lot sync & college question

[Meska]

I recently purged my neighborhoods and started over. This time I decided to try something I've never done before and *gasp* play -all- the families *gasps again* at the same time. I know, I know, radical isn't it. Anyway, so I downloaded the nifty lot sync thingamabob and so far so good. I was just about to send my first batch of teens off to college when I realized I don't know how long to play their parents and siblings back home to account for the "years" at college. What is the generally accepted amount of sim days you guys use? Thanks.

[Avalikia]

I've done it at 1 semester=1 day at home for awhile, but I recently decided that wasn't "fast" enough.  My Sims parents were either extremely old or dead by the time they got back.  I'm currently trying 2 semesters=1 day at home, but I haven't done that long enough to decide how much I like it.  Also, up until now I've been sending my teens to college within a day of when they'll transition to an adult, but now I'm thinking of sending them earlier and timing it so that teens born on the same day will become adults on the same day even if one goes to college and another doesn't.  It's really up to preference, actually, but maybe my comments can help you think about the options and the consequences.

[jsalemi]

I've been generally doing the 2 semesters = 1 sim day thing, on the basis that a sim day is equal to a 'year'.   But there are times I've fudged that depending on whether I wanted someone back in the hood earlier or later, because sometimes having a bunch of YAs graduate close together leads to a bit of a population explosion when they all go back home and have babies.

So it's really down to your personal preference of how closely you want to keep things in sync in your game. If you're being strict, then the 2:1 ratio is probably the most 'realistic'.
 

[kutto]

I usually don't play any days while teens are at college. I consider college to be a very long age transition.

[Orikes]

I don't have any sort of lot sync thingy, but I do have several families that I am trying to play simultaneously. All my YA sims are at the same fraternity, so I can play them all at once. What I usually do is keep a limit of 6-7 in the frat house at any one time. So, I'll play them until someone graduates, then go back to the neighborhood and play a family with a kid until the kid is ready to go to college. It's not perfect, but I've been keeping most of my families at about the same rate of aging.

The problem is going to come from the population explosion. I started with 5 families (Jackson, Kates, Shannon, Sawyer, and Hurle - can you guess what show I based my neighborhood off of?). Now I've got 10 families in the neighborhood and I'm just getting to the point where the grandkids are going to cause hte neighborhood to 'esplode' even more.

[Meska]

I've generally accepted that one sim day equates to about a year. So, I was thinking the 2:1 sounded about right but wanted to ask and find out. Thanks.

[AllenABQ]

Yeah, I play at a 2 semesters = 1 neighborhood day ratio as well -- when I bother to play Uni at all.  I get bored with Uni real fast, so most of the time I just face-pace through it with cheats/hacks to get the YA's to graduation.  Then back in the neighborhood I just play four days without the YA's around before introducing them back.

The thing I've found about trying to keep the days/years thing more realistic is to shorten the teen stage.  For ones I want to go through Uni that's easy enough.  I just send them off to school when they've reached ~7-8 days of teen-hood.  Ones I don't send to Uni I force to grow up to adults at around Day 12 of teenhood.  That keeps them on par with the relative ages of their college-bound peers.

[Roux]

Like everyone else: 2 semesters = 1 day.

I also follow someone's suggestion (sorry, can't remember whose) to send teens to Uni when they have 4 days remaining before their adult transition.  It's what AllenABQ's doing, but within the Maxis-defined age phases.  I like all that extra time in the teen stage for skillinating and making friends.

[Ancient Sim]

As it happens, I've been working all this out recently.  What I've done is check the age of the mother when the child is born and then worked out how old the mother needs to be when the child returns from Uni.

I've always sent my teens to Uni when they've got 4 days to go to adult and I still do as it's easier to work other things out, but the home family should only be played 3 days if the ages are going to stay in synch.  For instance, if the mother was 35 when the teen was born, she needs to be 61 when the teen returns.  For example, if you send the teen to Uni on Day 11 when he/she has 4 days to go to adult, they will be 23 when they leave, but only 26 when they come back, which means the mother will be 58 when they leave.  Therefore, if you allow 4 days for the home neighbourhood, when the teen returns the mother will be 62 instead of 61, hence the need to drop a day in the home neighbourhood. 

It's only really important if you are sending the teen back to the same lot its parents live on.  If not, you can play them for different lengths of time in their own houses until their ages synch up again.  If my teens leave on Day 11, when they return their timer will be put onto Day 14 if they're in their own house, so they are 26 on Day 14 and their parent (going by the above example) is 61 on the same day.  I can then play their original home lot as long as I want to while they're in Uni, as long as the returning YA catches-up on their return. 

All you really need to remember is that the home lot needs to be played one day less, so if you send them to Uni when they have 3 days to go to adult, you should only play the home lot for 2 days if you plan on sending them back there.  Or, if you're sitting there scratching your head and thinking "Huh? What's she on about?", you can just play the home lot the 4 years to fit in with the 4 semesters and give the parents an extra year of life using whatever mod you have to hand.  Not everybody wants to complicate matters as much as me - I do it because sometimes I just have to make this game more intricate to avoid Death by Boredom.

[Meska]

Thanks, Ancient Sim. I think I might actually try it your way.  It seems to be well thought out and have math behind it. *laughs* How can I go wrong?

[J. M. Pescado]

As it happens, I've been working all this out recently.  What I've done is check the age of the mother when the child is born and then worked out how old the mother needs to be when the child returns from Uni.

I've always sent my teens to Uni when they've got 4 days to go to adult and I still do as it's easier to work other things out, but the home family should only be played 3 days if the ages are going to stay in synch.  For instance, if the mother was 35 when the teen was born, she needs to be 61 when the teen returns.  For example, if you send the teen to Uni on Day 11 when he/she has 4 days to go to adult, they will be 23 when they leave, but only 26 when they come back, which means the mother will be 58 when they leave.  Therefore, if you allow 4 days for the home neighbourhood, when the teen returns the mother will be 62 instead of 61, hence the need to drop a day in the home neighbourhood.

I don't get this at all. By what strange mathematical chicanery have you managed to set 3 to be equal to 4?

[Ancient Sim]

I knew somebody wouldn't get it.  I'll try to explain it again.

I've always sent my teens to Uni 4 days before they become adults because it's - well, it's EVEN, with no bits left over.  That way, I was able to play a day in the neighbourhood for every semester I playet at Uni.  HOWEVER ... when I checked ages on the YA's return, I realised that the parents had aged one extra year compared to the YA.  This is the case no matter what day you send them - the parents will always be a year older when the YA comes back if you play them the equivalent number of days.  It just makes it easier to choose 4 days from adult than 3 when it comes to playing Uni (i.e., 1 day = 1 semeseter).  To be accurate, you just need to remember to start them off a day earlier than the parents lot is on, or play the parents' lot one day less (i.e., if they go to Uni with 8 days to go to elder, you'd play the home lot for 7 days, or if you played the home lot for 8 days, you'd start the YA off a day earlier than the day the parents had reached).

I've probably made it sound even more complicated now.  It's actually quite simple, I'm just not very good at explaining mathematical concepts.  The important thing is to check the ages of the parent and teen when the teen goes to Uni and make sure that when the new adult returns (at the age of 26) the age-gap is still the same).  In other words, make sure the YA's timer reflects the parents' timer in terms of their ages and the day in question.  You can play the new adult extra days if you want to, as long as they hit the right day on the right age.

[Sandilou]

I asked about lot sync a long time ago; the trend then was to send teens to Uni when they had 7 days left to becoming an adult.  People then played 2 semesters = 1 sim day.  Uni would be finished in 4 sim days and they used the usual mods to help them get through it at speed (TJ's clock and JM's College Adjuster).  That worked fine for me, until the most recent version of Inteen, which allows for full living privileges on campus (sims age, can get married, wed, have babies and kiddies can go to school etc); with non-YAs on campus aging at a daily rate I started to play 1 Uni day = 1 sim day. This suits me as playing Uni for any longer than 1 sim day makes me want to do bad things.  I don't mind the age discrepancy now, as I wouldn't play at all if I had to spend four times as long at Uni as I do in the base neighbourhood.

[ElfPuddle]

I play 1 day = 1 day no matter where the day is. Yep, it makes the "year thing" totally wacko. I don't care. The number of years a sim spends at each age is odd anyway, so the college discrepancy doesn't bother me. Besides, I think it would be fun to spend so much time at University, so I'll live through my sims. (Like I didn't already?)

[seelindarun]

The number of years a sim spends at each age is odd anyway, so the college discrepancy doesn't bother me.

I was just noticing this!  Right now, I have a bit of baby boom on my hands, and it's ridiculous that adult sims are pregnant through 3 years of uni! (If you play 1 day = 1 year at uni.)  Before I had very many families, I only kept them in sync sort of loosely, only making sure that age transitions happened in a way that roughly made sense.  Now with more families I had to get a System.   It's now apparent how unbalanced the sim life stages are.

[Sandilou]

I turned the whole 1 day = 1 year on its' head.  Now my sim year constitutes 1 round of rotated play on each of my lots.  Basically I play 1 day at each lot until I'm back to the beginning.  Each of my lots have a door number, so it makes it easy to sequence. 

My last neighbourhood (which is now deleted) I had 23 base hood lots and 7 Uni lots.  Playing 1 sim day at each meant that by the time I returned to Lot 1, so much had happened on each of the other lots that indirectly/directly affected sims on Lot 1, that it truly felt like a whole sim year had passed. 

This gave me the brain wave to schedule in regular events (like when to go Downtown, have group outings, date night, play a business lot, celebrate seasonal events etc) and add it to the rotation.  I deliberately set it up so that Christmas would not always happen at the same lot.  I obviously had way too much time on my hands!  It was fun to play, though.

[Avalikia]

I've always wondered if it would be possible for someone to make a mod that makes the length of life stages more consistant with the 1 day=1 year idea, since that's so popular, or even better make one that lets the user decide how long they think the lifestages should be.

[Roux]

Well, Two Jeffs created the Adult/Elder Age Duration Hack.  Would it be possible to use it for the other age durations as well?

[Ancient Sim]

The main problems are the fact that the teen period is so long, because obviously it should only really last 7 years and they should go to Uni after 5 years of it anyway.  In this country at least, students are only at Uni for 3 years not 4 (unless they are spending an extra year on teacher training or taking a post-grad course), so that's wrong in itself.  They should be then return to the neighbourhood at 21/22, not 26, giving them those extra years as adults.  It's ridiculous that they can't start a family before they're 26 (without mods), because if you want to play them a while so they can advance in their careers it means they're getting on for 40 before they have their first child, which is ridiculous.  My main reason for adding 10 years to my adults and removing them from the elders was because I was so sick of all the elders with toddlers (not to mention being sick of all the elders - period).

For the ages to work properly, they'd have to totally alter the teen lifespan, which presumably they'd not want to do as it would mean they'd not have the time to get to the top of their teen careers and make High Achiever (which I am presuming is the reason it's so long), but they could bring something else in instead.  I do hope that in TS3 they sort this out and the lifespans are more realistic.  I won't say MIDDLE-AGED LIFESPAN again, because I don't think I need to! 

There is so much that could be done with this game and I get so frustrated sometimes when I think about it!

[J. M. Pescado]

Getting the top of a teen career requires one day. It's not hard to do all the requirements needed in two days, even for CAS.

Day 1: Get in private school, grade++, gain few piddly skillpoints needed for promotions.
Day 2: Grade++, get job, go to job, get promoted.

[gjam]

Well, Two Jeffs created the Adult/Elder Age Duration Hack.  Would it be possible to use it for the other age durations as well?

I looked at TwoJeffs' hack and decided it didn't quite do what I wanted.  Then I found Inge's agecons.package.  However, that's marked as being experimental.  Does anyone know if it works?  If it does, you can edit it to use whatever duration you want for each stage. 

I've had it in my game for a while, but I've been focused on a photoshoot for a story instead of actually playing.  So I keep forgetting to pay attention to the age durations.  Hmm, I should look at a few sims in SimPE and see if I can tell anything about it.

The discussion in TwoJeffs' thread helped me understand the agecons (I think).  Except maybe Elder.  I'm still really confused about that.

Edit:  Whoa!  I got lips.  I feel so special.

[croiduire]

I tweak in SimPE or with Merola's mirror (and have had no problems using either for this purpose) and make a much longer, slower game with totally different priorities. My default is one day=three months (reflecting the trimesters of pregnancy) so one year in uni (two semesters) equals four days in the 'hood. I extend every life stage commensurately with that, so that my parents go crazy trying to secure decent child care during the four days of babyhood, sixteen days of toddlerhood, and twenty-eight days of childhood and every lifestage has plenty of time to screw up.

One thing I do is remove half the earned skill points at each age transition prior to adult-to-elder (using charisma as an example, I figure the baby wiles that are so cute from a toddler don't work too well coming from a child, and not at all from a teen...but the ability to relate to others remains, so they get some credit). But this might explain why I like all the possible harder grade and harder job hacks, and am trying to learn how to make them.

However, if every character doesn't reach the level of abject despair at least occasionally I'm not doing my job...