Maxing out sims skills
SimsHost:
Wow! I just learned something! I didn't even know that there was a pool scholarship!
J. M. Pescado:
Quote from: DaveFlew on 2005 July 20, 14:29:47
Starting with Toddlers - any new Toddler of mine will spend more time with the Wabbit than with its parents. I regard the Toddler phase as being the ideal time to get up to 8 Charisma skill points, since I don't depend on the Execuputter or the Teleprompter for fun Charisma skill-building. It normally takes two days to get up to 8 Charisma skill points, after which I switch them to building Logic or Creativity.
Ah, but the wabbit *IS* time with its parents. A toddler using the wabbit can simultaneously interact with its parents, gaining easy, easy relationship boost without disrupting skill gaining at all. Well, okay, maybe not easy, easy. Actually, they mostly have a lot of bad conversations, because toddlers obviously cannot talk about anything interesting. It's kind of slow. But it's not like your parents have anything better to be doing, right?
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Child skill-building goes hand in hand with Fun, because Children are low in Fun once they return from school. If they bring a friend home from school, they head to the chessboard. This is good for Logic, Fun and Relationship score (and Comfort if you have a comfy chair). Another cure for low Fun is to gain Cooking skill by watching the Yummy Channel.
The piano can be another source of fun, but if you just need Fun Refill, Flamingo Kicking is powerful enough that the fact that you gain no skills doing it is completely offset by the more powerful training you can get from the Lie Detector under an instructor.
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Teenage skill-building revolves around getting all skills up to 8 points, in order to earn skill-based scholarships. It's just normal studying, really - nothing unusual. If there's a need for the Teen Sim to have fun, they'll head off to the pool table. Enough trips to the pool table and your Sim will earn the pool scholarship.
Teen skilling for me currently involves mop-up. Most of the work has already been done by childhood.
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I try not to rely on Career Reward Objects for skill-building. The exceptions: Logic (thanks to the Biotech station's glitch which escalates the rate of skill building), Mechanical (the Surgical Training Station just seems "nicer" than reading a book) and Cleaning (if you can find it, the Fingerprint Scanner sure beats studying from a book).
I prefer to use career objects extensively, because otherwise, your parents and grandparents sit around pretty uselessly as an untapped resource.
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Weekends are serious skill-building time for my Child and Teen Sims. I send a Child/Teen Sim to bed on Friday night, and wake them up as soon as the Energy bar is full - even if it's at 2am or 3am.
I generally clock-time my sims, so they don't really oversleep anyway. One nice thing about the Cooking and Mechanical rewards is that you can "overdrive" a sim well past their normal energy-quit mark, forcing them to continue until they're about ready to pass out rather than letting them stop to whine about it. By then, their calculated bedtime mark usually has arrived, and I can have them wake at a civilized hour alongside their parents for more training. Teens, on the other hand, have access to both caffeination and the Energizer. SLEEP IS FOR WUSSES! Not to mention if they're still not finished yet, they're behind schedule, and have already failed to break the speed record, and so must be driven harder!
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Once a Sim goes to University, I plan their skill-building so that it coincides with a career-related Lifetime Want. For example, a Sim whose Lifetime Want is to become a Mad Scientist will focus on maximising Logic and Cleaning, and getting the 9th Cooking point. By rights, any Young Adult Sim who enters University with at least 8 skill points across the board should be able to maximise all 7 skills while at University.
I try not to wait that long for maximization, because Knowledge sims get majorly jacked in their skillpoint wants at Uni: They don't get ANY, and thus Knowledge is basically a dead aspiration in Uni. Have your lifetime platinum or suffer badly.
Quote from: SimsHost on 2005 July 20, 14:51:13
Wow! I just learned something! I didn't even know that there was a pool scholarship!
The pool scholarship takes *FOREVER* and doesn't pay all that well. I tried to get it once, but takes well over a day of continuous pool to get it that high, and there's no feedback like there is with the Dancing scholarship. And while the Dancing Scholarship is USEFUL, in the sense that getting there unlocked Bust-A-Move, one of the power-cycle socials that makes friend-building a snap, pool is useless, and your sims will likely never touch a pool table again for as long as they live. As a source of fun, it is vastly outclassed by flamingo-kicking, and provides no other useful collateral benefit that isn't similarly vastly outclassed. While it's possible to gain relationship points with other sims while playing pool, it's vastly outclassed in both fun and relationship boost to the point where you can kick a flamingo to max fun, then Bust-A-Move your way to 100 in far less time than it would take doing pool.
Suffice it to say, Pool, like every other new Maxian obsession, is completely worthless and not worth the bother to acquire or use. It has no practical application, unlike the Dancing scholarship. For a puny $1000 or so, it's not worth over a day of effort.
vcline:
Quote from: DaveFlew on 2005 July 20, 14:29:47
Child skill-building goes hand in hand with Fun, because Children are low in Fun once they return from school. If they bring a friend home from school, they head to the chessboard. This is good for Logic, Fun and Relationship score (and Comfort if you have a comfy chair).
Yes, I like this aspect too, and also use painting to gain enough fun to get their homework done. Of course, sometimes they have to kick the flamingo when they get home to get enough fun so that they will agree to paint or play chess.
Vicki
HRH Posie:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2005 July 20, 15:06:47
The pool scholarship takes *FOREVER* and doesn't pay all that well. I tried to get it once, but takes well over a day of continuous pool to get it that high, and there's no feedback like there is with the Dancing scholarship.
Suffice it to say, Pool, like every other new Maxian obsession, is completely worthless and not worth the bother to acquire or use. It has no practical application, unlike the Dancing scholarship. For a puny $1000 or so, it's not worth over a day of effort.
I manage to get the pool scholarship in around 11 hours. Most of my sim children, as mentioned previously, will already qualify for the 7 skill scholarships when they transition into teens. If like me you also want them to qualify for the teen job scholarship, you might as well build pool skill to fill in the time between transition and moving to University. I totally agree about the dance scholarship. Bust a move is such a great relationship builder and I'd be lost without it. From my experience it takes just over an hour of dancing with a partner to unlock bust a move. I studied pool skill building last month and you can find the results here.
Oddysey:
Quote from: J. M. Pescado on 2005 July 20, 15:06:47
Teens, on the other hand, have access to both caffeination and the Energizer. SLEEP IS FOR WUSSES!
Do you read the webcomic www.userfriendly.org? Because I think Pitr (a character with a bad Russian accent who wants to take over the world) is your soulmate. He once forced Pepsi and Coca Cola to merge under his leadership and created "Pitr Cola." Ingredients: Caffiene.
Quotes:
"Sleep, she is for the weak."
"If the Giger counter does not click, the coffee, she is just not thick."
And who could forget "alien blood coffee," the freakishly strong caffeinated substance that burned a hole all the way through the building and into the sewage mains below?
Seriously, you should check it out. A computer geek/hacker/generally pithy personage like yourself would greatly enjoy it.
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