Awesomod discussion/questions/helpful tips thread

[simwit]

I don't think the (service) NPCs by default are really touched by story mode, are they? I have never seen one move in autonomously or have a kid or any of that.

I'm sure they don't move in or have kids autonomously, but I may have seen some involved in AwesomeStory romantic interactions, like X and Penny Barclay at City Hall, where Penny Barclay was definitely not a resident. It's been a while though, I don't know if this still happens.

[Buzzler]

It's not about that. I think things happening in some sort of sensible order with controls in place is a good thing I just don't want to be forced into some Sim City style of gameplay to manage the whole damned town.

Actually I don't want that either, that's why I hope SupCom isn't the final answer to NPCs being unable to live anything near a reasonable life. But I don't think placing a couple of cribs is that much of a hassle. Sure, right now nobody knows how many cribs are needed (and I think the AwesomeStoryDriver isn't up to the task to preserve a 'hood yet), but I actually think it will be fun to figure it out. Call me weird if you want to.

I simply refuse to believe there is no way impose some sort of overpopulation limit without this crib stuff.

There is a way but it would need some form of global top-down feedback thus spoiling the grace.

But anyway, I've played a while in my ridiculous neighborhood, and there doesn't seem to be any danger of overpopulation. According to twallan's supercomputer, the population has even declined from 101 to 95 residents while I was playing.

Yes, considering the demographics of my current hood (basically default SV, with one CAS-created playable added, one Teen and one YA running on SupCom and therefore pretty much out of the loop, no sacred households) AwesomeStoryDriver seems to be too picky concerning relationships which could lead to breeding. There are 55 adult resident Sims but only 8 married couples.

I have to revise what I said about the super computer though. If the demographics developed "naturally" (without intervention by the player) one look at them is enough to precisely tell if the population size is increasing, decreasing or stable. If it's according to the AgingStageLengths (25% Elders, 10% Babies and Toddlers) it's stable, if it's shifted towards younger people it's increasing and if it's shifted towards older people it's decreasing. In my hood more than 50% of the residents are Elders and only 3% are Babies or Toddlers => It's doomed and no amount of cribs is going to prevent that. I was right about the 1% dying of old age per day on normal life spans though.

Those paper kids and babysitter teens actually go to school, too. You can meet them there.

I'm glad to tell that they don't do that in my game.

I like that the NPC:s grow and change. I would like them to marry and move in too, when appropriate - I see they are romancing, but I haven't had anyone move in autonomously.

I think that's because it would be just as dangerously unpredictable and untrollable as random immigration. For everey NPC taken out of the NPC stack another one gets created.

[IreneDAdler]

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with how AwesomeStory handles the dead.  I haven't had any playable ghosts made through storymode actions but I also haven't bothered doing the Oh My Ghost opportunity yet.  Does storymode exert any sort of control over the ghost population?

[Motoki]

As far as I know a playble ghost is just treated as a normal sim for all intents and purposes. They are basically just a transparent sim who goes oOOOoooOOOOooo a lot and doesn't die.

[kuronue]

As far as I know a playble ghost is just treated as a normal sim for all intents and purposes. They are basically just a transparent sim who goes oOOOoooOOOOooo a lot and doesn't die.

They eventually "lose their hold on the material plane". But I can confirm they go "oOOOoooOOOOooo"!

[simwit]

Yes, ghosts in your household will eventually return to the netherworld, but when I was still an addict I once played a neighborhood filled with ghosts. As soon as I had plenty of ghosts I evicted and deleted all the normal sims, so only ghosts and NPCs remained.

This was before the patches, so I don't know if anything has changed, but ghosts in other households didn't return to the netherworld. Every night I got several 'getting old' messages, again and again for the same ghosts. In the end I evicted and deleted all the elderly ghosts myself. This was either a bug or a borked neighborhood. I quit when I was fed up with the ghostly noises all day long. There were other annoyances too. I just blamed the rEtArds.

[quetzilla]

Inge, I don't like that idea at all! I prefer a new Sim popping into the hood to be a boss for my Sim. Some people don't play a lot of generations or the whole hood at once, so what fun would it be to have the Sim start a job and achieve their LTW right away?

Bosses are career level 5, and LTWs are 9 or 10, so that would never happen.


I like the idea, but you could add a bit of qualification to it... if the sim has some of the skills toward the job they could get *offered* to be promoted to level 5/boss, but at the cost of some sizable simolean investment (aka starting their 'own' business).  Otherwise the game would wrangle in a new sim to be the boss.  Seems like a reasonable middleground.

[Homestar]

I just recently turned on Supreme Commander, and so far it's pretty useful. It could use a couple more options, though. Socializing and/or Family Time. What good is a better AI if the sim's wife is indifferent and his toddler is starving on the porch. I guess I can sum up my request in two parts.

1. The option for a sim to call people, visit houses, chat online, and just plain talk to family members.
and
2. The option for a sim to Potty Train, Teach, Read to, Feed, and otherwise care for their children.

Looking foreward to more Awesomness!

[coltraz]

I'm sure this has been explained a number of times, but I cannot seem to locate any reference(s) to it, so I must ask...

I recently read that you should download a new AwesomeMod.package before each play, to ensure you have the latest version. I download the latest version whenever Pescado adds to the thread saying what's been updated/added. If there's not a new post in the thread I assume I have the latest version. Is that not so?

Also, do I need to download a new config file every time I download a new Awesome, or is it OK just to keep the one I have?

[kuronue]

He only posts for major updates; bug fixes don't get a post, just an updated timestamp.

[Chocolate Milk]

I noticed the npcs too. I got rid of them all and in a short time I had over 40 again. I can't for the life of me understand why. I almost never interact with them except for one or two. The paper kids and mail people I understand since they always come around, but why do we need the others unless we do something that specifically requires their presence?

I seem to remember something along the lines of an NPC being created for each role for each household, which obviously leads to a ridiculous number of NPCs.

Also, none of the NPCs I've had seem to grow older. At least, my toddlers meet teen babysitters and are then able to catch up with them once they reach high school, which is weeeird and is just like TS2.

Also, back in my first game, when I was playing without story mode, one of my Sims moved out of the home and then became a maid. I remembered it because it was the only instance of someone getting a job without me having to force them into it. Is that even possible, or did something get warped there? And would a system like that ever be possible, where playable (but not necessarily played) Sims in houses become maids/paper kids/etc and you don't need single people commuting in from elsewhere who never grow up? It would be nice...

[Motoki]

I'm sure this has been explained a number of times, but I cannot seem to locate any reference(s) to it, so I must ask...

I recently read that you should download a new AwesomeMod.package before each play, to ensure you have the latest version. I download the latest version whenever Pescado adds to the thread saying what's been updated/added. If there's not a new post in the thread I assume I have the latest version. Is that not so?

Also, do I need to download a new config file every time I download a new Awesome, or is it OK just to keep the one I have?

You don't have to but it's probably a good practice to get in the habit of doing it.

However, if you intend to report a bug you absolutely should download it again to make sure you have the very latest version and then check it again and see if the bug still happens. Many times people report bugs Pescado has already fixed.

You don't need to redownload the config file unless you make changes to it. Otherwise it can stay as is, although it is a good idea to check it every so often because sometimes he adds things to it. However, it won't hurt you if you have an old config that doesn't have a particular setting in it, it will just default to whatever Pescado set the default setting for that value to be.

[quetzilla]

I noticed the npcs too. I got rid of them all and in a short time I had over 40 again. I can't for the life of me understand why. I almost never interact with them except for one or two. The paper kids and mail people I understand since they always come around, but why do we need the others unless we do something that specifically requires their presence?

I seem to remember something along the lines of an NPC being created for each role for each household, which obviously leads to a ridiculous number of NPCs.

Also, none of the NPCs I've had seem to grow older. At least, my toddlers meet teen babysitters and are then able to catch up with them once they reach high school, which is weeeird and is just like TS2.

Actually NPCs do grow older, but I think at a slower rate.  My family had a newspaper girl who grew up to a teenager (becoming the babysitter), and then grew up to an adult and became the repairwoman.

[Motoki]

Actually NPCs do grow older, but I think at a slower rate.  My family had a newspaper girl who grew up to a teenager (becoming the babysitter), and then grew up to an adult and became the repairwoman.

But do they still age if no playables ever know them at all? I feel like they exist in some weird Schrodinger bubble and only progress if you force it by observing and interacting with them. I could be wrong though.

[Gastfyr]

I had a newspaper girl grow up to a teen and stay a newspaper girl, or at least that's what it said her job was in the relationship thing.  I never saw her delivering papers as a teen.  I didn't know they could become babysitters; that's kinda cool.

[cheriem]

Question, I have two sims who are endlessly spawing copies of themselves all over my hood....  Every time I evict one and delete him, story mode moves another one in.  Help!  If they were content to just exist and not spawn endless copies of themselves, I'd let them live.  I've even tracked them down in my files to remove their saved sim data.  What is causing this and how do I stop it?

[edalbformat]

I like to marry my Sims to the maid. On the contrary it seems that my NPCs older faster than normal and once I play with veeery long aging, they age far too fast. Everytime I marry a maid, they become elder in a few days. What I like in the maid is that they will always be maid. I mean, if you get them a job they get the job title, retire in this job, but if they die, they get back the maid status instead of the usual "unemployed". So, if you ressurrect them, they are still maids. Sometimes I ressurrect a ghost only to have one family member that will never die and keep the family name. I was not aware of the messages that they are getting old. Another EA nonsense - ghosts aging This is not a feature, it is incompetence.

[IreneDAdler]

Question, I have two sims who are endlessly spawing copies of themselves all over my hood....  Every time I evict one and delete him, story mode moves another one in.  Help!  If they were content to just exist and not spawn endless copies of themselves, I'd let them live.  I've even tracked them down in my files to remove their saved sim data.  What is causing this and how do I stop it?

You mentioned in another thread that you have two sims getting jobs then being fired then going to get jobs again, is it possible that these clones are the result of boss spam for each time your sims get a job again?

[Buzzler]

Was there a vast improvement in the last couple of days or am I just doing something entirely different? I just scrapped my testing hood because it couldn't be kept alive by any reasonable means and thus wasn't a conclusive indicator anymore. Started a new testing hood, added one playable Sim and 11 cribs (making it 18 altogether) and let it run for a Sim-week. Of course this is too short to make any long-term conclusions but thus far things are looking really good. 4 or 5 new married couples formed, there were some reasonable moves to find breeding space and 7 babies were born. If they manage to keep up that pace, the hood should survive and be stable. It wasn't anything like this with the last testing hood.

Something odd occured though. There are 17 married males and 18 married females. I smell bigamy. Tried fixromances but it came back empty-handed.

[Motoki]

Question, I have two sims who are endlessly spawing copies of themselves all over my hood....  Every time I evict one and delete him, story mode moves another one in.  Help!  If they were content to just exist and not spawn endless copies of themselves, I'd let them live.  I've even tracked them down in my files to remove their saved sim data.  What is causing this and how do I stop it?

I am surprised no one responded to this yet. I thought it was fairly common knowledge.

Anyway, the Indie Stone mod has been known to cause these mass duplications, but really I've had it happen even before ISM came out so it is EAXian in nature, though Indie may exacerbate the problem with it's high volume of immigration.

The problem is the game seems to keep going back and using the families in the library to make new sims. The best solution is to delete all families from the library, even the default ones (though keep backup copies somewhere in case a future patch or expansion complains).

If you end up needing to move families between neighborhoods then make sure you delete the copy from the library as soon as you place them and verified they are in their new town okay. Do not leave families sitting in the bin for extended periods of time.

Pescado has a command to delete the duplicates (destroydoppelgangers? I forget the exact command and am not at home right now; someone else can help with that I'm sure or just type help in the console and look through the destroy commands). I believe it only works on a per family basis now (ie destroys the dups of the current playable family members) but Pescado said in another thread he might expand it to work for all dups in the neighborhood, which would be good.

I know the game stores the duplicates internally with numbers after their name, like Agnes Crumplebottom2, Agnes Crumplebottom3 etc so it should be doable to get rid of all but the originals.

You mentioned in another thread that you have two sims getting jobs then being fired then going to get jobs again, is it possible that these clones are the result of boss spam for each time your sims get a job again?

I hadn't thought of that, but it sounds possible. In any case it's probably a good idea to keep the library bin clear if it isn't already.

[dilpill]

That's not how ASM is working out for me in my current hood. I have 27 (!) cribs and plenty of extra bed space, but unless I go around spamming ctrl+shift+click "get pregnant", the demographics indicators in twallan's Supercomputer will always predict a fall in population. Many of my sims also fail to get married or even have relationships of any kind unless they have the flirty or hopeless romantic traits, and then they have too many. I suspect the population would sustain itself better if most sims had an inclination to start relationships and get married, but as of now that is not happening.

Also, apparently most sims are fine and dandy with being unemployed and living with their parents when they've grown up.

[Jens]

I've also reported the same thing regarding relationships and marriage in another thread. After an 8 sim week wolfrun following 3 weeks normal play only singles with hopeless romantic, flirty or family orientated traits initiated relationships.

[Buzzler]

Pescado has a command to delete the duplicates (destroydoppelgangers? I forget the exact command and am not at home right now; someone else can help with that I'm sure or just type help in the console and look through the destroy commands).

I believe it's "nukeimpostors", and do I have to be worried that I never had doppelgangers in one of my hoods despite storing families in the library? I only saw doppelgangers once in a hood someone had sent me, lots of them. I thought AM prevents the spawning of doppelgangers? No?

@dilpill: That's why I'm kind of surprised, in a good way. It was just like you described in my old testing hood, which I started last Friday IIRC. Might be pure coincidence (pretty much of it) but it looks like there are really reasonable things going on. Like I placed a crib in the Frio brothers' house and it looks like they caught the message, one of them got married, his spouse moved in and the other brother moved out a day later. And a YA who just grew up moved out for no apparent reason but to live on his own.

[mildlydisguised]

I have a question about the crib placement.  I have been adding just one crib per household as I have been assuming that when the crib is no longer being used i.e. the baby/toddler has grown into a child, the crib is then free again to act as a 'oooh let's have a spawn' trigger.  Am I correct in thinking this?  It got me wondering when I read the post by the person who had over 100 cribs in their hood, as there aren't that many households.  Also number of cribs have no effect on multiple births, yes?

My second question is regarding awesomestorymode hood moves.  Agnes Crumplebottom autonomously moved from her big $200,000 house to the Keatons Low Fat Ranch house, that is much cheaper.  My sim was at her house when she moved and followed her directly to her new place and they got married.  She joined the household with a couple of thousand simoleons and my sim moved into her new house.  I couldn't work out where the money went from the sale of her old house though.  Does the storymode actually calculate the sale of the old house and purchase of the new house or was the discrepancy from the calculation of monies a sim brings with them after marriage?  I am quite happy to do more testing on the issue if needed.

[simwit]

I'm the simwit with more than 100 cribs, at least 2 in every house. I can't answer your question, but I can add another one.

What does AwesomeStory do if every house has only 1 crib, and twins or triplets are born?

You could make sure a woman in your household is pregnant with twins or triplets, and then move her out before the babies are born. AwesomeStory would then have to deal with twins/triplets in a town where every house has only 1 crib.

EDIT:
Well, I'm stupid enough to answer my own stupid question. I now have a woman with 5 babies living in a huge 3-crib house. Nothing happened: no dingos, no social worker, not even wringing 2 little necks... And they lived happily ever after.