XMLs are lying to me about bills, I cannot figure out how the heck the game

[Claeric]

determines how much you get billed.

According to an XML it's a certain percentage of the "total assets". I assume this is the furnished household value, possibly with the money your sims have included.

I'm trying to make the bills higher, to encourage sims to require cheaper houses at earlier job levels (a single sim wouldnt be able to afford a 20k home until job level 3, usually, with this mod. You'd have to pay attention to the household value as well as your sims earnings instead of basically having a free ride as long as your sim had a job. MUCH less disposable income this way.). So I told the xml to set it at .05 instead of .013.

But when billing time comes, a home with just over 20k lot value gets billed just 541 simoleons. This is MORE than the base game value should be (260) and LESS than what the mod should be (just over 1k).

The math indicates this is not .05 OR .013 the value of:

Furnished household
Unfurnished household
Furnished + Current funds
Unfurnished + Current funds
Any of the above divided by two (XML also claims sims are billed twice per week despite billing being a weekly thing?)

The household has two sims but I found nothing indicating bills are any less for a household depending on the number of sims.
So I have no idea what is determining it. There's clearly some other factor that influences the bills. But...what is it? How the heck do bills work?

I can't have my dream of hard mode until I figure this out. This is driving me crazy.

[wizard_merlin]

Have you tried dissecting one of the other billing mods that increase the bill value and see how they did it, might give you some clues as to what you need to do for your own tweak.

[Claeric]

I had no idea such mods exist.

[The_Goddess]

Here is one.
http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=383084

[Claeric]

Checking out that 5% one, I see the same information I changed.

So I still don't know anything about it, because that 5% isn't 5% of the household value. So I still don't know what determines bill amounts...

I was getting 541 for a 2,100 home. So that is 5% of...10,800?

...Was that just the bills for one of the two billing days? :| I think it must've been. So I guess I just need to tell it to do it once a week...damnit, that means somebody already did it. ;-; Dumb jerks stealing my cool game-difficulty-increasing ideas.;-;

Whatever, at least i know how it works now. Plus I have some fun math done to know just how difficult such bills are.

If your sim was, say, level 1 in the Business career, they'd bring in 810 simoleons in a week. Woops! Can't afford the bills, sucks for you. A sim at level 1 business career could afford a 16,000 dollar home, at 800 a week- but they wouldn't be able to afford food. This means a sim at level 1 business career must have a home of, say, 15k to live comfortably. That would cost 750 simoleons a week, allowing 60 for food.

A criminal sim at level 1 will bring in 510 a week, meaning they could live in a 9,000 simoleon house with minor discomfort.

Two sims working business and law enforcement at level 1 would bring in 2010 simoleons a week. They could easily live in a 20k home.

Part time jobs won't properly pay for a single sim's housing until they get to level 3.

With the base game a sim at level 3 of the culinary career, bringing in 1170 per week, could easily afford a 50k house (650 per week). Not so now- they'd need 2500 to do so- something they won't get until level 6! (Unless they have a partner or roommate)

This means you will have POOR sims. This means you will NEED to advance in a job. This means writers, painters, etc will NEED a part time job. This makes disposable income MUCH harder to come by. It makes saving important- don't go and immediately spend as much money as you can when making a new sim, you damn well better do the math to make sure they can actually afford the house you're building for them! The more money you make, the more expensive your home can be, and the easier it is to sustain it. The more money-bringers you have the easier it is, as well.

That sounds a LOT more fun to me.

[Inf]

Claeric, I have to say this thread kinda interests me on the fact of realism. You got something here and I'm very interested if you figure this one out. It would be nice to be able to adjust billings by income. Like you said... If per-say Joe Shmoe down the road makes 1800 a week working an average job and ole Mary Rotten Crotch up the street makes 8k a night from whoring around then yes the bills should be adjusted accordingly. Interesting concept here and I like it...

[Claeric]

Absolutely nothing I said in any way ever once even came close to barely implying that bills would be changing based on wages.

[Inf]

Oh well then that was my mistake then. I was under the impression you were trying to figure out how the bills were adjusted in the game and how to modify it accordingly per level of difficulty.

[Claeric]

It helps to actually read a topic when replying.

[SJActress]

Absolutely nothing I said in any way ever once even came close to barely implying that bills would be changing based on wages.

You'd have to pay attention to the household value as well as your sims earnings

I actually thought that's what you were trying to do as well, based on the above sentence. Out of curiosity (and the fact that I'd like my game to be harder and I am interested in this mod), could you clarify?

[Claeric]

The household value determines the bills. Paying attentiont o it would be mandatory as sims would no longer magically make enough to pay for bills even if they had absolutely no money from just building a house with all the money they started with.

Since wages, due to the higher bills, would not be able to properly afford these homes, you'd have to calculate how much your sim will make and how much your bills will be instead of getting a free ride by the game which mostly lets you always have enough money.

[soozelwoozel]

Claeric, I have to say this thread kinda interests me on the fact of realism. You got something here and I'm very interested if you figure this one out. It would be nice to be able to adjust billings by income. Like you said... If per-say Joe Shmoe down the road makes 1800 a week working an average job and ole Mary Rotten Crotch up the street makes 8k a night from whoring around then yes the bills should be adjusted accordingly. Interesting concept here and I like it...

Dude, let's not try and use words we clearly don't understand. What is per-say, exactly? You clearly thought you were being a master of rhetoric, which is pretty amusing. Now, why don't you go and jump off a cliff, per-chance. 

[Fairlight]

The way you wrapped the thread title into the body text of the first post (producing an incomplete and barely comprehensible title) is also pure genius.
Mitchie-style genius.

[jezzer]

Claeric, I have to say this thread kinda interests me on the fact of realism. You got something here and I'm very interested if you figure this one out. It would be nice to be able to adjust billings by income. Like you said... If per-say Joe Shmoe down the road makes 1800 a week working an average job and ole Mary Rotten Crotch up the street makes 8k a night from whoring around then yes the bills should be adjusted accordingly. Interesting concept here and I like it...

Dude, let's not try and use words we clearly don't understand. What is per-say, exactly? You clearly thought you were being a master of rhetoric, which is pretty amusing. Now, why don't you go and jump off a cliff, per-chance. 

Why would you expect it to know how to spell "per se" when, judging by its passive-aggressive signature, it can't even spell "too" correctly?  Clearly it is Hooked On Phonics.  (also:  Uncyclopedia is the Dane Cook of internet comedy; referring to it in any shape or form adds an immediate fail quotient to your point)

Back at the beginning of its illustrious career, it promised to post once and go away.  11 posts later, it is still floopyboobing all over the goddamn place, starting new topics, contributing nothing of worth, and engaging in doomed pissing contests with its betters.  Clearly, a deformed ass is just around the corner.

[SJActress]

Hmmm....let me ask some more, as I don't fuck with codes/mods and only play the game with mods that I know will work and make it playable (ie. Awesomemod).

MY understanding (as I don't look at actual CODE) is that Sim bills are only determined by OUTGOING money (the cost of the house plus the shit I buy for it).

My scenario:

Sim A buys a $2300 plot of land. I fill it with stuffeth till the bill is $20,000 (and my Sim is out of money). My bills reflect the $2300 plus the cost of stuffeth ($20,000 SPENT).
Sim B buys a $2300 plot of land. I motherlode and kaching the hell out of that Sim, making him a millionaire, and buy nothing ($2300 SPENT). My bills only reflect the $2300 I "spent".

Is this totally wrong or completely right?

Sorry, not trying to hijack your thread; I'm just trying to understand the system so that I can understand what the HELL is going on behind the scenes that you want to tweak (because I WANT you to tweak it).

[Claeric]

I just remembered I never figured this out. Explains whY I couldn't find my Bills mod, because I apparently never made it.

still looking for some input on this, then. :\

[jezzer]

There, there.

[Milhouse Trixibelle Saltfucker III]

I just remembered I never figured this out. Explains whY I couldn't find my Bills mod, because I apparently never made it.

still looking for some input on this, then. :\

You're still here?

[J. M. Pescado]

You can't really bill a sim for the price of the empty plot of land, because if he doesn't pay, there's nothing you can take from him, as he is a hobo. There are a few other non-billable objects that cannot be billed because they cannot be taken from the lot.