Time-sync and aging

[Sandilou]

8. Time-sync must be maintained if anyone goes to Uni. You may play no more than 1 day on the main lot per year of Uni.

I have never been able to work out just how sim time works.  Is there any logic to it at all?

I just want my sims to age at the same rate, whether they are in the main neighbourhood or at uni.  What's the easiest way to make this happen?  

[Alvaron]

In a challenge 'hood such as the Prosperity Challenge where time sync is mandatory, I do it in half-simweeks. I play 3 days Monday to Thursday a.m. then save and exit, then on to the next house in the playlist. After that half-cycle is done, rinse and repeat for the second half of the sim week Thursday to Monday a.m.

With respect to university neighborhoods, the time scale for the YA stage is terribly off compared to the other life stages and university takes far too long unless you use J. M.'s college clock or Twojeffs's college adjuster. When I cannot use those, I generally equate one semester at university to one sim day in the regular neighborhood which gives an entire college career in about a sim week. That feels about right to me and seems to work ok. Within a university neighborhood, I sim each lot in turn doing about one semester at a time so my brain doesn't leak out through my eyeballs.  Sometimes, to break up the monotony, I'll sim a day or two at each university lot between houses in the regular neighborhood.

In J.M.'s Email Challenge, it's spelled out: one sim day in the regular hood, then one year at university so your YAs will finish up in four sim days of regular 'hood time.

[J. M. Pescado]

Actually, it's not quite spelled out that explicitly: Uni is a little wiggy, so that time is alotted as a maximum, not a minimum. For time-sync, you can elapse no MORE than 1 day per Uni year, but you may opt to run none. This fudge factor is inserted because of the fact that you can shave days off the teen stage (which is technically too long) more or less arbitrarily.

[Sandilou]

Alvaron, I play each neighbourhood house for a sim day then move on; the 1 sim day = 1 sim year worked fine apart from the fact that pregnancy lasts for 3 days - ie 3 years.  I know it's not real, but it really gets on my nerves. 

One of my sims is currently at Uni, and I'm trying to age him at the rightish pace, so I was trying 2 uni days = 1 sim day, but then his Mom got pregnant and I realised that if I played at that ratio tnen he would leave Uni when Mom's new baby was about to be a teen! 

JM, if I play using your ratio, then Mom will be pregnant for 3 Uni years.  It just doesn't work out.  Do I really have to play a whole Uni (yawn) year at a time?  I do have your clock, and could use it, but there are still lots of Uni activities that I haven't done yet (zombies, secret society) mainly because my eyes start to bleed and my head pulses ready to explode if I stay at Uni for too long!

Thanks for the advice from both of you. 

[J. M. Pescado]

Alvaron, I play each neighbourhood house for a sim day then move on; the 1 sim day = 1 sim year worked fine apart from the fact that pregnancy lasts for 3 days - ie 3 years.  I know it's not real, but it really gets on my nerves.

Elephantine Pregnancy is unfortunately one of the major timescale distortions of TS2. Recalculating scales based on this tends to result in a greatly
extended adult ages (at 3 days = 9 RL months, the agespan of 24 to 60 drags out to 148 days).

One of my sims is currently at Uni, and I'm trying to age him at the rightish pace, so I was trying 2 uni days = 1 sim day, but then his Mom got pregnant and I realised that if I played at that ratio tnen he would leave Uni when Mom's new baby was about to be a teen!

Yes, and at such a ratio, your parents will be dead by the time you graduate in many cases.

JM, if I play using your ratio, then Mom will be pregnant for 3 Uni years.  It just doesn't work out.  Do I really have to play a whole Uni (yawn) year at a time?  I do have your clock, and could use it, but there are still lots of Uni activities that I haven't done yet (zombies, secret society) mainly because my eyes start to bleed and my head pulses ready to explode if I stay at Uni for too long!

The given ratio is a MAX, not a minimum. It is entirely possible to simply warp through Uni elapsing 0 neighborhood days for the entire giant mess. The alternative, using pregnancy as a guideline again, is a rough equivalency of 4 days to a year, which means that you will burn 16 days over the course of the entire Uni mess and probably be dead by the time your kids graduate. This is much too absurdly long.

And no, you don't have to play the entire Uni year one at a time: Some amount of asynchronity for sanity is tolerated, if this is the only child at Uni and no siblings are of close enough age that they'd enter Uni prior to graduation. In which case you can elapse up to 4 days of standard neighborhood time and still maintain sync, but then you get to play the entire 4 years of Uni in a single sitting! OH, THE PAIN!

Besides, the Secret Society doesn't take all that long, and isn't a requirement, and zombies aren't really a part of the Uni experience at all. You can hardly expect every sim to commit a few serial killings (and join the secret society: Wouldn't be very secret if everyone joined, now would it?). Just do the coursework, then slam the clock. It doesn't take that long if you're doing it in a rental house, quiet dorm....or an email, which is probably why you're asking, since if you want to de-sync your entire game on your own for the heck of it, well, that's not my problem.

[reggikko]

When I recently played a Uni student, I had her go on fast forward to get her grades up, used the clock to take the final, and was done with her entire Uni experience in about 2 1/2 real play hours. It was awesome. 

[Oddysey]

Time scale screwyness is mostly the result of age lengths being based on how much crap can be done in them rather than real world analogue, as well as most sim players apparently spending most of their time waffling around and doing nothing useful. If you have macrotastics and are a ruthless taskmaster, you can complete the most important events of a given lifestage in far less time than you have to do them in. Particularly in Uni, although the teen stage also suffers from this, since most of the major stuff that can be done in it (skilling and romance) can have significant progress made on it in the preceding life stages, or can be done very quickly and is basically pointless anyway.

[Sandilou]

A bit of research and calculating has led me to believe that the age phases work out okay if the teen phase is played for 7 days and if sims endure Uni for 4 neighbourhood days, as JM suggests.  As usual he's right - I have buggered up my time-sync.  Now I have to use his clock to fix this.

The only other thing I might do is use a hack to make pregnancies last for just one sim day so that finally, time really is in sync with aging.

[Mirelly]

It was evident that time-synch was always going to be a fudge months before the game came out. Understandably (I suppose) teenage player wanted a long span for their sim-sakes ... I often wondered if they were satisfied with what they got? Since uni came out I have rarely played a teen thru to the bitter end and since the FFS college clock appeared I have been able to whizz the occasional student thru a whole college course in well under an hour of Earth time (including such important stuff as making at least half a dozen new best friends and finding a potential mate).  As for the 3 year pregnancy thing I suspect that higher than RL incidence of twins is a useful balance for the seemingly overlong sim-gestation period. I suspect (with no research and no facts) that real folks (who don't undertake child rearing frivolously) probably take close to three years to plan a pregnancy, achieve it and then see it thru to fruition ... 

[gali]

 "Do I really have to play a whole Uni (yawn) year at a time?  I do have your clock, and could use it, but there are still lots of Uni activities that I haven't done yet (zombies, secret society) mainly because my eyes start to bleed and my head pulses ready to explode if I stay at Uni for too long!" (sandilou)


My students graduate  after 6-7 days only.
Like you, I am bored to play it such a long time.

My strategy is this:
I use  Insimenator + Merola's multi-painting + Merola's booster paint - and if you have 3$ - download the Eternal Booster from http://www.simslice.com   - works on babies too  - and Inge Jones's Teleporter.

My first couple has to stay a little more time, because they have to find the SS members. I observed that the SS members are fond of body training and pool board. So I updated one of the community lots (the Gym), and made it all-purpose community (super-market), packaged the lot (for the future use). and visit only there.
All the body-train machines are in the yard, to ease the interaction.

I spawn the relationship sign (a heart), and begin to befriend between my sims and the body trainers (you can use the  Carrigon's Voodoo Bottle - just put it in the community lot.
In about 3 sims hours I can befriend about 6 sims.

Return home, wait for 11:00 PM or so. If nothing happens - I go to the community again and befriend 6 more body trainers. Usualy after that I find the 3 SS members, and get to be abducted.

When the first sim goes to the SS building, I write down the names of the members, and when I return home - I begin to teleport all of them (one by one) to me house with Inge's teleporter, and befriend them.

After that, my second couple enters the SS on his first, or max second day  (freshmen) in college, teleporting to them at least 4 SS members, and using the Voodoo bottle or Insimenator.

As I have the Eternal Mood Booster - my sims, after  being abducted, don't eat, don't sleep don't get to shower  - and only do assignments (+term paper) and research.

In one day they are ready to the Final exam - and I use Pescado's clock to send them to the final.

In 6 sim days they graduate and return to the old neighbourhood - no parties at all....

Try it...

[SJActress]

I am confused...time in the neighborhood elapses while you're playing in Uni world?  If so, I was completely unaware of it.  Does time just elapse for the families that have young adults away at college?  Like if Sue Sim left for college and had a kid sister, the kid sister would be a teen when Sue Sim returned, even though I haven't played the house the kid was in?  This is mindboggling.  I haven't graduated anybody yet, so I don't know WHAT'S going on here.   HELP!

[SJActress]

Wait...I think I get it...yeah.  I got it.  You peeps are trying to figure out how to do what I just said by playing the right places at the right times, cuz it doesn't do what I just said, right?

SJActress in Need of Brain Enlargement

[Kitiara]

you nailed it
they are trying to make the game more realistic than it is
it adds a challenge that isn't really there

[J. M. Pescado]

Well, it's not so much a "challenge" as it is "sense". The game isn't any harder or easier when maintaining time-sync, but it makes a hell of a lot less sense when your kids are elders and your parents are still adults.