The more I learn, the more I realize what a noob I am...

[Kyna]

I tend to use DinkORama for the main residential area of my neighbourhoods, occasionally using EasyEstates, EasyQuad or maybe DinkBlossom for a little variety.  I mainly use 2x3, 3x2 or 3x3 residential lots, which fit nicely in the DinkORama terrain.  There's not a great deal of wasted space.  Since you have said you use smaller lots, then the Easytown one would have a lot of wasted space in it that you'd have to fill with decorations.

How many 'hoods do you have? Once I finally clean my game up, I'll only have two.  And it's only becaues I'm holding onto the second one for general purposes (to test houses, keep CAS sims, to play out the storyline etc.)

Currently playing 3 'hoods.  Riverblossom, Strangetown and a custom Legacy style hood.  I periodically decide I'm sick of my current sims and wipe the neighbourhoods I'm playing.  Riverblossom isn't really interesting me that much currently, so I may wipe it soon.  Or maybe I'll just take a break from it until those sims seem fresh and interesting again.

I did some terrain surgery on my current version of Strangetown and replaced the terrain with one of the efficiency terrains, and now have sufficient space for subsequent generations.  I usually end up running out of room in the standard Strangetown, especially as a lot of the terrain is sloping.  I replaced the terrain the last time I was playing PV, too.

I use custom terrains to build my own uni and downtown for each neighbourhood I play.  So between my 3 current neighbourhoods, I'm using 8 custom terrains (2 main hoods, 3 unis, 3 downtowns).  The Efficiency Terrains get a lot of use in my game, and while I have my favourites for main hood, downtown and uni, I like to have a bit of variety and occasionally use another terrain.

[maxon]

The only additional NPCs were the pet police and the pet trainers - plus the two families in the bin - and then the strays.  All will be squashed by the empty P001 template.

What about people townies? Or were the strays the new townies? *notveryimpressedwithmEAxis*

No people townies with Pets - only NPCs and Cyd Roseland.

[SimulatedDork]

Since the questions on this thread have been answered, I guess it's OK to go a little off-topic?
Does anybody here play the Jade-style way? With an intergrated economy?

[Zazazu]

Since the questions on this thread have been answered, I guess it's OK to go a little off-topic?
Does anybody here play the Jade-style way? With an intergrated economy?

Jade-style? Linky?

I can barely keep attention to one family for three generations, much less a neighborhood for more than a couple months, so I've been through lots of custom hoods. I have five on my computer now, but V-ville and Kendry (custom) are about to be trashed. I hate it when I have to hit that arrow button.

[SimulatedDork]

Unfortunatly, Jade's site is no longer around. She was a great simmer with lots of ideas - her "community" way of playing could inspire even the most fidgety simmers to stick to a project. If you're intrested, I could explain her way of simming to you. It was fairly complex but well worth it once your neighborhood had critical mass. Her posts on it here are no long gone.
I prefer to stick to one thing at a time - I can't stand scrapping hoods because I always seem to spend so long on them. I plan to only have two (one to play out a story and one Jade-style) but ATM I have 2 Maxis' + 4 custom ones.

[SaraMK]

Since the questions on this thread have been answered, I guess it's OK to go a little off-topic?
Does anybody here play the Jade-style way? With an intergrated economy?

Yes. I think Jade and I kind of "discovered" this method of playing separately but at the same time. Back on Rentech's site is when I first realized anyone else played that way. She was more into storytelling though. I barely take any pictures.

However, right now I'm really more into themed neighborhoods than trying to make them completely self-sufficient. Most of my neighborhoods have at least some elements of an economy, since I find that it extends the life of the neighborhood when things are interconnected. Otherwise each lot is more or less its own island.

[SimulatedDork]

She invested a lot of time in her neighborhood, that's for sure. She even wrote a tute for minions like us to follow. The only thing I didn't understand is why she wrote "this is the only way to create a custom neighborhood" then ranted about why everybody was copying Thyme. Maybe she was only referring to creating a clean template to start on.
I liked to think I was the only person playing with mortgages until I read up a bit about Thyme. I think she used mortgages, but concentrated more on rent and taxes. I hadn't even thought about taxes, although I hated the way sims could never afford anything without a good dose of kaching but then I thought how unfair it was (I'm a very honest simmer, see) so then I made them pay it back over time. Of course, this was when I didn't know what a hack was, so I figure I did quite good for myself there!

Isla Muse used to be a themed 'hood, but I gave up on it because the loading times were hopeless and then opted for a small island where only 20 or so sims could live. From there, I'm developing my own set of islands: The Nephele Islands!

[SaraMK]

The reason I like themed neighborhoods is because it significantly cuts down on the amount of custom content that sits in the Downloads folder. If you just have a generic neighborhood, all sorts of crap starts looking good. Like, "Gee, maybe I'll find a use for this horse and buggy... or these decorative sheep... or these crowns and scepters... or this magic wand and pixie wings..." it just never ends. But if the neighborhood has a specific theme, like "backwoods country" or "space colony" you are much more unlikely to start downloading random stuff that doesn't fit in that theme. I keep all my neighborhoods separate, of course. This allows me to customize them even more, like having different default replacements for each neighborhood, or customizing the hacks I use.

[angelyne]

Really her site is gone?  I was looking at it no so long ago.  I even printed off her tutorial.  I was planning to set up my neighbourhood as per her tut, but I never quite got around to it.

[SimulatedDork]

Her tutorial was good for ideas, but now I'm using my owned way of creating a 'hood. For example, townies were pointless in her tutorial, so she skipped making them. But now my neighborhood, Westwater, has three sets of townies 9the homeless, the tourists and the natives). It never occoured to me not to have townies until Jade, then it never reoccoured to me to have them afterwards. I guess it's a breaking-out-of-the-shell thing. I just wanted to make my game more to me, and to fully use the £29.99 worth of college funding I spent on a children's doll house game.
x
Yeah, her site closed up pretty suddenly. Shame, too, because I was an avid reader of her blog. She didn't do herself much justice when she said "only ten people ready my blog" - loads did! I guess it was the "drama" from round here + N99.
x
I always find uses for decorative sheep

[Zazazu]

Really her site is gone?  I was looking at it no so long ago.  I even printed off her tutorial.  I was planning to set up my neighbourhood as per her tut, but I never quite got around to it.

Yup, it's down...and every other search hit I get just links to that site. I'm doing a one-community-lot-per-residential thing. I build a residential lot for each gen of my "legacy" family, then a community lot somewhere at the same time. No new lots until the next gen is reached. I don't like sitting on the same lot for 10 generations, so I move my family every generation and give them the money that shows as their net worth from the 'hood screen to start the new plot. I end up with less $ because of item depriciation, but no biggie. It's not like I'm competing against anyone.

I also have uses for decorative sheep. One is a frequent prop in my nurseries.

[witch]

Isn't it funny, different tastes and ways of playing the game. I read about the whole economic structure thing and immediately thought, my god, that'd be just like working at the local council. To me it just sounds like an incredibly anal OCD way of tracking zillions of variables.

My RL work consists of tracking zillions of things and comparing and measuring (stats) when I'm not teaching, so the play style holds little attraction for me.

As Queen of my sims world, I make decisions on the fly. e.g. a sim moves out to become a townie, I adjust the parent's money to account for a handout. If sims use Inge's mortgage bush to get some things for a business or home, I hit them with 10% interest when they pay it back.

I play for fun & relaxation with a bit more realism thrown in, as and when I feel like it. This game is more free-form to me, not a chance to create my own rigid set of rules.

[notveryawesome]

I agree with witch. I don't even play challenges because I can't stand all the rules. The closest I get to OCD-style playing is to loosely rotate my lots, meaning that I do rotate them, but not by day or by week - as long as the sims are still in the same lifestage when I rotate them, that's good enough for me. The economic structure of Thyme, while it was a nifty idea, just seemed like too much work. Eh, to each her own.

[witch]

Yes, to each her own, I hope I didn't sound critical of the players. It's the playstyle that holds no appeal for me, it's none of my business how others choose to play the game. Sorry if I sounded rude.

[neriana]

Didn't seem rude at all to me, witch .

I remember thinking something similar about that way of playing, and at the same time thinking what an awesome way it would be to set up a storyline. There's no way I'd have the attention span for it, though. I've got great concentration during school and work (when I have a job; atm I'm blissfully unemployed), but in my leisure time I'm rather the opposite. I think I'm playing like 5 games currently, as well as reading 3 books .

[Lorelei]

I have a slightly avoidant reaction towards my game now. If I avoid playing it, I can pretend it will work beautifully the next time I want to wait 30 minutes for it to load up, and that if it doesn't crash, it will be incredibly fun.

[witch]

a t i c i PATION

[SaraMK]

I think Thyme was on the far end of the spectrum. Jade created a government, which complicated things tremendously. You can have an economy and interrelatedness without having a government or making things complicated enough that keeping records is required. I think that's why Thyme was so "scary;" most of the rules you saw were in fact related to the government, not the economy, it's just that the two were so closely tied. But economy ≠ government.

It's obviously a different way of playing. I'm just happy that the game allows all sorts of ways of playing and making things up that aren't even part of the game unless you make them a part of it yourself.

[maxon]

Since the questions on this thread have been answered, I guess it's OK to go a little off-topic?
Does anybody here play the Jade-style way? With an intergrated economy?

Sort of, in that I have always played in a similar way.  I picked up some good ideas from her though.

[Sagana]

My hoods are kinda a combination of themed and Jade's (I have 2 like this, one kinda cyberpunky, very near modern and one late 1800s) - except I don't spend much time tracking anything. And, I more or less just do what I want. Even when I play challenges I just do what I want unless they're very very short. I live rules are made to be broken.

I do find I get stuck on something that's too complicated for me to want to work at it. Right now my modern-ish hood is stuck on Uni as I want it set up properly but the set up is way too much trouble. So I got distracted with something else <sigh self>

[angelyne]

What I plan to implement from Jade's idea is to have all my player characters's own the community lots.  So it will be more like a small town where you know everyone.  No way I can put up with any kind of record keeping whatsover.  I might try Monique's rent system.


Another one of her ideas I was toyiing with was to clone all the NPC's with my player characters so that if the police come, let's say, you can pretend it's one of your payables.  That's a fun idea, but the problem is it's a little hard to do unless you play with aging off, as she did.   Beside I like my policeman in the game.  He's actually funny.  He's a real wuss and always fails to catch the bad guy (girl in this case).  He looses the fight everytime.

So lots of good ideas there, you can pick and choose from.

[SimulatedDork]

   As it so happens, I think I'm an OCD sufferer. I could spend hours perfecting my 'hood without playing a single family. I write up all the records: who owns what, who's going out with who, how much their rent is etc. What can I say - I like order! But I don't like legacy challenges at all - I can't see myself sticking to one lot for 10 generations, and if I ever were to take a break - I don't I'd be revisiting the legacy lot again. Besides: it's such a 2D way of simming, IMO.
   My favourite challenge is the challenge of keeping my economy 'hood alive and well, if that could be considered a "challenge".
I do play with mortgages, but I don't pay them back with interest. I think simming life would be too hard, otherwise. I try not to have just plain out loans though, because being bogged down with debt makes things unenjoyable and unsatisfying, especially when creating businesses. It was hard not to constantly take out loans, but I thought of a way that maybe is a bit more creative than Jade's: where she just flat out bought the businesses.

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Anyway, for me, the mayor is the first sim to be moved in. I figured I need a mayor because of the flow of the money. She then buys every empty community lot. Through taxes the residents pay, her job (she is level 10 on the politics career track - that's how new money is interjected into the system) and any other way the community can accquire money, these community lots are soon built up. She then places them for sale at City Hall for "less than average". This way: the taxes are spent on something useful, I never have to use "motherlode", everybody helps create the neighborhood gradually and sims can afford to buy a business almost immediately (as the lot is place for "less than average").
   I don't mind the £20K handouts, sometimes I even boost it up to £25/30,000. It depends on the sim/family. For example, a well established business man who moves in is obviously going to start out richer than a single mother of three. If a house costs £17,000 then that leaves £8,000 to start up the business: but that is nothing (considering a lot costs - err - a lot). So, instead, I have them keep that money and only pay taxes to the mayor. Once the mayor has collected enough, she visits a community lot and creates only the shell of the building. If money allows, then she furnishes it minimally. Say the buyer has spent £750 on taxes - that leaves £7,250 left to spend on buying a business. By now, her funds have grown to £9,000.  The business costs £11,000, but because it is put at "less than average": the buyer can now afford it. For really poor sims who need a boost, and if the mayor's funds allow, there might even be a greater discount then the game allows (15% below average, I believe?) The £750 he spent has gone towards building a better community.
   It's sounds complicated - but is really worth it. How do they do it in RL? You buy community lots from the community, of course, so why not in The Sims 2? Infact, the mayor has funded most of the building: so the simple £750 investment on the buyer's part has turned into an £11,000 business which he bought for £9,000. He could have just bought it from the "invisible" community: but that is exactly what this method is trying to iradicate. And then, that sim might be the only one with a business (and with practically no funds). This way, no sim buys a business until they're all relatively ready to be bought. So the community grows as a whole.

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Does that make sense? What do you think?
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I play with aging on (kills the realism otherwise) and I still clone my playables onto the fugly NPCs. It takes something along the lines of 20 sim days for an Adult > Elder transition, and I take forever playing a house! I can only play for a few hours on the weekend and I tend to rotate around which lot I am currently playing (unless I'm really into it or playing out a pre-set storyline)

[Sagana]

How do they do it in RL? You buy community lots from the community, of course, so why not in The Sims 2?

One of the reasons I've sort of avoided this economy thing (besides it taking too much record keeping) is that I don't feel like this is the way it works where I live. People who want to start businesses either need to have a backer, a good amount for startup costs, or take out a business loan (hard to get, some SBA things make it easier but still hard). They need money for startup costs and for business premises (and whatever equipment/permits etc. are required). Businesses that don't require inventory (web design, for example are so popular and come and go so much because the startup costs are so minimal, but everything else is harder. A lot of people rent a storefront or small store space in a group storefront (or mall, but those are expensive) - usually cheaper in poorer neighborhoods. The people that actually own these properties tend to have money, and sometime leave them empty because the tax writeoff is bigger than they can make on rent (making it more difficult to obtain one.) And you hafta have the business lot with the proper zoning and all. The mayor giving most of the property away free or cheap just doesn't seem realistic to me. People make big bucks in business property. And startup costs (inventory/equipment) for new businesses are high - in part to help keep them from starting up, going broke and going out of business in short order even though that happens a lot also.

And it's too complicated. I've used Monique's rent system and I like that (this works really well for my late 1800s, where the landowner has a house, carriage house that he rents, barn that he rents and farmland that they work - takes a bit to setup but not bad really), also her payer/payee, computer and Pescado's money orders. Between all that and the money cheats in the game, I don't really have to remember anything - unless I lose all the records installing a new EP or something and then I don't care I also use the AIO and various "hire anyone" employee hacks and those help too.

[SimulatedDork]

One of the reasons I've sort of avoided this economy thing (besides it taking too much record keeping) is that I don't feel like this is the way it works where I live. People who want to start businesses either need to have a backer, a good amount for startup costs, or take out a business loan (hard to get, some SBA things make it easier but still hard). They need money for startup costs and for business premises (and whatever equipment/permits etc. are required). Businesses that don't require inventory (web design, for example are so popular and come and go so much because the startup costs are so minimal, but everything else is harder. A lot of people rent a storefront or small store space in a group storefront (or mall, but those are expensive) - usually cheaper in poorer neighborhoods. The people that actually own these properties tend to have money, and sometime leave them empty because the tax writeoff is bigger than they can make on rent (making it more difficult to obtain one.) And you hafta have the business lot with the proper zoning and all.

But that's just it: the limitations of the game means we have to adapt it to what we want. Like Sara said, the game allows all sorts of ways of playing that aren't even part of the game unless you make them a part of it yourself.
Who'd want a boring economic way of life? For me, I just want it organized and realistic. They can take out loans, have rents (although this looks complicated and I am holding this off for a while) and have businesses that don't require inventory (novel writing in the sims, for example.) If I had more room, I would open up a mall and have different sims rent out shoplets from the mall-owner. Instead, I have a marketplace (Lande Produce) where my Silver, my gardener sim sells his crops, my gardening club rep sells gardening club items and my florist, Dandelion Pierce, sells her flowers. It's how a marketplace works in RL except with simming adaptations.

And startup costs (inventory/equipment) for new businesses are high - in part to help keep them from starting up, going broke and going out of business in short order even though that happens a lot also.

That's why my sims buy it off the community - because it would be too hard to create a full business from scratch with motherlode and without a loan.

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I love Monique's mods! The payee-payer mod is the one I use for taxes and loans. It keeps a bit of tracking once you finish playing a house, but other then that, it works like a charm. Pescado's money orders seem a little pointless to me when you have familyfunds, I only use it when one family has the same surname (that rarely happens in my hood, but I keep his MO anyway)

[Sagana]

I'm not sure we aren't speaking at cross-purposes as I'm not quite following everything you're saying

That's why my sims buy it off the community - because it would be too hard to create a full business from scratch with motherlode and without a loan.

Here, for example - if buying from 'the community,' you mean the mayor (I'm not sure) and the mayor buys it with taxes, that's what I find unrealistic and have been trying to avoid. In my real world, there are "tycoons" who own property and rent it to people who want to start businesses, but they get rich doing it. And I want "tycoon sims" in the same fashion. Uh, I should mention I have no problem with out-and-out cheating if it fits my storyline. I'll happily motherlode a tycoon to let him buy the property and rent it to others. Usually if I'm going to cheat, I do it starting a sim/family and that's it-no more gifts from the goddess - so if the tycoonsim runs out of money, oh well too bad, so sad. And he doesn't own all the property - other sims can become tycoons, if they get rich enough to start buying it (or my landowner goes out of business or whatever.)

But that's just it: the limitations of the game means we have to adapt it to what we want.

I'm not quite clear on this either. Honestly, I haven't found much at all I can't find some way to accomplish - since OFB (that's the reason I love that EP so much) - but I'll put in a hack at the drop of a hat to get what I want (add 'em, try 'em out, take 'em out, put 'em back in, add another). I've got a ton of them, different ones to have different things. I really have more trouble finding the "stuff" I want than the hacks to make the game work the way I want, with a few exceptions.

There are some things I've just sorta decided to accept that's how sims are and sims aren't people - spinning around to suddenly switch from 4 years old to 10 and then from 10 to 16 for example. And the other is how babies are born. I've tried to do hospitals and playing out home births and whatever, but the truth is, it's just not how people do it. Sims give birth in a few minutes with a scream or two and divided plumbbob and there ya are and Aunt Martha. They ain't people. (Death is a whole 'nother issue with a thread of its own.)

Who'd want a boring economic way of life? For me, I just want it organized and realistic.

I want it semi-realistic and *easy* That's why I use Monique's mods to take care of most of it. I don't do any external tracking at all. Jade kept a lot of records. I don't keep any - if I don't just remember it or it isn't in the game somewhere, oh well, it's gone. And I'm phobic about numbers.

The rent system really isn't hard at all. You give the "landlord" the deed and the renter a rental contract, from the landlord's house decide how much they'll pay and how often and that's it. The computer does the rest. The only complex thing is to remember that one of them (and I can't remember which, of course) has to be set up before the other - for that, I keep the thread instructions in a file with the hack and check before I start giving out deeds. Other than that, it does all the work for you Except I'm not sure this mod is updated for Seasons, wasn't last time I checked

I use Monique's computer for most 'work from home' things (novels, web design, etc., any work that can be done on the computer) and it's easy. For the right sims, I'll use a work at home career, but usually I don't bother with that.

The payer/payee mod is harder than the rent one. I get confused by it now and then, but did use it to have employees who could work in the orchards (as, if you actually *hire* them, they can't garden) but now that other people needed that for Seasons, there's 2 mods that allow employees to garden and I don't need it anymore. <wheeeee>

I like Pescado's moneyorder because it's easy and the sim 'receives' the money so it feels more realistic than family funds. For my own repairshop, I usually pay the repairpeoples via money order (for most other 'hired' employees All In One works better, except nannys - I'm stuck on nannys again <misses Dizzy's hack some more> and will have to do them the same way as I do repairpeoples.) I don't do taxes - that's part of the 'too much for my tiny brain' stuff

I'm enjoying the discussion and not fussing you're doing it wrong or anything. Different people play different ways and I'm waaaay lazy and *not* OCD The way you're doing it works well for a lot of people, just not me. I hate recordkeeping and anything that begins to seem complicated and like a lot of work, and anything with numbers. So I'm just adding some other ideas and opinions and stuff.