Since success in the challenge is measured by the number of days required to complete the challenge, the time you spend getting to the top of a career is never moot. If the number of sim days you take to do the challenge isn't important to you, so be it.

With regard to male pregnancies, you must be using a hack that I do not use because the only way my male Sims can become pregnant is alien abduction. That's hard to do with little or nothing unlocked since telescopes aren't available unless you unlock NatSci. I have no hacks that increase the chances of alien abduction so males conceiving that way is a very low probability event. If you unlock NatSci with your founder instead of Education, you're screwed because your Sim teens cannot go to high school. How does one grow them into adults if they flunk out first?

I do all Knowledge Sims since they routinely spin up wants to gain skills, do homework, write term papers and do college assignments, all things I want my challenge Sims to do. If you want to make friends or woohoo 20 or whatever for your permaplatness, have at it. I don't consider those options better nor more useful than LTW Max 7.

professorbutters commented on founder gender and aspiration switching in college:
Aging isn't a problem if you take the Elixir as the aspiration reward for unlocking Science. It allows you to leverage the time investment made in the founder and ignore the Paranormal track, unlocking it as the last career done. Insofar as switching aspirations in college, it's not necessary. You can spend all the time you want downtown with your founder doing every social interaction you wish, building friendships and establishing relationships, without the college clock ever moving. What's the point of changing aspirations when you can have as many dates with your founder as you want to get all the aspiration points you'll ever need? There is no point to that. You can make all the money you'll ever need as a barista even though it's mind-numbingly boring at 16 simoleons a pop. I usually call a halt at 30K or so before I yank out the rest of my thinning hair.

Your point about the car+driveway is well taken. Leaving space underneath the house for the obstacle course used to be a viable alternative but the Adventurer restriction killed that strategy.

rohina pointed out the brokenness in the Pets Apocalypse rules:
Unleashed didn't light my fire in TS1 so I skipped Pets in TS2. I don't have that expansion so I ignored all rules dealing with pets in the challenge. It's too bad that Pinstar hasn't fixed the Pets rules.

I agree that his Seasons rules lack that special something. They make the challenge incredibly difficult but I wouldn't say that they make the challenge more challenging. That's the point, after all, isn't it? It has to be more than an exercise in Simmer stress testing; the challemge should be enjoyable, with multiple paths to victory. After 50 days or so of staring at blowing Sim snow, you begin to ask yourself just how much fun is this? I do hope that Pinstar will spend some time polishing his rules and bringing some fun back to his Apocalypse challenge.

With my last pair of twins at University, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's not an onrushing freight train! 

It's Day 68, and I expect the last two siblings of my founder to complete the challenge in another sim-week or thereabouts so about 75 sim-days to do Seasons Apocalypse with the strategy I used. I enjoyed the challenge very much and learned some things from doing it which is IMO the mark of a good challenge.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of this challenge follow.

The Good
It's... um... quite challenging which good challenges should be. I would not recommend this for the casual Simmer, and if micromanaging isn't your thing, I'd advise skipping this challenge. In Pinstar's description, these rules are termed playtest rules. They are certainly that. The multiple interlocks on the abilities and objects you need to make rapid progress in solving the challenge make it extremely difficult to get off the ground and get going. The constant winter weather is grim and depressing, and you will likely grow to hate sim-snow. I know I did.

I do not have the Pets expansion so none of what follows applies to those rules. If you analyze what must be done to solve the challenge, you discover that there are twenty (20) career tracks total that must be unlocked. 10 of those are the original careers, four are from University and six are from Seasons. What you also discover is that no NPC will ever have a University career nor will they have a Seasons career. The only career an NPC (and thus a spouse) can ever have is one from the original set of careers. This leads us to the first strategem: if the founder and the siblings all do University + Seasons careers while their mates do original careers, the maximum number of children required to complete the challenge is nine (9). Unlocking Culinary relatively early makes cheesecake available, and using it to force twins gives the likely number of required pregnancies as six. Assuming you unlock access to college first (see below), that bounds the total number of sim-days required to approximately 4 x 6 = 24 child-bearing days. Other factors such as lot crowding, difficulty of conception, etc. will make your mileage vary.

The Bad
In one respect, Pinstar's Seasons Apocalypse rules are bad because they eliminate multiple paths to victory. Any solution which does not begin with Education + Military as its initial pair of unlocks is non-optimal. Simply put, if you do not gain the ability to launch Sim teens off to college ASAP, you cannot solve the challenge in the minimum number of days. If that's not a problem for you, do as you will but for those of you who wish to test themselves against Pinstar's challenge, this pair of careers is your starting point.

From a challenge design standpoint, that is an unfortunate outcome because good challenges encourage multiple paths to victory and promote multiple strategems in so doing. Pinstar does a fine job usually but, in this case, he blew it. The real challenge as the player in Seasons Apocalypse is to figure out how to proceed from this initial point. Your founder does Education and their spouse does Military but where do you go from there? All you've managed to do at that point is get your Sim kids eligible to attend high school and go to college (iff they have Body 10). Your Sims still stink, their food supply is severely limited, their phones and computers don't work, career rewards are useless, and they're stuck in an 8x8 floating dung-heap of a house in the middle of a never-ending blizzard.

The Ugly
So much rides on the townies and downtownies that to succeed in this challenge, you must carefully inventory each and every one of them, even the butt-ugly ones (isn't that most of them? ). You must find those who are L9 or L10 in their careers and befriend them before your founder leaves college. Previous experience with the Apocalypse Challenge has taught me that a Female Knowledge Sim with LTW Max 7 Skills is the ideal founder because it's easy to permaplat her before the Apocalypse begins. Being permanently platinum is invaluable since stinky is irrelevant, fun isn't absolutely necessary and she never blows a Smart Milk feeding.

To inventory the available NPCs, take your founder downtown and interact with townies and downtownies. Ignore service Sims, elders, young adults, teens and children if any are present; you only want adult townies and downtownies. Once the short term relationship hits 20 or so, ask them what their job is. Make a list and check it twice, recording gender, career and level. Level 9s and 10s are preferable but keep track of the male and female with the highest career level in each job track. Be prepared to move on to the next lot when you've interacted with each adult Sim present. Rinse and repeat until you have at least one Level 9 of each gender in each career. This process will take a long time so don't be in a hurry to finish it. Befriend any Sims that qualify as spouses for your founder and her children.

Choosing the order of unlocking careers is where the challenge gets interesting. Without Culinary, it's difficult to keep everyone fed. Without Medical, the lack of hygiene causes difficulties, particularly with Sim kids. They can wash their hands until the hide comes off, and it doesn't help. Their hygiene desperation move is to wash their hands. It's useless. The best thing to do is keep them in platinum aspiration as best you can, and keep them busy skilling. Without Science, your computer is useless except for writing novels. Even with Science, if you haven't unlocked Gamer, the phones and computer are only useful on Tuesdays between midnight and noon. Note: this is the only day of the week that Sim teens can legally depart for university until Gamer is unlocked so plan ahead. Moreover, it's the only day of the week you can use the computer to search for jobs.  All other days of the week you must use the newspaper, and without unlocking Journalism, you may only take the first job offered.

I have no certain answers as to how to proceed. Each solution has its advantages. My preference is to unlock Gamer + Science next followed by Adventurer + Culinary then Art or NatSci + Medical. Here's why: without phones and computers, you're screwed. You can't find the jobs your Sims need nor can you maintain your friendships. But most importantly, you need to be able to "Find New Place" to move Sims out of the house, and you absolutely must have the Elixir of Life to keep your founder from aging. If you keep your founder young and healthy, she can bear every sim child you'll need to finish the challenge. No other Sims will need to permaplat and no other Sims will be required to stay in the family home after unlocking their track. They can move out right away to make room for more siblings.

After getting the computers and the phones fixed, Adventurer + Culinary is good. Unlocking the Adventurer track is very nice since the career reward acts like a snapdragon but better still, now you can use the Super Bookcase from Hell. Your founder can teach using any career rewards she has access to, and your Sim teens can make use of the Sensotwitch Lie Detector as teens to gain creativity (they're still prohibited from using the super bookcase to gain creativity by the Artist restrictions). Best of all, you get a second aspiration reward for unlocking Adventure. Eclectic Energizers are the obvious choice since they fix all manner of problems (like hygiene) though Thinking Caps aren't bad either. Unlocking Culinary is a stress reliever. It's stressful simming when you have to constantly watch their food supply though saving leftovers has made this much easier. Tip: buy an early fridge and grill if you can afford it and grill a batch of burgers every day even if your founder isn't hungry. Stash the leftovers in the fridge and build up a stockpile of extra food for the lean times when she's pregnant and needs extra portions to keep fed. As always, meditate when she has nothing better to do to save on food.

My fourth unlock pair is less certain for the sibling. Medical is the obvious choice for the spouse but NatSci, Music, and Art all have positive benefits. Music breaks the grip of permanent winter but NatSci enables gardening underneath the house on the land not used by the driveway. Fresh produce and juice have positive benefits so NatSci is a good choice. Art stomps the creativity problem once and for all. It makes the simming less stressful, and you can't go wrong with that choice. Music is perhaps the weakest of the three choices but then again when you've endured endless days of blowing snow, maybe it's not such a weak choice after all.

Managing the Household
With the Pets expansion, the limit on the max number of Sims per household increased from eight to ten (10) but it's a spongy ten. The two slot increase is intended to be used for Sim pets. If you have eight Sims in the house, you can't add another non-pet Sim until someone moves out. If you have seven Sims in the house, you can add up to two Sims by pregnancy so cheesecake-created twins will work just fine. Plan for the slots needed to bring the siblings' spouses into the house via marriage and make certain that you leave adequate time for them to unlock their tracks before launching another round of pregnancies. For those who wish to experience true Sim hell, download J. M.'s "harder jobs" hack and install it. It'll make you ponder the joys of dropping out of university early.

What I do is batch my sim kids through University in groups of two or three. This helps pay the Mob protection money on their stuff, and minimizes the total amount of time I have to spend at University. I find the time spent at Uni to be mind-numbingly boring so I want as little of it as I can manage. With 9 sim kids, three batches of three isn't too bad though the early unlocks are so important that you'll probably end up doing a batch of two, a batch of three and two more batches of two each.

In conclusion, I get the sense that not many Simmers have tried this challenge. Perhaps that's because Pinstar labelled his rules as "in playtest" or perhaps it's because this is a gonad-masher of a challenge that's not for the faint of heart. I've seen a couple of variants on this challenge on the TS2 boards (the Jericho challenge in particular) but few people have had the urge to try Pinstar's version. If you do, I'd love to see what you come up with.

Happy Simming!
--Alvaron

Had a blast with the challenge. Since sims that don't know how to cook are hazardous to the community health, I had a big Yummy Channel party on Day 1. Since everyone's fun bar was low, they watched that stupid cooking show for most of the day and some uncontrollables managed two cooking points. That really cut down on the fiery balls visible from the backdoor (I put the stove out back).

No simmies died in the making of this challenge run and only one visit by the simshrink (the knowledge sim was very afraid of fire and we have two in short order because of clumpiness in the random number generator). I was fortunate in that my controllable sim was home during each fire (there were probably 7-8 fires total and my controllable caused one of them  ) and only once did she play "moth to the flame". I was able to get her to call the fire department without too much trouble and they always put out the blaze before somebody died.

I put the sink in the kitchen, had three countertops, a fridge and waste bin with the stove outside on the back deck. It worked well and I had several sims who were happy to clean up and keep the place clean. Some of them managed three cleaning skill points -- that's a lot of countertops wiped down!  The bathroom was a pair of 2x2 rooms with the toilet in one and the shower/tub in the other with a connecting door as well as an entry/exit door. There were occasional traffic jams but it mostly worked okay. I had to restart the challenge because I left out the connecting door in my initial attempt. The sleeping area was one room, 4x10 I think, with sufficient room for 5 single beds. For seating, I had a Zecutime sofa, a decent living and two chairs for the chess set. Skill gear was the bass (creativity), cheap mirror (charisma), cheap bookcase (cooking, cleaning, mechanical), TV (for cooking and body), pool (body) and chess set (logic). I had to laugh as the napping sim would snooze through entire concerts of bass symphonies but the TV and the phone would wake them easily. Go figure!

My controllable sim was a Fortune sim with LTW "Become Hall of Famer" and I was able to complete the challenge in 19 days. My final score was 310 and almost all of the uncontrollable sims managed 25 skill points (4-5 cooking, 10 logic, 6-8 creativity, 2-3 cleaning). My big winner was, of course, a Knowledge sim who racked up lots of aspiration points from skill gains. Interestingly enough, my two Fortune sims did quite well. They were able to earn a little money playing the bass for tips and they got some aspiration gains off creativity gain wants and the occasional decor purchase. The Family sim did okay but the Romance sims and the Pleasure sim struggled with serious aspiration problems as they could not satisfy any of their wants. I should've bought a bar with the seed money but I didn't and I bet they both had "Buy bar" as a want pretty much continuously. It was there at the end.

Oh, I forgot to say: I generated all eight Sims and then randomly determined which one would be the controlled sim. I got lucky with her LTW and that helped me finish the challenge quickly. My proudest moment was when one of the Romance sims managed to gain a body skill point in the swimming pool. 

I completed the challenge in 45 Sim-days using an initial unlock pair of Culinary (founder) + Military (spouse). Unlocked Medical (first 2nd gen heir) then Science with her husband, choosing the elixir as the aspiration reward. The other of the first pair of twins unlocked Slacker. The remaining tracks unlocked in the following order: Slacker, NatSci, Athletics, Politics, Life of Crime, Show Biz, Business, Law Enforcement, Art and Paranormal.

Reducing the number of required pregnancies by using cheesecake is a boon. I had studied the Culinary track in detail and decided to place a driveway and purchased a car for my founder. That was the correct choice as she topped out the track very rapidly with three doubled promotions, allowing a quick start to the family. To be sure, NatSci+Military or Medical+Military or Show Biz+Military might be less stressful simming as each offers a method to raise hygiene but none of them can compete with cheesecake-powered pregnancies. The first generation spouse took a job in Athletics for a punching bag and all of the heirs max'ed their body skill as children so the Body 10 requirement was never a problem.

The three spouses provided auto-unlocks for Military, Science and Business (Joe Carr, Benjamin Long and Ivy Copur) and only five pregnancies were required in total. Having four toddlers to care for was stressful at times but an efficient 8x8 layout made coping not too bad. I batched the heirs through university in three clumps, the first set of twins, then two pairs of twins and a final two pairs of twins. As usual, University was mind-numbing and not terribly exciting. Money was never really a problem either at home or at university. The founder had 39k when she returned from college (it was quite tedious working as barista before she began skilling toward permaplat, LTW Max 7).

I never did manage to get anyone abducted so the only aspiration reward available was the elixir. The founder's carryback of two Smart Milk dispensers and her diploma was perfect. Other than the rare kitchen fire, one burglary at college, and one electrocution during computer repair, the play was uneventful. Having food available on demand more than compensated for being stinky early in the challenge as it made managing the pregnancies much, much easier.

It's an interesting challenge and I enjoyed it.

J.M.'s right so what I do if I need to keep their aspiration meter gold+ is find them a lover. One dream date/day will put them into platinum and provide sufficient aspiration points to drive the thinking cap and eclectic energizer. They'll usually roll up "Do Term Paper" at the start of the semester and "Do Assignment" after attending class so that'll provide any additional aspiration points that you might need. With this technique, it just doesn't matter whether they roll up skill gain wants or not. Sure, it's mechanical. Sure, it's about as romantic as a hike through a garbage dump but points is points. Without breaking a simulated sweat, it's no big deal to permaplat a "Max 7" LTW Knowledge CAS Sim before the end of their first semester as a junior.

Oh, and here's a silly trick you can pull when they spin up "Buy Drum Kit" or "Buy Bass" or something similar. Buy the item and stuff it into their inventory. When they spin up the want again, buy a new one and sell off the one you've stashed. Stash the new one then rinse and repeat. Lots faster than running a date when you've plenty of aspiration points built up and just need to zoom back up into platinum.

It's generally kids on a weekend who have the problem since they've dropped out of platinum. Groom does raise hygiene but it's slow and is limited to spouses.

To be sure, kids aren't very efficient at raising hygiene through hand washing but they're shot anyways since they've reached the point where they won't skill so better to freeze time on a community lot than sit at home accomplishing nothing.

Well done.

A question: how often did the lack of a car come into play early on? Did you miss any "Daily Double" promotions (full work shift -> partial shift, for two promotions that day)?

I send them singly to community lots with good sinks and do a run of forced hand washing to 90% clean. It's extreme but better than turning on free will.

I agree that the lack of hygiene is so debilitating that one of the first two unlocks of the 2nd generation has to be Medical. Either the heir or the spouse can do it, depending on the townie draw.

Maybe Medical+Military is OK iff you run the first 2nd gen heir through University by themselves. I'll try it and see how much it slows me down.

Kyna, any idea on the bot problem I'm having (see my prior posting for details)?

True enough. As soon as Pinstar allowed your founder to go downtown without restriction, he opened the door to infinite simoleons on the carry back. It's too boring for me however. l tip-leech some and bring back $30k-$40k because I don't need more than that.

I hope someone can help an OFB rookie. My bots don't work. I turn 'em on and they just sit there, never leaving their stands. The cleanbot has piles of garbage to pick up, the hydrobot has flowerbeds to water and I'm sure some evil sim is thinking of breaking into my shack so I'd like the security bot to do something. The munchiebot doesn't provide any munchies either. I thought I'd seen a posting on the board somewhere that talked about this problem but I can't find it and multiple searches using the search engine haven't borne any fruit. A pointer to the proper thread would be much appreciated.

Having punched three businesses to level 10, I'm about to decide that OFB is... um... droll. Getting a retail business to the top level is predictable and it matters not what craftable you sell. In fact, with the proper perks, it's better to sell catalog items since you don't waste time crafting. Given the stupidity of shopping Sims, exorbitant price gouging is the order of the day. Show/dazzle/restock almost as boring as "clunk +16 simoleons". I guess I'll mess around with a venue and see what that's like. Zapping the unwary for thousands of simoleons/hour should be absurdly wicked. 

Maybe I'll skip it and run the challenge again, at least that's interesting. I still can't figure how parking the tombstones of dead heirs on a business lot speeds things up but I'm sure there's a way. 

Hee hee... just when you thought it was safe to go back into the simulation, the challenge pulls you back in! 

I'm still messing around with OFB, learning how the business lots work (and don't work  ). Earlier in this thread, somebody (Ivy, I think) mentioned that sims could gain skills on a business lot. Other than talent badges, it doesn't happen for my sims. Am I doing something wrong?

Barring a gender change while I was sleeping, Alvaron is a he.

54 is a good estimate. The challenge can be done faster with OFB and the correct unlock sequence. And, no, I'm not talking about l33t solutions a la J.M.P. and his magical mystery tour Day 0 wins either. Think about it and you'll figure out why.

Cheers,
--Alvaron

Done, challenge completed in 63 days. The game apparently decided to torture me one final time since it refused to offer Show Business for two days.  The challenge was fun though running two more batches of YAs through college was terribly boring and took too long.

I'm off to install OFB and then argue with my Downloads folder until I get everything properly updated. Have fun!

I have the end of the challenge in sight. It's Day 54 and the first clump of five graduates from La Fiesta Tech has returned home, unlocking Athletics (3rd gen heiress' husband), NatSci, Slacker, Life of Crime and Politics. My heir who's degreed for Law Enforcement is at home, ready to unlock when that career shows up on the computer. The last toddler will age into a child tomorrow so I could finish as early as Day 62 but it'll probably be a day or two after that given the vagaries of what jobs are offered.

I suppose the biggest surprise for me was the 2nd gen heir's wife getting abducted by aliens the night following the NatSci unlock. I really didn't expect it and had no particular need for the aspiration rewards (though I certainly won't hesitate to use a SimVac to snarf up skills off visiting YAs at the college house -- I just love popping the cow with that thing  . I mean, why kill it when you can steal it blind? "Ventrilofart me, will you?  ).

I think I'll do some fiddling with house designs. I love the floating stilt house that I used for both the "legacy" lot and the college lot but I hate stairs so I'll happily demolish it in favor of something more to my liking. I'll package the house and upload it to the Exchange if anyone's interested before demolition. My handle on the TS2 BBS is alvaron53.

Some random thoughts about the challenge:

a) With OFB, Culinary+Military can be a very fast track. Think about it and you'll figure out why.
b) Stink won't kill your Sims (though they might wish you were dead  ) but starvation will.
c) I still want to investigate Show Biz + Military as an opening pair of unlocks. With six 2nd gen males who all look alike, I wanted to 'change appearance' so bad I could taste it. 
d) If your strategy involves birthing lots of simkids, is there anything better than Smart Milk to bring back home with your founder?
e) The Paranormal restrictions are pretty limp in the face of elixir, at least with a YA start. I'd like to see Paranormal be more important, perhaps like the cross-linking between NatSci and the Slacker career reward.

Have fun!

Check The Armory for the critical UNI/Orig TS2 fixes. I'd install those for sure. Peruse the other offerings there for the other hacks and fixes. Unless you like the friends of your Sims driving you crazy with their idiotiic "Why haven't you called me?" bleats, I highly recommend the phone hack. Look in The Firing Range for the latest and greatest modifications and improvements by FFS to the game. It's been my experience that most of the mods by J.M. and Doctor Boris are safe to install into your game. If a mod can cause a fiery ball visible from space in your game, J. M. is very good about saying so.

I also recommend checking Twojeffs' area on this site. His work is quite good also and I love his Casual Romance mod for those trailer trash 'hoods I play. 

That doesn't sound good. Try the experiment I outlined in my previous post (I editted that posting after I thought about what you said). I do hope your neighborhood isn't bugged because I've been there and done that.

I admit to a certain amount of micro-management when I'm playing a scored challenge because the Maxian notion of 'free will' is a frightening concept. Whatever it is that 'free will' decides to do, you can pretty much bet that it's the wrong choice for the situation at hand. For example,

"No! Get out of the bathroom. You really don't need to play in the bathtub right this instant since your daughter needs to shower so she can do her homework."

Or, "Um... did you really need to hold the baby for five hours while the children asked repeatedly, 'Where's supper, mom?'"? 

I'm not compulsive nor obsessive. Just let me queue up another six or seven commands for each of my li'l virtual people and I'll be right with you. Anal, you said? Nah, not me. I'm not anal, everybody should play TS2 this way! 

You're braver than I am. I absolutely will not play the game without the critical bugfixes from J.M. and Twojeffs. I guess maybe that's because my first four attempts to do the Legacy Challenge back in the early days of TS2 all ended in failure when the lots became too buggy to play. 

Those things are normal, as far as I know.

Edit: I take that back. If you're willing, next time you play your challenge house, do an experiment. Have an adult get the newspaper and try to do a "Find Own Place". If that action fails (as in, the sim folds up the paper and the taxi never comes), then it's my sad obligation to tell you that your neighborhood has become corrupted. If the move out works, then it's not a problem with corruption of the neighborhood files. Just move the sim back in and use the familyFunds command to reconcile your family's bank account.

Pause the game after the paper boy delivers it and put it on top of your house until your sim is ready to job hunt. The zombies'll have a tough time stealing it off the roof.  If you have a proper roof on your house, make an attic by painting the floor tiles of the top level with the roof already on and park the newspaper in there 'til your sims need it.

Dunno about that one. Might be a bug.

Amen.

I could've refreshed her bars using moveobjects on but I felt like that violated the spirit of the challenge. Besides, I messed up by letting her oversleep so it was incumbent on me to figure out something, and I did. I had some anxious moments while she waited for the carpool, I can tell you that. My founder is my rock and my challenge household wouldn't work half as well as it does without her. If she'd died, I would've soldiered on and the paranormal track would've suddenly become a lot more important in my scheme. 

I understand. Your use of J.M.'s lot debugger doesn't bother me one bit. I had to evict my family once in this attempt when the middle of the 2nd floor family room (only the most highly trafficked area in the house) developed a "black hole" of four blocked tiles due to a bug in the meditation teleport function. I curse Pinstar for his injunction against using birthday cakes because everyone knows that the infant->toddler grow up code is buggy. Well, I found another one. Never ever teleport into the house while someone else is holding an infant helping them grow up. It screwed up my house thoroughly and I wasted two hours trying to fix the broken tiles with buyable fire, raising and lowering the floor, and every other kinky thing you can imagine. Nothing worked so I ended up having to "cheat" by loading up and evicting them.

Here's a newsflash: after that meltdown, I started to use birthday cakes to grow up my infants because I will not put up with more bugginess from Maxis. I didn't allow anyone to eat the cake but I used them and I'll do so again rather than tempt the fates.
[/quote]

I tried to login there to get the URL for that posting but the site refused my login. They must be having problems.

In theory, that's what the official site is supposed to be. But that's only a theory. 

And that's what you should do. It's your challenge and I think that, as long as you play within the spirit of the challenge, the minutia of the details are unimportant. I know you're not supposed to do "sneaky satellite" foo and that having your founder get abducted while she's still in college isn't supposed to unlock alien technology but Pinstar's rules are ambiguous. They need clarification and that's why I bring up these weird ideas.

To be honest, Pinstar needs a dose of Pescado to make the challenge... well, challenging. I think Pinstar wimped out when he relaxed the Law Enforcement restrictions on teen Body skill requirements. You can bet El Presidente wouldn't have cut us any slack. 

None of which I'm aware. If you want to change them into their everyday wear, you can. You can plan outfits for them if you wish.

Yep. I blundered in my challenge by bringing back two thinking caps to help my first 2nd gen heir get the creativity he needed by writing novels on the computer. A smart milk dispenser and something else (probably an eclectic energizer for real emergencies -- like your pregnant founder is almost starved and you can't eat for another two hours) would've been a better choice.

So long you remember the Slacker restrictions, sure. The teen has to quit that job when they miss work and are locked out of that career track as teens, adults and elders until the Slacker restrictions are lifted.


Another fine example of Pinstar speaking out both sides of his mouth at once. On the one hand, he says "Teens and elders cannot leave the lot for any reason..." but then he turns around and says, 'but it's okay for them to leave the lot to take the bus to go to school.' So we find out that "cannot leave the lot for any reason" doesn't really mean "for any reason", it just means for some reasons. Since I'd rather play the game than spend countless hours searching three different forums for all of Pinstar's vaunted pronouncements because he hasn't deigned to update the official rules, yeah, I sent my first two teens to college without lifting Law Enforcement first. And it doesn't bother me one bit. If he really wanted the Law Enforcement restrictions to matter, he'd have "for any reason" mean for any reason with no exceptions. That would certainly make Law Enforcement and Athletics more important than the also-ran restrictions that they are now.

Had I felt the need, I could've held them back one day and had them trained to level 10 on the punching bag. Their intended careers don't need the skill so I didn't bother with it.

While we're on the subject of ambiguities in the rules, anyone want to hazard a guess whether or not the alien technology restrictions are auto-magically lifted if your founder gets abducted by aliens in college? 

That's correct. My founder unlocked Medical and her spouse unlocked Science, choosing the elixir as the unlocked aspiration reward.

Medical+Culinary is a good pair of initial unlocks, so long as you've a plan to get the first heir through puberty quickly so that Military can be unlocked. Lack of computers makes me crazier than I already am  so Science is a must for me. Being stuck with only level 3 jobs for non-college adults and only three job offers per day is maddening. Gotta love it when you grab the paper and the only offer is one job, and one that  is in a track already blocked by the Slacker restrictions. After that happened to me in my second attempt at the challenge, I swore I'd unlock Science as soon as possible.
 
Maybe. Unless you've unlocked computers, there's not a whole lot of difference between college graduates and high school graduates with respect to job hunting. Were I in your shoes, I'd've done the same thing: had sim kids as fast as possible.

Yes, I'm counting the founder as the first generation and your math is dead on.

That's correct. It took longer than I thought it would because I couldn't get him to spin off "Grow Up Well". His aspiration meter was hovering near red and zoomed up when he grew into a teen. It was painful having some of his fears come to pass but necessary to get him into the red so it wouldn't take a zillion tanks of elixir.

It works just like you expect: once his age bar hits zero days left, "Grow Up" appears or you can use a birthday cake to transition him into an adult.

Close. He was Culinary and his wife was Level 9 military. She unlocked the Military track the day after they got married by going to work in platinum aspiration.

Ah, gelatin. That explains a lot. I followed Pinstar's dictum (made somewhere, don't remember where) that gelatin was disallowed. Had gelatin been available, things wouldn't have been quite so desperate in my challenge household of four adults and three children without Culinary being unlocked.

When my celebrity chef pulled into the driveway (after slam-dunking the top-end culinary chance card to boot on his promotion day), he served up pork chops for the entire family. I kicked back and watched my poor hungry simmies munch down in the dismal drabness of their family room on the 2nd floor of their hovel. The silly game made me feel proud of my little virtual people for having survived all of the abuses to which I put them and it made my heart glad to hear their murmurs of contentment as they ate. If nothing else memorable happens to them in this challenge, that one evening with its simple pleasures of eating good food prepared by a top-quality chef after countless days of near starvation made it all worthwhile.

I'm sure I have though offhand I don't remember the names of them. It's that old accelerated decrepitude creeping in. 

And, yes, I paid $8000 for a fully-equipped Macintosh II back in the day. Sheesh, what an idiot I was. 

Got it. Thank you for reminding me that not all career rewards come in at level 6.

And I've no problem with that. With my starting unlocks of Medical and Science, it was tricky figuring out how to avoid the 15 days of enforced puberty until Military and/or Culinary could begin to be unlocked. I did it with forced aging using elixir since I am trying to see how quickly I can complete the challenge.

I don't know of an overall best strategy since randomness in job offers and chance cards has a lot to do with it. I do know this: with Medical and Culinary unlocked, you have two of the four basic requirements for happy sims in hand. The trick is figuring how to get the first heir into adulthood quickly so that Military can be unlocked. Once that's done, you can birth simmies as fast as you like and park 'em in college until you're ready to send a batch (4-5) of them through university. With multiple students on a small lot, protection money isn't a problem, particularly if you spend most of your time on university community lots since your items at home don't depreciate much each semester.

Agreed.

Um... I'm not maxing the skills of the children. I look at the intended unlock track and do the 3-4 skills to scholarship level required by their career. As far as I know, dancing, pool, zombiefication and alien abduction aren't required by any career track so I ignore them. What matters is summa cum laude graduation in the right degree program.

As soon as my simkids grow into teens (and I do mean, the day they grow up), they're off to college with whatever scholarship money they have. Unless you're playing the Apocalypse Challenge as a Legacy handicap, it serves no purpose to crank on skills your sims don't need for their unlock. The exception might be those sims who need to teach their siblings and their children but, since I use elixir to keep my permaplat founder alive, I don't need other fully max'ed out sims in the house.

Sounds about right. My toddlers manage 5-6 charisma or logic, depending on their ultimate career choice, then I work them with career rewards if possible. Since I know they will leave as soon as they're teens, I don't worry about the 10 body requirement for teens. With the elixir unlocked, there will be never any elders so it's moot. It'll really be moot when Law Enforcement unlocks. My teens have no need to go downtown and they won't have teenage jobs since they don't need them. If they need a cell phone, they can get one when they get to college. Money in college really isn't a problem since they can park in a downtown lot until Hades becomes icy and tend bar or sell coffee until your brain overloads from the utter ennui of another "clunk... +16 simoleons".

It's not possible to have children too fast in this challenge. It's Day 37 PA in my current attempt and my founder has birthed six children and has one grandchild. Four tracks are unlocked (Medical, Science, Military and Culinary) and it is literally down to counting days between pregnancies. Nothing else that will unlock will have any bearing on how fast I complete this challenge so the order in which the unlocks occur is irrelevant. Oh, having some more tracks unlocked will make simming them easier but it won't speed up the completion of the challenge. This is the flaw in Pinstar's set-up: once the basics are covered, the rate at which you birth the first heir of each generation balanced against the rate of siblings produced by previous generations is the overall governor on completion speed. Since you've unlimited room in college for YAs, there is no need for more than 3 generations. That gives six unlocks so you need eight siblings and you're done. Do the math and you'll get a fair idea of how long the challenge should take.

I plan to batch my YAs through university in clumps of 3-5 students at a time. Beyond the skills required by their degrees, most of them actually have little skill work to do so I don't expect too much difficulty. To avoid wasting time skilling, I select their degree program as soon as they hit campus.

At first, I allowed the illusion of time synchrony to muddy my thinking. Don't let it muddle yours. There is no required time synchrony between your college lot(s) and the home lot. Your last unlock could be by the second child of your founder because it really doesn't matter once hygiene, food, finances and access to college are available. And that's too bad because it should matter. It should make a difference that you had to choose to prep a sim for NatSci before one to unlock Slacker or Politics or Business but it doesn't. If you want an additional challenge over and above the rules-as-written one by Pinstar, try this: play one semester of college for each sim day at home and maintain all of your "legacy" sims in strict time synchrony. Maybe I'll give that a shot some time.

Well done!

Those were my two picks also for the 2nd gen bloodline heir and his spouse. She's unlocked Military and is now pregnant with the first 3rd gen heir, he's working at level 7 in Culinary.

The lack of food is maddening as it's preventing my Sims from skilling as much as I'd like. I think it's the need to schedule the day's activities around the one meagre meal that really crimps my style. With luck, Culinary will unlock in a few days and life in my Apocalypse will get, much easier.

If there had been a male downtownie with a Level 9-10 Culinary job, I would've unlocked Medical and Culinary as my first two picks and brought back two tanks of elixir to help force-age the first heir into adulthood. There was no such downtownie so I did Medical and Science, knowing that Culinary had to be the first 2nd gen heir's unlock. It's worked mostly but there have certainly been some close calls (as in "Stop whining, I know you're starving. The school bus will be here soon.")

They will pry the phone hack from my cold, dead fingers.

I refuse to play without J.M.'s and Twojeffs's fixes. I've already had to load up and evict once in this challenge due to a bug in the meditation teleport function (take my word for it: you do not want to teleport into the middle of the house when a toddler is growing up with moveobjects on). I simply will not play with the buggy code that Maxis serves up by default. 'Nuff said.

I'm confused. How did you manage to get a Level 6 job in Crime w/o computers unlocked? The best you can get from the newspaper is level 4 and that won't get you a Lie Detector. Or did you spend time in the criminal career then switch?

Going for show business first is an interesting path. I discounted it because it seemed to me that the boost in the bars was too low to be useful but apparently my estimate is incorrect. One thing I do know: if you need to put a spouse's mood meter into platinum for a promotion or want to spin their wants, an at-home date works wonders. Maybe I'll give show biz a shot next time out. 

Whatever for? He can only unlock one track and even the most demanding careers don't require max skills. I suppose being permaplat might be useful but when my male Sims have done their unlock, they're out the door to make room for more kids. They're your Sims so play 'em as you wish. I don't just understand your thinking here since the challenge is scored by days spent. I choose not to spend time max'ing skills on sim kids who won't be around that long once they're back from college.

See the Slacker restrictions. Chance cards may not be ignored until those restrictions have been lifted.

You can choose not to unlock a track if you wish when the sim hits the top of the career.

Yes.

The love tub unless unlocked by Science and/or Alien Technology restriction removal must be deleted when the candles burn out. IMO, hot tubs should be disallowed until Medical is unlocked but that's not what Pinstar ruled.

Whew! Talk about a fiery ball visible from space! That nicely describes my second try at this challenge, this time w/o "sneaky satellite" foo. I got to learn the painful lesson again that SketchElder on the BBS pointed out: you take care of providing hygiene and food first by whatever means necessary then go from there. Well, I didn't take of the food supply and paid the price. In my previous run-through, eclectic energizers got me over that hump but this time I didn't have them. In the second try, the moment of epiphany came when the lack of a meal portion caused the spouse of the 2nd generation heir to miss his promotion to Mad Scientist because he couldn't finish the eighth cooking skill point he needed. That goof caused a five day delay which then, of course, snowballed into all sorts of problems. College graduates had no computers with which to search for jobs so what was the point of graduating ASAP and returning home to a house already short on food? None.

With the week's delay at around Day 36 or so, I realized the blunder I'd made when I chose to unlock Medical and Military first. It looks sexy as your sim kids transition to college very quickly but the lack of food at home hampers the children from getting the skills they need. I parked that bunch and decided to try again.

Here's what I've learned:

1) Make intelligent use of the downtownies and townies for rapid unlocks. Ignore any downtownie level 8 and below because you can grow sim kids who'll return as summa cum laude graduates and get level 9 jobs in their intended track with computers unlocked. When you make your initial survey of the downtownies in your founder's first semester, concentrate on befriending those who have level 9-10 jobs already as potential spouses for generations 1, 2 and 3 (and four if you need to go that far).

2) If you have OFB, NatSci is a great choice. If not (and I don't), then Medical is your best bet. Sure, the Medical career track is maddening with badly-scheduled days off in levels 5-7 but 8-10 are not too bad. Just be careful of the chance cards and choose the "right" answer as shown in J.M.'s chance card guide. Without hygiene, your sims at less than platinum aspiration can function but sponge baths aren't efficient. Unless you like picking up dirty diapers, I highly recommend the changing station. Culinary is also tempting. Just remember that you need to unlock Medical quickly and getting the first 2nd generation heir to skill without hygiene isn't easy.

3) Science is IMHO the best track to unlock next. You get an aspiration reward immediately and computers unlock. Better still, there are usually multiple Science Level 9-10 downtownies to pick from. My third attempt at this challenge had two Mad Scientists and another downtownie at level 9 Science. If you go this route, take the elixir of life as your aspiration reward. Eclectic Energizer is tempting but will force a long delay in getting your first heir to adulthood. Use the elixir to force-age the first heir through puberty so they can work their creativity. Focus the heir's skills on Culinary, doing logic as a toddler and being taught cooking as a child by the spouse (you have computers; surely your spouse can find a job in the culinary track by the time the heir grows into childhood). Yes, it's painful with only novel-writing as an adult to build creativity but, if you bring back two thinking caps with your founder, the pain is reduced considerably. I suppose someone will pop up and say that the child can't be taught cooking using the career reward. I beg to differ. The restriction says only sims in the Culinary track can use the chocolate-maker but it does not limit that use. Teaching cooking is one of its functions so I will use it that way. I'll even go so far as to require the adult in the culinary track to initiate the session.

4) Make room in the house soon with a Military unlock. The spouse of the first 2nd gen heir is ideal for this. In my game, I had one male downtownie at level 10 and two female downtownies at level 9 in Military so gender wasn't a problem. A fast unlock on Military opens the door to cell phones (with Science unlocked) and college so that your teens can get out of the house and off to college. Spouses and heirs who've done their bit can depart the lot to make room.

5) Visualize the problem when thinking about the challenge strategically. What that blather means is this: once you have the basics covered (food, hygiene, finances and access to college), what is needed? You need skilled college graduates and downtownies at high levels to unlock tracks quickly. Since there's no time synchrony between the "legacy" lot and college lots, you have essentially unlimited space for sims, up to eight at home and certainly six more in college. There's no requirement that any of them graduate immediately, you can do it when it suits you. With three females of child-bearing age (founder plus two generations), they can be raising five simkids at the "legacy" lot simultaneously (just move their husbands out once Military is unlocked if your finances are good). It won't take long for those three females to punch out eight simkids. It requires you to ignore teen skilling and attend college on a shoestring. Big deal: go tend bar or work as a barista since Culinary is unlocked for all the cash they'll ever need. Sure, it's mind-numbingly boring but isn't that what challenges come down to? 

The elixir of life is the best aspiration reward choice in my non-OFB world. It neuters the paranormal restrictions since no one ever dies, prevent stupid annoying ghost attacks since there are no ghosts, and gets you over the hump of no college for the first 2nd generation heir. Unless you think spending 15 days as a teen is fun in the dismal world of the Apocalypse, I highly recommend forced aging through puberty. Your founder and spouse should have plenty of aspiration built up if you had them go on dates a lot in college. I did one date per day and amassed 250k aspiration on my founder, over and above what was used buying thinking caps and energizers for skilling. My founder's spouse dropped about 10k worth of  goodies which helped her reach her target financial goal of 25k to start the "legacy" lot. Now, if I'd only known that turkey would have about 30k worth of crap in his inventory when he moved in....  Let me just say that we had a large bonfire on the third floor that involved some plasma TVs, DJ booth and more.  It was a slow day so the sacrifice of the daily food ration wasn't too painful.

I had an extremely close call on Day 17-18 PA. My founder had just delivered her second child and I had underestimated her hunger demand, allowing her to sleep too long. She couldn't grill anything because of the time of day and couldn't meditate. Desperate to keep her alive, I expended the next day's food ration near 0500 on cereal. Big mistake as she was so tired by then she couldn't stay awake to eat. Cereal spoils so quickly that she barely got half a bowl. The only thing I could come up with to save her life was to get her a job. Thank God for the computer as she found a level 8 position in business with an immediate take off for work. She was dead tired, starving and urgently needed to pee. But like the trooper she is, she got into the car, went to work and lived. Her poor husband skipped his prep cook job that day to watch the kids and that cost him his job. But, hey, better that than a dead wife who's permaplat, max skills, summa cum laude graduate in Biology and pretty nice looking for a Knowledge Sim. 

It messed up my plan to have him teach the 2nd gen heir cooking so the founder will have to take on that responsibility. She found a job in culinary after work that day and switched. All of these gyrations derailed my plan for a third 2nd gen child right away but that's life in the Apocalypse. As soon as she finishes teaching her son cooking to level 8 or so, she can quit and get back to birthing more kids. The detour into Business for a day wasn't a total bust since she did snag an Execuputter. 

So far, it's been a fun and challenging ride. Your comments welcome. Have fun!

It does and that's why I'm gonna yank it as well.

I don't skill much on downtown lots actually. With aspiration points readily available to the founder from dating, it's faster in terms of play time to use the energizer and thinking caps while skilling at the founder's campus house. It takes less than 24 sim hours to max your coursework bar so you've two days to skill. You can do a lot of damage in terms of skill gains in two days, especially with Knowledge sims if they spin up skill-grinding wants.