I've been getting these for a couple of EPs now (can't remember when it started).  For me, it seems most common for Money sims, to the point I've stopped making money sims.

Agree on raising the social.  If I've only got one or two sims in a house, they don't get to blog (and I might not buy them a computer, just to avoid stupid computer behavior in general).  If I have four or more, I might let a sim blog just because it'll keep him occupied and not doing anything ridiculously stupid for a few hours while I deal with the ones who need attention.

This is why I tend to do stuff like vamp or use elixir on adult sims.  If I transition them to elders, they're going to be sucky for a long, long time.  Playing an elder sim into 80+ days is boring as hell.  Now I can also make good retirement homes with AL.

I may need to get that Age Duration hack.

With jumping rope now--and the obsession that kids have with it--it's nearly impossible not to get kids up to Body 3+ before they become teenagers.

Huh.  I was unaware of the Playfulness limit on meditation.  Checking my sims, it seems the ones that can't meditate do, indeed, break the limit.  I learn something new every day.

By the time my sims are adults (and usually by the time they're teenagers), they have Body 3, Logic 3.  Certain sims, though, never learn to meditate or do yoga--or they do learn it, then forget it later.  I'm assuming this due to a mod or a hack, but before I go pulling them out and putting them back, I wanted to know if anyone else has run into this and already knows what causes it.

True.  However, the first thing I did with my witches was max them out and make everything they could possibly make.  The thrones seemed like a good idea . . . at first.  Then they made things really boring.  However, they're a good source of revenue for the stay-at-home witch.  When I finally use AL for apartments (by making a retirement home), I'll have the witches make thrones and then sell them to pay the rent.

Or I'll just keep moving more and more old sims in and just forgetting about them, like a real retirement home.

My witch sims pretty much summon magical servants to clean house, get rid of puddles and leaves, and, when children age up into teenagers, the resident witches give them a birthday present of a buff physique.  I made the teenage member of the Newson family (the all-underage bin family) a witch and she would produce food magically for free.  Then I got bored with having witches since the throne means witches don't have to do anything once they have one.

Casual witching isn't that hard.  After I got my first witch made (which is kind of an ordeal, though not as hard as getting a werewolf), then you just send them to the magic lot of whichever choice, buy up a ton of reagents, study magic, and use the available throne to recharge all motives when necessary until you've maxed out magic skill.  It takes a while where you're not doing anything but monitoring needs, but you can mostly do it on fast-forward and watch TV or read a book, just looking up every once in a while to check those motives.

I didn't even know that mod existed . . . but now I have it and TJ's other "no autonomy" mods. 

I've decided I've got an actual annoyance with AL (at least, it's not something I've ever noticed before): Obsessive diary writing.  "Hey," my sims think, "I just went to the toilet and took a shower, and I didn't immediately have anything else in my queue--I'd better write in my diary about my latest BM!"

I can at least understand my sims wanting to obsessively browse the internets.  Keeping a written record of everything they do, immediately after they do it, is weird. 

It's a little better with a regular bookcase--but not much.  The throne regens needs *really* fast, so you can work a sim to the point they're in desperation, then sit them down to study something in a book for a little while, and they're full up again.  But at least it means you have to do things with them occasionally.

I don't think I'm going to make any more witches in my house with the education bookcase.

The biggest thing which I'm kind of torn on is making a witch character high enough level to build a throne.  At that point, I'm playing that character in God mode.  Witch sims with a throne don't need to eat, or sleep, or talk to other people, or do fun things.  They can just sit in a chair and skillinate 24 hours a day.

I use the campus directory to gain relationship with Greek house folks and secret society members, or with college sims I saw on a community lot and checked out up close for facial defects.  I don't trust the thumbnail portraits.

If she went around in her actual special outfit--the cheerleader outfit--it wouldn't be so bad (though I'd have to make sure she never got old, because ick). 

I don't even want to imagine the hideous spawn of any two random Eaxis sims.  Making sure my sims meet sufficiently attractive NPC sims to have kids with is the hardest part of the game.

Usually I just rotate houses based on generation.  I'll typically play one house until a kid reaches an age transition, then play the next house until the kids in that generation have caught up to the first house, and so on.  I keep track of it from memory, and if I go long enough without playing and the neighborhood is so involved that I don't want to re-learn the family tree, I just wipe and restart.

The last neighborhood I wiped would have benefitted most from AL (since I created a retirement home pre-AL to house all of my senior citizens), but after half a dozen generations, there was way too much going on.

I'm too soft-hearted to kill my sims off myself.  As a side-effect, I almost never resurrect sims, because they'd just come back old--and in this case there's nothing sadder than an old llama furry.

It's not her outfit or her job (she's currently a flight lieutenant, and wears her uniform to and from work just fine).  It's only when she visits community lots or other sims' homes.

Faizah confirmed my suspicion that it's a coding issue in the game.  Too bad there's no fix at present.  Not marrying cheerleader types is probably good advice (in the game if not out of it), but it's a little late for that.

One of my sims hit it off really well with the cheerleader who kept coming to his dorm at university, so he married her (I was going to marry him to someone else, but he seemed to build points faster with the cheerleader).  No problems, except that she's amazingly sloppy, oh, and when she goes to community lots or visits other sims, she dresses like a llama.

If she was the mascot at college, I'd at least understand why there might be some weird code that made her dress like a llama when going out.  But she wasn't the mascot, and while it's kind of funny, it's more annoying.

Is this a known issue, and is there a patch somewhere to correct it?

Oddly, inbreeding sims seems like a good strategy to keep all the horrible deformities of EAxis-designed sims out of the family.  Too much non-selective breeding with the townies would make all of my towns look like Innsmouth.

Thanks!

And alien color with human features is actually pretty cool.  It's the reverse I don't like--normal human skintones with no nose and gigantic human eyes.  It's like the neighborhood is being invaded by black velvet paintings of Third World orphans from the 1970s.

I need to get one of those, yeah.  It would probably be impractical at best (and likely impossible) to change the way genetics worked just for human-alien hybrids so that it wasn't possible to get human coloration with alien features.

As noted, aliens behave exactly the same as other sims.  The downside--the only downside--is that you get horrible freak babies until some of the less-attractive genetics (like hugely oversized eyes and no noses) breed out.  Me, I made sure my alien families had cosmetic surgery machine career rewards (and a spare in the dorm I use in University), so that they could shrink their eyes down and get some sort of nose.

As far as getting a sim abducted without hacks, I wouldn't count on it.  With FT, knowledge sims can gain the ability to summon aliens, but that greatly reduces the chance of pregnancy (I've had one sim get abducted 5 or 6 times now, and he's never come back pregnant yet).  The only sure-fire ways to get aliens into your neighborhood are to play the Curious family in Strangetown or attach La Fiesta University to your neighborhood and play Stella Terrano, then graduate her. 

I haven't been able to pick up FT yet, but that sounds fine to me.

Just grabbed it.  Well worth the download.

Now I just need a Bass-O-Matic, to make delicious juices from fish, and I won't even need a stove.