The Legacy Challenge for TS3

[rufio]

Neat.  Since I'm definitely not playing TS3 as a sandbox, I'll probably try this out.  Could be interesting to have Unlucky as the Family Trait.

I never actually got to the point of raising a kid to teen in my game, but I've heard that you actually have some control over their LTW - you can dismiss the first one that comes up and wait for something better.  Should there be a rule that you have to accept the first one that comes up?

Also, is there a way to see Lifetime Aspiration points in-game, or do you have to manually add up all the rewards you bought?

Is there any problem with using deleteallhumans (from Awesomemod) to get rid of all the EAxis sims before starting?

[jaccirocker]

Another question. I wanted to use Ashkitty pregnancy mod; is that usable or not seeing as we are decreasing age some of us are changing from epic life span to normal life span.

[Zazazu]

I never actually got to the point of raising a kid to teen in my game, but I've heard that you actually have some control over their LTW - you can dismiss the first one that comes up and wait for something better.  Should there be a rule that you have to accept the first one that comes up?

You can have LTWs come up as children or teens. If no LTW has been accepted by YA, one is assigned. They are acceptable or deniable just like any other wish, excepting that you can't cancel one once accepted with a wrong-click. Right-click. Left-click. Whatever the fraking alternative is.

[Madame Mim]

Not always just asigned. I had a teen age up to YA and he got the option to pick his LTW from a selection just like you do in CAS once you've set your traits.

[gethane]

Is anyone else having trouble with the Sunset Valley lot? I've not played yet on a lot that big. The only thing on it is a bed. But at night, the time jerks and stops, pausing sometimes for 30 seconds. Nights now take longer than days. The other lots in the neighborhood (parks, work, and the gym) are still acting normally.

Edit: Hmm, I think its the animated night sky. Once dawn began to break, the game sped up to normal.

[Zazazu]

It's a bug in the current Awesomemod build with story progression.

I have walls. Lots of them. However, almost nothing is inside them as my founder, spouse, probable heir, and fetus continue to enjoy outdoor living until the bedroom areas are built. And no, my founder was not a good mix overall, but I like to go with a random roll on everything. It's been almost three weeks and she's only at level 4 in her career. Her unreasonable grumpiness is a big problem. She's making me grumpy.

[gethane]

grrr, thanks for the info. I should've known. I just updated awesomemod. Inner mind tech support: "Have you changed anything recently?" "Oh, no, it's just like it was this morning!" (other than updates, installations and being run over by a mack truck).

[kiki]

Not always just asigned. I had a teen age up to YA and he got the option to pick his LTW from a selection just like you do in CAS once you've set your traits.

I got a LTW come up as a want for a child at random, and had the option that if I "promised" the wish it would become the LTW so I've had children in my game with an already established LTW before aging up any further, through natural gameplay.

[MasterDinadan]

Hmm, I didn't know you were forced to take a LTW upon aging to YA, because I always took one as child or teen when it randomly rolled.  So one post suggested that you just end up with one, and one post suggests you get to choose from a list?  Which one is it?  Or is it based on your performance?

Notes on Legacy:

-Having to random a trait without any rerolls is lame. Do badly and you end up with a random bad trait.  Do well and you end up with a random good trait.  Do great and you end up with... a random trait, good or bad...  If nothing else, we should at least get to random until something "good" comes up (just make a list of what qualifies as "good") or give us one or two chances to reroll.  I do LIKE random, but it doesn't make sense that you should be punished for doing great instead of merely doing well.

-Portraits are just plain broken, as has already been observed.  You say that you "have to raise the child" and yet I see no penalty for having a child taken (which stops you from adopting, but doesn't stop you from breeding them).  At least, I'm still assuming the social worker works like that.  I've never actually seen it happen in TS3.  Otherwise, you specifically allow AwesomeMod, which allows you to move sims out without an adult, regardless of their age.  If you are going to put in a rule or penalty for the portrait scoring, make it clear and official.

-Not very clear on which Sims are eligible for points.  You make a distinction between "heirs" and "spares" but are you implying that there can only be one heir and thus children of spares are not eligible for scoring and might as well be cast aside?  I'm just not really sure on this.  Children of an heir are obviously all eligible to score.  Parents of heirs are obviously eligible to score (even if one of the parents is not an heir).  But I'm just not sure whether children of spares produce spares/eligibles, or whether parents of spares which are not a parent of the heir are eligible.

[jaccirocker]

This question is directed to anyone that may know the answer(s).

Having never played Legacy Challenges, I'm unclear on building. I was going to just make an A-frame roof large enough to be the shell of the house and add walls and furnishing as I can afford. Then I began wondering if that would be considered cheating. Is it cheating?


Also:
>gethane-- I have the most updated Awesome mod (I'm 99.9% sure) and I am having the same problems you mentioned. However they also occur at the gym and the park. It can't be anything on the lot because there's nothing there. I will double check my time stamp to be sure. I did redo my game folder with the Monkey Tool just because I wanted to have sub-folders and was afraid that I would bork everything.

I just downloaded the 11:37 PM Awesomemod. I'll see if this one fixes the problem.

[tedw]

Since the original post does not explicitly forbid this, I would like to assume that we can use something like "editsim" to improve the looks of EA-made sims before adding them to the family.  The post only indicates that you cannot create new sims, but does not preclude editing them.  In my case, I'd like to change a few facial features but not the name, character, etc.  Is this considered cheating?

Also, it was mentioned upthread that you can get rich in the family, then have a townie with the Gold Digger LTW marry in and kill your created sim off.  Is there a way to find out what someone's LTW is before they join your family?  Or are you recommended to have them move in without marrying, then kick them out if they lack this LTW or marry them if they do?

[J. M. Pescado]

It's a bug in the current Awesomemod build with story progression.

Strictly speaking, that is not really a *BUG*, it's more of an odd side effect. It is not fatal to your game or anything, and the hiccup will stop as soon as the game finishes resolving what it is going to do. It's just that the new algorithms used to make sure the actions generated make SENSE are a bit computationally intensive compared to the previous EAxian stupidity, and some numbers have to be tweaked around as a result.

[Roflganger]

Since I went through the challenge and formatted it for my own purposes, I figured I might as well share it with anyone else who wants it.  All I've done is add in some formatting, fixed the line breaks and cleaned up a few minor typos.

[Updated to reflect rule changes]

[Pinstar]

Mooching, in all forms, is in. In testing I didn't find it generated enough money to be broken.

Life fruit is out.


I have updated the rules to balance portraits. Portraits now only count if they are done of a YA or older sim that is living on the Legacy Family lot at the time of painting. this means you have to raise the child from infant to YA at the very least to get a portrait point out of them.

As said before, if you don't like how your rolls turned out, you can purchase the "Mid Life Crisis" perk to get a shot at re-rolling your traits.


Having a shell of a house, especially in the early game, is not only allowed but is good strategy.

If you can somehow edit just the appearance of sims without taking control of their traits, jobs or ages then yes, I suppose a tool like that would be allowed.


As to who is eligable for points: Any sim that is 1: Living on the Legacy Lot AND 2: connected to the bloodline. If you open up a sim's family tree and can trace a solid line up to the founder, they are part of the bloodline. Note that spouses of heirs do not count as part of the bloodline until they actually reproduce with the heir to bring in the next generation.

[Pinstar]

Neat.  Since I'm definitely not playing TS3 as a sandbox, I'll probably try this out.  Could be interesting to have Unlucky as the Family Trait.

I never actually got to the point of raising a kid to teen in my game, but I've heard that you actually have some control over their LTW - you can dismiss the first one that comes up and wait for something better.  Should there be a rule that you have to accept the first one that comes up?

Also, is there a way to see Lifetime Aspiration points in-game, or do you have to manually add up all the rewards you bought?

Is there any problem with using deleteallhumans (from Awesomemod) to get rid of all the EAxis sims before starting?

I have unlucky as the family trait for my Legacy Family. It already saved my founder once when he electrofried himself trying to fix a broken dish washer and got rezzed by the reaper.


If you mouse over the treasure chest icon that says "current aspiration points" the tooltip that pops up will tell you how many points you've earned for this sim over their lifetime. It is that number that you use for aspiration point portion of the Legacy scoring.


There would be nothing against the rules to use 'deleteallhumans' to purge EAxis sims.

[Zazazu]

Using "destroyallhumans" makes it harder and is therefore fantastic. It was almost a week before another family moved into my neighborhood. It was nearly two more weeks before another one moved in (and now I seem to have a flood, of course). I was basically stuck marrying the very first guy who moved in, not realizing until he was already married in that the two other sims were his daughters. I'd just separated a family-oriented sim from his two teenage daughters in order to enjoy some lawn living with an insane woman.

Hmm, I didn't know you were forced to take a LTW upon aging to YA, because I always took one as child or teen when it randomly rolled.  So one post suggested that you just end up with one, and one post suggests you get to choose from a list?  Which one is it?  Or is it based on your performance?

I'm just a dumbass, going off of something someone had posted in the past.

Having to random a trait without any rerolls is lame. Do badly and you end up with a random bad trait.  Do well and you end up with a random good trait.  Do great and you end up with... a random trait, good or bad...  If nothing else, we should at least get to random until something "good" comes up (just make a list of what qualifies as "good") or give us one or two chances to reroll.  I do LIKE random, but it doesn't make sense that you should be punished for doing great instead of merely doing well.

That's kind of the point. In TS2 Legacy, you had to roll for aspiration and personality was always randomized by the game. You get what you get and you deal with it. Otherwise, you end up with a bunch of super-similar sims over 10 generations.

[infamy]

Having to random a trait without any rerolls is lame. Do badly and you end up with a random bad trait.  Do well and you end up with a random good trait.  Do great and you end up with... a random trait, good or bad...  If nothing else, we should at least get to random until something "good" comes up (just make a list of what qualifies as "good") or give us one or two chances to reroll.  I do LIKE random, but it doesn't make sense that you should be punished for doing great instead of merely doing well.

That's kind of the point. In TS2 Legacy, you had to roll for aspiration and personality was always randomized by the game. You get what you get and you deal with it. Otherwise, you end up with a bunch of super-similar sims over 10 generations.

Indeed.  And the legacy challenge is already far more fun in Sims 3 than it was in 2. The random button for the traits is one of those "small, clever" things that you don't really notice.  But it shows that the developers were paying attention to how we played with their game and to the games that we made up for ourselves. They saw that people were using outside-the-game tools to bring random chance to it, and they gave us a button. A button that I use even for my non-legacy Sims, though with them I will "reclick" if I truly don't like what I was fed.

Zazazu - it sounds like our legacies have started out alike, right down to the pre-game genocide.  I went the Klepto/Outdoorsy/Mooch route and it's fantastic.  She doesn't have walls, but she has everything else she needs.  The library is out of computers though - she stole them all before she grabbed a desk.

[caitlyn]

Here is something to consider regarding stolen objects.  Since the rules state the you get points for the net worth of the house and not the amount of wealth your family has acquired, then the stolen items that you place around the house are actually contributing to your points.  This seems to be the exact opposite of what you would have if you would sell them, where you would have the cash, but no longer the value to add to the net worth of the house.

[infamy]

Here is something to consider regarding stolen objects.  Since the rules state the you get points for the net worth of the house and not the amount of wealth your family has acquired, then the stolen items that you place around the house are actually contributing to your points.  This seems to be the exact opposite of what you would have if you would sell them, where you would have the cash, but no longer the value to add to the net worth of the house.

Sell them for cash, buy objects with cash... increase value of the house. I think even if you stole everything that wasn't nailed down, at the end of ten generations you will have so much legitimate money that the stolen items will be a small fraction of the total value of your house as compared to purchased items.  However, I can't be sure of that, and I have a non-legacy theif who has come home four times now with a 12K statue in her back pocket, so it's hard to say.  

I know where the developer was going with the rule - it's for the first generation, to make them start slow.  Riverview has a few accessible cars in driveways.  If you started with a klepto Sim, you could be at well over 50K in cash at the end of your first day.

[caitlyn]

Sell them for cash, buy objects with cash... increase value of the house. I think even if you stole everything that wasn't nailed down, at the end of ten generations you will have so much legitimate money that the stolen items will be a small fraction of the total value of your house as compared to purchased items.

I agree.  I started playing a "Legacy" before the official rules came out and am on my sixth generation.  I believe my house is worth right around $100k, but they have $1.5 million in the bank.  This is from jobs, opportunities and selling fruits/veggies/fish.  I have not played a klepto Sim or a thief.  Now, if I were counting points, I COULD wait till the end and buy all kinds of expensive stuff to decorate the house with when I got to the last generation, to up the value of the property.  Personally, I don't like to clutter up my house with useless stuff, and keep the same basic necessities through the entire challenge.

As with all things, those who want to find rules to exploit will do so.  Those who want a genuine challenge will play that way.

[Alex]

The Black Market restriction is going to be a pain to keep track of after a few generations. If a founder generation steals some small item, it has to stay on the lot for all 10 generations? I mean at that point, it will have lost so much value that selling it is pocket change, anyway. Could we get a time restriction on it? Like after the thief dies and the object is inherited, it is no longer considered stolen. If only to make bookkeeping a little easier.

There are ways to dump the items without being forced to sell. While you could always just keep it in the family inventory near the top, there are other methods based on how it was stolen. Goods stolen by a klepto can be returned, while you could always engineer it so a maid or someone swipes it themselves. Of course, you can always move them out with spares. Sadly, burnination is out of the question due to the new fire insurance feature.

[Zazazu]

Have you ever seen a maid swipe? The majority, but not all, have the klepto trait, but I've never seen them act on it.

Oh, I have achieved maximum difficulty. Yay!

[caitlyn]

Have you ever seen a maid swipe? The majority, but not all, have the klepto trait, but I've never seen them act on it.

I have not.  One thing I've found of interest, though, is that hidden traits seem to last much longer than they did in TS2.  For instance, my very first generation spawned her offspring from the Burglar.  The "sneak here" trait was seen through the 5th generation (so far).

[dragoaskani]

Nice Zazazu, what professions are they runnign with right now in your 1st generation? I went kinda normal I guess. My founder was a YA male, named Shane Storm, He has the Neat, Lucky, Green Thumb, Excitable, Heavy Sleeper traits. LFT is renaissance  sim.  Um He went into the Medical Career, and let see didnt do anything but garden, and work on his house and concentrate on doctoring all through his YA years. Now finally an adult he woo'd and married River McIrish, now River Storm. Who is currently pregnant from wedding night festivities. She only has the small bump, so its still a couple days away for the baby. So in Short Generation 2 is about to be happening for my family. My house so far is worth about 39k, and shane is lvl 9 medical carreer, closing in fast on level 10.

So Thanks for the Legacy challenge for sims 3 pinstar I am having alot of fun with it, and taking lots of screenshots to put up later. hehe.

[Soggy Fox]

Yay - right now, I'm just starting and my sim is living in the park.  I figure I'll save up enough to build more then a tiny box for the bed.  She's tired alot, because napping doesn't give much in 3, but she fished up a laptop and a guitar, which helps a bunch.  I suppose I could sell the laptop, but why, since it saves me money later.