I do this too   I use the mind-control mirror.  I also use no reassign so the managers don't go around auto assigning all the cashiers to clean the toilets    I'm actually pretty happy with that setup, except for just that one problem of the employees getting paid (for a third time!) while I'm visiting.

I might have a look for that no quit hack.  I think somebody linked to a collection of Squinge stuff somewhere around here...

This is the thing that bothers me most.  I don't care about the double-dipping so much, since most of the employees (cashiers and stock boys) make squat anyway, and it doesn't hurt the business owner's pocket, but the "triple-dipping", third-party visits, DO bother me a lot.  Especially since when you show up, all the employees are working, including the insanely wage-greedy managers (who I try to use sparingly when playing the owner's lot).  This does actually subtract money from the business owner, and since you're not in charge of running the business, it works inefficiently, and if you stay too long the business owner will go broke.

I very much like that my business owners can make money off visits from other Sims in the neighborhood, but the way this is set up, they almost never make a profit.

On a related note, does anyone else think that managers are disgustingly overpaid?  I almost never call them in because they're so expensive, but you have to have one to make money at home (right?).  I am already using relevantwages.  This is especially annoying when somebody owns a little kiosk or something.  Like your kiosk manager is really going to make $70 an hour!!!  Anyone know of any good fixes for that?


This is true.  It was patched.

My gardener sucks too!  I have to move all my shrubs away from any walls, and the half-flowers away from borders before he'll touch them.  It is annoying, but I don't remember it ever being different.

No, it doesn't.  I'd like to know how to get rid of them too.

I'm also wondering, if anyone knows, if a parent hands over a top level business to a child, does that count?  Or will the child still need to knock it down to level 9 and then back up again?

Thank you!  This is just what I had in mind!

Thanks   I forgot about that.


Right, but then I would have to go through all the bother of getting them back together to go to the next lot. 

I have a few annoyances I would love to see solved.  I'm hoping maybe some of you might point me to a good hack or suggest a workaround I might use. 

1.) The "go here" action that happens when they are in casual groups is SO annoying.  When I take one of my Sims to a club with his friends, and I want one guy at the bar, a couple more on the dance floor, and maybe a couple in the hot tub, but NO, they all have to follow my Sim, and stand next to the bar being totally useless like they have nothing better to do    Anyone know of a mod that stops all the following?  I mean, isn't that what we have the "gather casual group" option for? 

2.) Some kind of an "I forgive you" action, to get rid of furiousness?  Or maybe a way to get rid of it in SimPe? (I had a quick look in SimPe and couldn't find anything)  I've got this girl who is mad at her boyfriend, and she's been mad at him for a whole year of uni.  They've long since made up, back to 100/100 relationship, but she's still half furious with him.  Enough already!  (And he even rejected the hot tub cuddle, which makes the whole thing even sillier, but you know, that's how Sims are...) 

Thanks!

ETA: I'm not above shameless begging, if anyone wants to make these for me

I tried out the evict and erase memories version.  It works as described. 

Not a problem, but maybe something to think about - her memory panel was completely reset, but she retained her relationships with everyone she had known.  Her relationship panel lists all her friends with the same friendship levels, all the guys she dated still have the crush symbol.  I used one of my playables (a guy she used to date) to invite her over, and just by chance, her current boyfriend walks by.  So I greeted her, and the boyfriend, and the two of them proceeded to head straight for the hot tub for some auto woo  

My very long-winded point is that if the reason we want to erase her memories is so that we can make her over and pretend she is a different Sim, then it seems strange when she retains her relationships.  Does that make sense?  Would there be a way to erase her relationship panel as well?

Thinking ahead now, once all of her memories and relationships are wiped, and I have made her over, renamed her, rerolled her personality and aspiration like she was a completely new Sim, all of her exes would still remember dating her, except their memories would be of the new girl, not the old one that they dated.  Which is still just as weird as having the grandsons date the same girl their grandfathers dated.  And so maybe this doesn't accomplish quite what we had in mind, and the only way to get what we really want is to kill off the old girl and create fresh new dormies, which creates new character files, and basically, we just cannot be pleased

Never said I didn't like it   I just mean that it's subtle.  I'm still using the mod so it must be okay

Nah, I don't really like them.  Stairs just take up space, and if my big honking stairs in real life take up most of my crappy little house, then they'll take up most of my Sim's house too!  It's only fair!

I use the ladder if I really need space saving, because that is realistic enough.

Squinge has as reduced LTW mod like this that I am VERY fond of: http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=39950

I agree that "cooking" is one of the biggest problems.  What if interactions were divided into two categories: ones that raise STR and others that raise LTR?  For example, a chat can raise your STR, but does nothing for your LTR.  A friendly hug will raise LTR, but maybe not STR.  Telling a joke raises STR, a family kiss raises LTR.  Flirting raises STR, which will trigger a crush (and I think it should).  Light kisses, kisses on the hand raise STR, romantic kisses and make outs raise LTR.  Woohoo raises LTR.  Obviously those are just suggestions for the actual categories, but you get the idea.  Would that work? 

With cooking off then, your Sim would have to make meaningful interactions to raise the LTR. 

And inspired by recent events in my house, I would like to suggest if anyone makes this mod, there has to be autonomous arguing with your spouse when in a bad mood!

And about that harder relationships mod over at MTS2, I'm not really noticing a big difference.  Just a few more bad conversations.  The one thing I am noticing though is that most of my Sims have too many common interests, so I need to change that up a bit.  So I also wonder if the bad conversations I'm noticing are a result of my varying their interests a little more??? 

I saw that.  I'm about to try it out right now.  I'll let you all know if it's any good. 

I don't know if any of you have dropped by the BBS lately, but they're all talking about Bon Voyage allowing you to take your toddlers on vacation with you... so maybe community lots too?  I guess we'll see.

Oooh, ditto!  I was just wondering if this mod would be useful for this.  I too have probably about 30 or 40 YAs in my game, but keep seeing the same 10 of them over and over again. 

It's a little creepy actually, since my fathers and sons or mothers and daughters usually end up sharing a lot of the same traits, personalities, aspirations... they usually sleep with the same dormies too.  Ick! LOL.

Good point about pretending they're relatives of the original townies.  With a makeover and some new clothes, maybe I'll try to think of it that way.

Kyna, what is Hook's randomiser?  And JadeElliott's list of random events?  It sounds like a lot of fun.

I love this topic!  It's so fascinating to see how other people play. 

Me - I am an absolute nerd about my Sims, LOL.  I have charts!  My husband laughs at me!  I play with a deck of cards for variety, which decides all kinds of things... what Sim is going to die a tragic and early death... what Sims "move away" (population control!)... oops, somebody got pregnant... somebody has a midlife crisis... how much does so-and-so really want to go to college?... family lost everything in a tragic house fire... criminals draw a card for jail risk, law enforcement and military draw a card for death risk...  I'm not kidding when I say I have charts

My custom neighborhood is Lakeside Heights.  I have 71 Sims, several different family lines, who I play equally in 3 day intervals, and my fourth generation kids are just starting to be born.  I've been at this neighborhood for over a year, and had another before it that I played since the beginning, and that one made it to the 6th generation before I started over.  Lakeside Heights has a downtown, Lake City (the Maxis default, remodeled), and Bluewater Village has been wiped clean and turned into a farming suburb.

I mostly build my own lots, but I do download too. 

Interactions - I'm pretty big on free will, and I almost never exit without saving.  I keep in mind that just because they want something, doesn't mean they'll get it.  I do try to keep them happy though.  I guess I'm big into realism.  Some of my Sims end up very successful, some lonely, some poor but happy, some miserable.

About half of my families have pets.  I don't play any of the vampires/werewolves/zombies etc...  Except I have one alien Sim, but I didn't really have any choice in that matter.  I'm a little irritated right now actually because I can't keep my farmer from turning into a plant Sim with all the spraying he does, but that's another discussion.

Hacks - A lot of them!  I like things that make their lives more realistic, harder, and more logical.  I have quite a bit of CC too. 

I don't share any of my creations.  I'm greedy like that.  Maybe I will someday though, because my houses are pretty cute

Good topic!

A brilliant mod!  Working great so far, no problems.  Even works when messing around with the sethour cheat, which I do quite a bit. 

This is a good idea, providing a sim would be able to achieve at least a best friends relationship (for example, the cap should be no lower than 60/60) with any other sim.  I'd also be excited to see how this would work in family relationships too, where living together pretty much guarantees an easy 100/100 between parents and siblings as long as they have meals together.  You know, in all these years of Sims playing, I've never had a teen hate his/her family enough to run away.  I would love some variety in that aspect. 

But yes, I too would love to get excited about finding one true love, or one true best friend forever type of relationship.  And then they can have other "buddy" kind of best friends too, at 60/60 or 70/70 relationship caps.  Still high enough to count as best friends though. 


I use the ACR interaction "Will I Woohoo?" for this, which gives their attraction in a number.  It's very useful for getting an idea of my sim's interest in another before approaching.


MasterDinadan, I like these ideas too.

Basically, there are a lot of good ideas in this thread, and if someone made it, I would LOVE to play it.  Of course, I am nowhere near awesome enough to help out, other than testing it when it's ready  

I hope someone does look into it though.

Just wanted to say that I had no problem understanding the documentation.  I never did get the Excel calculator to work though.  I ended up breaking out my old graphing calculator from high school - finally, a use for that stupid thing! 

Very easy to understand, thank you! 

I just have a couple questions.  What would happen if I decided to make it unbalanced?  If I didn't keep the 4 majors per career ratio?  For example, if I wanted only biology majors to be able to go into medicine? 

And is there any way to add custom careers into this hack?  If it's very complicated, don't worry about it, because I probably wouldn't be able to do it.


ETA: (by syberspunk to merge posts)

A problem...

In the calculator, if I try to change anything in the 0/1 columns, to get a new hex value, it gives me an error.  It says "#NAME?".  It won't let me change anything.


Note: when possible, please use edit rather than double posting.

Well, it's an interesting idea... but I've been playing the same sims, all equally, steming from five original sims (comparable to about your generation 2?), and they're only just having their fourth generation after about a year of play.   In this challenge, I might finish by the time my real life kid is in college

Kudos for all your hard work though!

Just to clarify,
Don't worry about it, I would rather be playing too!

Yes, I am using v0.00.19 for Seasons.

In my game the jobs change over at midnight.  I think my original post was a little confusing, so let me clarify.  In my post, each line of each day represents one of the three sims, and the jobs they were offered in that same day, before the jobs changed over at midnight.  Does that make sense?  I know what you guys mean about the game rolling up only 5 jobs for each day.

I guess the weirdest thing I noticed, is that on the same day the biology major was offered the law enforcement job, neither of the other two were.  I assume you've left the law enforcement career path open to everyone?  But of course, if it's not supposed to be open to everyone, then that's a whole different story   I guess the other discrepancies could be explained by the changes you've made to the requirements.

I like it though, so I'll keep playing it the way it is until you update.  Happy Simming!

I love this hack!  Anything to make my sims lives a little harder

Are you still looking for testing info on this?  (seasons version)  Everything seemed to be working as described, except a few small differences.  I used three sims, one born in game, one spawned from TL&D, one CAS.

all of these job searches are on the computer

Day 1:
born in game, went to uni, math major was offered 3 jobs: writer (custom), social work (custom), and science - no more.
spawned from TL&D, no uni was offered 2 jobs: writer (custom), and social work (custom) - no more.
CAS, no uni, upgraded to biology major with debugger was offered 4 jobs: writing (custom), science, law enforcement, social work (custom) - no more

Law enforcement should availale to everyone?  My math major and my non-uni sim were not offered it.  And no one was offered 5 jobs, not even the biology major.

Day 2:
born in game, went to uni, math major was offered 4 jobs: adventurer, military, athletics, investment (custom) - no more.
spawned from TL&D, no uni was offered 4 jobs: adventurer, military, athletics, investment (custom) - no more.
CAS, no uni, upgraded to biology major with debugger was offered 5 jobs: adventurer, natural science, military, athletics, investment (custom)

My math major should have been offered natural science?

Day 3:
born in game, went to uni, math major was offered 5 jobs: journalism, slacker, medicine, computing (custom), social work.
spawned from TL&D, no uni was offered 3 jobs: slacker, computing (custom), social work - no more.
CAS, no uni, upgraded to biology major with debugger was offered 5 jobs: journalism, slacker, medicine, computing (custom), social work.

My math major should not have been offered medicine?

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you want me to test anything else.

And are you still working on the documentation for customizing?  I would definitely be interested in making some of my custom careers require degrees.

Thanks!