Yeah, you're right. That price is for precision rounds. Typical 9mm's can be $0.10 each or less. Reminds me of what the Joker said in "The Dark Knight".

On hardcore technical lists, we don't even say "Hey". I got lambasted for omitting things like that. And yes, for bundling posts as well.

I even received a reprimand for top-posting. Usually, top-posting is required on other lists because people just wanna read the latest info, not the most recent history.

I was cramming too many posts into one.

Point 1: Killing is killing. The question of the factor of sentience is beyond me. Do plants feel, think? I don't know.

Point 2: It's hard to deny our bodies their natural nutrients. Carnivores like tigers have shorter intestines, so food passes through quickly. Meats carry most nutrients for them. Our intestines are so much longer; meats do turn bad inside, I hear. I'm really no expert at what our bodies need. For now, I just know I need to handle my Hunger, Social, Bladder, and Energy motives.

That was a simplistic example for illustrative purposes, that bit about making life simpler and less hypochrondiac-like.

The aversion part... lemme see how to explain it. Ok. If my Sim dies of old age, I can see it in one of 2 ways. I can be pained, wondering when there ever will be a time when a Sim grows up exactly like it did, with all the memories that it accrued.

Or I can just let go, understanding nature for what it is. Everything that has a beginning has an end. And before we all get too emo from this, that's not the end of it! Everything that has an end has a beginning. Energy cannot be destroyed; only converted from one form to another.

If I am averse to old age or death, then I might do stupid things when faced with those parts of nature. I can become irrational.

If I crave old age or death (or living), I could also become stupid.

I love Kung Fu Panda for a cute saying that the wise and lovely Oo Guay (Turtle) quipped. "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, today is a gift and that's why we call it the present". I know, it's an old adage, and it's probably trite by now. But it's still cute.

Hold firm to the present, because it is the only thing we can mould. Anything is possible in the future, as long as we work with the present.

Yeah, my reactions too when I first read it. rosenshyne posted something about plants screaming when killed. I remember reading something about Buddhism forbidding even the killing of plants. But I'm no expert.

I just eat what I eat. Avoid addictions (sugar, salt, anything). And just be at peace as much as I can. Oh, dang that fly! I'm a kill you later! Peacefully.

But veggie is the only defence we got against inflammatory tendencies, I think. Just about any ailments has to do with inflammations: old age, allergies, scleroses, etc.

Guns and explosives are cheap. Bullets are about $0.50 each. We're not talking about specialized ammo for accuracy (match grade, subsonic, etc) or for damage per round (hollow points for eg). At point blank, really, any ball of lead works on the head.

Compare price of bullets to say... hmm... stationery. A good pen could cost even more! Used to be that the "The pen is mightier than the sword". Seems today that "A bullet is cheaper than a pen". Mightier than a pen or not, I don't know.

Ah, don't remind me! I live in a city, but do try to get away to the burbs once in a while. The meat sure tastes different, even at fast food restaurants like KFC.

I have some friends who had to do a dissection one morning, then have lunch at a steak house! Heh. Perspectives can change quickly when we look too closely at "what we are made of inside".

Most of us are squeamish about our insides, though we still need to live with our insides.

I read something about 2 key moodlets (in real life): aversion and craving. Supposedly, both are bad. Removing aversion to our insides would allow us to live simpler lives (and not as hypochondriacs). Removing craving to erm, eternal bodily existence, might let us slaughter our foods without getting squeamish (via empathy)?

I once heard someone say: "stand ground/firm and observe/learn, rather than run from one troubled scene to another". Wait, where were we? Ok, I gotta stand my ground, collect my thoughts. Where the hell is my ground? Hmm.

I still want to know this.

I've looked through the GameplayData.package file. Found the nauseous moodlet. But didn't find anything to do with lifespan. The ingame text did put ellipsis ("...") after the "said to live longer lives" thing.

I read something about teeth hollowing out from the inside if we lack meats. It's one (good) thing to have a healthy dose of veggies (to reduce inflamation tendencies?). It's another (bad) thing to miss meats altogether, I think.

About the GameplayData.package, I have a feeling some things are hardcoded. As in, the developers forgot to make them tunable.

Thanks for the info! My mid-life crisis is gonna gimme something else other than Vegetarian.

Subscribe to mailing lists like Qt-interest@trolltech.com .

Try dispensing with social niceties as simple as a "Hi everybody". Let me know how long you lasted.

Like I said. I personally prefer the space savings brought about by the MATY policies.

Things are tighter and more information-dense in other forums or lists, esp for hardcore coders like Linux lists.

But yes, we all have to learn different rules for different forums or communities. When in Rome... it's good to learn Roman (or Latin?).

Alright, I think I need to get this straight once and for all. The FAQ says:

"If you want to quote multiple people, you can use the "insert quote" function"

Ok, got it.

If we're responding to 2 different persons, we would expect 2 different replies, right? Bundling responses to multiple persons would certainly make it difficult for the multiple addressees to see which parts are addressed to them.

Socially speaking, I would rather people respond to my posts in a single response post dedicated to feedback to me. Would be tough finding replies to my posts within a bundle. On other forums, it's either a ban for bundling replies like that (because it's socially rude), or we at least risk our addressees not finding relevant feedback.

Personally, I like the space savings.

Yeah, I can understand that. A perfectionist thing too, maybe. If I married a rich real person, and have more time, maybe I can still stick to my obssession with completing games.

I make do by trying for quick and intense challenges. I'm thinking how I can do this legacy challenge (or any challenge at all) within a short time.

I did create a simple short challenge by modding the GameplayData.package, if anyone is interested. Certainly removes all (or at least most) book-keeping required to keep score.

Or if any challenge designers are interested in doing away with book-keeping, we can work together.

What are "12s"? 12 year-olds and younger?

EDIT: No. 12-18. Thanks FAQ.

If challenges actually come with consistently and easily/automatically enforced rules, they might appeal to a much wider audience?

EDIT: Please do consider moving the FAQ to a more global location. It's currently nested at least 2 levels deep inside the "The Sims 2" forum.

Confirmed that those 2 skills don't receive logic boost.

<LogicSkillBoost>True</LogicSkillBoost> only exists for the other skills, not for Athletic or Charisma.

Which was precisely why I asked: why don't we just come up with a specific mod that automatically keeps track of those rules and restrictions for us?

That's why we stick with a time limit. Playing with normal lifespans, I actually had to choose which skills to improve. My sims do die of old age before they can master many skills. Often, I would take a high-logic sim off of work permanently, just so she can tutor the next generation well. Having a level 10 (career or logic skill, etc) sim die is a big blow, but a natural one.

In short, playing with normal lifespans, there almost always seems to be never enough time to get everything (that I wanna do) done before my life is over. Much like how busy you might have felt reading that gratuitously long last sentence I just wrote. Life's like that. Busy busy busy.

I was replying to 2 different posters. But I didn't realize the topic discussed may be similar. Where's the FAQ? Nice to be on a forum that's so neat. Why is the official Sims 3 forum so unpolished?

If ambrosia and life fruits are so difficult to get (so much that I haven't been able to get them at all!), then yeah, no point disabling them. I just thought that it might be nice to have Sims 3 actually mirror real life to some good extent. I like the legacy challenge for making me run through Sims 3 gameplay like I'm considering actual trade-offs for real life.

Aside from getting a kick out of realism in the game, gameplay balance and mechanics is another thing. Ambrosia and life fruit may have gameplay usefulness somehow.

As for lifetime rewards, I like the idea of upgrading cars for better speed, not the teleportation device.

Oh, it does? Yeah, I don't intend to test it either. The 90-day span feels right, given how I actually have to rush hard to fulfill a career lifetime wish if I start at middle-age (Adult). And I don't have all that much real-life time to devote to Sims 3 too. I have lifetime wishes myself.

Yeah, I knew that. Hmm. I guess I was unconsciously hoping that my Martinez couple can play with their kids while still not elders yet. I hear that energy motive decays faster when in Elder life stage.

That's realistic. It'll also be nice if we can call in to take leave or something. Then we have the option to turn up for work or not.

Maybe allow 1 sim-day leave per week? Assuming the YA and Adult life stages are 20 years each (20-40, 40-60), that would mean that 1 sim-day is about 1 year in real life. A 14-day leave package per year would give about 0.32 sim-days (7.84 sim-hours) of leave per sim-week. If we take more leave than that, then yeah sure, hit our work performance. To make it more realistic, maybe we need to call in to apply for leave, say, 6 sim-hours before work starts?

This keeps bugging me. Why is EA not adopting Awesomemod? If I were working on Sims 3, I wouldn't mind paying Pescado and company to improve Sims 3. It's not like EA can earn any extra from updates that ship these fixes in Awesomemod, right?? Awesomemod's very existence already means that area of revenue is already lost. Why not just let Pescado make Sims 3 better?

Updates that ship fixes should really not have to be paid for by customers.

It seems the logic skill will improve skill gain rate for the other skills. Is this true? Can anyone confirm it?

I was poking around the GameplayData.package file, and found this:

    <SkillGainModPerLevelUp value=".033">
      <!--Skill Gain rate mod to add to skills for each level of logic skill the sim has-->
    </kSkillGainModPerLevelUp>

That would mean at logic skill level 10, skill gain rate for the other skills will go up by 33% faster.

Does that also mean the logic skill itself also gets the modifier? The logic skill's increase rate will also be bumped up as the skill goes up?

Given how a typical career path would take a sim from 20 years of age (young adult) to maybe about 50 (adult) under the "normal lifespan" setting, I'd say that's the thing to play for most realism. Of course, everyone wants more time to fulfill whatever lifetime wishes they have. Sticking to the normal lifespan setting makes the game more engaging. We need to carefully consider trade-offs in life.

Take the Martinez couple for example. As adults, they have just 21 days (less actually) to reach the top of their careers, and then have kids. If I run a real tight ship, I would JUST make it. The mid-life crisis reward is necessary. I'd say the Martinez couple decided they needed to give up some traits and become ambitious workaholics to get any chance at all at fulfilling their lifetime wishes. Fun. Maybe almost as fun as the legacy challenge.

Having kids early will put them out of work for about 6-8 days. Then they would have settle for gray hair when at the top of their careers.

Well, there's the life fruit, the ambrosia. Once we get access to those, sims live perpetual lives. Sort of like some "Actuarial Escape Velocity", where the rate of increase in life expectancy (from improvements in life sciences) outpace the time-cost (time taken) to bring about said rate of increase.

A simple mod that removes all those lifetime rewards would be great. There's no way to "sell away" a lifetime reward that we might accidentally buy!

I never play with life fruits or ambrosia. I think it makes the game terribly trivial.

I think the "Propose New Course of Action" is hardly worth it. It takes 16 hours (2.5 work days) to complete. There's only a 10% chance of getting promoted (outright, doesn't consider performance bar).

30% chance that we get a "impress boss" outcome (+40 to relationship). 40% chance we get a "brown-nosed boss" outcome (+40 to boss relationship, -40 to coworkers). 20% chance that "no one is impressed" (-30 with boss, -40 with coworkers).

Better to use "Inspirational Speech" to develop relationships, than to use "Propose New Course of Action". Very bad chance of getting a promotion with that anyway.

That chances listed above seem to be hard numbers, not affected by skills or anything.

Working hard causes your Fun meter to decay at double the rate. It's -5 per hour if you work normal, not hard.

I do it all the time. I work hard till my "Having a Blast" moodlet is gone, then I slack off to get back that moodlet. Having a good mood is vital in the initial levels, when only the mood and 1 other factor (usually skill) matters. When more factors come in, having a second-rate mood doesn't do as much harm; the drawbacks are averaged out to a smaller value.

According to the GameplayData.package file...

Build independent case actually causes your performance modifier to dip by 1. Sort of like bumping your mood from "Elated" to "Very Happy", down by 1 level.

The time taken to complete building the case is 600-1080 mins (10-18 hours).

As for success rate, it depends on your logic skill. Above level 7, it will always be successful. Below level 7, probability of success decreases linearly (not too sure what this means, ie if level 0 gives near zero chance of success).

Upon success, your work performance gets filled up by 75%! So, if you calculate the losses you're taking over 10-18 hours at a performance penalty of -1, maybe you can see if it works out profitably.

Upon failure, your relationship with every co-worker takes a hit of -5. Is the relationship scale 100? Ie, -50 to 50? Or 0 to 100? Or -100 to 100? Not sure about this.

Ok, that's all I can read for independent cases from the GameplayData.package file.

The Vacationer reward seems to reduce performance decay by a factor of 0.2. Ie, decay is reduced to one fifth of normal.

The performance flow when missing work seems severe: -10. That's even more severe than the being at work in your worst possible condition: -8.

So, with the Vacationer reward, it seems missing work will only give you a performance flow of -2.

I do hate the fact that any performance gains when performance bar is full (100) is wasted. Weird.

I'm just curious. With all this ability to do with modding, why not just do a mod for the legacy challenge to install rules and restrictions? It's tough enough playing through 10 generations. Having to manually watch out not to accidentally violate any of the rules adds quite a burden.

Besides, it's no fun knowing that I might make an accidental mistake violating the rules once in a while throughout the long 10 generations.