Harder finances hack?

[aussieone]

That's how it works in Oz too...but I can't buy a 3 storey mansion after working for a month or so and I doubt I'll ever be able to within my working lifetime actually! 

[knitro]

Well, insead of "payroll, income tax" then it can be like property tax, that doesn't get taken out of wages...And i have said that before about the private school, it should cost money!, my broke ass sims shouldn't be able to afford to go..or have a maid for that matter, or nanny, they should be broke, no niceties!  hard to keep them that way for long though.
K

[J. M. Pescado]

I could make private school concatenate itself onto your bills on a per child basis, if you want....Does an extra +$500 per child per billing cycle sound good?

[tunaisafish]

500 a week for private school - Yes, it sounds great.

I always thought that must've been in the original spec. for the game.
What with them stupid memories about how the parents are shelling out money for it.

[J. M. Pescado]

A week? No, per billing cycle! Twice a week!

[tunaisafish]

Doh... yes 1000 a week is even better.

If you think in roughly the terms of a sim day is a year, that's still a great deal.
That'll be about 3k for the whole of there education.

Make it 3k a week? Or tweakable.

[crazi_aboutu]

It cost us roughly 4000 per year to send daughter to a private high school so at least that!

[Regina]

well, maybe when OFB comes out, i can make a business that is isn't profitable.....it would be nice if there was a work for charity job..doesn't pay, but maybe gets skill perks..but if i have a bunch or romance and pleasure sims, they dont' really need to work, their happy just "getting around" the neighborhood heheehe
K

Oh my!  My eyes are so blurry I'm never going to make it through this whole thread tonight, but wanted to say I had a similar idea to this the other day.  When your sims have more money than they can use, no problem--simply make a few bad business investments and that should pretty much take care of it.

I'm with Pescado that sims staying home is harder than having them go to work every day because there's not enough for them to do.  I downloaded those garden objects from VitaSims the other day and am going to see how that works out, once I get my game put back together, that is.  I'm hoping the money they can earn won't be a ridiculously large amount, but might be enough to support a family if they want.  Above all, I'm hoping it gives some of my sims a bit less spare time.

[Gwill]

I could make private school concatenate itself onto your bills on a per child basis, if you want....Does an extra +$500 per child per billing cycle sound good?

I'd use that hack.
I guess it's easier than somehow paying the headmaster cash when you get accepted.  That would be cool though.

[J. M. Pescado]

Interested. So I started digging for how to make private school costs money....

And as it turns out, it's already SUPPOSED to cost money, but due to several bugs in the code, the entire functional tree (which already exists!) that is responsible for charging the bill....never gets invoked. Experiments are currently being conducted into how this can be fixed.

Also, nobody seems to have noticed because by default, the actual bill is a pittance of $25/day. Woo.

[aussieone]

25 Simoleans per day?? A mere pittance!!!

Make it a crippling amount J.M.

3000 simoleans per billing cycle sounds about right.

[Kyna]

Remember there are private schools and then there are private schools. 

The private school system in Australia is a wide spectrum of schools.  At one end of the spectrum are the very expensive ultra-prestigious top-notch private schools - the type where you have to put your children's names down at birth, and no doubt they give priority to the offspring of former students.  At the other end of the spectrum is a large Catholic school system, where fees are structured based on parents ability to pay.  I've known sole parents on benefits who sent their kids to Catholic schools with minimal fees.  In the middle are a range of other private schools.

Translated into game terms, Alexander Goth would probably go to a very prestigious private school, the Broke kids would go to a low-prestige private school where fees are based on ability to pay, and the Pleasants and Dirk Dreamer would probably go to a medium level school.

I like playing first generation CAS sims, but I also like sending their kids to private school.  If I create a CAS family with children I'd still like to have the option to send their kids to private school, in spite of the fact that their parents are in low level jobs due to the lack of a degree and non-existent starting skills.  I'd like the option to choose the level of private school from one of three levels (maybe with reduced mood benefits for the less prestigious schools?) but I don't know if that's possible to mod.

[J. M. Pescado]

3000 simoleans per billing cycle sounds about right.

I'm pretty sure that pushes it well into the "Usurious" range. Currently I'm test-driving it at 10x the original pittance, $250/child/schoolday. Which is well within the affordable limits of any family that doesn't totally suck. And if you totally suck that much, you're PROBABLY NOT GONNA DOWNLOAD THIS.

I think even the Broke family could manage to afford this.

[syberspunk]

Anyone know of any hacks that allow you to select which kids get into private school? Instead of having all the kids on your lot ending up in private school?

Also... exactly how does the harderjobs hack work? What exactly does it do to make jobs harder? Does it reduce the amount of money you make? Does it increase the requirements? Which ones? Skills? Number of friends? Long-term Job performance (i.e. do you actually have to fill that meter up before you get a promo)?

Ste

[J. M. Pescado]

Also... exactly how does the harderjobs hack work? What exactly does it do to make jobs harder? Does it reduce the amount of money you make? Does it increase the requirements? Which ones? Skills? Number of friends? Long-term Job performance (i.e. do you actually have to fill that meter up before you get a promo)?

The amount of money you make is unchanged, but you can no longer skip the first 8 levels of a career track, nor are you always guaranteed to reach the top, because some jobs have a limited number of vacancies, in some cases a very HARD limit set by cold hard facts, and if a sim already occupies that job (Mayor, for instance), YOU CANNOT HAVE IT UNTIL THE OTHER PERSON RETIRES!

It's possible to sneak in via chance cards, but if the limit is rigid and inviolate and you fail to make promotion, you will instead be demoted down to the nearest open slot.

[Kyna]

My last post was responding to the idea of 3000 per billing cycle *shudder*.  250-500 per billing cycle is more what I had in mind.

At 500 per billing cycle (1000 per week) my CAS families that have 2-3 children would still have to make choices - private school or add/upgrade objects.  Which is good - I like the idea of meaningful choices in the game.  In the real world parents do make sacrifices to send kids to private school.

[syberspunk]

The amount of money you make is unchanged, but you can no longer skip the first 8 levels of a career track, nor are you always guaranteed to reach the top, because some jobs have a limited number of vacancies, in some cases a very HARD limit set by cold hard facts, and if a sim already occupies that job (Mayor, for instance), YOU CANNOT HAVE IT UNTIL THE OTHER PERSON RETIRES!

It's possible to sneak in via chance cards, but if the limit is rigid and inviolate and you fail to make promotion, you will instead be demoted down to the nearest open slot.

Ahhh... very nice. Yes, I thought it was quite retarded for sims to have more than one Mayor in game. Truly more awesome indeed!

I'll throw my hat in for adding/fixing the private school expenses, as well as the income tax and/or property tax idea. I'll have to check out Inge's mortgage shrub thingie, although I'd prefer global hacks just cuz I'm too damned lazy about setting things per lot. Hehe. And how bout, in addition to this, making Taxis ACTUALLY COST SOMETHING! What's with the Free rides? Sims should pay per ride, to comm lots from home or other comm lots, and back home. And god forbid, if they actually don't have any more money to get a ride back home, then they have to hustle, freestyle or perform music for tips just so they could get back home. Otherwise, too bad, they starve to death or pass out on the comm lot and they're stuck until they can afford a trip back home. Lol. 

Ste

[J. M. Pescado]

And god forbid, if they actually don't have any more money to get a ride back home, then they have to hustle, freestyle or perform music for tips just so they could get back home. Otherwise, too bad, they starve to death or pass out on the comm lot and they're stuck until they can afford a trip back home. Lol. 

The problem with that is that A: You can't starve to death on a community lot, because the motives have a lower bound to prevent that (they won't even let you pass out), and B: Should a sim manage to die on a community lot, the game breaks because there is nobody to go home and thus save the outing.

Plus, in real life, you don't get stuck on lots when you can't afford to pay a taxi, you just walk. Then I'd have to code both the ability to walk home, and the benefits and drawbacks of doing it.

Which means more likely than not, you'd end up walking anyway. I for one can't imagine why Maxis *DIDN'T* just let sims walk to community lots, seeing as it would have involved a hell of a lot less objects, things that can go wrong, and sims seem to have no problems walking all over the place anyway...

[aussieone]

3000 simoleans per billing cycle sounds about right.

I'm pretty sure that pushes it well into the "Usurious" range. Currently I'm test-driving it at 10x the original pittance, $250/child/schoolday. Which is well within the affordable limits of any family that doesn't totally suck. And if you totally suck that much, you're PROBABLY NOT GONNA DOWNLOAD THIS.

I think even the Broke family could manage to afford this.

OK so..you're saying 250/per school day/per single child which would = 1250 per week per single child. That's ok with me...multipy it by each child on the lot.....fine, no probs smart arse awesome one...I'll download it..my sims can afford it

[Grater]

The amount of money you make is unchanged, but you can no longer skip the first 8 levels of a career track, nor are you always guaranteed to reach the top, because some jobs have a limited number of vacancies, in some cases a very HARD limit set by cold hard facts, and if a sim already occupies that job (Mayor, for instance), YOU CANNOT HAVE IT UNTIL THE OTHER PERSON RETIRES!

Well that's definitely a big improvement! Might make those career LTW's mean something!

$250 per child sounds good. It might be a challenge to actually get an orphaned teen through private school. Well, not really. But I could pretend it would make it a challenge... actually I think a teen could afford that with their dead end job alone. Maybe it does need to be higher...

[J. M. Pescado]

$250 per child sounds good. It might be a challenge to actually get an orphaned teen through private school. Well, not really. But I could pretend it would make it a challenge... actually I think a teen could afford that with their dead end job alone. Maybe it does need to be higher...

Nope. No way. Dead End Teen Job will not pay enough. He might be able to pay PART of it, but definitely not all of it.

[syberspunk]

Hrm... didn't think of that. Per child gets kinda pricey... and what sucks is, if you have multiple children, you can't seem to choose which ones get in. If I'm not mistaken, if you successfully complete the headmaster scenario, all eligible children (meaning children of age i.e. child or teen) get automatically sent to private school. Any chance you could do a selection for this, similar to the carpool hack, so we can play "Sophie's Chioice" and pick our "favorites" sons and daughters to go to private school only? Currently, I have a house with 6 teens! This will definately be a crippling financial burden if I have to pay per teen. So... if it comes to that, I'd like to have a choice as to which ones actually go, rather than shipping them all off to private school. That way, I only pay for some of them.

Ste

[J. M. Pescado]

Any chance you could do a selection for this, similar to the carpool hack, so we can play "Sophie's Chioice" and pick our "favorites" sons and daughters to go to private school only?

That strikes me as manifestly unfair.

Currently, I have a house with 6 teens! This will definately be a crippling financial burden if I have to pay per teen.

Isn't that sort of the point? How do you *HAVE* that many teens anyway? 6 teens seems to be about a stretch of 18 days if you spawn them back to back, slightly less for twins, but twins are only 10%, so figure statistically there won't be more than one set, still 15 days.

So... if it comes to that, I'd like to have a choice as to which ones actually go, rather than shipping them all off to private school. That way, I only pay for some of them.

Eh, you could just wait until they get kicked out from non-payment. What exactly are you spending all this money on anyway?

[diamonde]

I'd like to pay for private school as well.  Not just to get rid of the excess cash, but it makes a lot more sense and would add to gameplay.

Aside from those rational reasons, my parents couldn't afford to send me to private school so damn right my sims should pay through the nose for it.  I walked thirty miles to my state school uphill both ways IN THE SNOW!  Well, rain.  Okay, I live in a sub-tropical paradise and I caught the bus.  They should still have to pay school fees.

[Lythdan]

Yeah, I have need to use some of this cash my sims are piling up. Because once you have everything they need, what ARE they using that money for??

And actually not all age eligible sims are automatically accepted into private school. They to have at least a C in school.