Awesome Story Driver Beta-Testing reports

[myskaal]

Asking a sim to break up with their partner is not so easily done when all romantic interactions result in +0/-0 because they are already partnered before your sim had a chance to get out of the cab. I haven't yet seen the mean/break up options on a nonromantic relationship. I admit I could be missing it.

I agree that forcing a lesser chance during YA stage would result in some not so ideal family age gaps. It's a great theory but since we're talking about the sims I believe it would end up being as Naples describes. Forcing a "YA must be at least ## days old" won't work because of the differing age cycle options. 

Still, the speed at which unplayed sims are partnered is annoying and frustrating. Literally minutes to a few short hours after they exist in the world romantic prefs are rolled and they're off to the Mausoleum with someone.

I have witnessed that these partnerings are happening without sims even having met. The game rolls and matches them via some unseen compatibility measure. Maybe if there was someway to force any single existing sims to adhere to the same social standards as played sims? That is: MySimA has to work through a pie menu tree of social interactions in order to build a relationship of any sort. UnplayedSimB should have to jump through the same hoops, being actually and actively social with AvailableSingleSimC rather than simply being rolled into the partnership via the games autopairing.

[J. M. Pescado]

Still, the speed at which unplayed sims are partnered is annoying and frustrating. Literally minutes to a few short hours after they exist in the world romantic prefs are rolled and they're off to the Mausoleum with someone.

Here's the thing, though:
1. Just because a romance event is fired doesn't mean it will ultimately succeed.
2. Just because a romance event is successful and advances doesn't mean that they're now immediately married.

It's not a one-shot event that instantly pairs them off, it's just a single date that will move them towards that point. For them to reach that point requires a MINIMUM of 2 dates to hit Partner status, and 4 to finally become married. Furthermore, at each stage they have only a 50% chance of advancing even if all the criteria are in place, and none if they don't acquire enough rel in the process to do so, so in all likelyhood, it's more like 8 events. The events are throttled to one every 24 hours, so assuming optimistic average-case behavior, it takes about a week. In more pessimistic scenarios, somewhat longer. Furthermore, YOU have the power to stop this! If you see the popup, you can go, cut them off, and pound their faces in, thus wrecking their date. Note also that the base rel gain and the success rate are using the same tuning constants as the EA version, so if you want, you can alter their to-hit odds and firepower using the same XML.

[Absimiliard]

...
Note also that the base rel gain and the success rate are using the same tuning constants as the EA version, so if you want, you can alter their to-hit odds and firepower using the same XML.

Good news! I'm gonna go spelunking for that XML. Does anyone know which secion I should be looking at? I'll start looking now, but there's a pretty lemon lollipop for whomever can tell me where it is first!

[shadow]

I had a teen ask his mother to break up with his dad! It was in the friendly menu. Only saw it once. 

[Absimiliard]

...
Note also that the base rel gain and the success rate are using the same tuning constants as the EA version, so if you want, you can alter their to-hit odds and firepower using the same XML.

Good news! I'm gonna go spelunking for that XML. Does anyone know which secion I should be looking at? I'll start looking now, but there's a pretty lemon lollipop for whomever can tell me where it is first!

Bad News! I cannot for the life of me figure out where this would be done... I'm guessing maybe its in the "Socializing" XML, but I can't see anything controlling the rate of attraction. Please anyone who might know (Pescado), I've given a kick at the can, could you tell me waht I'm looking for.

[chann]

I'll take a stab. "ChangeRelationship"?

[J. M. Pescado]

That's the droid you're looking for, yes. It controls how much +rel sims can earn per session as a baseline, just like the EA action, and therefore, reducing it to smaller values will slow down progression.

[Absimiliard]

I'll take a stab. "ChangeRelationship"?

Thank you very much chann & Pes. Let's see if I can't calm those randy buggers down a bit.

[Wolfeyes]

I had a teen ask his mother to break up with his dad! It was in the friendly menu. Only saw it once. 

I have actually seen this quite a few times lately w/several famblies and wondered what was up with it...   

[unstuck]

I had a teen ask his mother to break up with his dad! It was in the friendly menu. Only saw it once. 

I have actually seen this quite a few times lately w/several famblies and wondered what was up with it...   

I got with when my  sim woohooed with a married sim.  Makes sense: ask your lover to leave his wife.  I don't know why a teen would want his parents to break up, though -- maybe if he has a terrible relationship with his dad and wants him out of the house.  That would be cool!

[Absimiliard]

That's the droid you're looking for, yes. It controls how much +rel sims can earn per session as a baseline, just like the EA action, and therefore, reducing it to smaller values will slow down progression.

I'm having some success with this but romance events still fire like mad (the values in that section only seem to alter the severity of the actions). Do you know offhand where it determines how oftern story mode events happen? Or better yet, how often a story mode event is a romantic one?

ETA: Actually the real problem I'm having is my Flirty sims getting married off (or normal sims being married off to flirty ones). In my mind flirty means kinda playful, not looking to get married. One of my male slut Sims actually has Flirty and Commitment Issues, but I can't stop him from getting married even when I change the values from 50% down to 5%. And when I do change them to 5% everyone else has Romantic Relationships as 0-20% while all the flirts get hitched.

[edalbformat]

The problem must really be in a simple XML. It seems that couples are having a huge boost in their relationship everytime they meet romantically. Otherwise I cannot explain why two sims that had a relationship at about 20-25, get married after two dates.

[Absimiliard]

The problem must really be in a simple XML. It seems that couples are having a huge boost in their relationship everytime they meet romantically. Otherwise I cannot explain why two sims that had a relationship at about 20-25, get married after two dates.

One of the problems definitely is in XML. The ChangeRelationship section looks like this

Code:

<base>
  <Current_Tuning>
    <kMaxRelationshipChange value="40">
      <!--[Range: [0,100] Maximum amount that a relationship can change at once-->
    </kMaxRelationshipChange>
    <kChanceOfRomanticEscalation value="50">
      <!--[Range: [0,100] Chance of escalating to the next romance stage when relationship changes-->
    </kChanceOfRomanticEscalation>
    <kChanceOfRepeatedRomance value="50">
      <!--[Range: [0,100] Chance of jumping over several romance levels when choosing to advance romance-->
    </kChanceOfRepeatedRomance>
  </Current_Tuning>
  <Deprecated_Tuning />
</base>

It reads pretty easy I think. It seems that when a romantic story mode event is fired it has a 40% chance of changing instantly (this is the only section I am a little confused on... changed? could it go down). Every event has a 50% chance of escalating and 50% of event have a 50% of escalating more than one step. I'm quite sure Pescado also added additional boosts to Flirty and Hopelessly Romantic Sims so there's little wonder everyone get married on their first or second dates.

That being said, I reduced all these values to 5% and still had a third of my flirty sims married off within the week (Sunday-Sunday). If I had my druthers, Flirty sims would not have greater changes to their relationship scores but more frequent events and sims with commitment issues would have a substantially reduced likelihood to accept relationship escalations.

ETA: Okay did some more testing... If I set all values to zero sims still jump to the next romance level (they usually break up immediately afterwards because their LTR is still 0). So it would seem that the romance events are double whammys: 1st they romace up and then there is a chance for this XML to up their relationship and possibly (probably) romance 'em up even more. ick.

[Jens]

Reading the comments about marriages occurring too quick, I'm beginning to wonder why I'm seeing the opposite. In 3 seperate towns  around 70% of sims have remained unmarried by time they've turned elder (slightly modified normal agespan). Today I've had to reset age on around 30 because they were within a couple days of turning elder and still no partner (romantic interests but nothing more). I've now tweaked the same xml to 80 for all 3 values to see if an increase occurs and after 10 sim days the result is 3 new marriages. I'm wondering if its due to having a large amount of singles in my hood, its somewhere around 70 or 80 I think. I guess it proves different town set ups produce differing results in storymode which to me is the whole point of having one.

With what you've just said about them splitting up immediately, doesn't that prove lowering the values in the xml does significantly reduce the chance of the relationship advancing? Unless I misunderstood what you meant. 

[Tangie]

I don't have to worry so much about romance events in my current 'hood, either. I created 4 couples and put them in an empty Sunset Valley. One sim in each of two of the couples has the Family Oriented trait and they've been pollinating and adding to the town's population. The other two couples only have one kid each and I intervened on those. After installing ASM version 9-8, 11:09, I went to one of these couples and intervened again on a TFB. I also want them to move out of their crappy EA house (this is the couple who moved from the very nice custom house I moved them into) so I deleted the second crib (not that it matters much since their one spawn is now a kid and occupies the only other bed in the house). In about a sim day I had a pop-up stating that they had moved into another house. The only problem is that they displaced the second one-child couple, who then moved into another crappy EA house. At least it wasn't the same crappy house.

Before the displacement I selected the second one-kid couple and instead of directly influencing events I added the Family Oriented trait to one of the sims. Within 2 days, I got a pop-up stating that the couple had pollinated. Now I am waiting to see if they displace the first couple and take their home back. In which case we are in for another round of musical houses, I suspect.

The two couples who weren't spawning have a variety of traits like angler, artistic, bookworm, etc. According to previous comments I suspect that AM's Story Mode has been programmed so that certain traits have a lower chance of mating/spawning. If this is the case, I would like to say that other than dooming my small hood with only two of the couples having the Family Oriented trait and therefore having children, I don't think this is realistic, either. I know these traits also affect whether they get married in the first place, if I recall correctly, and if I hadn't created them as couples I would have already noticed this problem in my current neighborhood. I could see a slightly reduced chance of being interested in having relationships and babies would make sense, but not as low as it seems to be now. After all I've seen plenty of bookworms and introverts and most of them had the urge to create "mini-me's" in spite of the fact that they liked to read.  I'm just sayin'....

[J. M. Pescado]

There seems to be a minor bug which may be explaining this. It will be fixed in the next version coming Real Soon Now.

[Tangie]

That's good to know. In the meantime I think I need to remove the Family Oriented trait from two of my couples. One couple (the one that had a set of twin girls and a set of triplet girls) already had 6 chillins (a 6th boy) and while playing another family, I got a pop-up saying they'd pollinated again. I had to add a room onto their house.

ETA: Of course I made the mistake of allowing overstuffed houses in the first place!

[byronh]

New families (ones that I haven't created, and are not in the bin) are moving into the neighbourhood now. Not that I'm complaining, it's good. But I never saw anything about this in the changelog.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's not the work of AwesomeMod, that is standard game behavior. AwesomeMod merely encourages them to stop being homeless once they can afford homes once they exist.

[Kitbug]

Is there somewhere that has a list of features for AwesomeStory? I really want to try it, but I'd like to know what it does... and I don't really have time to read through the entire thread.

[coconnor]

Is there somewhere that has a list of features for AwesomeStory? I really want to try it, but I'd like to know what it does... and I don't really have time to read through the entire thread.

Try the Wikka http://wikka.moreawesomethanyou.com/Awesomemod

[J. M. Pescado]

Is there somewhere that has a list of features for AwesomeStory? I really want to try it, but I'd like to know what it does... and I don't really have time to read through the entire thread.

AwesomeStory believes that Less Is More. As such, there aren't a ton of meaningless events that you'd never have gotten to see in game. Instead, AwesomeStory only prods sims to do things that they would otherwise be completely incapable of ever doing: They can Romance, Move In, Split, Join, Work, Skill, and Fail At Life (Starve To Death). That's it.

[edalbformat]

It seems that is also forcing things to happen as they should. I was observing sims in the park and got a message that "X was romancing Y, at the City Hall".  X was at the moment playing football table in the middle of the park and I got a laugh. But immediately Y showed up and both left the park, so I believe that the story mode corrected the mistake.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's not a bug. If it gives a location in which it is happening, it means that they are actually going to go there, and you can SEE it happen. The actual romance does not occur until the two have met up, which they will do as described. The code actually does have them go and meet up.

[Kitbug]

This might not belong here, but I didn't know where else to put it. What's it mean when it says "[insert name] has no available romance victims"? o.O