Business Controller: Business Runs YOU!

[professorbutters]

Two unrelated issues:

1) I have a sim who has a home business:  an art gallery in the front part of his home.  The front part contains saleable stuff and bathrooms.  There is only one door to the rest of the house and it is locked to all but members of the household.  When guests come over, the business is closed and the door is unlocked.

The problem is that visitors tend to come up and Complain, even though the business isn't running right then.  It's annoying. Especially at a wedding.

2) I have read all the documentation, and I'm still not sure what "Assign/. . .Unmanned Owner" does.  Sometimes I visit an owned community lot business, and I've noticed that only the owner is there--not other members of the household, even if they were assigned to do various jobs before they left.  This means I suddenly don't have anybody manning the register--or restocking items, or what have you.  I don't understand this, as when I'm playing as the owner with BRY, I can bring members of the household with me, and the employees do sensible stuff (nobody at the register?  Restock for a while!)  Must I hire more employees so there is one for every job?

I'm sure it's something in the way I have it configured and/or set up:  I'd just like to know what the correct setup is, so I can change it.  My only business-related hacks are the Awesomeware ones:  I have the most recent for my game (BV, Mac, no official patch yet.)

PB

[jsalemi]

Assign/Unnmanned Owner lets you set what job the owner will have in the situation you described -- the owner will be the cashier when you visit the lot with another playable sim, for example, if you assign the unmanned owner to 'cashier'.  Family members don't count as employees, unfortunately, so they won't be on the lot when you visit it.  You would have to have at least one real employee assigned to a job on the lot for there to be someone other than just the owner on the lot when you visit it.

[professorbutters]

That's very helpful.  Off to hire some more feckless staff, or ruin sensible Sims' lives by Hiring them.

PB

[Zazazu]

I find that if you have just one sim visiting to grab something and run from another playable's store, it's not a big deal if only they are running the place. Typically your playable visitor is going to pick up everything they need before the other customers are done browsing.

[seelindarun]

Also, the BRY controller allows you to reassign the owner on the fly, while you are visiting with another family.

Example:

The head monk owns an off-site produce market.  The produce purchased by controllable visitors isn't removed from Brother Ezekiel's inventory unless it is restocked before they leave the lot, so when I set up the market, I assign Brother Zeke to restocker with the BRY.  When one of my playable families visits the market, they pick up what they need and once Zeke is finished restocking, I click the BRY to change his assignment to be cashier so they can check out.  That reassignment however, isn't sticky, so the next family who visits the market will find him assigned to restocker once again at the beginning of their visit.

[professorbutters]

It's good that BRY makes it possible for visitors to change settings.  I actually did that a bit.  This is a bit unusual, as the lot is owned by a legacy household, and so of course other families can't shop there.  It's a giant beach lot with a pirate ship and a lot of other free stuff.  The business part is  what amounts to a fairly small hut with overpriced souvenirs and a bar.  I figure it's kosher as long as the playable visitors just enjoy the beach and don't buy anything, but I'd like for the business to be running reasonably efficiently in the background. Anyway, I hired a few simselves as peons.

Is there something specific that makes visitors to a closed home business Complain?  Are the business characteristics of the lot primary even when closed?  I have noticed that walkbys tend to come up and browse the art work even when the business is closed.  Through the wall, which is freaky.

PB

[J. M. Pescado]

I find that if you have just one sim visiting to grab something and run from another playable's store, it's not a big deal if only they are running the place. Typically your playable visitor is going to pick up everything they need before the other customers are done browsing.

If you don't assign a job, the playable sim will do absolutely nothing intelligent and just wander aimlessly until it pees itself from shitty EAxis AI. Also, the business will be nonfunctional if any jobs need to be performed. Note that Macro-Sales runs much less aggressively when the business is not being played, so as not to deplete the shelves of materiel your playable may be coming to requisition, and drain the employee of power needed to perform secondary functions.

[seelindarun]

Is there something specific that makes visitors to a closed home business Complain?  Are the business characteristics of the lot primary even when closed?  I have noticed that walkbys tend to come up and browse the art work even when the business is closed.  Through the wall, which is freaky.

This is why I stopped playing home businesses, except as venues.  The business part never really seems to close to visitors.  They are complaining because they can't find anything to browse.  ('Cause the store is ummm... closed?!)  I think it's similar to the mechanism that causes townies to complain when you've fallen behind on restocking.  I don't remember walk-bys who wanted to browse through the walls, but maybe that's only because most of my houses tend to be built up on foundations.  I'm sure if they could, they would have peered through my walls, too. 

As far as I know, none of the Awesome hacks fix the screwed up AI that keeps pushing the browse interaction on visitors to home businesses. 

[AnastasiaRenai]

I am currently running several family owned business.  I want the family members that live on the lot to automatically work at preset times on the lot.  Currently I use this hack to make family members fish, farm, etc.  I also use the macrotastic to make them clean.  But I would like a time component added to this and the macrotastic so that from 8:00 am - 4:00 pm Mon - Fri a particular family would run around doing a task.  Cleaning the house, farm, etc.  Like a real job.  In addition, would it be possible to add a sales feature to buisness runs you hack as well.

[Milhouse Trixibelle Saltfucker III]

The BRY controller is designed for efficiency, and scheduling tasks rather than performing them as the controller performs them now would be inefficient and potentially destructive. Example: farming. What if a set of plants is being watered, and the watering action is cut off by the end of the schedule, so not all of the plants are watered?

As to the "sales feature", if you mean "Business.../Be Salesman", that exists.

[talysman]

As to the "sales feature", if you mean "Business.../Be Salesman", that exists.

One thing that may be confusing the n00b is that "Business.../Be Salesman" won't appear unless there's currently a customer on the lot with a sales meter. This makes sense, but when I first went looking for that and couldn't find it, I thought BRY was broken. Fortunately, I tried again when there was a customer and discovered how it works.

[jsalemi]

That's not true -- I've setup my sims as "be salesman" as soon as they arrived on the lot, before the business was even open.  It should always be available, at least if the sim in question has a bronze (or maybe silver) sales badge.

[Roux]

It's Macro-Skillinate-Salesmanship that requires a customer with an active sales meter.

[talysman]

Maybe the badges have some bearing, then, because I definitely have had a missing "be salesman" option that appeared later.

[Roux]

In my experience, Business-Be Salesperson appears once the sim has earned a gold badge. It's usually the first thing I queue up when the owner arrives at the business, even before it's been opened and employees have been summoned. But before gold badge, they can only skillinate on sales, which doesn't appear as an option until there is at least one customer with a buy bar.

Employees are different, however: they can be assigned to sales even without having earned a bronze badge.

[rufio]

Sims running on BRY macros with restock badges do not restock bookcases (which are not sold as pieces of furniture, but are holders of sellable books, like the magazine rack) unless explicitly instructed to.  They are restocking other things on their own just fine.

[J. M. Pescado]

Do sims on EAxis-restock do it?

[rufio]

EAxis made a restock macro?  Hold on, I'll try it.

ETA:  Nope.

[jsalemi]

I recall having a bookcase in one of my businesses, and it could never be restocked -- but it disappeared one day, and the 'out of stock' sign appeared in its place.  I don't think you could ever restock them -- you just sell books until its empty, then put a new bookcase in its place.

[J. M. Pescado]

In my experience, Business-Be Salesperson appears once the sim has earned a gold badge. It's usually the first thing I queue up when the owner arrives at the business, even before it's been opened and employees have been summoned. But before gold badge, they can only skillinate on sales, which doesn't appear as an option until there is at least one customer with a buy bar.

While it is possible to assign untrained employees to run the EAxis routines for sales, they are basically useless while doing that, as non-gold sales is pretty much completely ineffectual on its own. As such, there's no point in making a macro to handle that because uselessness is uselessness.

[rufio]

I recall having a bookcase in one of my businesses, and it could never be restocked -- but it disappeared one day, and the 'out of stock' sign appeared in its place.  I don't think you could ever restock them -- you just sell books until its empty, then put a new bookcase in its place.

I've not had any trouble restocking bookcases manually.

[BastDawn]

I recall having a bookcase in one of my businesses, and it could never be restocked -- but it disappeared one day, and the 'out of stock' sign appeared in its place.  I don't think you could ever restock them -- you just sell books until its empty, then put a new bookcase in its place.

Fascinating.  How many books are in a bookcase?  Does it vary by expense?

[jsalemi]

Don't know -- never kept count.  It's a lot though; more than 10, maybe more than 20.  Took a while for the bookcase to be empty.

[bethabooba]

I am trying to download this wonderful hack but every time I click on the autosoc file to download it I am taken to an error page. Is it still available? I was able to download all the other required things and the business controller itself, just not the autosoc.

[jsalemi]

Autosoc is included as part of the macrotastics.zip file now, since you need macrotastics for it to work (and for this hack to work as well).