Business Controller: Business Runs YOU!

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

Do you have "relevant wages"? It includes a fix where random binary garbage can cause a sim to be detected as a manager and start demanding manager-class wages for no reason.

[Magicmoon]

Yes, I do have relevent wages installed. In fact, I put it in before I even ran the game with OFB installed.

And what about the crafting station problem?

[J. M. Pescado]

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.

There have been several fixes for unresolvable motive problems, as well as the annoying "non-loungeable" issue. Update the entire macrostuffeths set. Employees that run into unresolvable motive lock will instead be dismissed from the lot and resummoned in a few hours.

[idtaminger]

Maybe I'm missing this, but is there a choice for macro-badge building? Essentially, to assign a playable to a certain task and not have them wander off randomly?

[Venusy]

Maybe I'm missing this, but is there a choice for macro-badge building? Essentially, to assign a playable to a certain task and not have them wander off randomly?

Macro.../Skillinator.../(Badge name)

[witch]

One of my employees tonight kept doing the rabbit spin outside the terlet, over and over again.  I'm not sure whether to post here or in Bathroom uses you, the error log seems to be talking about the terlet controller.

All my employees kept running around tonight whilst completely in the red.

[J. M. Pescado]

These look like forced-errors, which don't say much. Most likely your controller seized up due to a failed exit attempt at some point, and now your sim is unable to eject properly. I'll try reducing or removing the "give up" timer on ejection and see if that helps...after I fix this other crap.

[witch]

Yes I did force an error, the employee just kept spinning. Is that no good for error logs? I thought it might show you what was happening.

[RainbowTigress]

Forced errors usually don't help much because the error isn't caused by an object.  You can tell when a user forced an error because it will say "Hit break point primitive."

[witch]

Oh OK, ta Rainbow. I thought error logs just reported currently running code, so that if there was an something wrong it would still, for instance, show why a sim kept spinning. You know, like the cause of the spin, why the sim was being told to do that action.

So in that sense I figured it wouldn't make any difference whether I triggered the error log or the game did.

[dizzy]

The important part of the log is the stack frame. When you force an error, the stack frame only indicates that you forced an error, not necessarily what they were doing while you forced the error.

[witch]

The important part of the log is the stack frame. When you force an error, the stack frame only indicates that you forced an error, not necessarily what they were doing while you forced the error.

I understand now, thanks. 
By forcing the error I'm basically overwriting what I'm trying to report.

[FatedCircle]

Forgive me if this has been covered, but I seem to be having some problems with the reporter, possibly related to this mod.  A "reporter type person" showed up at my business, but did no reporter type actions.  They purchased an item and promptly left, no note taking, or anything; they acted just like any other sim (I am aware the reporter does not always review, but I am pretty certain they always at least act like a reporter).  I was pretty sure this person was a reporter since they paid at my ticket machine right away, without pondering first.  I had been running the business for a while, and hadn't had any reporter action at all, so it seemed, so as an experiment, I took the mod out.  Almost immediately, the same person as before (my "reporter type person") showed up, and was now acting like a reporter.  I don't know if this is normal reporter behavior, or if something in this mod is causing it.

I do have all EPs, including Pets, and I have the latest version of this installed, as of yesterday.

Thanks. 

[J. M. Pescado]

Unrelated. I have reporters that report all the time, but sometimes a reporter appears as an ordinary walkby visitor instead, and when this occurs, he does not do any reporting. It's normal, and random what will happen. Even when reporters appear and act as reporters, if their visit is short and their customer loyalty didn't change much, they may not write anything at all.

[FatedCircle]

K, thanks.  Guess it was just a coincidence then. 

[SimDebster]

When putting my Sims in Salesperson or Restock mode, the controller keeps sending them to the bathroom when their bladders are only half full (or empty depending on how you look at it).  Is anyone else experiencing this?  It is a bit annoying because they are needed to tend to customers and they are not anywhere near bladder failure.  I do not recall having this happen in previous releases before Pets.

Edit: Also wanted to add that they are sent to eat when the hunger bar is only 1/3 full.  It seems that they could wait a little longer before eating.  It is hard to keep the business moving when your Sim is the only employee in a fledgling business because they decide that they want to go eat.

[J. M. Pescado]

When putting my Sims in Salesperson or Restock mode, the controller keeps sending them to the bathroom when their bladders are only half full (or empty depending on how you look at it).  Is anyone else experiencing this?  It is a bit annoying because they are needed to tend to customers and they are not anywhere near bladder failure.  I do not recall having this happen in previous releases before Pets.

Aggressive bladder action has always been part of the tuning due to the serious penalties for ignoring it, but I'll try to move the check a bit so it will check for tasks first.

Edit: Also wanted to add that they are sent to eat when the hunger bar is only 1/3 full.  It seems that they could wait a little longer before eating.  It is hard to keep the business moving when your Sim is the only employee in a fledgling business because they decide that they want to go eat.

They will "scavenge" any food left available, so if some customer has left a half-finished plate, it will get pillaged immediately (as it will go bad if left unattended).

[jsalemi]

There's one thing on BRY I'm not clear about -- the 'assign unmanned owner' menu.  I have a sim with 3 businesses, and he has at least one employee in each of them.  I click on this, set him to be the salesman, but nothing happens.  Is this only for lots where there aren't any employees?

[Magicmoon]

The way it is working in my game is that you assign a job to the owner for the owner to do when you have stopped controlling him/her.

I assign unmanned owner to sales. Then I tell him to macro clean, eat a sandwich, use the bathroom, and restock the one expensive item that just sold. After issuing these commands, I personally leave my computer and go into my kitchen for a sandwich. When I come back, the owner has finished his list of tasks and is now happily making sales pitches to the customers.

I play with free will on. I'm not sure how much time has to pass from the time you issue your last order and the time they let the controller take over.

[jsalemi]

Hmm, I guess I haven't waited long enough, then.  The one shop I gave it a serious try, the owner spent an hour just walking around and talking to the customers, rather than doing any sales,  I finally gave up and told him to be the salesman.

[Magicmoon]

When it does "kick in" correctly, the sales icon will be showing in his queue just like when you manually assign him to be salesman. There have been several times that it didn't seem to "take" and I would just give up and issue the sales command. Either way, canceling the command lets you retake control of them.

I've also noticed that with the Managers that at the end of the day when I dismiss them, if I don't cancel out their queued command of sales, cashier, etc, that they keep working until I do.

[J. M. Pescado]

The way it is working in my game is that you assign a job to the owner for the owner to do when you have stopped controlling him/her.

I assign unmanned owner to sales. Then I tell him to macro clean, eat a sandwich, use the bathroom, and restock the one expensive item that just sold. After issuing these commands, I personally leave my computer and go into my kitchen for a sandwich. When I come back, the owner has finished his list of tasks and is now happily making sales pitches to the customers.

Unmanned Owner doesn't control what the owner does when you're playing them. If you can tell him to do anything, he's not unmanned. Unmanned is when you visit the lot as another family.

Note that the sales behavior operates slightly differently in "unmanned" businesses. A salesperson will no longer attempt to sell normal objects when you're not playing the lot, and will only sell admissions and restaurant podium. This is because selling off craftables, for instance, only depletes the owner's inventory without any gain.

[jsalemi]

Unmanned Owner doesn't control what the owner does when you're playing them. If you can tell him to do anything, he's not unmanned. Unmanned is when you visit the lot as another family.

Ah-hah!  Now that makes perfect sense.  So setting it to 'cashier' means the owner will be running the cash register when I visit the lot with another sim, and there won't be a long delay until someone finally figures out my sim wants to check out. That's really quite handy, then.

[witch]

Having a couple of issues with Business Uses You.

The first one, when one of my employees disappeared off the lot for several hours I see you've explained further up the thread JM.

When I use the Bugger Off option, some of the sims leave the lot but some of them don't. Tonight the ones that didn't leave, all made a beeline for the staffroom and helped themselves to the buffet. The door was locked to everyone but staff and household. The dismissed sims no longer appear on the BUY Bugger Off menu. Bloody gannets ate the entire buffet tonight. The sims that were seated when I dismissed them seemed to be the ones that hung around.

I had one sim that wouldn't be a salesperson no matter what I did. Freshly arrived in the morning I assigned him to sales. He stayed in the staffroom. I unassigned and reassigned, no luck. I tried sending him back to work via the management menu. He just paced up and down the staffroom as if he were waiting. There was another salesperson operating but also plenty of sims with the thingies over their hheads wanting to buy. I sacked him in the end. I didn't select him because then they don't operate as employees.

ETA: The same sim who wouldn't do sales had done the same thing on a previous business day.

[J. M. Pescado]

When I use the Bugger Off option, some of the sims leave the lot but some of them don't. Tonight the ones that didn't leave, all made a beeline for the staffroom and helped themselves to the buffet. The door was locked to everyone but staff and household. The dismissed sims no longer appear on the BUY Bugger Off menu. Bloody gannets ate the entire buffet tonight. The sims that were seated when I dismissed them seemed to be the ones that hung around.

Sims in the middle of actions seem reluctant to leave, and Maxian default door locks contain a security hole in which a sim flagged as "leaving" is allowed to walk through locked doors.

Unfortunately, sims don't always *LEAVE*, instead opting to perform some random action, and thus they manage to sneak past the doors. APO is much more reliable in its "NO MEANS NO" approach to door-passage.

I had one sim that wouldn't be a salesperson no matter what I did. Freshly arrived in the morning I assigned him to sales. He stayed in the staffroom. I unassigned and reassigned, no luck. I tried sending him back to work via the management menu. He just paced up and down the staffroom as if he were waiting. There was another salesperson operating but also plenty of sims with the thingies over their hheads wanting to buy. I sacked him in the end. I didn't select him because then they don't operate as employees.

If a sim isn't doing sales, it is possible that he isn't doing it because all of the potential customers would hate him due to bad chemistry or relations, and reject all sales, or because no customers require sales attention. Just because a customer has a buy bar does not mean he needs sales attention: The controller actually calculates the buy-delta, and if the bar would fill on its own, the salesperson is not needed and will not bother that customer.