AWESOMEMOD 4.0.87 (AMB) TEST THREAD

[ickaboo]

This may be a stupid question or in the wrong area, my apologies. Where do I download the 4.0.87 test mod?
I've looked throughout this forum and I was unsuccessfu in finding a link.

[rachelelyse]

Try reading through this whole thread. It's been linked to.

[myskaal]

The seed problem is EAxis. I started getting it after installing WA though it might be from base game.

[Anach]

No bugs to report currently. Which is unusual for me...

However. New professions progress doesn't scale with the lifetime setting in the same way the career progress does. Got to level 10 Stylist in less than 10 Sim days on epic.

[J. M. Pescado]

I have not decided how to address the profession progress yet, since unlike careers, they are hands-on, and reducing the gain to negligibility therefore just produces more grinding. Perhaps once I have had a chance to play it and turn it into a Supreme Commander macro.

But first order of business, figuring out how to get CREATE-A-CRAP to work.

[Motoki]

I have not decided how to address the profession progress yet, since unlike careers, they are hands-on, and reducing the gain to negligibility therefore just produces more grinding. Perhaps once I have had a chance to play it and turn it into a Supreme Commander macro.

But first order of business, figuring out how to get CREATE-A-CRAP to work.

In my experience playing the Firefighter career fairly extensively I would say it could definitely use some tuning. I'm far more lenient than you in terms of forcing my sims to really work their asses off to advance but the rate of advancement is too quick even for me.

My Firefighter guy is already up to level 8 after a few days and it's mostly just from increasing skills, mainly athletic which he does all day at the firehouse since he has nothing better to do. He doesn't even know his coworkers and only put out a few fires.

The experience bar is measured by 3 metrics, skills, coworkers and putting out fires. You only need to increase one to advance. That's all well and good except you can apparently make fire chief buy simply working out all day and putting out the occasional fire. Also, unlike the job performance meters in the rabbit holes, your experience meter (as far as I know) can not go down and decrease.

The rabbit holes are actually more of a challenge than these careers. Especially firefighter because you have things easily available to replenish every need in short time. I feel like there needs to be some counterbalance to that.

The stylist and architect don't have as many other activities available on their default lots as the firefighter. You can easily add them though and really you should, at very least a drafting table and fridge. Otherwise with the dumb 1 assignment a day EAxis gives you sit around twiddling your thumbs all day.

[aquila]

I'm assuming the CREATE-A-CRAP issue is that when you edit a pre-existing sim and click the checkmark to confirm changes, it crashes to the desktop. It's the only major problem I've noticed with the latest build, but if you're already aware I won't go into details.

[Arieth]

Has anyone been experiencing freezing issues ever since installing AMB with the new Awesomemod? My game freezes, but the trees in the background keep fluttering and I'm forced to force-close my game and lose any progress I made. =(

[Quijibo]

Has anyone been experiencing freezing issues ever since installing AMB with the new Awesomemod? My game freezes, but the trees in the background keep fluttering and I'm forced to force-close my game and lose any progress I made. =(

Three or four of us responded to your post yesterday where you brought up the freezing.  See page 6.  I am sure JM is looking into it.  The hard part is replicating the problem to find out why it's happening.  I have gotten the freezing once but can't seem to make it recur by repeating my actions.

[Claeric]

In my experience playing the Firefighter career fairly extensively I would say it could definitely use some tuning. I'm far more lenient than you in terms of forcing my sims to really work their asses off to advance but the rate of advancement is too quick even for me.

My Firefighter guy is already up to level 8 after a few days and it's mostly just from increasing skills, mainly athletic which he does all day at the firehouse since he has nothing better to do. He doesn't even know his coworkers and only put out a few fires.

Whats worse is that when you get to level 3 firefighting, the game says that you've tackled all sorts of stuff, when in reality you've done maybe two basic fires, and that's it. Hell, you're practically in charge of the place afte rputting out 5 fires, it's ridiculous.

They all progress too fast, but firefighting in particular is just terrible.

[Sigmund]

My Firefighter guy is already up to level 8 after a few days and it's mostly just from increasing skills, mainly athletic which he does all day at the firehouse since he has nothing better to do. He doesn't even know his coworkers and only put out a few fires.

This. I actually had a sim get three promotions before his first day of work, simply because he spent his downtime working out. It was ridiculous.

[Claeric]

Perhaps a solution would be to figure out a way to slow progress for the two things BESIDES the main idea of the job.

So that working out would yield maybe 2% of the experience that putting out a fire does or befriending a coworker does. But the way it's set up, it doesn't seem like that's possible without major tweaking. They really dropped the ball with how professions gain experience.

[The_Goddess]

My Firefighter guy is already up to level 8 after a few days and it's mostly just from increasing skills, mainly athletic which he does all day at the firehouse since he has nothing better to do. He doesn't even know his coworkers and only put out a few fires.

This. I actually had a sim get three promotions before his first day of work, simply because he spent his downtime working out. It was ridiculous.

Agreed; I too received 3 promotions in a weekend before my first day of work.  I haven't put AM back in my game yet but I'm wondering if increasing the "JobDifficultyScaling" will help make career advancement harder as it does for job advancement.  Has anyone experimented with this?  If not perhaps I should put in a request for this feature to be added to AM as well.

[Claeric]

The two work on entirely different principles, so it doesn't work. Professions have set EXP gain for set actions, and a set number of EXP required to go from level 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. Scaling job difficulty doesn't alter any of these things, because they're hardcoded for each profession instead of just a general concept.

[The_Goddess]

The two work on entirely different principles, so it doesn't work. Professions have set EXP gain for set actions, and a set number of EXP required to go from level 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. Scaling job difficulty doesn't alter any of these things, because they're hardcoded for each profession instead of just a general concept.

I assumed as much, but because I removed AM when I installed Ambitions I have not had the luxury of seeing what works and what doesn't.  I'm assuming that with ‘testingcheats enabled' you could drag the bar back down manually to prevent a promotion from happening before you feel your Sim has properly earned it. 

[Claeric]

Yeah, you can drag it, at least.

[rhodaloo]

I've had a couple of instances of my game freezing, but random freezing for me has been an issue since the base game.  I've found that if I remember to save every 1-2 sim days that it makes less of an impact on my game.

[Motoki]

I feel like the amount of experience you get for skilling in the new professions, and fire fighting in particular, should be greatly reduced and perhaps it should be required that you at least do some of all 3 metrics to advance to the next level.

I also think the emphasis should be placed on the main task with the assignments for each profession. So for fire fighting, so the bulk of experience given shifted to putting out fires.

More should be given to more difficult fires and based on your grade (time spent) putting out the fire. The Prima Guide claims it does this, but it's vague about the exact xp amounts, multipliers and formulas and don't trust EAxis to make it reasonable.

Skilling to me should primarily have an indirect benefit in that athletics helps you run faster, break down doors quicker and tinkering helps you upgrade and maintain the truck, alarm, and extinguisher so they work better. The amount of experience given for skilling should be minimal and in no way should be able to advance solely through skilling. So someone who works out all day or tinkers around with shit all the time but never put out a single fire is qualified to be fire chief? Uh, no.

Also shifting the advancement to primarily the assignment creates a bit of an element out of the players control as they have to wait for them so the advancement is naturally slowed a bit.

Unless you can be crafty and say, have your sim or another commit arson. Does this work and get recognized as an emergency in the firehouse? I hadn't tried it yet.

[guardianpegasus]

I have not decided how to address the profession progress yet, since unlike careers, they are hands-on, and reducing the gain to negligibility therefore just produces more grinding. Perhaps once I have had a chance to play it and turn it into a Supreme Commander macro.

Well, as it is, as you say, hands-on, wouldn't it be both easier and within the spirit of the game to simply freeze the progress for profession sims when not playing them?

[Claeric]

More should be given to more difficult fires and based on your grade (time spent) putting out the fire. The Prima Guide claims it does this, but it's vague about the exact xp amounts, multipliers and formulas and don't trust EAxis to make it reasonable.

None of the XMLs indicate that this is true at all. One indicates that you lose exp for failing a job, but that's about it.

<Scoring>
  <JobId>LargeFires</JobId>
  <GradeATime>240</GradeATime>
  <GradeBTime>320</GradeBTime>
  <GradeCTime>400</GradeCTime>
  <GradeDTime>440</GradeDTime>
  <CompletionTNS>LargeFiresCompletion</CompletionTNS>
 </Scoring>

Is the only sort of thing I found referring to grading, and no mention was made of an exp multiplier based on it.

[akey]

I've been testing AM for a while now and haven't run across any issues other than the game freezing up with a spinning plumbob (which seems to occur more frequently when changing game speeds but that could just be me as I'm ALWAYS changing game speeds.)

Has anyone else run across the issue where they cannot achieve the last gem cut although they meet all the requirements? I've running a sim through the Inventor career (which is annoyingly easy in the beginning and frustrating with all the grinding towards the end) & Master Invention Opportunity when I realized that I have found all 10 gem types but many by mining.

I did googled and research the issue and there's been some forum-chat about it elsewhere. Seems that you have to find all the types out in the fields rather than mining them which seems silly that an inventor cannot use his own inventions to, you know, mine. It's almost certainly EAxian by nature (certainly seems like the kind of thing they would FUBAR or consider a "feature')

Love to find out if this is a glitch, "feature", or if it's just me being a 'tard.

[Motoki]

Well, as it is, as you say, hands-on, wouldn't it be both easier and within the spirit of the game to simply freeze the progress for profession sims when not playing them?

Agreed that it's dumb to get a promotion outside of work from reading a book at home or doing a couple of laps around the block.

I've kind of got mixed feelings about being able to gain xp from doing your actual job (ie styling, putting out fires, catching ghosts etc) outside of work hours, but it doesn't seem like you get xp for doing anything that is not a set 'mission' anyway.

None of the XMLs indicate that this is true at all. One indicates that you lose exp for failing a job, but that's about it.

<Scoring>
  <JobId>LargeFires</JobId>
  <GradeATime>240</GradeATime>
  <GradeBTime>320</GradeBTime>
  <GradeCTime>400</GradeCTime>
  <GradeDTime>440</GradeDTime>
  <CompletionTNS>LargeFiresCompletion</CompletionTNS>
 </Scoring>

Is the only sort of thing I found referring to grading, and no mention was made of an exp multiplier based on it.

The guide did give those same times in minutes and the letter grades the equate to. It then went on to make the vague statment that:

"Your score is given as a letter grade and that letter grade acts as a multiplier for the amount of xp a job normally pays out"

Of course they didn't bother to state what those multipliers are.    It wouldn't at all surprise me if they were wrong since Prima frequently is.

It also claimed that the times and grade for a small house fire, building disaster, gnome invasion, science facility rescue, warehouse rescue and hospital rescue (basically everything but a large house fire) were all the same

A=180 minutes
B=240 minutes
C=320 minutes
D=400 minutes

That seems dumb to me since a small house fire is way easier than some of those rescue/disaster/invasion scenarios. Seems like that is easily tunable via an XML mod though.

[Arieth]

Really? I even looked back to see if anyone responded about my Freezing problem, I didn't see anything. I'm really sorry! I must of passed over it by accident. =(.

EDIT: I feel really stupid now. =(, I've must of been half-asleep when I was looking through it. Thanks again!

[acfalconhawk]

Known AMB specific issues should be fixed, including the following:
1. Broken schools.
2. Wonky lot value calculations now that community lots are ownable/buyable/value-able.

was number 2 the issue with lots being closed because they are not worth enough to open? I have six lots right now that are closed because it says it must meet some minimum value. But they all are worth more than the minimum noted and building/buying on the lot, while it does increase the value of the lot, it does not do anything to help open it. example: The Old Pier Beach is closed because it must have a minimum value of 15,000 (needs 15,000); but when i look at how much the lot is worth, it says it is worth about 25,000. Nothing I do to the lot changes how much i still need to open it. I have 5 other lots doing the same thing.

[Pyromaniac]

@Motoki:

The guide is pretty much bullshit. You have to finish a small fire in before 3 hours to get the A grade, and 4 hours for a large fire. I've rarely gotten an 'A' for large fires unless a) everything is upgraded, b) I notice the fire right away (alarm bell and fire truck should be at 100% maintenance), and c) my sim is already dressed in firefighter 'gear' and doesn't need to change before hopping on the truck.

For some reason it takes an entire ingame-hour for my sims to get dressed.

edit: reading comprehension fail. Didn't catch that you were already aware of the small/large fire difference. Anyhow, disasters are easy to handle - your sim just arrives at a lot, enters a rabbithole, and does their thing.