Business Controller: Business Runs YOU!

[mdrturner]

I've had a magor issue with businesses since I installed OFB (obviously, I wouldn't have had the problem before I installed it now would I?  ).
If I am running the business I have no problems with or without BRY (of course with BRY it runs better).
However, it's when I visit a sim owned business that my problems start.
  (a) without BRY, all the employees/owners/managers are there but they just act like normal customers, i.e. browsing, going to the toilet, etc.
  (b) with a BRY controller (and the relevant other items; BUY, espresso machine, sport of kings), again all the staff are there, but the only person who does anything is the owner. Even then it's only sometimes.

I have one business; a salon, where the owner has gold badges in sales, cashier, cosmetology and restocking and all she'll do is restock. Admittedly I did use the badge juicer for her and on the others I earned them correctly.
Another business is a combination bakery and restaurant. The owner will ring up purchases from the bakery and will greet and seat customers. However that's all he will do.

My first thought is that it's a hack conflict, but I've got quite a few hacks and some of them I can't even remember where I got them.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, and can anyone offer me some advice?

P.S. Is it safe to leave a BRY controller on a business when I sell it?

*Edit*: Dammit, I just found this thread:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5532.0.html
That's what I get for not searching. Mind you, there are no answers to be had there either. 

[Zaphod]

over at http://www.simwardrobe.com/
there is an object that can modify the number of sims visiting your business. I've not been able to get it to bring in more than the default number and the hack conflict scanner isn't coming up with any conflicts. Any chance there is a conflict between that and BRY that the scanner isn't finding? Or does it only deal with employees and not customers?

[jsalemi]

BRY only deals with owners and employees -- doesn't affect customers one way or the other.  I've had no problems with Paladin's customer adjuster, but it will cause lag problems if your computer can't keep up with the number of sims on the lot.  More often than not, I use it to reduce the number of customers, rather than increase them.

[Zaphod]

I've had 30 or so sims at a house party using boolprops before, so it shouldn't be a problem. Must be some other conflict I guess.  I'll try working hacks in and out and figure it out.

[notovny]

I have one business; a salon, where the owner has gold badges in sales, cashier, cosmetology and restocking and all she'll do is restock. Admittedly I did use the badge juicer for her and on the others I earned them correctly.
Another business is a combination bakery and restaurant. The owner will ring up purchases from the bakery and will greet and seat customers. However that's all he will do.

My first thought is that it's a hack conflict, but I've got quite a few hacks and some of them I can't even remember where I got them.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, and can anyone offer me some advice?

Sims who are not sufficiently Active to race across to lot to a new destination will not be drafted into performing secondary tasks, because it may take them hours to get there.

[nekonoai]

ok, I'm a complete dorkfish. I keep hearing about controllers for this thing. What are they and where can I find them in the menus? I've spent the past hour looking thru the buy section in my game and can't find anything. 

[dizzy]

Misc/Misc: look for the big red hammer and sickle.

[Qwiggles]

I've had some customers that are unclickable.  They're miming the "need help" motions but I can't help them.  Naturally, the BRY-assigned salesperson can't either.  I tried to bugger off the offending sims but their names don't even appear on the sickle as if they're not really at the lot.  This was the first time I've played this lot after installing GLS.  Just a glitch maybe???  I wish I'd thought to force error or turn debug mode but I was just bamboozled all I could do was yell, "Why can't I click on the idiot??!!!"
Needless to say, these sims walked out of my lot with minus signs over their heads.   

[Carmelita]

I've gotten those Sims too.  They just stand there and bitch and ruin your business rating and there's nothing you can do about them.  I don't remember if I ever got them before I got the controller.

[jsalemi]

Yea, they've always been there.  I usually put one of Inge's Transporter bushes on the business lot to make them disappear.

[DrBeast]

What do they do if you force-error on them? I think that might make them behave after a reset.

[Avalikia]

I've only gotten these if they get reset while they're asking for help.

[DrBeast]

I've only gotten these if they get reset while they're asking for help.

Oh? Strange, I sometimes force-error on those asking for help but are ignored by the employees, and they set off to the nearest rack right after the reset.

[Motoki]

Okay Pes can I suggest some stuff? Well too bad, because I'm going to anyway.

Can you make the menu show the current assigned duty but have brackets around it like Maxis did so you can tell who owns a car when you click change owner? The reason being I was playing with 8 employees yesterday and it got confusing figuring out who does what. Now I can and did sit there and look and figure out which job was missing hencer which was their current, but it would be easier to have this at a glance.

Also could you possible integrate making food into the controller? Currently you can't assign it and if I do assign a sim to make food by clicking on the fridge and doing assign job make group meal bla bla then the BRY controller will not work for reassining them. According to BRY they are reassigned but they keep cooking and I have to have the owner or manager go up to them and tell them to take a break.

Another suggestion is could you add an assignement for an employee to gain cooking skill into BRY? I have a chef with 10 and so most of the foods my restaurant serves are high level ones but when the chef is on break I need someone else to do it. I had been training another employee as a backup but had to do it in a very roundabout way by having the owner sit and watch the Yummy channel and then invite her to join. Also I can't get her to wear a smart cap at all. I suppose I could only get the manager to do that since I can control her.

Training body might help too since it seems that servers need it, or at least they seem to gain it.

Overall BRY seems to be working pretty well for me now. I do also use Simwardrobe's don't sell to Sims in a bad mood hack and that seems to help the repeat negative sales. I only had it happen once yesterday when it used to happen a lot.

Had a couple of minor issues. One of my managers kept caffeinating when her clearly didn't need to and I had to keep manually forcing him to stop, he went back and did it again several times too. Once he even did it right after he came out of the aspiration reward recharge machine and all his motives were at max.  Not sure what that was about but none of the other employees did that.

I did have a sim visit the business on a date and it acted as if she was a manager or owner. She could assign sims and she made money too. Damn, wish I could walk into a restaurant as a customer and walk out with their profits. 

Did have a stuck loop issue with sims spinning over and over but not going anywhere. Found out there were looking for showers and I didn't give them any. As far as I'm concerned they can sponge bath but I put some university showers in and that seemed to fix it.

Oh and I think your whole wage calculation thing is complicated and confusing but you're stubborn so I know you won't change it. I use another hack (Simwardrobe) to do auto fair pay adjustments. I know you say you can underpay them, but I've had sims quit on me before even with BRY and I'd rather not have to deal with figuring the optimal salary amount.

[J. M. Pescado]

Can you make the menu show the current assigned duty but have brackets around it like Maxis did so you can tell who owns a car when you click change owner? The reason being I was playing with 8 employees yesterday and it got confusing figuring out who does what. Now I can and did sit there and look and figure out which job was missing hencer which was their current, but it would be easier to have this at a glance.

Will think about it. That's not quite as easy to do since every single string would require a bracketed and non-bracketed version as a result, and this essentially would double the stringspace needed...which has already been assigned to other things.

Also could you possible integrate making food into the controller? Currently you can't assign it and if I do assign a sim to make food by clicking on the fridge and doing assign job make group meal bla bla then the BRY controller will not work for reassining them. According to BRY they are reassigned but they keep cooking and I have to have the owner or manager go up to them and tell them to take a break.

Research into foodmaking is already in progress, but it takes awhile, since it's an argument-based command, which is dependent on the food objects to build a menu. To sidestep this, I'm trying to code dynamic analysis so it will analyze what your store stock is and then make food to fill those requirements. This is not easy.

Another suggestion is could you add an assignement for an employee to gain cooking skill into BRY? I have a chef with 10 and so most of the foods my restaurant serves are high level ones but when the chef is on break I need someone else to do it. I had been training another employee as a backup but had to do it in a very roundabout way by having the owner sit and watch the Yummy channel and then invite her to join. Also I can't get her to wear a smart cap at all. I suppose I could only get the manager to do that since I can control her.

Vocational training programs are currently outside the planned scope of the project. This may be looked into later.

Training body might help too since it seems that servers need it, or at least they seem to gain it.

Servers already gain body skill just while working as a server, even when not serving.

Overall BRY seems to be working pretty well for me now. I do also use Simwardrobe's don't sell to Sims in a bad mood hack and that seems to help the repeat negative sales. I only had it happen once yesterday when it used to happen a lot.

Probably unrelated, as the BRY/Autosoc selection code is independent, although I increased the kick aggression for surly customers so they tend to sod off faster once they've become useless.

Had a couple of minor issues. One of my managers kept caffeinating when her clearly didn't need to and I had to keep manually forcing him to stop, he went back and did it again several times too. Once he even did it right after he came out of the aspiration reward recharge machine and all his motives were at max.  Not sure what that was about but none of the other employees did that.

Not sure what prompted that, although managers have autonomous actions, especially when not given a chore they can do. Was he doing this EVEN though a "Be Something" was in the queue? Also, some "Be Something" actions aggressively caffeinate as an idle behavior even when energy is still green, especially when the job requires constant alertness. The last thing you want happening is for your minion to stand there forever until his energy runs out, which is generally when customers show up, and then he won't have enough energy for the next 3 hours while he recaffeinates. Thus, certain employees, particularly servers and chefs, will caffeinate anytime their work looks satisfied and nothing is imminently looming.

I did have a sim visit the business on a date and it acted as if she was a manager or owner. She could assign sims and she made money too. Damn, wish I could walk into a restaurant as a customer and walk out with their profits. 

The "assign" options will appear in BRY even if you are not manager/owner, in case an employee has forgotten what he was assigned to due to attribute corruption and thus is preventing you from shopping. This was recently enabled. The "profit leakage" bug is Maxis.

Did have a stuck loop issue with sims spinning over and over but not going anywhere. Found out there were looking for showers and I didn't give them any. As far as I'm concerned they can sponge bath but I put some university showers in and that seemed to fix it.

If they can't repair hygiene, they can't work.

Oh and I think your whole wage calculation thing is complicated and confusing but you're stubborn so I know you won't change it. I use another hack (Simwardrobe) to do auto fair pay adjustments. I know you say you can underpay them, but I've had sims quit on me before even with BRY and I'd rather not have to deal with figuring the optimal salary amount.

There's no wage calculation feature right now. What you set is what they get, and nothing changes it yet. A ZQC autoadjuster is in the works, which will calibrate underpaid employees for zero-quit-chance (ZQC) rather than "fair".

[Motoki]

Maybe you could just do a separate report on current assigned status for employees then if the brackets are a pain.

The manager with the coffee addiction was doing sales so I guess that maybe have been why since they run out of energy really quick from all those dazzles. It's was definitely from BRY and not just a random autonomous action because it said "caffeinate" heh.

[J. M. Pescado]

Sales employees will chug coffee compulsively, dazzles really drain you fast. The profit margin from doing it, though, is simply so massive that it's completely worth it. For the price of $30 an hour, you can move merchandise at a profit margin 50-100x better than without. The difference between selling a flamingo at $12 and selling a flamingo at $1000 is simply massive.

[PlayLives]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but I noticed that even though sims are assigned to one task, they will leave their post and do another. I have one sim working the register and she is constantly leaving the register to do sales, even though I have someone doing that already. She will periodically run back to the register though, it's just funny watching her, she is working her tail off, lol. The guy doing sales however, never leaves to work the register, though sometimes he just stands there like he has nothing to do.

[J. M. Pescado]

If your sim working the register is "active" and thus able to move about fast enough, AND has gold sales, he will attempt to perform sales while idling. A lazy sim, however, will simply hold position because trying to perform a secondary task may take him on a 3 hour chase and cause him to be unable to return in time for his primary assigned task. Sims with no other qualifications will also not attempt to perform jobs they are not qualified to do.

[Magicmoon]

So is there any way to tell a lazy sim from an active one before you hire them? After I saw your post (and already have an active sim who is a stellar employee) I hired a guy with 6 body points, assuming that no one with so few skill points would have put most of it into body unless they were active. I was wrong. I told him to put on a uniform and got the "lazy spin". So I fired him. Probably the first person ever fired for dressing lazily.

[J. M. Pescado]

So is there any way to tell a lazy sim from an active one before you hire them? After I saw your post (and already have an active sim who is a stellar employee) I hired a guy with 6 body points, assuming that no one with so few skill points would have put most of it into body unless they were active. I was wrong. I told him to put on a uniform and got the "lazy spin". So I fired him. Probably the first person ever fired for dressing lazily.

Skillpoints for townies are random and correlate to nothing in particular. They are often assigned at random so that the sim qualifies for his similarly randomly assigned job.

As for how to tell, if you have "Call Over Hack" from More Awesome Than You, move a short distance and call over. If they respond snappily, they're good. Otherwise, learn from experience who = suck.

[Magicmoon]

I'm having trouble with some employees that are assigned crafting tasks.  I'll see an employee that is supposed to be crafting standing in front of their bench instead of working. They will have the red comfort icon in their bubble. Finally I'll make them selectable. Generally their comfort and energy will be at zero (The halfway mark on the bar), but their other stats will be in excellent shape. They will have 2 items in their queue; their crafting station and BRU, which when hovered over says "be taken by break".  These 2 queue items will rapidly flip back and forth between each other. All the while the employee just stands there.

I have 2 expresso machines, a gnome, a sofa, food, and BUY available to the employees. These items are not being blocked when the glitch is happening. Cancelling all the icons and issuing an order to caffinate will temporarily stop the problem, but unless I manually fix all of their needs, the BRU controller takes back over and puts them back into the loop.

I lost track of one employee for awhile and when I found him he was standing still in a puddle of his own pee. Evidently he had been stuck in the loop for quite awhile. I've been sending these employees home and then recalling them when they go into the loop, but they shouldn't be going into a loop in the first place.

By the way, is there anything I can click on that will zoom me to a missing employee? Maybe I could have saved my sim the embarassment of peeing on himself in front of customers if I could have found where he was.

I just now downloaded the latest BRU, so if this problem has already been addressed, I apologize.

EDIT: Another question. I hired several employees for crafting that had no badges. But soon one employee (Brandi L) was demanding $80 an hour for her QC to be 17-19%, while her colleagues were getting $15 with QC 1-2%.  This was a new neighborhood. In a previous neighborhood I had made that sim a manager, but I can't see how she could remember that from a deleted neighborhood. So what's her problem? BTW, her and the owner are best friends, so it isn't because they don't get along.

[RainbowTigress]

You can zoom in on an employee by right-clicking their icon in the employees panel.  I think that's it, I don't have the game open right now.  If that doesn't work, try a left double-click, but I seem to remember right-clicking.

[Magicmoon]

I thought I tried all that, but I'll try again when I load the game. I think the problem comes if the camera is a little "pulled back" from the lot so that you can see the whole thing at once. Then you click on the employee, but it doens't actually "zoom in", just kinda centers the camera.

[RainbowTigress]

Yeah, that's probably it.  It doesn't actually zoom in, it centers.  Wrong choice of words, sorry.