Interesting business glitch.

[JennyJenny]

I thought this was interesting, I haven't seen it before.

My sim was at his job managing a sim owned business when I got one of those dumb hobby related chance cards. I picked one of the options and it told me my sim had gotten a promotion. I was a little surprised at this, and was more surprised when my sim got home from work early w/ the promotion sound playing. it said he had been promoted to "Unused 3" then gave the hours (regular employee/manager hours). His pay stayed the same (400) and he got a bonus of 800.
 
Anyone seen anything like this before?

[kazebird]

You got a promotion! You're now unused! Sounds easy! I wish I had that job. Being payed for being unused. Your best bet is not to answer those chance cards. Anyways, it looks like that family is loaded. I suggest telling him to quit, and then hiring a new manager. Since you don't want a borked job controller.

[J. M. Pescado]

I know why that happens, yes. If you're in an Ownable Job, there are only two levels: Minion, and Manager. However, the GAME implemented the career as a full 10 level career with 7 unused levels. As a result, the job is now borked and you must use SimPE to drop back to level 2. Any Hobby-Card or bonus which grants a promotion in the Ownable career will fuck up your game.

[JennyJenny]

Shoot, and here I thought this was simply a little piece of weirdness, not part of a BFBVFS.

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, it's correctable. You can just fix it.

[Marhis]

Your now unused!

Sorry, I tried to restrain myself, but I failed. Please, it's YOU'RE, not your.
"Your" in place of "you are" makes me cringe.

[kazebird]

Your now unused!

Sorry, I tried to restrain myself, but I failed. Please, it's YOU'RE, not your.
"Your" in place of "you are" makes me cringe.

Thank You, I never even knew that was a word

[funkilla]

It's a contradiction, combination of two words - YOU and ARE. "Your" is a possessive pronoun, implying ownership.

*funkilla hides her English grammar geekiness, despite English not being her first language and still can't speak it correctly.

[purplebunny]

It's a contradiction contraction, combination of two words - YOU and ARE. "Your" is a possessive pronoun, implying ownership.

*funkilla hides her English grammar geekiness, despite English not being her first language and still can't speak it correctly.

I fixed it for you.

[funkilla]

YEAH, WHAT SHE SAID.

Now would be the time to say, "HEY, FUNKILLA. YOUR STUPID FOREIGNER SKILLS ARE SHOWING!" Except, well, I was born in the US (but yay for dual citizenship!), so I don't even know if I can play the foreigner card.

[cwykes]

They screwed up other aspects of the fake career as well didn't they. 

1) There isn't an elder/teen career so elders and teens are supposed to work 9-5 mon-fri.  There's a fix for the teens (in Pescados OFB fixes?), but the elders work a very long week.   

2) The pay doesn't work right - I can live with amounts that don't make sense, but one playable manager went to work and came back with 0 pay every day. 

3?) I don't think he got any vacation days either.

4?) I bet you can't get a Uni scholarship off the OFB 'career'.

If they'd gone a bit further with it, the fake career could have been really good - with badges required for promotion instead of skills and a proper pay scale.  level 0 no skills, level 1 sales bronze, etc etc.

I guess the thing is too bloody complicated to fix properly, but at least they won't be screwing it up any further now the last EP/SP is out!

[J. M. Pescado]

-
1) There isn't an elder/teen career so elders and teens are supposed to work 9-5 mon-fri.  There's a fix for the teens (in Pescados OFB fixes?), but the elders work a very long week.

OFBp2 fixed this. 12s get slightly different hours. There is no special exemption for elders. Why should there be?

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2) The pay doesn't work right - I can live with amounts that don't make sense, but one playable manager went to work and came back with 0 pay every day.

Works fine in my game. Once again, I point the blame squarely at tight pants.

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3?) I don't think he got any vacation days either.

I think this possibly by design.

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4?) I bet you can't get a Uni scholarship off the OFB 'career'.

No. You can't reach the top because of the "unused" 8 levels. It could easily be truncated down to a 2-level career, whereupon it would work.

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If they'd gone a bit further with it, the fake career could have been really good - with badges required for promotion instead of skills and a proper pay scale.  level 0 no skills, level 1 sales bronze, etc etc.

The pay scale is determined by YOU! Naturally, there are no promotions.

[cwykes]

Didn't think I owned any tight pants.  I certainly don't have insim or inteen.  Could have been a version problem I suppose, but this was in Meadow Lawns and I was careful what hacks I had in for that because it was for download.  Other sims were OK, but this one had a problem.  Water under the bridge really, but it left me with a lasting impression of borkedness.

You've said before that what the business pays isn't what the sim actually gets.  I don't remember the explanation if I even understood it at the time.  I can't say I've looked at the numbers even - I'm happier not looking for things that would annoy me.  Given the way the game works, the two numbers are never going to match, but are you saying there is actually some logical connection?   I was imagining all employees received a standard wage regardless of what the business paid.  That would be consistent with the fact that it's set up as a career.  Maybe I need to reconsider my aversion to pay rises - just for playables of course!

I just think that if they set it up as a career, they missed a good opportunity to do something different and make it a normal career with badge based promotions.  The fact that they had to fix the teen problem in the patch just proves they didn't think about teens in the first place.  If they had thought about them, they'd have built a teen/elder career alongside the adult career like they always do. They'd have fixed it to work for the Uni scholarship as well!   I'm not 100% against elders working longer hours for low pay, but 9-5 Mon-Fri is too many hours and the hours are wrong - the oldies should be doing odd shifts here and there or shelf stacking at weekends.   If you want elders to work full time, then you can keep them in an adult career instead of making them retire or use a noagediscrimination hack.

[J. M. Pescado]

You've said before that what the business pays isn't what the sim actually gets.

I was talking about the business income received by remote owners.

I don't remember the explanation if I even understood it at the time.  I can't say I've looked at the numbers even - I'm happier not looking for things that would annoy me.  Given the way the game works, the two numbers are never going to match, but are you saying there is actually some logical connection?   I was imagining all employees received a standard wage regardless of what the business paid.  That would be consistent with the fact that it's set up as a career.  Maybe I need to reconsider my aversion to pay rises - just for playables of course!

Business pay at the ownable job per day is determined by the hourly wage * hours worked.

I just think that if they set it up as a career, they missed a good opportunity to do something different and make it a normal career with badge based promotions.

Again, the "pay" and thus "promotions" are set by you, the user.

[cwykes]

You've said before that what the business pays isn't what the sim actually gets.

I was talking about the business income received by remote owners.

Ohhhh!!!!  So your relevant wages hack is probably impoverishing my playable employees......

[Sagana]

I've got a hack that gives college scholarships for the talent badges. One of jfade's here:
http://www.djssims.com/index.php?category=1&subcat=33

I was kinda shocked how much my business sim got that way. It's probably a bit much. Though admittedly she hasn't done much else - except max'd mechanical and some misc. Some of that happens automatically with the badges, so it does kind of double-up.

[J. M. Pescado]

Ohhhh!!!!  So your relevant wages hack is probably impoverishing my playable employees......

Unlikely. While the relevant-wages hack makes it so irrelevant badges don't count towards wage demands, nothing stops you from paying more. The alternative is that those sims would be unemployable because they would insist on wages that are outlandishly high despite being no better at doing the job than an employee with no additional irrelevant qualifications.

[rufio]

Out of curiosity, what counts as "relevant"?  Do sims working as cooks in a restaurant demand wages based on cooking skill?  Do sims working at a fishing-and-gardening business have their fishing and gardening badges counted?  Do cashiers have their sales badges counted?  I noticed that a sim assigned to restock gets wage increases for increased sales badges, which is good because BRY makes her sell things in her spare time, too.  What's the limit?

[J. M. Pescado]

Out of curiosity, what counts as "relevant"?  Do sims working as cooks in a restaurant demand wages based on cooking skill?

Yes: Cooking skill only counts in places where there is cooking equipment. Otherwise it has no relevance. Similarly irrelevant skills NEVER count: For instance, skills like "Logic" and "Charisma" never count, because there is no aspect of anything that uses them.

Do sims working at a fishing-and-gardening business have their fishing and gardening badges counted?

There isn't actually a detectable thing as a fishing business, so fishing does not count, but gardening, yes.

Do cashiers have their sales badges counted?  I noticed that a sim assigned to restock gets wage increases for increased sales badges, which is good because BRY makes her sell things in her spare time, too.  What's the limit?

A sales badge is relevant to any business where there are salesable things. A cashier badge is relevant to any business that has a cash register. Since any business that has a cash register has salesable items, both badges count. However, irrelevant skillsets are not counted: Your PhD does not give you a better wage as a burger-flipper.

[rufio]

Ahh, so it has to do with what is actually present on the lot, and reassigning my workers is not going to cause them all to start demanding completely different wages.  Good to know.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes, it's based on what skillsets are valid to the lot, not based on the current job, as the task assignment is temporary and easily altered. BRY, if deployed, also includes a ZQC selector: Unlike various peoples' "Fairly Paid" regulators, ZQC will merely raise wages to the zero-quit-chance level, if below, which may be higher or lower than "Fairly Paid", depending on minion-to-boss relationship level. It will not lower a wage you manually set higher.

It also includes a "Pricing Consistency" enforcer, useful for custom-priced items, where if you add additional items of that type, upon leaving build/buy, all of them will be set to the highest price for that type of item on the lot.

[Gwenke]

I know why that happens, yes. If you're in an Ownable Job, there are only two levels: Minion, and Manager. However, the GAME implemented the career as a full 10 level career with 7 unused levels. As a result, the job is now borked and you must use SimPE to drop back to level 2. Any Hobby-Card or bonus which grants a promotion in the Ownable career will fuck up your game.

Can you give an idea of how it would fuck up the game?
I've just got this idea of using those 7 unused levels to enable OfB employees to have different days and hours of work, and different carpools. The extracted career may need to be cleaned of chance cards, although all say 'unused'. The levels could just be used to assign a work schedule, like '2-hour morning career', "weekend evenings only career' and the like. With 7 extra schedules for teens and 7 for adults, there would be no need for additional employee-work-hours-change mods.
I did a small test and it seemed to work -family of two employed by the same employer, set one of them to level 3, her work days, hours and carpool changed as expected while those of the other sim did not.

[J. M. Pescado]

Can you give an idea of how it would fuck up the game?

Well, it would foul up how managers and employees are detected. The error is not FATAL in the sense that it breaks anything hardcoded, but you WILL have rewrite large portions of the game to resolve this.

[caterpillar]

I stopped having employees of owned businesses take the hobby chance cards because of this issue. But then with AL, they are now getting random promotions from getting 'networked' by townies. That's a lot harder to control, my Sim will be chatting with someone and out of nowhere she gets told the townie she's talking to is 'cousins' with her boss and she'll be getting a promotion the next time she goes to work. And the next time she comes home from work, she's promoted to 'unused 3'. Thanks, EAxis. 

[Gwenke]

Well, it would foul up how managers and employees are detected. The error is not FATAL in the sense that it breaks anything hardcoded, but you WILL have rewrite large portions of the game to resolve this.

I would be really very grateful for some details on this. I am using the altered OfB career now to set various schedules and carpools, and cannot see any problem other than the job title says Unused X. Employees are still recognised by their employers. Will my game blow up if I continue?