On the same general subject, has anyone found the plummetation odds, and the amount of need damage it does?  Are the odds more like abduction, or more like (oh, say) a Cooking 9 Sim burning the furshluginer spaghetti (again)?

What's supposed to happen is that while on the SS lot the amount displayed is the SS's own lot balance (used for improving / restocking the SS), and that once the student leaves the lot the amount goes back to normal.  That going back to normal is maybe not happening anymore w/OFB?

I play with aging on (but lots of elixir!).  I usually play at speed 1 (except when no one's awake on the lot), but I go up to 2 if nothing interesting's going to happen for awhile, and once in awhile to 3 if say someone's alone in the house and skilling or doing homework or an assignment.  But mostly I run at speed 1 (and take tons and tons and tons of pictures!).  This is unlike with the original Sims, which I usually played at speed 2.

I don't feel at all guilty about speeding up when I do; I figure it only changes the speed at which the game shows us stuff, and the Sims themselves still experience their lives at the same subjective speed.  I've never heard anyone suggest that turning up the game speed has any effect on aging; I would be very surprised if that was true.

I download comparatively little stuff (less to be disorganized about that way); the only sites I pay for cc from are SimsHost sites (I'm lazy and they're convenient and some of them have really good stuff).  And of course my monthly membership fee here on MATY... 

And the problem is...? 

At some point it definitely fulfilled the immediate Want-slot Want for Public Woohoo, but not the memory-based ones.  At least in my game!  (No hacks at all installed at the time.)  Maybe we were running different stepping levels...   

In my experience, woohoo in a hot tub on a public lot counts as Public Woohoo for the purpose of the short-term Want-slot Want, but it doesn't generate a memory token and therefore doesn't count toward "Public Woohoo with Forty-Seven Different Sims" and so on.  See press release.

Glad to hear it!  That's more important than the score; the score is just to structure the fun.  How'd you get her to meet the correct professors without going to class?

Yeah, that's something every high school senior should be taught...

Glad to hear it!  On the scoring, I like asymmetry; if deciding to go for the no-hacking style bonus also means that you have to put up with a restriction against other uses of the computer also (and if the rules are more cagey about hacking than about the other two methods of GPA building), that's okay with me.  It introduces a nonlinearity... 

Or at least to get any grades without forgoing some potential style bonus.  Which might be frustrating to those who like to get every single possible point.   (I remember back in the SLIGE days I added a "no monsters in secret rooms" switch, because there was one guy who just had to both kill every monster and zip through the level in minimum time, and monsters in secret rooms annoyed him because he had to slow down to find the rooms and kill the monsters.)

Grade hacking is definitely allowable.  It has certain risks, requires good logic, requires getting into the Society, etc.  But it might be the most effective way to get a good score.  We're currently considering adding a 50 points bonus per term that the challenge sim doesn't use a computer, which would add a 400-point offset to any bias in the current rules toward grade-hacking as opposed to other styles.

Actually I was kidding again; but from what Venusy says, it sounds like it might be possible in NL, by dating higher-ups.  But I don't know firsthand (have to install NL one of these days).

Impressive score, and thanks much for the feedback; really glad you enjoyed the challenge. 

To some extent I want to avoid overly detailed scoring rules; not only does it make people less likely to bother in the first place, as you said, but it also sort of gives away all the strategies right up front.  For a hacking-related style bonus, I'm thinking maybe 50 points per term in which the main Sim doesn't use a computer at all.  My tendency is to leave the skill things as they are, just to avoid too much complexity (although your sliding scale for incoming skill penalties does seem sensible).

The thing about beds and toilets was meant as a joke, but then I hadn't really thought about Energizers.  (Not using aspiration rewards at all would be an interesting variant of the challenge; it'd be so different that it probably ought to be thought of as a whole different challenge, rather than just giving some enormous bonus in the current one.  Or there could be some big per-term bonus for not using any; but I don't know if the extra bookkeeping is really worth it.)

So let's see, what should the next challenge be?  How about reaching the top of your career ladder without ever going to work? 

I think that varies with HM.  I always get my kids into private school, and the headmaster visits have never been a problem.  Like angelyne I never leave him alone for a second, so he doesn't do anything stupid.  But what typically happens afterward (the next day, or even later that evening) is that he calls and wants to talk on the phone for hours with the lady of the house.  The masher!

Inneresting, thanks.  So to do Pescado's trick in the challlenge I guess you need to first make sure there are 50 first-dateable Sims in the neighborhood (can the Gypsy reach into associated Uni 'hoods?).  Which would be trivial in some neighborhoods, but mine tend to be comparatively sparse...

Thank you this is gr--.  Ooops!

How does that work?  If there aren't 50 dateable people in the neighborhood that your Sim doesn't know, does the game roll up new ones for the Gypsy to call down out of the sky?  Did you have like 50 skyborne dates all standing around the lot at once, wondering why the datee was ignoring them?  I don't suppose you took any pictures.  *8)

Any particular trick to reliably meet the appropriate (Drama) profs?  Or do they just eventually walk through the Downtown lot reasonably often?

I'm much too softhearted to do stuff like that.  I've never even had a Sim die (except for Benjamin Long that one time, but that was just so Kaylynn could plead him back).  I'm slowly steeling myself to allow some permaplatinum townies / gownies to die of old age someday soon.

There are two schools of thought here: one says that skilling up is a good thing and shoud be rewarded; the other says that it's too much like studying and should be penalized.  We'll suspend judgement for now.  (edit: or we could reward having skills but penalize studying in order to get them, thus giving JMP and his skill-vaccing even more points.)

I didn't make very good use of asp points in Suzette's run (I suspect I'm pretty much the opposite of JMP, in that I don't really plan things out very much, I just sort of dive in doing whatever springs to mind and seeing what happens).  An Energizer probably would have helped her out, and I think she could have easily afforded it.

I assume there's a GPA penalty also?  But I guess it's reasonably small?  (Just whatever you'd already gained in the current session, or something?)

Good luck to Nanette! 

Yeah, it seems to be a pretty bogus place in general, but I thought it might be fun to get wider exposure for the Challenge and all.  Maybe I'll post a one-page story (I tried that yesterday with a test story and it worked) with just the teaser image and the URL of the full story.

Pah!  Awesome is as awesome does...

One is speechless.  (Well, comparatively speechless.)

You won't get any argument from me!  I stand in awe.  Recycling Professors via vampirism in particular is a brilliant touch.  We'll have to forbid all that stuff in the next version of the rules. 

I really have to instal Nightlife one of these weeks...

What's her Aspiration, by the way?  Any comments on whether it made the Challenge harder or easier?

For some reason the EA Exchange keeps refusing my upload, even though it's a mere 152 pictures and five or seven meg.  Must be some server problem.

After a little CSS and Perl and Photoshop hacking last night, I put up a version on my own site; The Story.  Comments and derision welcome.  Not exactly a detailed analysis of the gameplay, but it might have some funny bits.

(It also references version 0.6 of the Rules, which includes Kyna's suggestion about allowing use of Reward objects on Society lots.)

(Wait, didn't I already post this last night?  But I don't see it in the thread.  How confusing...)

We eargerly await your reports.

Given that it's pretty much plagiarism, buttering up professors, or breaking into the computers, there's not really a moral component to the style bonuses. 

There's currently a 100 point bonus for starting with no skills, and a 100 point penalty for starting with 20 or more skill points.  Does that address your worry here, or have I missed the point?

Oh, or do you mean that skilling (at least skilling with books) is sort of like studying, and so ought to cost one points in the basic spirit of the challenge?  That's a thought; have to see if I can think of some creative way to incorporate it.  (How about a flat -50 for each skill point that the Sim has at the end of the Challenge?  Heh heh.)

You are allowed to enhance the dorm after she moves into it!  (Hm, you should probably only be allowed to use money that she earned herself to do so.)  Suzette did all her body-point-getting at the stereo, but then Philosophy only needs one (as opposed to four in Drama), so it wasn't tough.

That was very noble! I don't know enough about NL yet to judge for sure if such outings should be forbidden, but it sounds like they probably should.

Narf narf!  Has she been annoying you during the Challenge, or do you just have other people that need a drink? 

Wow, so she's earned basically all of her GPA from grade-hacking?  Has she ever been caught?  Maybe we'll have to think of some excuse for penalizing Society membership ("I hear they study alot over there").

There's a penalty for that, but it's just 100 points.  We'll see if that's too small. 

Also very noble, although not required by the current rules.

Sure, as long as you have the time.  Unless I've forgotten something in the rules?  She can even invite existing friends and family over for visits; nothing academic about that...

Very nice.  Beat me by 400, anyway!

DC

Cool!  Keep us up to date.  *8)  I'm writing up the Suzette Somnius playtest as an eight-zillion picture story for the EA Exchange right now.

Good feedback, thanks!  I playtested with a CAS Sim, and the lack of skills and previous relationships didn't seem like that much of a problem (Suzette's problems with Influence were with the fullness of the bar, not with its size), but that may have just been something about my (inept) playstyle.

Glad it's interesting!  The only hacks that I routinely play with are No Age Discrimination and No Buskers, but the more time I spend on maty the more tempted I am to install dozens more...   *8)

DC

Hm, hm, hm.  It certainly does seem to mean that as written.  I tend to think that should be okay, though, since the Society has its own associated challenges and barriers.  Assume there's an exception for rewards on Society lots, and we'll put it into version 0.6.  *8)