Offspring personality points

[Kibble]

I have had offspring in the game with as many as 32 personality points, a stark contrast from the 25 alotted for CAS sims.  Based on anecdotal evidence (i.e. I haven't tested enough to be sure), this seems to be based on the mood of the mother during pregnancy.  A mother who spends her entire pregnancy in a platinum mood seems to have higher-point-total sproglings. 

So, for example, a family sim mama gets knocked up.  Pregnancy is spent largely in a green mood, because the family is new and poor and focused on scraping together a living.  Child is born with 26 points, mother is ecstatic.  Gets knocked up again ASAP, same papa. 

Second pregnancy is spent in a platinum mood, energizer used freely to keep the mom happy, free time is available to do things she *wants* to do, meaning that platinum mood stays platinum throughout pregnancy.  Remembering to roll the pacifier before the baby is born -- the kid comes out with 31 personality points.  I have noticed similar trends in other families, but this was the most clear.

Soooo.... am I on crack here?  Anyone else notice this?  Could it simply be a side effect of the energizer?  Could it be an effect of sparkly Seasons EP food?  I do tend to use both of them often during pregnancies.

[Li'l Brudder]

Wunderkind.

[Kibble]

Wunderkind.

Hmmm.... is that a comment, or an answer?  I could read that to mean "The idea of a superior child amuses me", or I could read it to mean "The game was just weird at that particular moment, do not expect to see this again".

If it was the latter... I've seen high-point-total children many many times, but it definitely doesn't always happen, and rarely happens with a first child (for me).

[maxon]

The higher points is common in born in game sims - nearly all mine have more than 25.  I don't think it is anything to do with the mother's mood since we know that the personalities of children are always the same (first born effect) which is why we do the random rolling on the LotDebugger before a birth so the kids don't end up with the same personalities. 

[Quinctia]

A decent proportion of my sims are 30+.  I don't necessarily see more points as "more better," but I've got a pretty big neat and outgoing streak running through the one family.  (I have a fondness for the occasional mean or shy sim--so I'd stop breeding my sims if I thought that would keep me from getting one of those again.)  Looking through my oldest hood, it seems like they top out at 35.

If you wanted to test your theory, the easiest thing would probably be to look at the quantity of points natural (tokened at conception) twins get, and see if they're identical.  Over the course of multiple sets.

My twins haven't always had identical numbers of points, just so you know.

[Zazazu]

Random is random. Take a small enough sample, and you can easily draw false conclusions.

[Li'l Brudder]

Wunderkind.

Hmmm.... is that a comment, or an answer?  I could read that to mean "The idea of a superior child amuses me", or I could read it to mean "The game was just weird at that particular moment, do not expect to see this again".

If it was the latter... I've seen high-point-total children many many times, but it definitely doesn't always happen, and rarely happens with a first child (for me).

It's what the Prime Guide for the basegame calls them.  Stuff like that happens.

[Kibble]

I don't necessarily see more points as "more better,"

I definitely don't see higher point totals as "better", either -- I typically find Active sims to be a bit too high maintenance, and Outgoing can be a liability if a sim doesn't have enough Nice & Playful to compensate -- they end up just being jerks and getting pissy. 

But back on the subject -- has it been proven that for the personalities of sim offspring, random is random?  No inheritance, no parental influence other than "Encourage"?  How... dull.

[Quinctia]

Have a sample size of 88.  Every born-in sim in my legacy hood that's on Generation 11.  The "Played" column indicates whether or not I played through the pregnancy or just basically spawned some kids for the parents.  Special parentage (alien abduction, grim reaper) is noted, as well as which sims were born as multiples and which were singles (plus who they shared the womb with).  Lucky you, catching me when I decided to input all my sims into a geneology program, mainly to keep track of custom genetics.  I had all the info collected pretty much already.

I'd say my quads with totals of 35, 35, 28, and 25 are pretty good indicators of general trends, however, at least for total points.  I seem to have an excessive amount of sims with 10 neat points on the dot.  I've often wondered if birth traits are influenced by their parents.  But then again, I've had instances like a sim with 2 outgoing points born to parents with 10 and 7 outgoing points, which makes it seem more likely to be random.  To have THAT many maxed Neat sims, though...

[J. M. Pescado]

I definitely don't see higher point totals as "better", either -- I typically find Active sims to be a bit too high maintenance, and Outgoing can be a liability if a sim doesn't have enough Nice & Playful to compensate -- they end up just being jerks and getting pissy.

Active sims are far less maintenance than lazy ones, simply because they can actually *GET* to where you need them to be in a timely manner. ALSO, active sims have noticeably reduced energy decay! Sleep is the devil! Outgoing is largely a liability because it increases social decay while not providing any concrete bonii, although Outgoing >= 5 prevents fleeing from fighting. Playfulness increases Fun decay, but Fun is easy to repair, unlike Social, so high playfulness is not as troublesome as high Outgoing. With Niceness, moderate values produce the most stable, albeit boring, sims. Extreme Nice values (high or low) combined with high-outgoingness will antagonize other sims: Excessively mean outgoing sims antagonize other sims by poking them, but excessively nice ones are no better, as their constant attempts to hug are equally antagonizing, but far less funny!

But back on the subject -- has it been proven that for the personalities of sim offspring, random is random?  No inheritance, no parental influence other than "Encourage"?  How... dull.

There is definitely some amount of inheritance, but results can be extremely random as well.

[Kibble]

Have a sample size of 88.  Every born-in sim in my legacy hood that's on Generation 11.  The "Played" column indicates whether or not I played through the pregnancy or just basically spawned some kids for the parents.  Special parentage (alien abduction, grim reaper) is noted, as well as which sims were born as multiples and which were singles (plus who they shared the womb with).  Lucky you, catching me when I decided to input all my sims into a geneology program, mainly to keep track of custom genetics.  I had all the info collected pretty much already.

I'd say my quads with totals of 35, 35, 28, and 25 are pretty good indicators of general trends, however, at least for total points.  I seem to have an excessive amount of sims with 10 neat points on the dot.  I've often wondered if birth traits are influenced by their parents.  But then again, I've had instances like a sim with 2 outgoing points born to parents with 10 and 7 outgoing points, which makes it seem more likely to be random.  To have THAT many maxed Neat sims, though...

That is... amazing, impressive, and.... wow. 

It almost makes me wonder... could one's playstyle be thrown into the mix of a child's genetics?  I know it sounds like crazy voodoo nonsense, but what if?  For instance, I tend to have kids with very high (but not 10) active and outgoing, low everything else, which I am not a fan of -- I never *make* sims that way.  So maybe a kid whose mother was always in a high environment area would have high neat, or something like that.

I do believe I am going to have to spend some time torturing sim mamas-to-be.   Creepy, but I gotta know.

[Kibble]

I definitely don't see higher point totals as "better", either -- I typically find Active sims to be a bit too high maintenance, and Outgoing can be a liability if a sim doesn't have enough Nice & Playful to compensate -- they end up just being jerks and getting pissy.

Active sims are far less maintenance than lazy ones, simply because they can actually *GET* to where you need them to be in a timely manner. ALSO, active sims have noticeably reduced energy decay! Sleep is the devil! Outgoing is largely a liability because it increases social decay while not providing any concrete bonii, although Outgoing >= 5 prevents fleeing from fighting. Playfulness increases Fun decay, but Fun is easy to repair, unlike Social, so high playfulness is not as troublesome as high Outgoing. With Niceness, moderate values produce the most stable, albeit boring, sims. Extreme Nice values (high or low) combined with high-outgoingness will antagonize other sims: Excessively mean outgoing sims antagonize other sims by poking them, but excessively nice ones are no better, as their constant attempts to hug are equally antagonizing, but far less funny!

I find it very interesting how different we feel about our sims' personalities. You make some interesting points -- maybe I'll start letting a few active sims grow to adulthood without giving them the boot, and see how they do. 

[Zazazu]

My sims are all over the board, even CAS sims, because I randomize everything. That being said, I prefer sims who are just active enough to have the option to Run places, just playful enough to gain fun from games, and relatively outgoing. If it weren't for the "OMG a fight! RUNNNNN!" behavior, I wouldn't care about how outgoing they are. For nice, I prefer the extremes, because I love laughing at them completely failing at socialization.

Sims going low on social is almost never an issue for me as my sims are not single for long. Those who are have pets. I have more problems curtailing the socialization to get them to eat and visit the toilet...though it's still not too bad. I mostly leave my sims be and just direct a few interactions when aspiration lowers to green or skilling/targeted socializing when they are still going for their ordained career level.

[Quinctia]

My only problem with low active sims is that they still gorge themselves, as noeatcrap only stomps that for the active sims.  High Outgoing isn't a huge annoyance to me, because there are ridiculously easy ways to raise social, like toddler baths (for both bather and bathee), and phonehack's ability to call-->friends keeps relationships and social up.  Sadorandomness has dictated most of those really outgoing ones have ended up as Popularity or Romance sims, anyway, so that's easy--they want to do these things and do quite a bit autonomously, outside of the phone macro.  (It's also dictated some of the really Shy ones to become Romance Sims of Fail, for many funtimes.)  I dislike really Messy sims' bad habits and really Neat sims' cleaning obsessions.

I really don't think mood or anything during pregnancy affects the resulting baby's personality, though.  Just the same slightly randomness that leaves me with sims that had equally happy lives dying from about 78-83.  I have another legacy that started with a Messy founder and so far, the descendents have all tended towards Messy, as well.  But they're now living in a house that's just as nice as the family with the OCD streak--so the environment is probably not influencing that stat.

[maxon]

It almost makes me wonder... could one's playstyle be thrown into the mix of a child's genetics?  I know it sounds like crazy voodoo nonsense, but what if? 

It's crazy voodoo nonsense.  We know (at least I think we know if I understand Pescado correctly) that off-spring personalities are determined by an algorhythm in the code and the set of personalities produced by it, which can be applied to potential off-spring, are always the same.  It makes no difference how you play.

[Kibble]

It almost makes me wonder... could one's playstyle be thrown into the mix of a child's genetics?  I know it sounds like crazy voodoo nonsense, but what if? 

It's crazy voodoo nonsense.  We know (at least I think we know if I understand Pescado correctly) that off-spring personalities are determined by an algorhythm in the code and the set of personalities produced by it, which can be applied to potential off-spring, are always the same.  It makes no difference how you play.

Pescado reading the code is crazy voodoo.  Isn't it in a friggin binary file? 

I mean.... code, I get.  Code and I are friends.  But I'm a web programmer -- I don't get along with Binary.

[Zazazu]

Everything is in binary if you dig far enough.