That's the sort of thing I wanted to see.  I deliberately paired the Commitment Issues / Dislikes Children female with a Family Oriented male to see if I could get any fireworks, but so far she's been a happy little breeder.  The only effect so far was that she rejected his first marriage proposal, but readily accepted when I took the time to build up the relationship a bit more.  That, and the -15 moodlet for being around her own spawn while she fulfills the "Teach to Talk" want she rolled.

I'm not sure what "worry over commitment" looks like, though.  It's an animation?

 - Gus

Natural Cook gives you +1 food quality, once you get the "Kick It Up A Notch" interaction.  Usually you must do this manually when they cook, but they sadorandomly decide to do it on their own now and then.  They can give +1 food quality to foods other Sims cook with this action as well.

There's a thread in the Facts & Strategry board which gives the effects of Lucky in XML.  There's a host of stuff it affects.  Mostly it prevents failures like item breakage, getting shocked, and getting robbed, making them impossible.

I discovered last night that a Sim Commitment Issues still enjoys getting married, and even though she Dislikes Children she still enjoys being pregnant and rolls Baby wants once pregnant.  I was sort of expecting the Commitment Issues / Dislikes Children combo to give her the Fears of a Romance Sim, but in practice it just means she has to like her boyfriend more to get married, and wasn't reluctant to spawn at all.

 - Gus

Good to know.  Now I have more incentive to nuke the occasional stupid ones.

I'd miss the fear system more if it had ever mattered in TS2.  As a practical matter, only things like Fire or Death ever triggered without the player's deliberate intent.  At least with the present system, you don't get sims ignoring a spouse's death because they didn't happen to roll that Fear that day.

I agree though that with reasonable play, it's not hard to overcome most negative moodlets.  Tanked mood is rare if you know what you're doing.

 - Gus

Just now I was bitching that my Sims all feel the same, regardless of personality traits.  Yet that's not entirely true.  Some seem to be more visible than others.

Ones that have stood out for me, mainly because of moodlets or meaningful additional behavior:

Neurotic - lots of Cleaning wishes pop up, and check-the-sink behavior.  And Freak Out, though I usually forget to use that.
Neat - mostly wishes, the "extra clean" action isn't very visible.
Grumpy - mostly because it's a permanent -15 or 20 (not sure) invisible moodlet.
Hates the Outdoors - much more visible than Loves, since they constantly get the "go indoors" Want, and occasionally the "hide in house for 2 days" want.
Loner - the "too many people" moodlet often turns work from a neutral mood to a negative one.
Insane - I haven't played any of these, but it's bleeding obvious when a townie is insane.
Childish - similar to Insane
Kleptomaniac

There are several that have definite game bonuses, but aren't very visible.  Genius has well-defined effects, for example, but my non-Genius sims want to play chess just as often, and the bonuses don't stand out when I'm playing.

There are some that seem near-pointless, like Daredevil or Evil.  Slapping "evil" or "extreme" on every action doesn't change a damned thing.  Evil does get the "enjoy suffering" moodlet, and the "Steal Candy from Baby" action, but it's pretty minor.

 - Gus

True.  One reason I can't see going back to TS2, ever, is that there are fewer completely stupid Wants.  And more to the point, while we're limited to 4 locked Wants, extra unlocked Wants aren't clogging a limited resource, want slots.  So what if your Sim rolls a Want for the inefficient "friendly introduction" when they have "charming introduction"?  Just delete it and move on.

However, I still want stronger flavor to the personality traits.  All my Sims are starting to feel the same, and not just because their parents always want them to have the Genius trait.

 - Gus

It's fairly clear that many wishes are event-triggered.  Seeing another Sim triggers socialization Wishes, i.e. walk into a room with a toddler and they want to snuggle it, but seem completely unaware that their child exists unless they see the child periodically.

Other wishes seem arbitrarily generated, like learning to Fish, Cook, or play guitar.  Fishing generates "catch X" wishes, but the original Go Fishing wish is random.

Traits fairly clearly have some weight, but nowhere near as much as I'd like.  Everyone seems to want to Fish and Garden, even if they hate the outdoors.

 - Gus

I was curious, so I ran a Family Oriented Sim up to Elder without deliberately forcing a romance or kids.  The only family-related Wish he rolled was to kiss some women.  But once they were kissed, he showed no further interest in them, and never rolled Have A Baby.

From past experience, Sims fairly regularly start rolling Have a Baby / Have a Boy / Have a Girl / Have a Baby with Spouse once you've actually primed the pump by starting the first kid.  But it's clear that they won't start thinking about kids on their own, even if that's supposedly one of their personality traits.

Ditto WooHoo.  I've seen WooHoo wishes often enough, but only once I've pushed them into losing their virginity.  Otherwise they're just fine being celibate their entire simulated lives.

I'm disappointed.  I had the impression that the Personality Traits influenced Wish-rolling as much as the old Aspirations, and now I'm thinking that's not true.  Family Sims rolled these wants on their own quite regularly in TS2.

 - Gus

I timed various vehicles traveling from one of the homesteads on the outskirts to the central park.  In the process, I discovered just how very screwy the vehicle selection can be - as often as not, the Sim would choose a slower vehicle, and on at least one occasion a vehicle that was marked as owned by another Sim.

The distance (43.6 km, or 27.1 miles) I measured by having a Sim jog the same route, and noted the distance covered in the Skill notes.

Vehicle	Time (minutes)	Speed (MPH)
Jog	267	6
Run	102	16
Bicycle	37	44
Cab	28	58
Jalopy	26	63
Vorn 328	24	68
Stretch Limo	24	68
Yomoshoto Evasion	20	81
Police Cruiser	16	102
VFN Komensator	15	108
Bwan Speedster	10	163
Magaret Vaguester	10	163

Most trips in the game are much shorter than this, so you don't really get much real time savings from cars until you get to the Evasion, unless you're living in the boonies.  Bikes, despite what I believed before, are simply a drawback for adults.  Certain career paths slow you down because you're forced to drive the Stretch Limo everywhere even if you have a faster car.  At least the Police Cruiser is worthwhile.

Children on bicycles are the same speed regardless of whether it's a default bike or a bike you purchased: 44 mph, the same as adults.  So there's no point in purchasing bike racks, since adult bikes are a drawback and children's bikes make no difference.

EDIT: added running speed, which turns out to be roughly 2.5x the pokey Jog.
EDIT: noted child bike speeds.

 - Gus

I never found the social drain on larvae / rug rats to be an undue burden, even with 3-4 to monitor.  Or rather, no more than the other needs, since it seems to drain about the same as hunger.  My usual routine is Play With / Feed / Change Diaper, move on.  For toddlers it's Toss In Air / Change Diaper / Feed On Floor.

I had no idea you could put the bear in the crib, though.  I generally ignore the toys that don't raise skills.

 - Gus

They never show up in the bookstore, despite hints to the contrary.  They show up in the library, but otherwise the free copies you get for writing them are the only copies in existence.

 - Gus

They always bring Normal quality food.  You want a plate (or plates, if you've invited a lot of guests) of Excellent or Outstanding food, so your guests all get good food moodlets.  If you don't have that cheaty Legendary Host perk, this is the easiest way to get the "amazing party" rating, which fulfills the Wish and gives your host Sim a positive moodlet.

Fortunately, you can keep the idiot guests from noshing on that crappy plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by using Call to Meal on the decent food as soon as all the guests are on the lot.

 - Gus

Yes, they do.  I've completed "read X books" wishes with reading recipes and skill books.  I don't know if it works for songs, since learning a song doesn't use the Read interaction.  If you do it properly, anyway, instead of reading the songbook.

 - Gus

Revive requires the Green Thumb trait.  Not the perk, the personality trait.

 - Gus

I don't care about healthy or unhealthy, I just want their to be some point to the desserts.  It annoys me that they are just like any other meal, and you might as well ignore them.  Except for Baked Angel Food, of course, since it gives you an extra +Warmth moodlet.

Or contrarywise, you can subsist on nothing but desserts, but that feels wrong.

I can justify mentally some things that have no in-game reason, like eating breakfast foods at breakfast and dinners at night, rather than having lobster for breakfast every morning.  I just can't manage that with desserts, because dessert and dinner are an either-or situation.  Eat one, don't eat the other.  If you eat both, you gain no additional moodlet, and just force your Sim to get fat pointlessly.

As I've said before, ideally you'd want some additional benefit to eating both, like stacked moods, but at the cost of fat points.  But that's not going to fit into the existing code.

Next-best, I suppose, would be higher moodlets for dessert, but automatic fat even if you're not stuffed.  I'm not sure that's doable either.

 - Gus

I didn't pay much attention to them originally, but I did end up moving one of their descendants in with my one of my Sims to be his mistress.  Of course his wife didn't notice that half the kids in the house weren't hers.

Oddly enough, it seems that toddlers have X-ray vision and detect infidelity through several walls.  None of his kids ended up liking him much, since they'd all get upset when he'd WooHoo with the other woman.

 - Gus

You're pulling those numbers out of your ass.  The XML clearly says 15% per item, not 5%, and the maximum change is 50%, not 15%.  Since the base is 50% male, you can get 100% male by eating 4 apples, or 100% female by eating 4 watermelons.

I've had no trouble forcing whatever gender I want.

 - Gus

The "Can't Stand Art" variation on that painting is very Donny Darko.

 - Gus

Aside from the +5 mood for carrying one, Flame Fruit is an ingredient in Angel Food Cake, which gives a larger warmth bonus (+15 if I recall) after you eat it, beyond the regular food quality bonuses.

Despite that, I feel compelled to feed Sims a "healthy," time-appropriate diet, so I almost never end up eating the stuff.  Even though it's arguably the best food in the game, better than Lobster.  Desserts are kind of strange, since they're essentially just another meal.  If it were me, I'd have tweaked the design to get behavior much like real desserts, i.e. Sims would eat dinner and a small serving of dessert, and the bonuses would stack, but doing so meant fat.

 - Gus

It's not clear that auto-water is even needed.  You can just turn the sprinkler on and leave it on, with no apparent ill effects.  Personally, I turn the sprinklers on briefly and then off whenever something obviously needs watering, just because constant watering bothers my frugal soul.

 - Gus

How did "French Toast" become "Waffles?"  French toast, unlike pancakes and cobbler, won't take just any fruit.  It requires 2 apples and 1 egg.  The "use ingredients from inventory first" rule is irrelevant, French Toast always contains apples.

 - Gus

I'm unclear why this particular bit has gone uncorrected for so long in this thread.  You can buy watermelons in the store, they're not difficult to obtain.  Sure, you get apple seeds for free when you reach Gardening 1, but buying or growing watermelons is hardly difficult.

A slightly more significant issue is that the best breakfast, French Toast, contains apples and doesn't advertise it.  If you're the sort of player who finds eating lobster for breakfast inappropriate, it's not hard to end up with only male offspring if you're not paying attention.
 
 - Gus

He's either an idiot or a liar.  The latter could be intentional humor, along the lines of the Diablo I "cow level" hoax, but sadly it's far more likely that he's just stupid.  Only the Omni plant generates more than once kind of produce, and it only copies what you feed it.

 - Gus

Dying and going barren are two different states.  Dying is pretty rare, you have to really neglect a plant to kill it ... except for the Death Flower, which always dies when it blooms.  The Green Thumb trait (not the reward) allows you to revive a plant, once.  So a Green Thumb Sim can get two Death Flowers.  Everyone else gets just one.

"Going barren" is unavoidable, and not reversible.  It's part of the game balance.  The idea is that you get a limited amount of produce from each planting cycle before you must go through the investment of planting and waiting through the initial growth.

Telling a Sim to clean up dead plants is fine if they're an amateur gardener, but prohibitively time consuming if they're a real farmer.  Each trip goes to the lot garbage can, and won't target small trash containers.  If you have a dozen or plants finish at once, which is common if you're planting in volume, you might as well just delete them manually in Build mode.

 - Gus

You can go back to your old house and harvest, but you can't tend.  The plants cease to need watering or weeding, and don't seem to go barren, so tending isn't that important.  If you have a lot of high-quality plants, you can abuse this a bit by moving next door, so the travel time is minimal.

 - Gus

I wasn't aware of the second condition.  I'll have to look into that.

 - Gus