No more freeloading at the dorms plus more expensive bills

[Hook]

For gosh sakes, if you're buying a bunch of junk for the dorm, just sell it back before you leave.  It's not going to do the next students who come along any good to have a dorm full of paintings and sculptures, especially if they're fortune Sims and roll up wants for the *next cheapest* item.  For example, if you already have a §500 painting, they won't roll up a want for something cheaper.  They'll want something more expensive.

I consider it bad form to sell the other dormies' beds.   However, if I've upgraded the bed for my Sim, I might sell it back and buy the original cheap bed to replace it.  It's not a lot of cash back, but if you're under 2000, every little bit helps.

Hook

[syberspunk]

Haha, I've thought about doing that too.  Selling the stuff back, that is... but I'm a tad lazy.  Maybe with paintings and what not, I might sell those back... but hopefully, the fact that a dorm lot already has a full load of instruments will stop sims from rolling up wants to buy them?   Plus, the other objects are useful to have anyway, like the telescopes, hot tubs, or chairs and sofas, which equal more sims watchin tv and/or doing group research together.

Alternatively... I could at least pack those away into a sim's inventory... but meh.  I'll consider them gregarious, charitable donations to the school.   Besides, it might be nice for the 2nd gen of sims to have stuff there already.

I'm curious tho... if my game will blow up even before it gets to the 2nd gen.  With SaraMK's tutorials, I've added Strangetown, Veronaville, Fiesta Tech, and Le Tour Academie sims.  I think my sim population is up in the 700-800 range already (and this is with the clean templates).  And I still want to get around to adding those Blossom Hill neighborhood too.  I just want a cleaned version of just the absolutely necessary sims.  I've been too lazy to do it on my own.

Ste

[AuKestrel]

Personally, I'm fond of Nec's entry in the building contest of awesomeness..  I've had neighbourhoods that I think of as "company towns" with this house repeated a lot.

There's a more awesome house spec floating about too, that I use for guidance when building lots.  I prefer not to build since I suck at it, but I sometimes play a challenge that requires it.

I had come across the more awesome house spec before but now I have printed it for the next house building binge I go on but had missed the actual entries somehow. /airhead

I used to wing it, but found I'd fall into a bit of a rut that way. I love house building, though, and hate rebuilding or remodeling, so it's new homes all the way, all the time. I started using Architectural House Plans, recommended in an earlier thread as a good place for ideas. 
--snip--
Basically, just look at as many player-created houses out there as you can. Not the Maxis ones, they are inefficient ugly crap. Download your favorites and play them a bit. Then try building a few. By seeing the possibilities, you can start to find what you like.

That house is gorgeous. Thanks for the link to Architectural House Plans. It's definitely easier to navigate than the places I found Googling.

I have not used Maxis houses in forever because I (perhaps superstitiously) am convinced that they're buggy. I can't swear to it, of course, but I have had problems - since way back before I ever thought of custom content! - with two of the larger lots that came with the original TS2 - the farmhouse and the 3-story Craftsman-style.

Downloading comes with its own set of evils, however, especially before I got a Windows system (and, thus, a Clean Installer program which Mac lacks). Once I ended up with the mailbox hack and no idea what it was or what was wrong (the up side was the resultant research led me to MATY!); and yesterday I was playing a lot that claimed to be hack free and I guess, if you don't count somehow having turned aging off when it was packaged, it was, but it completely screwed up my attempts to figure out how the lot sync timer works until I realised that aging was off.

/airhead again would sort of be gratuitous at this point.

But yeah as much time as I am spending figuring out what's wrong with downloaded houses and/or tweaking them to suit my needs I guess I could be building what I want. I appreciate you taking the time and sharing the picture and link with me.

[witch]

Shameless plug follows:

Try Laverwinkle sims - link in my signature. Emma, Reggikko and I have all got houses and businesses for download, no hacks, no custom content, no customer complaints.  Regg in particular has a lovely range of New Orleans homes, Emma has some excellent family homes and I have a bunch of starter homes, amongst many other offerings from all. Dylan has a wonderfully subtle range of makeup and there is a lovely lilac alien default skin plus some vampire paste.

[AuKestrel]

Shameless plug follows:

Try Laverwinkle sims - link in my signature. Emma, Reggikko and I have all got houses and businesses for download, no hacks, no custom content, no customer complaints.  Regg in particular has a lovely range of New Orleans homes, Emma has some excellent family homes and I have a bunch of starter homes, amongst many other offerings from all. Dylan has a wonderfully subtle range of makeup and there is a lovely lilac alien default skin plus some vampire paste.

Oh, I have discovered Regg's houses! I am fond of her Petit houses for the Downtown neighbourhood especially but I have downloaded all of them. I do need to go check out the rest of the site though! I am salivating at the thought of your starter homes, believe me.

Last night I did spend a couple of hours building a Victorian style house for one of my larger families from scratch and it probably didn't take much longer than tweaking a downloaded house, except for the damn roofs. *g*

[Karen]

I just tried this hack for the first time in a Uni hood with two dorms and a total of 18 playable YA's (13 in one dorm, 5 in the other).  It's working great for me.  I always appreciate new ways to get rid of extra money. 

[kuronue]

Heh. Yep.  Some of the latest grads ended up with less than $500 simoleons.

Heh, I don't even know how I'd go about making my sims that poor...  The ones that attend my Legacy family's greek house typically leave college with like $40-50 thousand.  How do you even spend all your money at college?  After a few generations all the dorm residences that I use are pretty well pimped out...

Are you seriously telling me you don't know how to get below 40-50 thousand? how about not owning businesses in college and don't work on campus? With only grant money from all As, they can't get anywhere near 40 thou... hehe.

[Hook]

Are you seriously telling me you don't know how to get below 40-50 thousand? how about not owning businesses in college and don't work on campus? With only grant money from all As, they can't get anywhere near 40 thou... hehe.

Are you seriously telling me you can't get a Sim 70-80 thousand without owning a business or working on campus?  I've never done either, and that's my typical after-graduation amount.

I once had a Sim graduate with 110,000 exactly (the round number amused me greatly at the time) with NO hacks in the game other than manual-navigation.  It would have been more, but she left immediately after graduation.

Hook

[Zazazu]

Are you seriously telling me you don't know how to get below 40-50 thousand? how about not owning businesses in college and don't work on campus? With only grant money from all As, they can't get anywhere near 40 thou... hehe.

Are you seriously telling me you can't get a Sim 70-80 thousand without owning a business or working on campus?  I've never done either, and that's my typical after-graduation amount.

I once had a Sim graduate with 110,000 exactly (the round number amused me greatly at the time) with NO hacks in the game other than manual-navigation.  It would have been more, but she left immediately after graduation.

Hook

How? I'm seriously  ;Dtelling you that I couldn't get a sim there w/out owning a business/working on campus. Pre law or gamer career objects, anyways.

[Gus Smedstad]

It does seem like you'd have to be doing some very deliberate stuff to get that much money.  Maybe even exploit-level stuff, which is what I personally consider most ticketron home businesses.

My own Sims typically end up with about $10,000 after graduation.  But then, they do nothing at all to earn money except get grades.  Mostly the knowledge Sims study, and the rest of them debauch themselves.

 - Gus

[Kyna]

My YAs don't pull in anything like Hook's do, but they usually do better than 10K.  Fishing, gardening (sell most of the crops) and working on the crafting benches when the lake is frozen over.  It all adds up.

[Hook]

It does seem like you'd have to be doing some very deliberate stuff to get that much money.

Yeah, getting 110K did take some deliberate effort.  I did it mostly as a stunt, to see just how much a Sim could make.  I started with a totally new neighborhood and a single CAS young adult with no skills and only the normal 500 starting cash.  Keep in mind I had no hacks in the game except for manual-navigation when I did this.  Most especially I did not have comm-skilling.

I built a custom community lot with a cafe, a juice bar, a coffee bar, a couple of pinball machines... and all four band instruments.  I'd visit the lot every spare moment and invite professors and cheerleaders over to play the instruments for tips.  These Sims normally had high creativity skill so the tips were 100 each.  After getting four NPCs playing I'd call other Sims and invite them to the lot, and they usually ended up leaving a tip or two. The only thing my Sim really did is manage the band.  Some NPCs had 1300 in tips by the time they left.  I also had some instruments in the dorm and invited high creativity Sims over to play for those times when I had to be in the dorm.

My Sim graduated with a 4.0 GPA and a reasonable number of friends.  Skills weren't high, mostly just enough to keep the grades up.  At the end, right after graduation, I sold the dorm instruments.  When I sold the last one and saw the round number 110,000 I had to giggle.

Fast forward to today.  My teen Sims generally enter uni with around 8000, enough to buy a decent bed and an instrument or two for the dorm, usually a 12 room dorm.  I have comm-skilling so dormies will gain creativity skill from playing.  As I get more money, I add all four instruments.  Dormies play them and I collect the tips.  I may make one trip to the community lot, mostly to synchronize my clock so I have finals at reasonable times.  With no other effort my Sims graduate with 60-70K.

Some people don't like the idea of collecting tips other Sims get.  There's even a hack to prevent it.  But I figure if I bought the instruments, the dormies can use them to gain creativity skills and fun, so they owe me.  But even if you have the hack to prevent collecting other Sims' tips, a single instrument will still make you quite a bit of money if you use it as your main source of fun.  Your Sim probably needs to gain creativity skill anyway, so why not do it with an instrument and make money at the same time?

Sure, if you work at it hard enough, you can have a Sim graduate with under 10K.  When I put no20Khandouts in my game, the only thing it really changed was the way I played the game.  I realized that if Sims were to graduate with more than 10K, they'd need some way to make money.  At the time, the best way was collecting tips.  Now, we have other sources of income which also build useful skills of some sort, like the crafting benches.  And considering my Sims have done all the schoolwork they need to be doing within 10 hours of returning from the finals, at least this gives them something to do.

Hook

[Pyromaniac]

I abhor dorms. Most of my college sims either share a house with a roommate or join a Greek house. I like expensive furniture, but it's much more plausible if the Sims actually worked for it.

If you're ever desperate for money, just use the counterfeiter. It's a quick, 'reliable' way to make money in university. With the no20khandouts, my graduating sims (who live in normal housing) usually have around 5k to spend.

[fwiffo]

The only expansion pack I have is university, so I don't use home businesses or anything like that to make money at college.  The money comes from a combination of factors:

1) It's a greek lot that has had lots of sims pass through it, and always has several sims in it at any point in time, so it just accumulates wealth over the years.
2) Most of the sims I send there have $9500 or more from scholarships and over time that just adds up.
3) The house and the dorms have been pimped out over the years, so there's not much left to spend money on.
4) 4-8 sims in a house at college gathering 1200 each every semester adds up.
5) There's not that much to do at college.  Most of these sims have maxxed or nearly maxxed skills, and you can only spend so much time making friends.  Even for popularity sims, there's not much use for more than 30 best friends.  So instead of spinning their wheels, my college sims maintain a greenhouse with 30 money trees.  At $1200 per harvest, 3 or 4 (I forget which) times per day, you can make a lot of money.

[Chienne]

my college sims maintain a greenhouse with 30 money trees.  At $1200 per harvest, 3 or 4 (I forget which) times per day, you can make a lot of money.

Good god!  I don't think I'd  have the patience to *watch* my sims harvest 30 money trees three or four times a day for all of uni.  [obligatory straight line:] Don't you go bats? 

[J. M. Pescado]

I find that I'm getting a buttload off of the fishing they do when waiting for finals.

[fwiffo]

It's either that, or go bats watching them do some other mundane college thing.  It's not on the main deck, so I don't really have to watch them much anyway.  I can just listen to to ka-ching noises in the background while I manage the sims on the main deck.

[Hegelian]

Since this is a fairly recent thread, I'm going to jump in here with a question about zero-value dorms. This is with EPs through OFB and no stuff packs. I'm playing with a secondary account in a game that is mostly hack-free (except for some bug fixes and TwoJeff's lazy walk killer), and no custom content except for some clothing and eyes.

To find out how much a dorm is worth, use the "changelotzoning residential" cheat, then click the icon in the upper left to get the value.  This will be the Uni residential value, not the full value of the dorm.  To get the full value, divide this amount by 0.22, then use "changelotzoning dorm" to change it back to a dorm.  If you don't change the zoning, the value will always show zero.

I have two playables and six dormies in a dorm I built in the Sims State neighborhood. I noticed the mail carrier would come but there was never a bill, and there were no stuck bills to be nuked with the lot debugger. I tried resetting the mailbox with no results, and then used DBG - Force Bills to try to force a bill delivery. The mail carrier came back, but popped a message that there was nothing billable in the dorm. This is new construction full of fairly expensive stuff:  As a residential lot, it had a value of §161,000. I went into buy mode, clicked the value icon, and the dorm's value is zero.

This dorm uses the "vanishing room" technique described elsewhere on MATY by Grater, by which all the Myne doors are placed on a single "hidden" room with a stereo in it, and the real dorm rooms have regular doors and decent beds. The dormies go into the vanishing room to sleep but then come back out because of the stereo, and behave mostly like normal sims—they use the beds and showers as needed (although they still occasionally pass out or pee themselves). This is with nouniprotect (it's not entirely hack-free).

Shortly after I began playing this lot I had moved the playables out temporarily to do some remodelling; however, I did not change the zoning from dorm to residential, using instead the dorm tools cheat to enable all the build-mode controls. While remodelling I did delete all the Myne doors (which still had dormie portraits on them), but I replaced them before saving the lot. I don't know if that would have any affect.

Out of curiosity I went into an uninhabited Maxis dorm in the same neighborhood, one I have never played, and it too had a value of zero.

Any ideas why the dorms in this neighborhood have no value? The dorm I built myself has a large-screen TV and game console, two expensive telescopes, a couple weight machines, a pool table, piano, hot tub, jukebox, chess tables, pinball machines, quite a bit of comfy furniture, four computers, several bookcases, three easels, and eight teak single beds; also artwork and plants. This is definitely not a low-value lot!

[syberspunk]

Hrm... I dunno what it is about your playstyle Hookins!  With little effort, I managed to have at 6 sims graduate Uni well under 1k.  Yes, that's right, 1K!  Probably because I bought a buncha junk for their individual dorms, and when I got around to gradumacating them, I forgot to sell stuff off or at least put it in their respective inventories.

Well... I don't know if it's little effort, but maybe just as much effort as you could put into building a sims grade.  For many of my YAs, I don't have them study or do assignments unless they actually want to.  Generally, I may allow them to go to class on their own, if I there aren't any other things for them to do.  If they have other wants, I have a tendency to cancel them out of going to class so that I can satisfy those wants instead.

Still, I would hardly say that it takes more effort to have sims graduate with low GPAs or little to no money.

Funny though... one of my sims barely had enough to scrape by after graduation.  I had him buy a 2x3 lot and I attempted to have him live with only the bare necessities.  It worked out for a little bit.  Just a bed and a phone to sleep and call up for food, with a counter to place his pizza on.  He couldn't afford enough loot to buy walls for a terlet.  So I bought him a bush instead, and fortunately had my own tweaked version that allowed him to pee on bushes. lol.  He even managed to get into his dream (LTW) career track (Culinary).  But after a few days, he lost his job to a chance card.  He was despressed and he was sweating, as the summer heat battered him down (he was living in Bluewater Village where I set summer to be 2 seasons long).   He was too bummed to go back to work, his funders were quickly dwindling, and he even passed out due to heatstroke.  I had enough loot to buy a showertub, and I hoped that showering would cool him off... but it didn't.   I was worried that he was gonna die, possibly due to spontaneous combustion or whatever, and... since he was living alone, there would be no one to save him!  So... since, I didn't want to lose him to death... yet... and I didn't want to have to resurrect him elsewhere, I broke down and had his family send him funds via money order.

Now he's living somewhat comfortably and will probably manage a lot better.  Still a small, minimalist household with only bare essentials right now (bedroom with bed, bathroom with terlet and showah, kitchen with sink, fridge, and stove - no wallpaper or flooring and no form of entertainment really).  Hopefully his brothers will fare much better when they graduate. Hee


As for on topic... I thought about it... and:

$300 dorm bill seems almost purpose defeating considering that private housing doesn't cost that much, and dorms are supposed to be cheaper!

This actually isn't always true.  A couple of my friends managed to find places to live "off campus" (well, we didn't really have a campus since it was pretty much the city) which actually worked out to being cheaper than the cheapest, crappiest dorms.  I mean, if you find a decent apartment and split it with a roomie or 2, you may pay as much as 600$ a month, whereas living on campus could cost you about $1k+ (and then a meal plan on top of that) a month in some dorms/campus housing.


Anyhew,  I was wondering... instead of a flat fee for all students, is there way to add some multiplier so it's sorta based on dorm/lot size?  So... maybe bigger dorm lots cost a bit more to live in than the smaller ones.  It's probably not that great of a factor to go by, since some of the smaller dorms actually have roomier dorm rooms, but with larger lots, you have more room for stuff and things to do.


Ste

[Kyna]

Funny though... one of my sims barely had enough to scrape by after graduation.  I had him buy a 2x3 lot and I attempted to have him live with only the bare necessities.  It worked out for a little bit.  Just a bed and a phone to sleep and call up for food, with a counter to place his pizza on.  He couldn't afford enough loot to buy walls for a terlet.  So I bought him a bush instead, and fortunately had my own tweaked version that allowed him to pee on bushes. lol.  He even managed to get into his dream (LTW) career track (Culinary).  But after a few days, he lost his job to a chance card.  He was despressed and he was sweating, as the summer heat battered him down (he was living in Bluewater Village where I set summer to be 2 seasons long).   He was too bummed to go back to work, his funders were quickly dwindling, and he even passed out due to heatstroke.  I had enough loot to buy a showertub, and I hoped that showering would cool him off... but it didn't.   I was worried that he was gonna die, possibly due to spontaneous combustion or whatever, and... since he was living alone, there would be no one to save him!  So... since, I didn't want to lose him to death... yet... and I didn't want to have to resurrect him elsewhere, I broke down and had his family send him funds via money order.

Why didn't you put a small lake on the lot, so he could make money from fishing?  His first day's pay would have covered the cost.

[Sleepycat]

I think I will try the x5 version first 

if you have even 1 sim on a lot working it can be hard to keep them poor, even if it is a low paying job     


hell I have one sim (with a bunch of kids) that isn't working and even with Squinges IncreasedBills x5 version(which I just took out) she wasn't getting any poorer but I blame that on the money she got ($2,000) from a lover that died of old age and a few random child support payments (which she got before I stopped them). Maybe soon she will have to do something about earning some money   

[syberspunk]

Why didn't you put a small lake on the lot, so he could make money from fishing?  His first day's pay would have covered the cost.

Well... if you wanted to go the smart route, I suppose you could have thought of that (you meaning me = i are not smrt ).

I guess I'll try that next time...  I actually have two sims that also ended up with very few funds after graduating.  Both around $1k.  So, one of them could afford to buy a small lot, and then I combined households so they would have a bit more money (not much tho).  Right now, they don't have any furniture, as I have yet to play them since moving them in.  Perhaps I'll do the fishing thing and see how it goes.   Does the water have to be a certain depth and/or size (length/width)?


Ste

[jsalemi]

Does the water have to be a certain depth and/or size (length/width)?

I believe the pond has to be at least 4x4 -- 4 tiles square, and about 3-4 tiles deep.  You can tell that its deep enough if you can see a fish swiming around in it (if your graphics card supports it, of couse    - ff you get ground snow, you can probably see fish). Enough room has to be left around the outside for the sim to have at least one free square by the pond to fish from.

[Kyna]

I was making my ponds exactly 4x4x4 ... so I had very square ponds that were "ornamental" rather than natural looking.  (I was trying for the look of the ornamental ponds in the Capp lot which are fishable, but couldn't work out how to get the edging to look right and still have the pond be fishable).  My sims could fish in these 4x4 square ponds.

Then I got a graphics card and noticed I didn't have fish in those ponds, but I did in bigger ponds.  The sims on lots with bigger ponds also had the "business/be fisherman" option.

So now I build 4x4 by 2 deep, using the small water tool.  Then with the medium water tool I click once on each of the 4 center spots in the pond.  I get round ponds instead of square.  I see fish and have the business/fisherman option.  But I can fish in the smaller square ponds (I just don't see fish or get the business/be fisherman option).

[BastDawn]

Out of curiosity I loaded up the game to check out the Capp lot myself.  The ponds are 5x5, not 4x4.  You can easily replicate them by first making a pond that is far too big and then using the leveling tool on all sides to erase the parts you don't need.  You will then be able to add border fencing on the level edge of the pond, but it's the fencing that prevents fishing -- the Capps can't fish either.  But the 1 tile border of stone flooring around the pond still looks nice and it doesn't block anything.