Tuning mods - in testing

[Marhis]

I'm trying to play a bit with Peter and Inge's TS3 tools and I think I had some success - aka I made a few little mods that seems to work.
So, I thought I would share; some definitely needs further testing, and some are more a test of feasibility, but if you want to try them, you're welcome.

All of them should be compatible with Awesomemod, as they're simple XML tweaks.

• Genetics: lowers the probability of mutation from 10% to 1%, both for hair and eyes.
• SimTuning:
  • No lower limit of relationship for sleeping in the same bed.
  • Flirty sims will show more interest for other sims of compatible age.
  • No minimum relationship score required for ghost restore.
• Toddler skills: Doubled the skill gain rate for Talk and Walk. Potty Train goes from 550 points/hour to 800.
• LTR: decrement starts after 50 days, not 2.

[crunk]

I am especially happy to have a toddler training mod - potty training especially seems to take longer than it did in TS2. I'm downloading that and the LTR mod. I'll let you know if they do anything bizarre.

[kiki]

Potty training is definitely harder in TS3 because toddlers' bladders also seem to decay MUCH faster. I had a toddler with about 1/3 of a bladder bar, I clicked the toddler and went to potty train them, they'd soiled themselves before I'd had a chance to have my sim pick the toddler up.

[Ailias]

Yes
I'm second for needs decay mod
They still decay fast to me - at least - hygiene

[Roflganger]

This might be observer error but one benefit to TS3's potty training is that they seem to train for a fixed amount of time, regardless of bladder levels.  It used to be that you had to wait until the last second to train if you wanted to get in more than a few game minutes of training in, but now it looks like it fills up about 1/4 of the progress bar regardless. 

[MasterDinadan]

Yeah potty training is really done completely differently.  In Sims 2 it was best to wait until Bladder was really low before you try to potty, but that's definitely not the case here.  As long as their bladder isn't almost full, they will sit on the potty for quite a while before they go, and their training meter increases the whole time.

[Marhis]

I agree on the potty train; to explain what I in fact did:

The time a toddler spends on the potty chair is a fixed amount: 25 sim minutes.

The value I altered is the kPottyTrainToddlerGainRate, i.e. skill gain per hour. This value is 550. I raised it to 800. I didn't more because I only wanted to test improvements, not do blatant cheating - it can be raised more, of course, if needed.

Doing the math, in default game, toddlers gain circa 230 skill points on every train session; assuming the grand total is 1000, it would need 4 sessions.
With the modification, they'll gain circa 333 skill points per session, thus leading to a total of 3 sessions to complete the task, instead of 4.

[Captain Swooptie]

No point in making a new thread for this. Now kids can pick up seeds.

[D_Malachi]

• SimTuning:
  • Flirty sims will show more interest for other sims of compatible age.

By "interest" do you mean flirting/romantic, or just social interest in general? Specifically, as there's next to no "romance" in my neighborhood- quite dull really- will this change that?

[Marhis]

By "interest" do you mean flirting/romantic, or just social interest in general? Specifically, as there's next to no "romance" in my neighborhood- quite dull really- will this change that?

I'm not sure about how it works; I tweaked it just for testing purposes (and see if I'll spot something different during gameplay).
Basically, this is how that value is described:

    <kLookAtInterestingnessForFlirtySims value="55">
      <!--Range: 0 to 100.  Description: How much a flirty sim wants to check out sims of the right gender/age-->

My modification raises the value to 70.
I think it's , more or less, a probability that a flirty sim tends to choose a sim to interact with. So far, my observations have mixed results, therefore I don't know if I understood this correctly.

[J. M. Pescado]

That value has no effect on behavior, it's just a control for the idle-look-at behavior. Increasing it will make sims more likely to randomly rubberneck at some random hideous pudding's ass.

[Madame Mim]

You've created a new trait! For flirty now read pervy. Now if you can just get three 'flirty' females together to ogle the passers by and gossip about them it'll be complete.

[Fikcija]

Am I the only one who thinks toddlers gain their skills faster than in TS2? And even the lifestage is longer, so they have more time! The only annoyance is that the bladder need bar doesn't really show the truthful info. One second it's still yellow and looks like I can wait a little more before clicking to potty-train the toddler (I like to wait as much as possible, so that it takes lesser amount of trainings in total) and just a second after it's already full with hygiene red.

But thanks for this one!

• Genetics: lowers the probability of mutation from 10% to 1%, both for hair and eyes.

[McCrea]

Am I the only one who thinks toddlers gain their skills faster than in TS2?

Faster, I don't know, as you said stage may last longer.
Easier is certainly my wording.  Only my first toddler didn't score all 5 (if I'm correct to count):  walk, talk, potty, pegbox, xylophone
Seems I usually have 2 days after maxing them out to let them hump the wall or camp out in the toy box.
Feels like I'm cheating if I use more than one parent (or trainer).

That is my impression of TS3 base game.  But we don't have to hijack his threat.

[anaximander]

Easier is certainly my wording.  Only my first toddler didn't score all 5 (if I'm correct to count):  walk, talk, potty, pegbox, xylophone

Well, don't forget about the books - 3 series of them give skills (Painting and 2 others I can't remember offhand.) Buy them at the bookstore and let the toddler read them, they'll skill that way as well. (There doesn't have to be parental involvement, either, as apparently sim toddlers are fully literate before they can speak.)

[McCrea]

Well, don't forget about the books

DOH!  SHAZBAT!  SHAZAAM!

Guess you do learn something new every... month.   

[BastDawn]

Well, don't forget about the books - 3 series of them give skills (Painting and 2 others I can't remember offhand.)

What are the titles?

[minidoxigirli]

I deserve the snark I'm going to get, but I'll ask anyway- where do I install these mods to, the "Mods" folder, or the "Packages" folder, or whatnot?  I looked for a readme, but couldn't find one.

[Gus Smedstad]

What are the titles?

They're under "child development" at the book store.  I fiddled with them once, but gave up when I felt they used too much parental time.  I did not realize the toddlers could read them on their own.

Logic:

"Counting for Those Who Cannot"
"Squares are not Triangles"
"Being Smart for Fun and Profit"

Painting ones are pretty obvious, they're about finger painting and such.

There's a series of Harry Potter parodies, but I've never used them.

 - Gus

[kattenijin]

There's a series of Harry Potter parodies, but I've never used them.

The Potteresque series appears to be non-functional, as there is no learning bar above a sim as they are read. Using the blocks table as a child will give 3 skillpoints in handyness when they age up. 

[anaximander]

Re: The books.

The only trick to getting the sprogs to read them on their own is to leave them on the floor - they won't get them out of the bookshelves themselves.

[Gastfyr]

The third set of toddler skill books must be for the Writing skill.  Had a toddler read all the toddler books and when he aged up and learned the Writing skill, he started with 3 pts.  It's the greenish coloured Dr Seuss parody ones: "Oh the Destinations You'll Breifly Visit," "Bluish Eggs With a Side of Pastrami," "And Frank, I'm Not."  Correct me if I'm wrong about the skill, but it did certainly seem to give a boost as kid was not a Bookworm or Artistic and a class in Writing yeilded 3pts in the skill.

[Mandapotpie]

Using the blocks table as a child will give 3 skillpoints in handyness when they age up. 

In addition if your adults have full logic they can tutor kids in other skills they can't learn until teen, such as gardening and guitar.

[JamesNine]

• LTR: decrement starts after 50 days, not 2.

I was just wondering, could you make this one with another flavor? Perhaps a 10 day instead of 2.

Just wondering, thanks.

[Czezechael]

I was just wondering, could you make this one with another flavor? Perhaps a 10 day instead of 2.

Just wondering, thanks.

I hope it's not too forward of me, but I went ahead and modded it myself.