Bon Voyage time issue. <SOLVED>

[Kralore]

I've just discovered that BV has introduced a big problem with the way time passes.   

The game has always been this way, but with BV its something you will have to keep a close eye on.   Hotels have a checkout time of 12 noon. 

If you stay past this time 1 day is charged to your hotel fee.  All BV lots decrease your vacation days by 1 at 12 midnight.   The problem is, it doesn't differentiate between the hotel and just visiting a community lot.   

As an example...you leave the hotel lot to visit another community lot at 9am,   you stay at the community lot until 6pm,  at 12 noon while your visiting the community lot, the game will register that your staying another day at the hotel (you get no message about this though),  when you return to the hotel, the time is back to 9am when you left and you also get a message saying you missed checkout time and 1 day has been added to your hotel charge.  While at the hotel, at 11am you will get a message saying "it's checkout time, if you stay past noon, you will be charged another day". When 12 noon comes, the game charges you again for 1 day.  You have now paid twice for 1 day stay.    

The same issue applies to 12 midnight when vacation days decreases by 1.  If your visiting a lot when 12 midnight goes by, vacation days left decreases by 1.   If it's before midnight when you return to the hotel,  while your at the hotel, and time passes midnight, vacation days left will decrease by another 1.   You have now lost 2 vacation days in one day.

I don't think there is anyway around this other then keeping an eye on the time when you go visiting other community lots.

[jsalemi]

Why am I not surprised?

[KatEnigma]

Sounds like a hack fix is needed to make sure that time is only counted from the hotel lots, not community lots. Stupid EAxis

[J. M. Pescado]

...but then unless your hotel lot is inordinately fascinating, you would practically never pay!

[syberspunk]

Hrm... I wonder how Crammyboy's Community Time hack would work to solve this...

I mean, it would be nice to have some realism here as well... so sims that went to another comm lot, when returning to the hotel, would appear as off-world for the amount of time they had been gone.  In the meantime, you would go ahead with the other playables on the lot...

The hitch would be that the hack would probably have to disable the ability to return home until all playable sims are present and accounted for.  Unless, sims can return home separate from each other... which would be even more realistic... but I'm sure that would be too messy to implement and probably just complicate things.

The 'simpler' fix as Kat suggests, would be to just ignore the time that you are on a comm lot.  Hopefully this might be as simple as inserting a check if you are on a comm lot, and then ignore/skip the lines that deduct vacation days/charge extra hotel days.  This is assuming that comm lots can be identified separately from 'hotel' lots.

Again, it's the case of very simple things that Maxis EA doesn't seem to even try out before releasing their games.   Oh wells.

I'm hoping that someone can identify whether the new lots need emptying/cleaning.


Ste

[akatonbo]

Huh. I bet that'll be in the patch, then, since aside from the fact that it causes overcharging and loss of vacation days, time in vacation subhoods is supposed to be continuous, like it is in Uni subhoods.

[J. M. Pescado]

Huh. I bet that'll be in the patch, then, since aside from the fact that it causes overcharging and loss of vacation days, time in vacation subhoods is supposed to be continuous, like it is in Uni subhoods.

Yes, but Uni subhood time is broken also. It has never worked correctly either, as evidenced by what happens when only part of a lot goes out, resulting in semester times getting completely desynchronized.

[jolrei]

...but then unless your hotel lot is inordinately fascinating, you would practically never pay!

Problem (if it is one) seems to originate with EAxis using the Uni comm lot time structure without thought that there is no check out time in a dorm.

I would not mind that time is not counted on comm lots, as this is consistent with the way comm lot time runs in main hoods, and it allows more time spent away from hotel without racking up a bill.  However, if this is going to be the case, check out time should only be calculated when the sim reaches 12:00noon at the hotel.  However, this is generally inconsistent with the way most people run their holidays - generally, I would think that folks don't just stay in the hotel all day (well, some do if they have small kids that just want to use the pool, etc.).

If this does not work, time at comm lots could possibly be synchronized with hotel time, so that if you leave the comm lot at 11pm, having been there since 10am, it should be 11pm when the sims get back to the hotel.  

I'm thinking that this may be a "feature" not a "bug", in that EAxis logic might be that if the sims are going to spend a whole day at a comm lot, and then return to the hotel to spend another whole day in the hotel (admittedly on the same day), perhaps it is fair for them to pay for two days vacation in one.  We'll know whenever they patch this EP, whether they think this is a problem or not.

[Kralore]

If you go from the hotel to the community lot after 12 noon, and don't stay at the community lot past 12 midnight, things are fine. This gives you aproximately 11 hours game time on any community lot.  You can then return to the hotel, time would be back at the start time, and you could then go off to another community lot for another 11 hours.  You could repeat this over and over and take advantage of the time issue and stay on vacation indefinitly.

[jolrei]

Yes, but Uni subhood time is broken also. It has never worked correctly either, as evidenced by what happens when only part of a lot goes out, resulting in semester times getting completely desynchronized.

Yeah, a bit annoying.  I generally reset time until finals using Insim when my students return to the dorm so that the term stays in synch.  Maybe something like this will be necessary when on holiday - fun idea to leave the hotel after 12:00 and return before 12:00 the next day.  That might eliminate the double payment problem.

Purists would have to make sure that they actually paid a bill, for overall realism.

[Loncaros]

Nothing good is coming from the way time in community lots is handled. You have drop-dead tired Sims at 7pm when you return from a date, you have college finals at 2am, your teenagers never have the house for themselves. I don't understand why Maxis did it that way.

[jsalemi]

Yeah, a bit annoying.  I generally reset time until finals using Insim when my students return to the dorm so that the term stays in synch.

JMP's College Clock has an option to sync everyone in the dorm's time to a particular sim.  Very handy for keeping multiple residents synchronized.

[Kralore]

This just gets worse and worse. LOL

I played a different family,  booked a vacation at Three Lakes.   Checked in at the campgrounds Monday 10am. I spent the night and decided to checkout and try a hotel.  I checked out of the campground Tuesday 1pm. At this point two 12 noon checkouts have passed, but camping is free, so there has been no charge.   

Went to the Three Lakes Cabins. As soon as I finished the final check'in.  I recieved the message "Checkout time passed while you were away from the hotel, 475$ has been added to your bill".... Not once, but twice. So in the end I was charged the normal 475$ for checking into the hotel, plus 475$ twice for the 2 noon checkouts that passed at the campgrounds that were supposedly free

[bowlwoman]

This is why I'm waiting for the patch and various hacks to correct this before I buy this expansion.  Plus, I just installed zOMGPetz and Seasons a few weeks ago (had to finish my thesis and graduate before I got to play), so I'm still learning the ins and outs of those two. 

Do you have to take the whole fam with you when visiting community lots or can you leave one person behind?  That might keep the room rate/vacation days from double kaching'ing?

[skandelouslala]

Way to go screwing that up EA!~

[Inge]

This is a little off topic but in reply to the student problem being tired from an outing when an exam is coming up, I have made a hacked object/patch pair that "closes" the college for periods of time, so for the entire household classes and exams are not called and the timer does not tick down.   I found it was the only way if I had a house of 8 sharers to be able to get them all on an outing at the same time without finding one had just escaped to class or had a final coming up.

[J. M. Pescado]

The College Clock has been able to timefreeze on home and community lots for ages, and I've never had a problem with sims running off to class, seeing as they don't go unless I tell them to. As long you avoid massive-desync issues caused by messed up time tracking, finals come at predictable times.

[Inge]

Well you probably have yours autonomy off.  It's a complete pain cancelling go to class off the queues of 8 students, especially after they choose their majors and you forget to check the right queue at the right moment.

[Wusel]

As an example...you leave the hotel lot to visit another community lot at 9am,   you stay at the community lot until 6pm,  at 12 noon while your visiting the community lot, the game will register that your staying another day at the hotel (you get no message about this though),  when you return to the hotel, the time is back to 9am when you left and you also get a message saying you missed checkout time and 1 day has been added to your hotel charge. 

Time passes in my game! When I leave the hotel at 9 am and come back at 6 pm, it is 6 pm in the hotel. It does not matter, if I visit the community lot with my whole family or with just one of them...

[Aggie]

As an example...you leave the hotel lot to visit another community lot at 9am,   you stay at the community lot until 6pm,  at 12 noon while your visiting the community lot, the game will register that your staying another day at the hotel (you get no message about this though),  when you return to the hotel, the time is back to 9am when you left and you also get a message saying you missed checkout time and 1 day has been added to your hotel charge. 

Time passes in my game! When I leave the hotel at 9 am and come back at 6 pm, it is 6 pm in the hotel. It does not matter, if I visit the community lot with my whole family or with just one of them...

Same here. Even when I had all my "filthy" hacks still in the game, time passed regularly like it hadn't done before. 

[Inge]

Wow!  What happens if you left some sims behind at the hotel?  Or can't you do that?

[Wusel]

You can leave some of them behind, time passes anyway. I have tried visiting other lots with the whole family and visiting other lots with the teenage boy only, his parents and little sister stayed in the hotel and time passed.

[KatEnigma]

Yep, time passed for me too. It was kinda nice, actually

[Inge]

I suppose the drawback is that when you get back to the hotel, exhausted at bedtime, the kids you left behind in the morning still have their green energy ready to play all night?

[Wusel]

It was not that bad, actually. I have found espresso machines in all hotels so far and just let the teen sleep a little longer in the morning while the rest of the family had fun at the beach.
In the morning, they all leave together to visit something and then in the evening kids and parents go to bed and teen leaves again, it works just fine.