forgotten what it's like to play with other sims.

There are 3 different options, arranged in order of increasing cost. Both 2 and 3 include the beard. Those who choose 1 will already have the beard.:

The mini-pack, which is a booster for those people who bought last year's holiday pack. Since you're asking about the contents of the various versions, you obviously don't have last year's, so don't get the minipack.

The next one is the Happy Holiday Stuff Pack. This is, like the stuff packs, an add-on, requiring The Sims 2 to be already installed, although you don't need any of the expansion packs for it to work. Since you're asking for content questions, I'm assuming that you already have the The Sims 2 installed, so this is what I'd recommend choosing.
I don't have it myself, but from what I hear it isn't a 'proper' stuff pack, i.e. the disk isn't required in order to play the game, and it doesn't add new loading screens and music. On the other hand, it actually contains more game content than the Stuff packs do - genuinely new content such as firecrackers, NPCs and so on. Hopefully, when they compiled this, EA fixed the bugs that last year's pack had.

Lastly, there's The Sims 2 Holiday Edition, which is The Sims 2 Original, bundled with the Happy Holiday Stuff Pack. Only get this if you don't already have the base game.

It's well worth looking around to see how cheaply you can get the Holiday Stuff Pack. DO NOT buy via the EA Downloader - it will cause you a lot of grief.

You're joking! You're not? Why wouldn't they benefit...
Hmm... Might be linked to species? Since sims and servos are all 1 species, and the pets are different ones, that would be an easy way to discriminate. If so, however, it would be an oversight by some careless programmer. Which would be a novelty  After all, if a hunk of metal can benefit, why can't an animal.

BTW, yes I have pets. It's sitting nicely on the shelf next to me, and it's not getting installed until there's enough hacks out there to fix everything

Would snapdragons help? Assuming that you have OFB, of course.

I've heard - unsubstantiated rumour - that the reporter is okay to move in, but the person who posted it also said that in the home business, the ex-reporter would sometimes still take out a clipboard and study the business. I don't recall any mention that a real review came of this though.
Take this for what it is: A rumour that suggests that it may be a bad idea, but not necessarily disastrous.

That works, providing they home in on the chess board Also, all my sims learn to cook, usually to a full 10 points, so skilling cookery is a good idea too, provided that they go to the TV.

I'm assuming that you don't actually mean 'family' but 'lot-inhabitants'. i.e. That when a friend comes to visit who doesn't have a maxed relationship, you can socialise: friends, and that you want this to be also apply to others living on the lot.

If I recall correctly, Pescado has declared that it causes too many problems when both sides are trying to auto-socialise with each other. Specifically, problems with who gets priority. Basically, if several sims socialise with visitors, you may get a couple of them butting heads over who gets to socialise with a particular friend. Eventually one of them gives up and looks for someone else. This isn't great, but they tend to sort themselves out. However, if both sides of the equation try to do this, it just causes problems because both have socialise orders. Socialising with a visitor works since while lots of sims can try to socialise with a visitor, the visitor is non-awesome, and therefore willing to go along with it.
So, let's assume that we're going to let our sims auto-socialise with others sims living there. When do you trigger the macro? Remember, having 2 sims trying to auto-soc with each other will be trouble.
How about limiting the number of sims capable of using the macro at any time to one (requires a controller) and thus only one sim socialises. Hopefully the others aren't busy. So the controller would keep track of who was eligible, making sure that you didn't interfere with a sim who had motives below X... Even then, is it a good idea to waste resources on this when you can just eyeball the situation and manually click on them?
Perhaps include it as part of power-idle? i.e. when the sim is bored and would otherwise just sit around? Makes sense. After all, they're not doing anything better. Of course, other sims might be busy... And having a persistant sim trying to auto-soc you while you're trying to cook or cafeinate could cause problems. So, not when you're idling.

Basically, you can already use a macro to socialise with with lot-dwellers, it just isn't the 'working the crowd' version. It's specific, and you'll have to decide who does it yourself. To be honest, I find that this works well enough for me.

Yup, servos take on the traits of the one who turned them on. This also includes personality.
Unfortunately, this doesn't include badges, or permaplat status for that matter.

Does that apply to all the custom skintones? Including the ones that are tweaked to be DNA appropriate (Damn - what's the right phrase)

Good work - it's a very useful thing to know, and I can see it applying to other things too.

Hmmm. I need to investigate further.

Well, of course they're gone. They get added to an existing neighbourhood, just as if you installed a downloaded lot with sims in it. If you had other neighbourhoods at the time you installed pets, I'd expect the families to have been added to those too. As such, if you're careful, you could package those up and save them as an archive for use on new neighbourhoods. Just make certain that the files are clean and only have internal relationships etc.

It's possible that Maxis included a master set in the Prog/Pets directory, but I'd doubt it. I really can't see them meddling with the Prog/Original files however, since it would cause big trouble if you uninstalled.

Am I wrong on any of this? I don't have Pets yet, but it sounds right to me.

Sounds like someone needs the Macrotastics suite. Speciffically the Macro: Clean, Macro: Garden and Macro: Repair functions.
Have a rummage around, you'll find them quickly enough.

The important question is: "What have they got for the sim families that don't want a pet?" Anything significant? I don't mean variants of existing items, such as yet another table or bed - I mean genuinely new types of things.

'Tis true. Not many will want to go through the hassle of joining a yahoo group, and then having to wade through the bizarre layouts. Post the useful bits here and we'll look at them. As is, you're asking us to join a group 'blind'.

Okay - results are in from a session of spading.
Quick summary: Do trick shots. There doesn't seem to be any real difference between them, so I'm requesting the cup rather than the xylophone. Why? The xylophone noise irritates me immensely. No other reason.

Pulled from my attachment:

- - - - - -

Observations:

Skillination gave a pretty smooth progression. It looks like they get skill points based entirely on time at table. The RNG kept the numbers from being identical, since sometimes they did one animation, sometimes another. However, only 1 set of numbers for each Skillinator is given, since those using it only varied by a couple of points in each run-through. Finish times for skillinators varied from 1:30 am to 2:45 am. It doesn't seem that personality is a factor whatsoever. This could be run again with more extreme variety, but I doubt that it would matter.
Manually running the trick shots gave a jerky skill progression. The skill only increases after each cycle is complete. 2pts for a failed trick and 3pts for a successful one. Thus far, I have never had either more or less than this. Success rate on tricks is dependant on skill, but it only really starts to show right at the end. Since the scholarship only requires a score of 80, but a sim can learn up to 100, skill based success is almost irrelevant. Maybe the last 2 hours at best? The also doesn't seem to be any differewnce between the xylophone and the cup with regards to success, so if you're going to incorporate trick shots into the Skillinator, can I please request that you use the cup, because I can't stand the xylophone noise. Due to the jerky nature of skill progression, the random success rate, and the various animations, sometimes a sim was only minutes from completing a cycle when the hour came, and sometimes the cycle was already over. All this means is that a graph won't be much use! Also that I can't say exactly what point 80 was hit, since I just checked hourly. Still, the earliest that a trick shot passed the 80 mark was 20:00, and the latest was 23:00.

Haven't checked it thoroughly yet - just a gut feeling I've got, based on my setting sims up to do things, then dipping in to check progress now and again. I'll do some spading tonight.

I'm almost 100% certain that manually running trick shots is quicker than just letting them play. But you have to keep half an eye on them, so that you can set up another run when they finish the first half dozen. I've had good results doing it this way with mine.

Resurrected sims become part of the family that resurrected them. Families are attached to residential lots. If you're visiting a community lot, since it isn't the family's lot, there's nothing to attach the resurrected sim to. Consequently, you can't resurrect sims on community lots.

You can also meditate downtown - handy, since it takes so long to hit the teleport function.

I heard that you got the coupons from outings, although I've never seen them myself.
Not that I bother with outings, so that would probably be why.

Now that would be awesome. Having a link on, presumably, the BRY controller which had the option to hire, then allowed you to choose from either all (preferably) or the top 5 sims who fill a particular job. Such as "Hire Cashier" calling up a list of all available sims with a cashier badge. It would be useful to have a separate option for "talentless" too, just so you could train up PC sims, or in case you'd used up all the good ones. Could be interesting if someone is eligible for several lists - if you wanted a restocker, but there were none left, should a silver cashier witha bronze restock show up or not?
Let's hope you're tempted further!