Business Controller: Business Runs YOU!

[J. M. Pescado]

Nice. I'll try to incorporate it. For future reference, the pie menu strings beginning with * require no translation because they will never be displayed, they are dynamically stomped by the Makeaction strings. Comments like "THIS SPACE FOR RENT" similarly are unused and require no translation.

[Carmelita]

Break time doesn't seem to be working for my employee Sims.  When it comes time to take a break instead of looking after their needs they pretty much just stand where they are doing nothing.  Even when they try to do an action they mostly jump out of it before it can do them any good.

[Marvin Kosh]

It seems clear that there is a threshold at which they will not work, no matter how much they are coerced by the business controller.  If you unassign them then they are free to wander off and satisfy their needs, still using the functionality of Macrotastics.  Unassigning is of course not ideal since you will then have to re-assign them a task but it may well be that you want them to do something else after their break anyway.

I'm not sure which motives are mostly responsible for keeping them from doing their jobs, so any more speculation on my part would probably be fruitless.

[witch]

Couple of questions about the business controller.

Is it possible to make members of the family assignable to be salesperson through the macro? I have a vamp family to run their downtown business. The Count owns it, but he isn't able to hire his wife - either by clicking on him or her, or for me to select her to be a salesperson autonomously. She can be set to do restock. She is an elder and is retired. He can hire staff normally.

Which leads to the next point. Would it be possible to have 'shop idle', like power idle, only staff and/or family do all business tasks as needed, swopping from restocking to selling to cashier as required?

I'll also go and update the hacks associated with this one in case I've missed something.

[Marvin Kosh]

The Fairly Paid Regulator at MTS2 can assign anyone to Sell, Tidy, or Restock (it was updated a week ago).  I'm not sure if it will work on controllables, since I usually control them

[witch]

The Fairly Paid Regulator at MTS2 can assign anyone to Sell, Tidy, or Restock (it was updated a week ago).  I'm not sure if it will work on controllables, since I usually control them

Do you find any conflicts between JMs business controller and the Fairly Paid Regulator? I have both. I still want to self select a family member to 'be salesperson' or get the owner to tell them.

[Marvin Kosh]

I haven't found any particular conflict, though if you're particularly mean you will want to continue to underpay all your staff.  What I have found, although I am still currently investigating, is that the regulator will tend towards paying fairly (obviously) rather than just what will not cause your employees to quit

[witch]

Sorry, didn't see you say it was updated a week ago, I'll go and fetch it, thanks.

[jrd]

After taking a BRY-enforced shower or bath my employees wear their casual outfit, not their humiliating uniforms.

[J. M. Pescado]

After taking a BRY-enforced shower or bath my employees wear their casual outfit, not their humiliating uniforms.

This is a Bathroom Uses You functionality, which was updated to make them wear their uniforms if they have one.

[SimMoon]

Thanks JM. You have no idea how badly I needed this mod! Now if you could/would only make a hack that sets limits to how much an employee gets paid.... one employee at the bakery, an npc, has worked enough to get a few badges and is actively making a few dollars more a day then the bakery makes. Its a reason to sell. lol

[J. M. Pescado]

Now if you could/would only make a hack that sets limits to how much an employee gets paid.... one employee at the bakery, an npc, has worked enough to get a few badges and is actively making a few dollars more a day then the bakery makes. Its a reason to sell. lol

Maybe you want this?

It seems clear that there is a threshold at which they will not work, no matter how much they are coerced by the business controller.  If you unassign them then they are free to wander off and satisfy their needs, still using the functionality of Macrotastics.  Unassigning is of course not ideal since you will then have to re-assign them a task but it may well be that you want them to do something else after their break anyway.

Some conditions may be potentially unresolveable if the right utilities are not present on the lot. In particular, Social can be one of the unsatisfiable motives, since there are no really reliable ways to satisfy this. If a sim goes into social failure, there's no real way to tell, nor any way to really fix it. It's just one of those unsatisfiable motives. To prevent this, you should periodically scream at your employees, this helps.

Like real employees, sim employees may feel neglected and unneeded if not periodically shouted at, whipped, and abused. Beatings must continue until morale improves!

[Marvin Kosh]

Sims pass up the opportunity to socialise while doing something else so often it's crazy.  They need a sanity check or something.

[rhodaloo]

After installling the "business uses you" hack, the "too many interations" error box show up.  I made sure the all the supporting hacks were the most recent.  As long as I had the "business uses you" object in the home business, I didn't get the error.  I have attached two logs.  I currently don't have the hack in my game.

[J. M. Pescado]

After installling the "business uses you" hack, the "too many interations" error box show up.  I made sure the all the supporting hacks were the most recent.  As long as I had the "business uses you" object in the home business, I didn't get the error.  I have attached two logs.  I currently don't have the hack in my game.

The too many iterations error doesn't show in the Business Runs You tree at all. The other error is unknown, but not believed to exist in the current test build, since I've never seen it. It's probably some sort of version incompatibility. You're certain you're using the most recent?

[rhodaloo]

I rechecked my hacks dates last night before I sent the logs.  Unless you updated one after I sent the logs, they should be the most current.  Appreciate you checking.
Does this mean I need to bite the bullet and reinstall my game? 

Edit:  For good measure I just rechecked all my hacks' dates not just the hacks associated with "business uses you.  I found some that needed the updates.  Hopefully this will help.

[Angeleyez]

Thank you for this wonderful addition to my game. Thanks a million for everything you have added to my game in order to really have some fun.

[Qwiggles]

I noticed this hack was recently updated.  JM, did you by any chance change something so that the salesperson also tries to restock in between sales pitches?  I kept getting out of item messages but no one was assigned to restock. 
I had a lot of instability also.  The server was still not doing her job even with the waiter fix hack.  The host kept trying to sell items.  I had controller token decay error messages.  Just weird...  But it was just one session.  I'm going to go back and play that restaurant again and reset everything or something.  So I probably just have a mixture of non-awesome hacks.  Gotta do more testing.

[J. M. Pescado]

I noticed this hack was recently updated.  JM, did you by any chance change something so that the salesperson also tries to restock in between sales pitches?  I kept getting out of item messages but no one was assigned to restock.

Employees with qualifications in other fields may perform those tasks as secondary tasks if their primary objective is satisfied. If your salesperson has a restocking badge, he will assist in restocking if nothing needs selling.

I had a lot of instability also.  The server was still not doing her job even with the waiter fix hack.  The host kept trying to sell items.  I had controller token decay error messages.

That seems unrelated, if the "Controller Token Decay" errors are forcing constant resets, your waiter won't be able to do anything. The host will naturally sell things, since he has gold sales, as a secondary task, and no customers need seating. Because no actual skill is needed to perform the seating, any employee may, as a secondary task, also seat customers (In truth, the host position is actually slightly superfluous now, since "putz with phone" is not actually a useful function).

Just weird...  But it was just one session.  I'm going to go back and play that restaurant again and reset everything or something.  So I probably just have a mixture of non-awesome hacks.  Gotta do more testing.

There are a few known bugs with restaurants, although what exactly is wrong with them is unknown. In my game, I had problems with some kind of corrupted favorite food tokens, apparently because the format for NL and OFB food tokens was changed, and I wrote a mini-hack to simply zap the problem, but given that no one else reports the problem, I haven't put it out yet. I figure it might be an oddity confined to my own game.

[Ashman]

There are a few known bugs with restaurants, although what exactly is wrong with them is unknown. In my game, I had problems with some kind of corrupted favorite food tokens, apparently because the format for NL and OFB food tokens was changed, and I wrote a mini-hack to simply zap the problem, but given that no one else reports the problem, I haven't put it out yet. I figure it might be an oddity confined to my own game.

Would this be the same problem?



I get the squiggly lines of doom every now and then when customers (all townies) are browsing the menu at playable sims' restaurants and then when someone tries to "sell" them the menu. I haven't seen them on any playable sims while at a restaurant though.

[J. M. Pescado]

I've never seen that, but it looks like data corruption is occurring somewhere. Is your game or neighborhood ported from NL?

[Plu]

There are a few known bugs with restaurants, although what exactly is wrong with them is unknown. In my game, I had problems with some kind of corrupted favorite food tokens, apparently because the format for NL and OFB food tokens was changed, and I wrote a mini-hack to simply zap the problem, but given that no one else reports the problem, I haven't put it out yet. I figure it might be an oddity confined to my own game.

Would this be the same problem?



I get the squiggly lines of doom every now and then when customers (all townies) are browsing the menu at playable sims' restaurants and then when someone tries to "sell" them the menu. I haven't seen them on any playable sims while at a restaurant though.

...are those squiggly lines...people? There appears to be a green-faced one in the middle, on his knees with the back of his hand to his head and his elbow in the air...can you see it too?

[J. M. Pescado]

Actually, it's every single conversational topic icon in the game compressed horizontally to about 2-3 pixels in width. No one knows why that always appears that way, but the way it looks appears to be some kind of corrupted memory access, and therefore, bad.

[DrBeast]

And since it's bad, the morons at Maxis decided it's the best one to use when soneone's badmouthing someone else...just to make our hearts jump everytime we see it! And to make matters worse, the animation is the same as Gossip.
*le sigh*

[Ashman]

I've never seen that, but it looks like data corruption is occurring somewhere. Is your game or neighborhood ported from NL?

Yes, it is. So far this is the only time I've seen these symbols come up in a thought or speech balloon.