Abducted with the cheap telescope?

[TreyNutz]

I thought you couldn't, but an awful lot of people have been claiming recently that you can. Anyone know why?  Is it really a much lower chance with the cheap telescope?  Or just some glitch?

I thought someone at variousimmers.net once said that abductions were disabled with the cheap telescope (on Pescado's old Myth thread which I think has been deleted).  Is this true?

I've thought that clueless people assume that since the boolprop cheat works on the cheap telescope, then abductions are possible, but maybe I'm wrong.  I tested it once, and got no abductions under conditions that usually give me 6 or 7.  But if the rate really is very low with the cheap one, then I wouldn't have picked it up.

So, any thoughts?  Anyone actually have a normal, non-cheat abduction with the cheap telescope?

[Ness]

I've had one...  once...  pre-uni...

[skandelouslala]

That's really strange..I thought it was totally impossible..unless it is of course possible but the rate is just so low that it's basically a freak occurance.  Heck the rate with expensive telescope is low enough to make abductions at all a freak occurance in my game.

I wouldn't waste my time trying to figure out if it was true or not lol

[Motoki]

I can't speak for the cheap one, but I think they may have tweaked some stuff with the abductions in NL. I just had my first non cheat abduction recently (a teenage girl with the expensive telescope) and I wasn't even trying. Thing is, I had tried and tried and tried for the longest time and eventually gave up and all the sudden I get NL and bam, and abduction pretty much the first time I used the thing since installing NL. It could well be a coincidence though. *shrug*

[TreyNutz]

That's really strange..I thought it was totally impossible..unless it is of course possible but the rate is just so low that it's basically a freak occurance.  Heck the rate with expensive telescope is low enough to make abductions at all a freak occurance in my game.

I wouldn't waste my time trying to figure out if it was true or not lol

Well, if it's true, I'd like to update my Abduction Guide on the BBS. 

I've boolproped an abduction on the cheap telescope once before, and I remember that the animations (especially the hand placement) were clearly meant for the expensive telescope.  So I've assumed that abduction was meant only for the expensive one, or else there would an be appropriate animations for it.

[rohina]

Seriously, I have had so many abductions that I totally doubt the percentage likelihood. I always buy the expensive telescope, though. It's just so much cooler.

[dizzy]

Cheap scopes are excluded by GUID, so if you have a custom scope that will always have a danger of abduction (unless it's designed not to be dangerous).

Otherwise, the odds are 5 in 10000 (5/100 of 1% chance per Stargaze - Loop).

[TreyNutz]

Cheap scopes are excluded by GUID, so if you have a custom scope that will always have a danger of abduction (unless it's designed not to be dangerous).

Otherwise, the odds are 5 in 10000 (5/100 of 1% chance per Stargaze - Loop).

Thanks for the clarification.  I guess these abductions on the cheap telescope I keep hearing about are just glitches.  Unless there's a hacked cheap telescope that has the same rate of abductions as the expensive one.  I've never heard of one though, but it's been a long time since I've looked.

[Witches]

Seriously, I have had so many abductions that I totally doubt the percentage likelihood. I always buy the expensive telescope, though. It's just so much cooler.

How, exactly? I've been trying like crazy and so far the only abduction I've had was when I played the Curious family in Strangetown, which is set up for that ... I have my adult males with expensive telescopes spending every night between 11:00 and 3:00 just staring into space. They're practically maxxed out on logic and still I get nothing.

Is it just luck of the draw, or what? Is there a cheat I can use if I get desperate?

Is there something else I should be doing? Eating cookies first? Any help would be appreciated.

Also, disappointingly, both of the guys who had babies in Strangetown (one is already preggers when you start playing) had kids with normal human skintones. I so wanted a green baby, so I played the Smiths ... and they had a brown-skinned baby, even though she's skin tone #1 (white chick) and he's green. What gives? Not that I don't like the little tyke, but I want a green kid! Is the randomness supposed to happen or is that another benefit of my slow chip messing up the game? (Hoping to get upgraded any day now ...)

[Motoki]

You can use the cheat boolprop testingcheatsenabled true and then hold shift and click on the telescope to get the option to be abducted if you really want to cheat one.

As far as the babies turning non green, I know there's an issue if you move the curious brothers while pregnant between neighborhoods they baby will be human. I've also heard some reports since NL that the Pollination Technician is not showing up as the father of abducted babies anymore, so this may also be a source of the problem. As for Johnny or his dad, a lot of those Maxis premade characters have messed up genetics.

[TreyNutz]

Seriously, I have had so many abductions that I totally doubt the percentage likelihood. I always buy the expensive telescope, though. It's just so much cooler.

How, exactly? I've been trying like crazy and so far the only abduction I've had was when I played the Curious family in Strangetown, which is set up for that ... I have my adult males with expensive telescopes spending every night between 11:00 and 3:00 just staring into space. They're practically maxxed out on logic and still I get nothing.

Is it just luck of the draw, or what? Is there a cheat I can use if I get desperate?

Is there something else I should be doing? Eating cookies first? Any help would be appreciated.

Also, disappointingly, both of the guys who had babies in Strangetown (one is already preggers when you start playing) had kids with normal human skintones. I so wanted a green baby, so I played the Smiths ... and they had a brown-skinned baby, even though she's skin tone #1 (white chick) and he's green. What gives? Not that I don't like the little tyke, but I want a green kid! Is the randomness supposed to happen or is that another benefit of my slow chip messing up the game? (Hoping to get upgraded any day now ...)

Here, my guide might be helpful.

[HRH Posie]

I've also heard some reports since NL that the Pollination Technician is not showing up as the father of abducted babies anymore, so this may also be a source of the problem.

I've had two alien births since installing Nightlife plus I let Pascal give birth.  With a clean install I can verify the Pollination Technician problem.  I have submitted the details to the Nightlife web form.

[baratron]

How, exactly? I've been trying like crazy and so far the only abduction I've had was when I played the Curious family in Strangetown, which is set up for that ... I have my adult males with expensive telescopes spending every night between 11:00 and 3:00 just staring into space. They're practically maxxed out on logic and still I get nothing.

Is it just luck of the draw, or what? Is there a cheat I can use if I get desperate?

Yep - there's a boolprop TestingCheat for it. I know I used it in one of my sim stories . I think that with boolprop TestingCheatsEnabled true, if you shift-click on the expensive telescope, you get an option to "Force Abduction".

Alternatively, if you fear boolprop, you could grab TwoJeffs' Increased Odds of Abduction hack.

Also, disappointingly, both of the guys who had babies in Strangetown (one is already preggers when you start playing) had kids with normal human skintones. I so wanted a green baby, so I played the Smiths ... and they had a brown-skinned baby, even though she's skin tone #1 (white chick) and he's green. What gives? Not that I don't like the little tyke, but I want a green kid! Is the randomness supposed to happen or is that another benefit of my slow chip messing up the game? (Hoping to get upgraded any day now ...)

Yup, it's an annoying bug. Basically, many of the Strangetown premade characters have missing or corrupt DNA, which means that when they have children, the game may randomly crash. Pescado's Bad Birth Bug Fix deals with the crashing issue, and apparently it's fixed in one of the Maxis patches. However, I don't know whether Maxis has simply fixed the crashing, or if they'll be supplying new character files for those sims with complete DNA.

I wrote at length about the problem at Variousimmers, and also at MTS2, although I ran out of patience with another poster on that thread. I finally understood what was going on & I do now have a text file containing "correct" DNA for each of the characters in Strangetown, which you can use to "fix" them if you're vaguely handy with SimPE. You do have to be fairly good with SimPE to do this, though. I'm happy to email people the file, but I'm not really up to talking them through the process (been randomly in & out of hospital for the past couple of months, and it just takes too much energy).

[Motoki]

Alternatively, if you fear boolprop, you could grab TwoJeffs' Increased Odds of Abduction hack.

Does anyone outside of the BBS actually fear testingcheatsenabled? (it's not boolprop, that just means you have a boolean property that's not an interger but an actual term like testingcheatsenabled or snapobjectstogrid or allow45degreeangleofrotation etc etc) And for them, they tend to be scared of hacks too so I guess they are SOL.

Actually, I think Patches also made an always abduct telescope hack and I believe Pescado had one at one point that had a pie menu on it that let you choose.