Pausing University

[vecki]

Huzzah, I am not dead and all that.

So I've somehow found myself actually kinda getting into TS4. Out of sheer laziness, I haven't gotten any mods as of yet. I've managed to change the options so I can mostly do rotational gameplay and not have other played houses age up and DIE ON ME, but I've hit a point where I have sims at University, and while they might not age while I'm playing other households, the University term goes on and if I haven't played their house and micromanaged their studies like the slave driver I am, they fail their subjects and go on academic probation.

Has there been a mod developed anywhere so University gameplay can pause while we're off playing other houses? At this point if I want to keep things under control I need to keep all my students in one dorm at only Britechester and thats getting a little manic even with only three sims doing three subjects each.

[tinylittleparty]

I quit playing UNI because of that stupid bs. If you ever found a way to solve that problem, let me know.

One thing you could probably try is use MCCC to set the university difficulty to +10 while playing on a different lot. That would make them just pass while you're gone. No pause, but you did get to play another family, so *shrug*


Something vaguely related I want to complain about: Playing on a dorm lot is strictly worse than playing on any other lot because running (or even biking) to class buildings takes longer than disappearing on the sidewalk.

[J. M. Pescado]

This is a subject of some level of irritation that I have been looking into, although with only limited success. But yes, you're basically only allowed one batch of sims actively enrolled at a time, and absolutely everyone else will FAIL MISERABLY as a result of being unable to perform activities.

The tricky part is that once a sim graduates from university, their performance history is rendered unrecoverable, which makes it hard to figure out what the expected performance standard is. I can calculate this based on existing performance for a single individual sim, but not for completely fresh sims, and thus there are two options: Assume Awesomeness, or Everybody Fails (which is just the status quo). The former option works as long as it's just for my personal use, because I am awesome, obviously, but the same can't be guaranteed for the rest of you.

[vecki]

AAAH!

Ok, so I've figured out something of a workaround this problem for now.

University results for each semester are released at some point (I keep forgetting to check the time) each Monday.  So I rotate between households early on a Monday morning (usually around 3am when all the household members should be home).  When I come back to my uni household, even though I haven't played them for around 10 sim weeks by this time, their grades come out at some point on Monday, they re-enrol and we continue with their merry studies until 3am the next Monday.  If I stuff up and the grades come out before I've swapped over, I'll have to babysit them for another week.  Haven't stuffed up the rotation yet but never underestimate my ability to lose track of time.

It goes like this:

Uni House - join them 3am Monday morning, if they're new they start their classes on the Tuesday.  If they're continuing they get their grades and an opportunity to re-enrol.  If you don't re-enrol straight away they lose whatever scholarships they had on admission, even if you then re-enrol them later.  They then start their next semester on the Tuesday and away we go.  Classes, homework, term papers, presentations, blah blah blah. 

3am Monday - SWITCH! Go through the other families, then come back.  They get their grades and re-enrol. 

Rinse, repeat.

Something vaguely related I want to complain about: Playing on a dorm lot is strictly worse than playing on any other lot because running (or even biking) to class buildings takes longer than disappearing on the sidewalk.

Also, YES, this sucks.  I've simply kept some sims living in the family home to study to avoid this.  College experience?  WHAT COLLEGE EXPERIENCE!?  IT'S A PANDEMIC DAMMIT.  STAY HOME.  Pixellated brats.

[J. M. Pescado]

University results for each semester are released at some point (I keep forgetting to check the time) each Monday.

Not really. Terms last 5 business days. If you do what I do and enroll them on Friday Evenings (so you get the entire weekend to do your homework before class starts), your results will come out Friday Evening shortly after the term ends.

That's the reason yours are out of sync like that. The technique probably still applies, but the point remains that you can't leave anyone in mid-season or they fail.