XMLs are lying to me about bills, I cannot figure out how the heck the game
Claeric:
determines how much you get billed.
According to an XML it's a certain percentage of the "total assets". I assume this is the furnished household value, possibly with the money your sims have included.
I'm trying to make the bills higher, to encourage sims to require cheaper houses at earlier job levels (a single sim wouldnt be able to afford a 20k home until job level 3, usually, with this mod. You'd have to pay attention to the household value as well as your sims earnings instead of basically having a free ride as long as your sim had a job. MUCH less disposable income this way.). So I told the xml to set it at .05 instead of .013.
But when billing time comes, a home with just over 20k lot value gets billed just 541 simoleons. This is MORE than the base game value should be (260) and LESS than what the mod should be (just over 1k).
The math indicates this is not .05 OR .013 the value of:
Furnished household
Unfurnished household
Furnished + Current funds
Unfurnished + Current funds
Any of the above divided by two (XML also claims sims are billed twice per week despite billing being a weekly thing?)
The household has two sims but I found nothing indicating bills are any less for a household depending on the number of sims.
So I have no idea what is determining it. There's clearly some other factor that influences the bills. But...what is it? How the heck do bills work?
I can't have my dream of hard mode until I figure this out. :( This is driving me crazy.
wizard_merlin:
Have you tried dissecting one of the other billing mods that increase the bill value and see how they did it, might give you some clues as to what you need to do for your own tweak.
Claeric:
I had no idea such mods exist.
The_Goddess:
Here is one.
http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=383084
Claeric:
Checking out that 5% one, I see the same information I changed.
So I still don't know anything about it, because that 5% isn't 5% of the household value. So I still don't know what determines bill amounts...
I was getting 541 for a 2,100 home. So that is 5% of...10,800?
...Was that just the bills for one of the two billing days? :| I think it must've been. So I guess I just need to tell it to do it once a week...damnit, that means somebody already did it. ;-; Dumb jerks stealing my cool game-difficulty-increasing ideas.;-;
Whatever, at least i know how it works now. Plus I have some fun math done to know just how difficult such bills are.
If your sim was, say, level 1 in the Business career, they'd bring in 810 simoleons in a week. Woops! Can't afford the bills, sucks for you. A sim at level 1 business career could afford a 16,000 dollar home, at 800 a week- but they wouldn't be able to afford food. This means a sim at level 1 business career must have a home of, say, 15k to live comfortably. That would cost 750 simoleons a week, allowing 60 for food.
A criminal sim at level 1 will bring in 510 a week, meaning they could live in a 9,000 simoleon house with minor discomfort.
Two sims working business and law enforcement at level 1 would bring in 2010 simoleons a week. They could easily live in a 20k home.
Part time jobs won't properly pay for a single sim's housing until they get to level 3.
With the base game a sim at level 3 of the culinary career, bringing in 1170 per week, could easily afford a 50k house (650 per week). Not so now- they'd need 2500 to do so- something they won't get until level 6! (Unless they have a partner or roommate)
This means you will have POOR sims. This means you will NEED to advance in a job. This means writers, painters, etc will NEED a part time job. This makes disposable income MUCH harder to come by. It makes saving important- don't go and immediately spend as much money as you can when making a new sim, you damn well better do the math to make sure they can actually afford the house you're building for them! The more money you make, the more expensive your home can be, and the easier it is to sustain it. The more money-bringers you have the easier it is, as well.
That sounds a LOT more fun to me. :D
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