Yeah, this is exactly where I'm coming from. I only serve meals during the headmaster scenario. I only buy birthday cakes when there's a baby needing an age transition, and I like the age transition to happen as soon as possible (no babies after 7pm!). My Sims will always prepare a meal that will satisfy the right amount of hunger need. I don't like food going to waste.

So, because I buy a birthday cake at exactly 6pm, it goes off at exactly 6am - so my Sims can't have cake for breakfast. Now that I can store birthday cake in the inventory, I never have to throw out a cake that's only had 2 or 3 slices eaten out of it.

In the big scheme of things, it's a minuscule saving - but if you're a fan of efficiency and you dislike waste, you'll find this tip extremely useful.

If you're wanting as many reports as possible, add this one to the list. I've experienced it too with a couple of Teen Sims. No A+ cheering in NL - what a pleasure!

(As posted to the Nightlife BBS, but here I'm more interested in feedback than benes!)

According to various sources (BBS, Prima Guide (apparently)), you can't put food into your inventory. I'm happy to believe that, but last night I tried something and it worked - check this out.

I only use the Birthday Cake to make the Baby-to-Toddler age transition happen. Normally, if it's a small household (2 parents, one baby/toddler), most of the birthday cake goes to waste because it takes only 12 hours to become stale. So last night I tried putting the birthday cake into the mother's inventory - it worked!

Then, the next morning (more than 12 hours since they bought the birthday cake), I took the cake out of the inventory and put it on the table - the cake was still fresh! My Sims could eat more birthday cake!

I kept doing this - grabbing a slice of cake and returning the cake to the inventory, and the cake was still useable 30 Sim hours after I bought it!

So - if you store the birthday cake in a Sim's inventory, and only take it out when you want a Sim to eat cake, you'll keep it fresh for long enough, and your Sims will beable to eat the whole cake without it going stale! 

Has anyone else observed similar behaviour with food and the inventory? Does anyone here have any idea why the freshness timer, or whatever it is, gets reset when a birthday cake is moved into and out of the inventory?

I've found that I can avoid those phone calls by ensuring that the DR score between friends never slips down towards 50. LTR deteriorates by 2 points per Sim day - so if you get the relationship score up to 100/100, it should be about 3 Sim weeks before that friendship gets down to 60/60, at which point those phone calls are likely to start. So I find it best to put in the effort while the friendship is new, do lots of Appreciating, Hugging and Busting of Moves, and eventually your Sim will only need to boost that friendship once every couple of weeks in order to prevent those phone calls.

Bleh. I'm stuck here without NL. Gimme gimme gimme. Etc.

Not in my part of South Africa it isn't... which leads me to ask: Huh?

The Placebo method for changing comfort is for your "Nancy Boy" Sim to "Come Home" and have a bowl of "Special K" while spending a "Pure Morning" in a "Brick Shithouse". 

Benes to those who get it!

I keep details of all my households in a book, and devote a double page to a household. I list things like Aspiration, LTW and personality points for each person, and if someone moves out, I put something like "See Page 30".

I'm currently playing 5 days per household, and am nearing the end of one cycle through all the households. For my next cycle, I'm thinking of putting all the page numbers (from my book) into a hat, and doing a lucky draw to see which household I play next. For my next cycle, I plan to play three days per normal household, and two semesters per University household.

My biggest problem is that I don't bother playing the pre-made households (Curious, Beaker, Grunt etc.). I seriously couldn't be bothered with the likes of Vidcund, Loki and PT9. I should probably bite the bullet and do something with them after my current cycle. I managed my first (fireless) swimming pool pool simicide last night. It's whetted my appetite for destruction. This is bad news for you, Vidcund Curious! 

The value of a painting doubles when the artist dies.

Bear in mind that a Masterpiece is a painting whose initial value is §500 or more - so the post-mortem doubling of value won't have any impact on a painting's Masterpiece status.

Just another 57000 hours to go until you get a nice surprise! 

Hehe, all I can do is speculate. Maybe the game only does a sick-check every 1, 2, 3 or 6 Sim hours. If the general state of your Sim's motives has improved since the last check, your Sim's chances of getting healthy again will improve. Maybe your Sim did other things that improved Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder or whatever. I think next time I get a sick Sim, I'll be sure to take notes.

Sim-Man! To the Biotech Station! 

Lying down and standing up is surely irrelevant? Surely exercise machines cause comfort to decrease?

I reckon that Fun is the only possible beneficial effect that an exercise machine can have on your Sim's needs, so maybe the increase in Fun made a difference. As for getting healthy or staying sick, I'd guess that the game checks at regular intervals, and there is a randomiser affecting your Sim's chances of getting well. Improving your motives probably increases your Sim's chances of becoming healthy again. But I'm just speculating here... and I'm wearing a set of fake lips just in case...  

I've just had a Sim achieve this LTW after only 8 or 9 days as an Adult. Getting one big payoff chance card will get you there (this Sim scored §50k thanks to the Smuggler chance card). He had already earned §25k by the time he left University (college grants, paintings, tips), and a bit of job-hopping and a few promotions helped him to earn the other §25k in his first week as an Adult.

I find that a counter top "magically" appears in the baby's room, as if some higher power placed it there. Then a cake "magically" appears on the counter top. Then, after the age transition, the cake "magically" teleports itself to the kitchen, and in its place, a Smart Milk dispenser - you guessed it - "magically" appears on the counter top!

It's as if the same higher power is an efficiency and optimisation consultant for David Copperfield (the one who done Claudia Schiffer, not the Charles Dickens character). The same way that a toilet or a refrigerator teleports its way around the lot to where it's needed most.

Tell you what hey, if my Sims had any common sense, they'd be worshipping this higher power!  

Bring (baby) To Cake works like a charm for me. I always let Age Transitions happen as quickly as possible*, and I've never had problems or noticeable delays with bringing the baby to the birthday cake. To speed things up, I ensure that the whole family gathers around the cake.

* Unless it's a transition to or from Elder.

I've started getting into the habit of ensuring all needs are high green, and the painter is always in platinum mood while painting. As a result I haven't been getting much negative fluctuation in the painting price, and most of my Sims' paintings have been masterpieces.

If your Sim has the recurring "Sell a Masterpiece" Want, you can keep your Needs in high green by using the Enigmatic Energiser. I find it useful to max out the Needs once per painting. Five uses of the Energiser will cost you 14000 Aspiration points. Five Masterpieces will net you 30000 Aspiration points.

As for staying in Platinum - even if your Sim isn't permaplat, the Aspiration Meter should get filled by selling one masterpiece, and as long as you time things right (e.g. don't sell the masterpiece just before the hourly Aspiration meter drain), one masterpiece's platinum should keep your Sim in platinum mood for long enough to paint another masterpiece.

Jen, don't feel bad - one thing I've learned is that the more you play TS2, the better you get at essential tasks like building skills. You start to realise more and more that you need to get your younger Sims to focus on skill-building. The availability of University scholarships for Level 8 skills has given added importance to skill-building for youngsters. Because of this, I expect most future generations of my raised-from-birth Sims will max out all skills before reaching Adulthood.

I'll second that, Posie. I've only had the frozen mascot problem once, and I just put move objects on and moved it. I now have a decorative Cow Mascot statue - and the original (actual, living) Cow Mascot appears to be unaffected by this.

My frozen mascot situation might have happened during an  "Add Soap To Fountain" action that might have gone awry. 

Deleting and zapping is soooo civilised. Surely a better option would be to make annoying Sims playable, and then torment them in ways that would make Mengele look like Mother Teresa? 

Can't say I'm familiar with the ADHD concept - I tend to alternate fun skill building and non-fun skill building. If fun maxes out, I'll happily switch the Sim over to a non-fun method of skill-building.

I'll be sure to keep an eye open for ADHD though, and see what impact it has on my Sims.

According to this list children seem to hate watching the Yummy Channel. I seem to have found a way to make the Yummy Channel fun for Children.

For starters, you can tell that a Sim is having a lot of Fun when all three green arrows appear on the right-hand side of the Fun bar. So when I say three green arrows, that's what I'm referring to.

I make a Child Sim watch KidzTube until all three green arrows appear. Then, once they've appeared, I change the channel to the Yummy Channel. For some reason, the fun-gaining aspect of KidzTube seems to be retained for the Yummy Channel.

Or am I imagining things? 

Okay, this is my first venture out of lurkdom here, so hello to you all from chilly Cape Town.    Now for my personal experience of skill-building.

I've started getting into the habit of rating my Sims in terms of the skill in which they have the least number of skill points. Therefore any Sim with 6 skills maxed out but only 1 skill point in the 7th discipline would have a skill rating of 1. My normal playing style is utopian (as opposed to a sopa opera-style crisis-filled dystopia), so I like to keep those skill ratings high for all my Sims.

My initial goal for any new-born Sim is to get them through to University with all 7 skill-related scholarships, so skill-building is an important part of the Toddler, Child and Teen phase.

Starting with Toddlers - any new Toddler of mine will spend more time with the Wabbit than with its parents. I regard the Toddler phase as being the ideal time to get up to 8 Charisma skill points, since I don't depend on the Execuputter or the Teleprompter for fun Charisma skill-building. It normally takes two days to get up to 8 Charisma skill points, after which I switch them to building Logic or Creativity.

Child skill-building goes hand in hand with Fun, because Children are low in Fun once they return from school. If they bring a friend home from school, they head to the chessboard. This is good for Logic, Fun and Relationship score (and Comfort if you have a comfy chair). Another cure for low Fun is to gain Cooking skill by watching the Yummy Channel.

Teenage skill-building revolves around getting all skills up to 8 points, in order to earn skill-based scholarships. It's just normal studying, really - nothing unusual. If there's a need for the Teen Sim to have fun, they'll head off to the pool table. Enough trips to the pool table and your Sim will earn the pool scholarship.

I try not to rely on Career Reward Objects for skill-building. The exceptions: Logic (thanks to the Biotech station's glitch which escalates the rate of skill building), Mechanical (the Surgical Training Station just seems "nicer" than reading a book) and Cleaning (if you can find it, the Fingerprint Scanner sure beats studying from a book).

Weekends are serious skill-building time for my Child and Teen Sims. I send a Child/Teen Sim to bed on Friday night, and wake them up as soon as the Energy bar is full - even if it's at 2am or 3am. Then they spend time gaining skills until their Energy bar gets to about say 30% (maybe Saturday afternoon sometime) and send them off to bed again. They wake up on Saturday evening again, and study through the night until Sunday morning. Then they go to bed again, wake up at around noon on Sunday and stay awake studying until about midnight. Then they get a good night's sleep and wake up on Monday morning. This way they maximise studying time and minimise sleeping time - almost like getting three days of studying in a two-day weekend.

Once a Sim goes to University, I plan their skill-building so that it coincides with a career-related Lifetime Want. For example, a Sim whose Lifetime Want is to become a Mad Scientist will focus on maximising Logic and Cleaning, and getting the 9th Cooking point. By rights, any Young Adult Sim who enters University with at least 8 skill points across the board should be able to maximise all 7 skills while at University.