agecons.pkg editing?

[agcons]

I have altered all my ages now anyway using Inge's agecons mod, mainly to give them 10 extra years as adults and 10 less as elders . . .

A question I have for Ancient Sim, or anyone else who has done this successfully, is how the Elder lifespan was edited.  I have read and understood Inge's instructions, and I'm comfortable with editing up to and including Adult, but even though I backed up everything first I'm extremely reluctant to mess with the several lines between Adult (line 09) and the last five (identified as Elder age-adjusting variables in the readme file).  The line that has the value of "70" (I think it's line 12) is presumed to be the total lifespan, but the numbers don't add, if you consider all age periods from infancy.

I have yet to age a sim naturally to Elder status, so part of my problem is that I don't know how long they've got.  The moment this happens (Cassandra is close) I can check SimPE for "days remaining", but so far I've been unable to find anywhere how long Elders have got.  Unfortunately, I messed with Mortimer's age a couple of times, so the best I can do is assume the Elder stage lasts 55 days, which is was SimPE shows for him.

[Inge]

It does add up actually:

babies 2 days
todds 3 days
kids 7 days
teens 14 days
adults 28 days

that makes 54, leaving 16 days as an elder *baseline*.   Don't forget that age gets modified by some other values probably in that same file, on account of things like aspiration when they aged up etc.

[agcons]

Don't forget that age gets modified by some other values probably in that same file, on account of things like aspiration when they aged up etc.

Thank you; I didn't realise the Elder baseline was 16.   

On lines 10, 11, and 12 the values are 10, 20, and 18 respectively.  I would rather adjust the baseline rather than the age-adjusting values if I can, so I was thinking of removing 5 from line 10 (making it 5) and another 5 from line 11 (making it 15).  Does this sound reasonable?  Or, alternatively, if this doesn't sound dangerous to you I'll give it a try.  Because I'm all grown up now, you should know that if my game gets sizzled I will consider that to be entirely my problem.   

[Inge]

I don't know what those lines refer to anyway.  I am not even certain line 0D represents the age that normal old people die or that they usually get 16 days - I was really only contradicting your finding that it couldn't add up, because it can for those elders who had a bad life.  I only actually *know* the stuff that I already have in the description at my site, which is why it was a good idea for you to post here and invite other opinions.

Why not say what effect you actually want in your game, and we can see if that is acheivable with the lines we do know?

[Ancient Sim]

As far as I can see it doesn't actually add-up in game, because they get one extra day in each section (e.g., they're kids for 8 days, not 7, so they are actually 59 when they age, not 54, and that's without adding on the time spent at Uni, which would make them 83-86 if we're going to be really pedantic about it!).  But to answer your question, I haven't messed with the elder values, I am leaving that so I can check what changes within the file when I actually have someone age to elder for the first time since using the mod.

What I intend to do is simply deduct 10 years from whatever they get once they become elders, so if they are given 28 days I reduce it to 18 because they've already had the extra 10 in their adult lifespan.  The main reason I am using this file is to lessen the elder period, which is far too long when they've got perma-Plat, but also because by adding those years they retire at 64 which is far nearer the official retirement age of 65 than the 55 in the game (which is totally ludicrous in my mind).  

When I installed the mod I aged all elders within the first 10 years back to adult and made a note of how many years they had been given so I could alter them back when they age to elder again.  What I intend doing with the new ones who age at 64 is to save the game when they show 11 years to elder (the day they would normally transition, at 6pm) and then age them manually.  At this point I will make a note of how many years they are given, then exit the game without saving.  This is so when they age properly at 64, I can adjust whatever they are given to what they would have had (the easiest way to check what they've got is to use Inge's Days Left Bush as soon as they've aged, making sure you knock one day off when you adjust it later in SimPE).  The reason I am going to do this is because the chances are they will get extra years of elder by having those 10 extra years to gain more aspiration points (especially if they gain Perma-Plat during them) and the last thing I want is more elder years, or it defeats the entire object.   If they happen to get less years (because something nasty happens - hee-hee), then I will leave it as it is.

And I won't be letting them have babies in their 60's, either!  If they haven't had a baby by their early 40s at the absolute latest, they won't be having one.  The fact that they can't even start their families (or even get married) until they are almost 30 (without mods) is one of the most ridiculous aspects of the entire game. 

Hope this makes sense!

[Inge]

Cor that's a bit of a work-up!  I just have a hacked birthday cake in all my homes and when the elders are becoming a burden I move them to "green pastures"    I just need to fix the cake so it can kill younger ones too, as it gets a bit monotonous (and expensive) making swimming pools everywhere.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't think "agecons.pkg" does anything. Where is this file anyway? The elder lifespan is ultimately determined in game as 10-20 +asp, ranging from about -something for "badly" to +10 for Plat at grow-up, so your maximum normal lifespan is 54 + 30, or 84 days. Agecons.pkg is probably useless.

As for calculating realistic lifespans, the fact that 54 simdays happens to seem like a reasonable 54 years is purely coincidence. Simdays have no correlation with years. Although it possible to scale simdays to years, using various benchmarks (pregnancy) as a guideline...the results can be quite lengthy.

At 9months = 3d, or 4d/yr, with a life expectancy of, say, 75 years, your sim will live about 300 days: About 12 days as a baby, another 12 as a toddler, 24 as child, another 24 as a teen, the expected approximately 24 in Uni, and then 144 as an adult.

At least then it'd be POSSIBLE to do that 10 kids thing. If you don't mind hosing your game, but at this rate, generations would take forever anyway. Other gain rates would have to be slowed to compensate for the lengthyness.
 
As it stands, the current age-lengths are more balanced towards "how interesting is this", than "how realistic is this". Of course, the result is that pregnancy drags out to an elephantine length.

[Inge]

Agecons is not useless!!   It correctly adjusts the length of all age stages apart from Elder and YA!

[Oddysey]

As it stands, the current age-lengths are more balanced towards "how interesting is this", than "how realistic is this". Of course, the result is that pregnancy drags out to an elephantine length.

The standard game benchmark. Excessive realism leads to bad things. And not fun exploding type things, but "argh! there's a small monkey jabbing my eyes out with a rusty spork!" type things. To see an excellent demonstration of this, play GURPS. With all the optional rules. And calculate all food, water, and bathroom usage requirements. Abstraction can be a very, very good thing.

And it's still possible to do the 10 kids thing. I think they're assuming that you use elixir of life, but with a 10% chance of twins, on average a pregnancy will result in 1.1 kids. The maximum number of pregnancies a sim can have is 9, if they're pregnant basically constantly and don't use the elixir. So the average number of kids such a sim will have is 9.9, so a given sim has a decent chance of making the 10 kids goal. If you're insane and obsessed.

[Swiftgold]

And it's still possible to do the 10 kids thing. I think they're assuming that you use elixir of life, but with a 10% chance of twins, on average a pregnancy will result in 1.1 kids. The maximum number of pregnancies a sim can have is 9, if they're pregnant basically constantly and don't use the elixir. So the average number of kids such a sim will have is 9.9, so a given sim has a decent chance of making the 10 kids goal. If you're insane and obsessed.

Much easier for a cheating Family Sim male to achieve this want, that's for sure. *grin* I am kind of regretting letting my favorite first-gen CAS Sim do it, though. Now with generation three half the neighborhood is cousins and I had to kill off a bunch of them after giving him the twenty grandchildren he wanted and the want, which I'd had locked for ages, didn't even fulfill. He died soon after that... *innocent whistle*

[Sagana]

The maximum number of pregnancies a sim can have is 9

9??? You're managing 9 pregnancies in a normal lifespan with no elixir? The best I can do is 6, but I admit to being less awesome and I know I'm losing one at the beginning while they find a mate and usually another in the middle as they sometimes just don't get pregnant, but that'd still just be 8. Are you sure you didn't count the 3 days at the end when they're too close to elder transition as another one?

[Lythdan]

You could adopt. With adoptions and two sets of twins, you can actually have 10 kids rather easily.

[agcons]

I posted too quickly this morning; I was referring to a post of Ancient Sims' in another thread, and should have provided a link.  I want to adjust Adult to 39 from 29 (which i've done already), and remove the 10 days I added to Adult from Elder, which is what Ancient Sim mentioned.

I did edit lines 10 and 11 (I'm counting them from the top using a zero index, to be consistent with the readme file) as I described, so I'll see what happens when Cassandra makes the transition.  Nothing blew up when I loaded the game this morning -- I wasn't expecting it to, but one never knows with this game.

Thanks to everyone for their input.   

[Inge]

oh so this isn't connected with the Agecons download at my site at all then?

[agcons]

It is, hence my reference in my first post to your instructions in the readme file.  The effect I was hoping to achieve was the one Ancient Sim posted about in another thread, and it is to that post I should have referred, in order to make my question more clear.  I thought I had said in my first post that I was also going to post the question at your site, but my first draft got eaten by a page failure, and I see now that I didn't put it in the second time.  I apologise for the confusion.

Something JM said above indicates, to me, how I might achieve this effect: 

The elder lifespan is ultimately determined in game as 10-20 +asp

.  I added the bold formatting for clarity.  The existing values on the lines I edited were 10 and 20, and I reduced them to 5 and 15.

As I said, I'll see what happens when Cassandra transitions to Elder.  If I make sure she has Platinum when she transitions, I can factor out at least some of the "noise" introduced by the "+asp" part of the mix, and check her days remaining in SimPE at that point. 

[J. M. Pescado]

The standard game benchmark. Excessive realism leads to bad things. And not fun exploding type things, but "argh! there's a small monkey jabbing my eyes out with a rusty spork!" type things. To see an excellent demonstration of this, play GURPS. With all the optional rules. And calculate all food, water, and bathroom usage requirements. Abstraction can be a very, very good thing.

Depends. If your characters have access to all these things, there's no need to hassle them about it. But you break out the rules when they find themselves in a prison...a prison with no walls....and no toilet!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, if you create a couple of CAS sims with four kids, both parents having the family aspiration, then they can easily have a few more.  Put a hacked telescope on the lot, and they can BOTH have a few more!  But they don't need that many grandchildren to realise the LTW!

[Inge]

It is, hence my reference in my first post to your instructions in the readme file.

But there isn't a readme file in the download on my site, that's why I thought you were talking about someone else's version.

[agcons]

Oh, crap, more confusion.   I copied the text from your download description on the web page into Notepad.  I've had a long year with too little time off . . .

[Inge]

ROFL!  Ok, then just one more thing to ensure no more confusion, when you give values or line numbers could you use either all decimal or all hex references?  I am sure I have probably been looking at line 0x10 when you meant 0x0A or something