Romance mod issue - am I the only one?

[Swiftgold]

Hiya - I was having an issue with the current Romance Mod, and I was wondering if it was 'as designed' or if it's just me. The mod is great, of course, even though I don't have all that much autonomous flirting going on, for the whole "no slapping members of a legitimate couple, you mistress you" thing. However, it seems to prevent cheating even when I want it to occur, which is sort of a pain. 

Example: Moss and Ariadne have been going steady since teenagerhood and are a rather boring couple with one bolt. However, Ariadne and Tristan have three bolts and I wanted to get them together. So, Romance Mod installed, I had him try to ask her on a date. She refused, because she was going steady. Well, fine - I used a hack to select Ariadne, and had her try to ask Tristan. HE refused, because she was going steady?? I eventually had to summon Moss downtown, have her break up with him messily, and then she could go on her date. It kind of got really convoluted for something that I wanted to be a spur of the moment "hey, hi!" thing

Current annoyance: Devin and Theresa are teenagers going steady with three bolts. Devin is kinda creepy. Daiv is a geeky, cute Romance Sim who really really wants to flirt with Theresa and fall in love with Theresa. I eventually want her to realize Devin's creepy and the geek is cute! Or, at least give him some lovin' on the side - buuuut I can't indulge him, because she always rejects him thanks to the mod; I'd have her initiate the flirting, but he'd probably reject her (despite what he wants!) thanks to the mod. This would be fine if it was all autonomous and I didn't want it to happen, but...

Anyway, I guess what I'm asking is, is there any way to keep the rejection of autonomous flirts and allow user-directed romantic commands? I love all the other features of this mod, but since I don't have that many autonomous flirts (and if I did, I'd like them to work, since I like letting them "choose") the whole "you can't cheat if you weren't cheating before commitment" is preventing me from doing what I wanna!

[syberspunk]

Hrm. Interesting. I haven't had a chance to observe this yet myself, since I hardly have been playing at all. But I would agree in that, I would at least like to intetionally cause clandestine cheating for story purposes without having to full out "Declare War" in order to have the option.

Perhaps the romancemod can be tweaked so that when the interaction is user-directed:

1) If the target is in a committed relationship, there is a random chance that the interaction will be accepted depending on chemistry, STR, LTR, etc.

2) If the target is NOT in a committed relationsihp, but the initiator of the interaction IS, the target should only care if they are friends with (or have some kind of relationship with) the 3rd party.

I don't remember exactly how the romancemod works when it comes to this. I thought it should allow for more than two partner relationships, but if this is a 'hard' or enforced roadblock i.e. sims will always refuse, it would be somewhat difficult to set this up for sims already in a relationship. And it also seems to take the fun out of purposefully making your sims cheat.

I believe there are some other requirements, such as being a Romance sim, and having a certain personality type (involving how nice, outgoing, and playful there are, I believe).

Yet, I would have thought that a 3-bolt chemistry would allow for acceptance.  But I guess not, according to your experience. 


Ste

[Swiftgold]

Yeah, the going-steady as adults thing caused some more weirdness when it came to a group of Romance Sims I had in one of my dorms. All were in love with each other, except the two who were related, two males and a female. One of them kept going crazy when the others were making out, and she was going steady with some other Sim. When he caught her cheating and they broke up, there was suddenly just approval amongst all the Romance Sims. Of course, Romance Sims probably shouldn't be going steady anyway, heh, but the boyfriend wanted it, so...

Otherwise things pretty much work as they're supposed to - the threesomes included, as long as all are in love with the other two. It seems fine when there's no commitment involved, which I suppose is the point, yet often enough Sims commit and then I want them to stray, hence the above complainy whiney thing of mine, heh I haven't seen that the various levels of chemistry affect anything with the Romance Mod as it currently stands, though I could be wrong!

[Ancient Sim]

I used the Romance mod before NL, but not anymore because I don't want to stop any autonomous flirting, I waited long enough for it.  All that annoys me is when a Sim becomes furious with their partner for REJECTING an advance from another sim - in other words, they can't win either way.  I would rather that didn't happen, but I just put the relationship back the way it was with the Insim.  I don't want to interfere with the way the bolts thing works so I'm afraid to use the Romance mod now.

[Ruann]

The Romance Mod doesn't really stop autonomous flirting, though.  It just causes rejections from Sims in commited relationships who are not Romance Sims.  You can always direct a Sim to break their vows and you can Influence a Sim to break theirs as well (this seems to also bypass the auto-reject built in to non-Romance Sims as well).

The Romance Mod fixes more problems than it creates, in my mind.  It does, however, seem to give you warnings about bad behavior.  I had a Sim who kept getting out of bed when I directed him to woohoo.  When he finally did the deed, I realized why.  His fiance wasn't yet in love with his other lover (two Romance Sims) and they didn't have the required personality points to not care.

[Ancient Sim]

That's it you see, I don't want them to reject the flirting unless they choose to.  I've watched carefully since installing NL and they will do this autonomously anyway, depending on their aspiration, so I didn't feel the need to install the Romance mod.  Those who did accept it - well, I liked the surprise element and wouldn't want to lose that.  Was quite a surprise when a Family Sim female and a Fortune Sim male with only 1 bolt (both married to 3-bolters and with new babies) autonomously got together - with the Romance mod in, that would probably never have happened and I wouldn't have been able to go "Ooh, how on earth did that happen???".  I never saw it, it happened on a community lot.  All I would want it for would be to stop the stupidity I mentioned before, of them getting angry with a partner for rejecting someone else, but I don't want the other stuff.

[J. M. Pescado]

Example: Moss and Ariadne have been going steady since teenagerhood and are a rather boring couple with one bolt. However, Ariadne and Tristan have three bolts and I wanted to get them together. So, Romance Mod installed, I had him try to ask her on a date. She refused, because she was going steady. Well, fine - I used a hack to select Ariadne, and had her try to ask Tristan. HE refused, because she was going steady??

I don't think that's normally how it happens, but perhaps he already has something of his own, or was simply cranky?

Current annoyance: Devin and Theresa are teenagers going steady with three bolts. Devin is kinda creepy. Daiv is a geeky, cute Romance Sim who really really wants to flirt with Theresa and fall in love with Theresa. I eventually want her to realize Devin's creepy and the geek is cute! Or, at least give him some lovin' on the side - buuuut I can't indulge him, because she always rejects him thanks to the mod; I'd have her initiate the flirting, but he'd probably reject her (despite what he wants!) thanks to the mod. This would be fine if it was all autonomous and I didn't want it to happen, but...

It sounds like you don't have the no-random-flirt package that goes with this installed. They sorta go together.

Anyway, I guess what I'm asking is, is there any way to keep the rejection of autonomous flirts and allow user-directed romantic commands?

There's no way to distinguish, since hostile NPCs also run at user priority.

I love all the other features of this mod, but since I don't have that many autonomous flirts (and if I did, I'd like them to work, since I like letting them "choose") the whole "you can't cheat if you weren't cheating before commitment" is preventing me from doing what I wanna!

Considering you seem to be taking issue with the flagship feature, maybe you don't really want it.

[Swiftgold]

I don't think that's normally how it happens, but perhaps he already has something of his own, or was simply cranky?

He might have had a love, but nothing steady, and he was platinum and my controllable Sim... I'm now recalling that adults going steady isn't a Maxis default state either, I think it was held over via hack from when they were teenagers. Just being in love also seems to do it - experimenting last night, I had one Sim attempt a flirt with another and had it rejected because he was in love with some other Sim; I selected him, and had him flirt with her instead, and voila, crush.

Another case I was sure wasn't going to work did - two Knowledge Sims, one married and the other with some loves, did the 'caress hands' flirt at the table and instantly fell in love with each other. Considering how much I had to work around to get the Sim going steady to accept a date, I was kind of surprised that a happily married one would cheat so easily with this hack, but since it's what I wanted, I won't complain. 

It sounds like you don't have the no-random-flirt package that goes with this installed. They sorta go together.

I do indeed have the no-random-flirt wants - but Daiv is a Romance Sim, so I imagine that's why he still got the want.

There's no way to distinguish, since hostile NPCs also run at user priority.

Ah, so that would be the problem. Wonderful, Maxis. "Don't want to force" the players to make the Sims to go to college for a LTW, but you'll "force" them to fall in love with a random NPC if the relationship's high enough.

Considering you seem to be taking issue with the flagship feature, maybe you don't really want it.

Heh! Well, for the majority of the couples I have, I do - early on most of my Sims cheated and I kinda got tired of that. It's just the hack preventing me when I decide I want them to. But, que cera cera, I'll just do a workaround, then. Especially if the table flirting really isn't affected by the mod (assuming my Knowledge Sims weren't a fluke), then I'll just use that to establish the love/crush. I've never seen any Sim do those table interactions autonomously.

[Ashleigh]

I was about to whine about it myself, and then realized I didn't have it installed. I'm such a dumbass.

[seventhson]

Swiftgold, if you don't want to take the mod out altogether, there's a workaround I've found: the hot tub. If you can convince the Sims to develop a crush on each other, they stop rejecting flirts, but obviously you can't get them to develop a crush without flirting. But it seems like the mod ignores the hot tub, for some reason; it's possible to get them to cuddle and kiss, and then the little pink hearts appear, and bam.

My game is often very weird, but that seems to work. Maybe it'll work for you too? 

[Swiftgold]

Swiftgold, if you don't want to take the mod out altogether, there's a workaround I've found: the hot tub. If you can convince the Sims to develop a crush on each other, they stop rejecting flirts, but obviously you can't get them to develop a crush without flirting. But it seems like the mod ignores the hot tub, for some reason; it's possible to get them to cuddle and kiss, and then the little pink hearts appear, and bam.

My game is often very weird, but that seems to work. Maybe it'll work for you too? 

Thanks, I'll take a look at the hot tub as well. The problem does seem to be establishing the crush, though at least without a commitment involved it's a bit easier to get around when you want to!

[spambi]

Where is romancemod.zip these days? I'd like to try installing it again but I can't find it in any of the hack directories.

[Process Denied]

In my old game,there wasn't a need for this mod,so I took it out.  This game;however, is a different story.  There is random flirting going haywire.  Titiana madeout with Kent on her own(when I wasn't controlling either of them)and now they are in love--the prob is that they are both married to different sim--the slut!!.  Will this keep Townies from asking for dates when they have a crush or in love with someone else.  I swear, Mr. Big asked an entire Greek house out.  He went from one Sim to the other.  I had the first accept and they had a perfect date,then he called back the next night(which is common)I wasn't paying much attention and I thought he was asking for another date(I have some big points saved on their panels)so I accepted--the only thing is that it wasn't her it was her Sorority sister.  He proceeded to call every girl in the Sorority for a date(all others were declined).  The Sorority was a wealth one and it really pissed me off cause she is always wanting him even after she is happily married to a three bolt.

[Venusy]

Where is romancemod.zip these days? I'd like to try installing it again but I can't find it in any of the hack directories.

There's only one way to download it these days. Download moreawesomethanyou.zip, and extract the romancemod.