The Entrepreneural Spirit - Building and selling businesses.

[J. M. Pescado]

If Maxis had simply given each towniee a limit on purchases based on how much money they have (remember, you can ask and they give you an answer) lots of the stupid loopholes would be closed.

They can? Asking them how much money they have just gives an apparently random number of $ signs with no apparent correlation to how much money a sim actually has or doesn't. I should go and get a translation table of what the hell that's supposed to mean, really...

[veilchen]

Then you could pretend your live in a small town.  You have to restrict yourself to mostly service type business to be realistic and you'd have to play all your characters in turn (otherwise they would become broke), but that could be fun in itself.

That's what I'm planning on doing when I get the gumption up to play MY town. We have only three of stores including the local Gasthaus (or guest house/inn), and their proprietors do all kinds of things on the side. They help the farmers, one even trains horses (just the basic stuff), help with building, heck, our baker even operates a sort of shuttle. He drives all those without a car or license to the 'big' city (8000 inhabitants vs. our 365) to go shopping. He only charges for gas and gets small gratuities for that though. Our farmers sometimes even pay in chickens, eggs, milk, etc.

Our Vineyards sell their own wine in the markets, as well as the grapes. They open up their wine cellars to the tourists. The tourists love the fact that the cellars are hewn right out of the mountain, something I never really gave a second thought about. It's only logical, it's cool and usually dry inside of the mountain, something wine needs. Our Innkeeper is also the district forrest ranger.

But on the whole, that's why I don't have the insim. I don't trust myself not to use the thing to the point where I deprive myself of the fun of playing. I can picture it clearly: "Just this once, this is an emergency, I'll never use it again...., etc."

[Motoki]

re: asking townies how much money they have.

I know when you move them in they bring in varying amounts of money up to 20,000, but I think that's based on their job level, if any so I think when you ask them about their income it also is more refering to their income as well rather than their spending money.

angelyne: I hear what you are saying about a limited customer base, but I still think something should have been worked out to balance out the huge income you get from big ticket things vs the small ones. It's way too easy, IMO, to sell the big ticket stuff. It kind of makes it pointless to sell the cheaper items. In theory, the balance is supposed to be that the cheaper items net less profit per sale, but you sell many more of them much easier and faster. In practice, it takes only a dazzle or 2 to sell any item, even the most expensive and outrageously priced.

I've kind of learned to live with it by augementing my mom and pop shop with expensive items that fit the setting (paintings for sale in restaurants, fountains and statuary in flower shops etc) but it would have been nice if they worked on the balance a little more.

[Motoki]

But on the whole, that's why I don't have the insim. I don't trust myself not to use the thing to the point where I deprive myself of the fun of playing. I can picture it clearly: "Just this once, this is an emergency, I'll never use it again...., etc."

LOL yes that is me too! That's why I hate cheats, they are such a temptation. It just nags and gnaws at me and calls my name to be used like a little devil whispering in my ear. 

[Ruann]

re: asking townies how much money they have.

I know when you move them in they bring in varying amounts of money up to 20,000, but I think that's based on their job level

I believe this is actually a completely random number with few exceptions:  NPCs claim they are bringing $1,000 when they really bring $0 and the Mr. Big and Ms. Diva NPCs always bring a HUGE wad of cash with them, often if not always fulfilling "Get Married to a Rich Sim" wants.  I've only married two Mr. Big's so I can't recall if both of them broke $50k or not.

[sanmonroe]

If Maxis had simply given each towniee a limit on purchases based on how much money they have (remember, you can ask and they give you an answer) lots of the stupid loopholes would be closed.

They can? Asking them how much money they have just gives an apparently random number of $ signs with no apparent correlation to how much money a sim actually has or doesn't. I should go and get a translation table of what the hell that's supposed to mean, really...

Asking seems to give me fairly consistant results, but I have so few true NPCs that I know what they actually have. Perhaps towniees are broken (OMGWTF?!?! Maxis would never do that!!!).

Would be interesting to see the table info if you want to pull it up.

If they said "one $ towniees have a max of 1000$ to spend per visit, two $ have 5000$, and three $ have 25000", it would make things much better. There would ahve to be some sort of exemptions rule for deeds though. Although, the selling of deeds for marked up prices is so sploitish it would be better if you had to sell to a playable sim or just for the base value to the comm.

In fact, this would be an awesome hack.

[radiophonic]

Pescado pretty much summed everything up. Sales badges are not exactly hard to get. And I believe the manipulate perk can be passed on to someone with no sales badges. This 'technique' as far as I am concerned is an exploit at best and an out and out cheat at worst.

The Manipulate perk is also not unconditionally good! Besides, it's more a non-technique, since you flashy-thingy your customer.

The minus you get on customer loyalty far outweighs the benefits in some situations.

I suppose you could use it on a good friend who's in the shop with high loyalty points and get him/her to buy the most expensive object in the place then sell them a bunch of cheap crap to bring the loyalty back up though.

Dazzle works just fine most of the time though.

[cwykes]

re: asking townies how much money they have.

I know when you move them in they bring in varying amounts of money up to 20,000, but I think that's based on their job level, if any so I think when you ask them about their income it also is more refering to their income as well rather than their spending money.

I had two townies move in recently with over 1,000,000.  That was a bit of a shock!  they moved house straight away!  Maybe my game is messed up!

angelyne: I hear what you are saying about a limited customer base, but I still think something should have been worked out to balance out the huge income you get from big ticket things vs the small ones. It's way too easy, IMO, to sell the big ticket stuff. It kind of makes it pointless to sell the cheaper items. In theory, the balance is supposed to be that the cheaper items net less profit per sale, but you sell many more of them much easier and faster. In practice, it takes only a dazzle or 2 to sell any item, even the most expensive and outrageously priced.

I've kind of learned to live with it by augementing my mom and pop shop with expensive items that fit the setting (paintings for sale in restaurants, fountains and statuary in flower shops etc) but it would have been nice if they worked on the balance a little more.

good way to think of it, but I agree, the economics ought to make more sense.  Big ticket item stores usually sell a lot less items per day than flower shops.  Running them ought to be risky!  Maybe what we need to do is connect how fast the buy bar fills to the price of the item.

[Paperbladder]

I think me not having any townies makes OFB harder for me and closes most of these loopholes to be honest.  It's impossible for me to sell any item over $300 to anyone except for the 1 or 2 townies that slipped through the cracks because I nuked them all.  Essentially, Pescado's hack that disallows playables on a lot actually makes the game easier when you think about it.

I just knew OFB would have crap like this, because there's no way to spend 20k if you already have the best of everything.

[Motoki]

The Manipulate perk is also not unconditionally good! Besides, it's more a non-technique, since you flashy-thingy your customer.

The minus you get on customer loyalty far outweighs the benefits in some situations.

Yes but in the case of selling the deed to the business AT the business, or just opening up a fake dummy home business just to sell your deed, customer loyalty doesn't really mean squat and there's really no downside to manipulating.

I had two townies move in recently with over 1,000,000.  That was a bit of a shock!  they moved house straight away!  Maybe my game is messed up!

That's a really old bug dating way back to the original base game IIRC. Jase made a fix for it called the no lottery move in fix here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/aestudios/sims2/

He labeled it as EP2 and 3 compatible though so I don't know if it fixes it for just the base game or not.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yes but in the case of selling the deed to the business AT the business, or just opening up a fake dummy home business just to sell your deed, customer loyalty doesn't really mean squat and there's really no downside to manipulating.

Well, hey, I'd never use the action if it wasn't good for SOMETHING. Plus the animations are hilarious.

[Hook]

Ok, I just gave the "sell the deed at Ridiculously Expensive" tactic a try.  I found out a few things.

First of all, it took 4 dazzles and a maniuplate.  This requires 5 business level perks plus a gold sales badge.  And just where are you gonna get these right out of CAS?  You aren't.  So what do you do right our of CAS?  Use the Entrepreneur strategy. Which is what I suggested in the first place.

Buy the cheap business lot, sell something, get up to business level three, shut down, sell your inventory, go home.  You can sell the business over the phone, or set up a "dummy business" and try to sell the deed at an average price, which is still more than you will get over the phone.  This probably requires you have a gold sales badge, which you might not have yet.

Do it again the next day.  Get level 3, which gives you enough perks to use minipulate.  You should have the gold sales badge by now.  THEN sell your deed from a home business for an insane amount of money.

But how "insane" is the amount really?  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only makes it twice as much as you'd get otherwise.  So a business that cost me §7748 to buy (I'd modified it a bit, added a restroom and expresso machine) at level 3 would sell for §22,461 over the phone.  I took a slight loss because I was on the lot when midnight rolled around and I got hit with depreciation.  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only doubled it to §44,922.  The phone gave me §14,713 profit.  Ridiculously Expensive gave me §37,174 profit on the sale of the business.

If you haven't noticed, dazzle takes away some energy from your Sim.  Manipulate takes some of everything, and quite a bit of energy.  After the sale, my Sim was pretty much energy depleted, having started with full green in everything.  Three dazzles, then a manipulate, then another dazzle closed the sale.  Without resorting to the Energizer, your Sim won't be able to do many of these transactions in a day.  And right out of CAS, they don't have enough points to buy an energizer.  This sort of tactic can make your Sim a lot of money, but isn't that unrealistic, assuming you don't use stuff like the Energizer.  You might actually make more per hour by selling stuff at a reasonable price.

As for Passing On perks, it takes for-freaking-ever.  It's probably faster to do the Entrepreneur Scenario a couple of times.  Also, a CAS Sim with no money, no skills, and no friends might have problems getting someone who can pass on the perks.  

This scenario is useful for someone starting out, not someone who is already well established.  My recommendation stands.

Hook

[J. M. Pescado]

Ok, I just gave the "sell the deed at Ridiculously Expensive" tactic a try.  I found out a few things.

First of all, it took 4 dazzles and a maniuplate.  This requires 5 business level perks plus a gold sales badge.  And just where are you gonna get these right out of CAS?  You aren't.  So what do you do right our of CAS?  Use the Entrepreneur strategy. Which is what I suggested in the first place.

Well, you took 4 dazzles and a manipulate, but that's not necessarily the only combination that will sell. Gold sales badge == easy, you can get it in a few hours just making lame attempts to peddle aforementioned lot without it. You can do this out of your empty home.

But how "insane" is the amount really?  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only makes it twice as much as you'd get otherwise.  So a business that cost me §7748 to buy (I'd modified it a bit, added a restroom and expresso machine) at level 3 would sell for §22,461 over the phone.  I took a slight loss because I was on the lot when midnight rolled around and I got hit with depreciation.  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only doubled it to §44,922.  The phone gave me §14,713 profit.  Ridiculously Expensive gave me §37,174 profit on the sale of the business.

So on something worth 22.5K, you sold it for about 45K. That's doubling your worth in a day, less if you don't actually bother with the process of running a business. Let's say it takes you a day to build up a sales badge, which is typical, during which you can still spam your customers in an attempt to sell, you will double your worth about once a day. 22.5K -> 45K, 45K -> 90K, 90K -> 180K...

In practice, you can get faster turnover after the first day since you can just immediately buy one and sell it again right away, with little downtime since you already built gold sales (easiest badge in the game).

If you haven't noticed, dazzle takes away some energy from your Sim.  Manipulate takes some of everything, and quite a bit of energy.  After the sale, my Sim was pretty much energy depleted, having started with full green in everything.  Three dazzles, then a manipulate, then another dazzle closed the sale.  Without resorting to the Energizer, your Sim won't be able to do many of these transactions in a day.  And right out of CAS, they don't have enough points to buy an energizer.  This sort of tactic can make your Sim a lot of money, but isn't that unrealistic, assuming you don't use stuff like the Energizer.  You might actually make more per hour by selling stuff at a reasonable price.

Oh, come now. Motive replenishment is old hat already, as is gaining massive amounts of ASP in a very short duration. You're not seriously suggesting this is a real obstacle, right?

[sanmonroe]

Ok, I just gave the "sell the deed at Ridiculously Expensive" tactic a try.  I found out a few things.

First of all, it took 4 dazzles and a maniuplate.  This requires 5 business level perks plus a gold sales badge.  And just where are you gonna get these right out of CAS?  You aren't.  So what do you do right our of CAS?  Use the Entrepreneur strategy. Which is what I suggested in the first place.

Buy the cheap business lot, sell something, get up to business level three, shut down, sell your inventory, go home.  You can sell the business over the phone, or set up a "dummy business" and try to sell the deed at an average price, which is still more than you will get over the phone.  This probably requires you have a gold sales badge, which you might not have yet.

Do it again the next day.  Get level 3, which gives you enough perks to use minipulate.  You should have the gold sales badge by now.  THEN sell your deed from a home business for an insane amount of money.

But how "insane" is the amount really?  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only makes it twice as much as you'd get otherwise.  So a business that cost me §7748 to buy (I'd modified it a bit, added a restroom and expresso machine) at level 3 would sell for §22,461 over the phone.  I took a slight loss because I was on the lot when midnight rolled around and I got hit with depreciation.  Setting the price to Ridiculously Expensive only doubled it to §44,922.  The phone gave me §14,713 profit.  Ridiculously Expensive gave me §37,174 profit on the sale of the business.

If you haven't noticed, dazzle takes away some energy from your Sim.  Manipulate takes some of everything, and quite a bit of energy.  After the sale, my Sim was pretty much energy depleted, having started with full green in everything.  Three dazzles, then a manipulate, then another dazzle closed the sale.  Without resorting to the Energizer, your Sim won't be able to do many of these transactions in a day.  And right out of CAS, they don't have enough points to buy an energizer.  This sort of tactic can make your Sim a lot of money, but isn't that unrealistic, assuming you don't use stuff like the Energizer.  You might actually make more per hour by selling stuff at a reasonable price.

As for Passing On perks, it takes for-freaking-ever.  It's probably faster to do the Entrepreneur Scenario a couple of times.  Also, a CAS Sim with no money, no skills, and no friends might have problems getting someone who can pass on the perks. 

This scenario is useful for someone starting out, not someone who is already well established.  My recommendation stands.

Hook

Or a CAS sim, if you just want money, can buy and sell lots for a big profit as fast as you can use the phone 7 times per lot.

Buy- 1 call
hire 5 employees - 5 calls
sell - 1 call


Or instead of using silly exploits (which all the deed sale setups seem to be, poorly planned exploits), just save yourself 20 minutes of clicking and use motherlode.

[DrBeast]

The Movies had a sandbox mode and a regular gameplay mode, though as I said I could see uses for the sandbox mode and why it might appeal to some people, it wasn't for me and I never touched it but I did appreciate very much the fact that they kept both modes separate and didn't mix the two.

Sure did, but in order to unlock some of the special buildings and sets, you'd have to beat the game first! Not much of a sandbox really. Oh and the game SUCKED! Very good idea, VERY poorly manifested!

[J. M. Pescado]

I'm not sure why they consider the employees to be valuable, since you cannot, strictly speaking, "sell" employees. They're not slaves, even if you pay them like they are, and thus shouldn't actually contribute the value of a property.

[Marvelleaux]

That's what I'm planning on doing when I get the gumption up to play MY town. We have only three of stores including the local Gasthaus (or guest house/inn), and their proprietors do all kinds of things on the side. They help the farmers, one even trains horses (just the basic stuff), help with building, heck, our baker even operates a sort of shuttle. He drives all those without a car or license to the 'big' city (8000 inhabitants vs. our 365) to go shopping. He only charges for gas and gets small gratuities for that though. Our farmers sometimes even pay in chickens, eggs, milk, etc.

Our Vineyards sell their own wine in the markets, as well as the grapes. They open up their wine cellars to the tourists. The tourists love the fact that the cellars are hewn right out of the mountain, something I never really gave a second thought about. It's only logical, it's cool and usually dry inside of the mountain, something wine needs. Our Innkeeper is also the district forrest ranger.

But on the whole, that's why I don't have the insim. I don't trust myself not to use the thing to the point where I deprive myself of the fun of playing. I can picture it clearly: "Just this once, this is an emergency, I'll never use it again...., etc."

Veilchen, I'm coming to live with you!

[veilchen]

Sure, come on over. Just be prepared for the downside: everybody will know your business.

[Motoki]

First of all, it took 4 dazzles and a maniuplate.  This requires 5 business level perks plus a gold sales badge.  And just where are you gonna get these right out of CAS?  You aren't.  So what do you do right our of CAS?  Use the Entrepreneur strategy. Which is what I suggested in the first place.

You can use the telephone to call and hire employees and may find someone with a gold sales badge to hire. Promote them to manager and you can control them. Someone with a gold sales badge and another silver badge to two more bronze badges has enough experience to be promoted to manager. Even if there isn't someone that fits this when you call, you most likely know who in the neighborhood fits this bill if you've been playing the game for any length of time. Or you could even try to hire some random sims that come by and see what badges they have.

Also as Pescado said, the gold sales badge isn't hard at all to get, in fact, it's one of the easiest. You just open a 'home business' and sell a bunch of little junk or even your furniture and just work on selling. It really wouldn't take long, even for a CAS sim. It was the first gold badge my CAS sim got in his home business and I really wasn't even trying too hard to get it either, if I did I probably could have gotten it even sooner.

[Motoki]

I'm not sure why they consider the employees to be valuable, since you cannot, strictly speaking, "sell" employees. They're not slaves, even if you pay them like they are, and thus shouldn't actually contribute the value of a property.

Speaking of which, I am waiting for someone to make human trafficing and black market baby hack lmao. I suppose we could use SimPE to change the appearance of a servo, but then they would act more like an android and I'm not sure their appearance can be changed until after they are acitivated. Hmm.

[Twain]

Or a CAS sim, if you just want money, can buy and sell lots for a big profit as fast as you can use the phone 7 times per lot.

Buy- 1 call
hire 5 employees - 5 calls
sell - 1 call


Or instead of using silly exploits (which all the deed sale setups seem to be, poorly planned exploits), just save yourself 20 minutes of clicking and use motherlode.

Why would you have to make 5 calls to hire 5 employees?

When you call to hire employees you can hire more than one at once.

[Hook]

Why would you have to make 5 calls to hire 5 employees?

Methinks someone has been reading the Prima guide instead of playing the game. I have seen no evidence of employees adding to the sale price of the business.

Of course, if someone should post some actual numbers, I'd be very glad to read them.  See what the business sells for without employees, hire some employees and see if there's a difference.  Actual numbers from playing the game would be nice.  All my information comes from playing the game.

And as for saving yourself 20 minutes of clicking, why bother getting your Sims jobs when you can simply motherlode them to oblivion?

Hook

[idtaminger]

I wouldn't call it "true entreprenuership". And I'm betting that once you've profitably built up your business, you'd make more money than if you just kept creating and selling. You don't see Bill Gates or Mr.Buffett constantly changing businesses, after all. And they've been swimming in dough for decades.

The employees method does seem quite cheaty. Definitely sounds like a more convoluted motherlode method.

[phyllis_p]

I'm not sure why they consider the employees to be valuable, since you cannot, strictly speaking, "sell" employees. They're not slaves, even if you pay them like they are, and thus shouldn't actually contribute the value of a property.

Speaking of which, I am waiting for someone to make human trafficing and black market baby hack lmao. I suppose we could use SimPE to change the appearance of a servo, but then they would act more like an android and I'm not sure their appearance can be changed until after they are acitivated. Hmm.

I read on the BBS that if you use the Sim modder to change servo's age to anything other adult, they take on human appearance, and when you age them back to adult they retain it.  Voila. Android. Haven't tried it personally.

[Regina]

My word!  I'm nearly rolling on the floor laughing here!  Haven't you who disdain all those cheats ever heard of a little restraint?   I have my game absolutely full of cheat-type objects and files, and with the exception of using them to fix up Townies and such and for working around in-game bugs hardly ever use the things.  I do use a lot of JM's mods because generally speaking they 'fix' things and I have to admit, I'm a bit hooked on that Macrotastics>clean thing.   Until recently I also had the 'call everyone' mod that allows your sims to call any sim in the neighborhood.  The only reason I had it there was so if they should've met a sim and didn't (like the case of a cop coming to a burglary) they could.  I only deleted it because I got tired of click-click-clicking to get to my sim's friends when I wanted to make a call.  I think in all the time I had it, I let one sim call someone he'd never actually met yet.

At any rate, I've enjoyed reading Hook's adventures with this whole entrepreneuer thing!  I'm not sure but I think one of the new LTWs for money sims is to own something like five businesses, right?  Can they own these at one time or do they have to buy and sell businesses to fulfill that want?  (Sorry, I just installed OFB last night and am so far having a horrid go at it--and I usually figure out everything so quickly! LOL)