You've mentioned that your houses have cribs, but you didn't say if there were enough beds.  A homeless family of 5 is going to need a lot with enough beds to sleep 5 sims.

I disagree, and am so glad this mod cuts the teen stage to about where it should be.

I always felt that they made the teen stage twice as long as it needed to be in TS2, and they've done the same in TS3.  Personally I find the stage boring, especially in TS2 - by the time my sims turned teen they were one point away from maxing out all skills, so it was a case of picking knowledge & getting the Max Skills LTW completed, picking up the last couple of scholarships, using TJ's crystal ball to summon a compatible townie teen to macro/romanticate to get the first kiss out of the way, then on to uni ASAP.  The only advantage TS3 teen stage has over TS2 teen stage is that I can grow my sims up as soon as they hit teen if I get too bored with the stage.

My sim has several friendship-based lifetime rewards, including the attractive bonus which made them instant friends.  No quest was involved, and the tone was either working hard or normal.  The only random event was my sim's arrest, which was after the boss was created.

Good, I was worried that it might be a comparison between hourly rates of pay.

Running ASM, timestamp: 01:02:02 2009/09/06

I expected my sim to be promoted to the top of her career when she maxed out her performance at level 9, but it didn't happen.

The background & some relevant details:
- My sim was promoted to level 9 of the criminal (thief) career, Cat Burglar.
- As soon as she got promoted to level 9 the game created a level 10 thief to be her boss.  I'm not sure why this happened, as there isn't a boss metric for this particular career level.
- My sim didn't interact with her boss, but she has the "attractive" bonus and they went to instant friends as soon as the boss was created.
- When my sim's performance was maxed out I expected her to get a promotion, however she got a pay rise instead.  Again I'm not sure why, as I didn't think Master Thief would be a job that is limited to only one position.
- I used Twallan's supercomputer to check that there was only 1 sim working as a Master Thief. 
- The boss is earning §525/hour, which is apparently the base pay for the position (her jobinfo isn't showing any bonuses). 
- My sim's hourly pay is §225 (base) + §33 (the pay rise she just got).

Some questions:
- why was a boss created as soon as my sim hit lvl 9, when there is no boss metric at that career level?  I thought ASM didn't create unnecessary bosses.
- why is Master Thief limited to one position?  I would expect a town to have more than one active criminal who could thieve at that level.
- Am I going to have wait until my sim's pay reaches §525/hour before she can displace the boss and take her place?  At §33 per pay rise, with a pay rise every second working day (assuming she doesn't get arrested on the second working day), and with a 4 day working week, it will take a while before she earns enough to displace the boss.

It seems like the boss was created solely to slow down my sim's run to the top of her career, turning a 3 working day wait for promotion (it would have been two days, but she got arrested on the second day) into a wait of several weeks.  I considered killing off the boss, but I assumed the game would simply create another one to take her place since the game seems to think my sim needs a (pointless) boss.

I guess you didn't see this part of the original post:

If you have AwesomeMod in your game, try the falconpunch command to abort the spawn.

Or you could rename your household on the Edit Town screen.

One of ISM's features was that it would change the household name in the manner you describe.  This is not the same as the lot name, neither AM nor ISM changes the lot name.

You are confusing lot name with household name.

I would argue that both of these could be made to work in a rural community.

Many small towns & hamlets in the rural area I grew up in had a civic hall, a building near the council chambers that was basically a hall that could be hired.  The hall was a focal point of the local community, and was often used for movies, for dances, for wedding receptions, for meetings of various local clubs/societies (and for functions these groups may stage), and for gigs by local bands.

As for the spa - what about a beauty parlour or hairdressing salon?  What small town doesn't have hairdressers who also double as beauticians?

minonda, I think you missed my point.  I mentioned the Adult Jobs For Elders hack (or whatever it was called) simply because it removed one of the few significant differences between adults & elders in TS2.  It's not that I found the jobs inherently interesting in themselves.

Once you took away the employment discrimination there really wasn't a great deal of difference between adults and elders in TS2.  The main differences were that elders could not get pregnant/give birth, and that elders had an advantage over adults when it came to encouraging personality traits.  Did you find pregnancy & birth so fascinating in TS2 that sims who were no longer capable of it were suddenly boring?

I'm not elderly myself, being only in my mid-40s.  I do think it is unfortunate that our beauty-oriented, youth-obsessed culture tends to fear elderly women (oh no, is it catching?) & the aging process (zOMG, it IS catching!).  I suppose my gameplay reflects my values when it comes to the elderly.  Personally I'd rather play sims who are elders than sims who are in the overly-long teen stage.

BTW, double posting does not mean making the same post twice.  It means making two consecutive posts in a row, without anyone else posting in between your posts.  We have a modify button so that you don't need to double post.

I honestly thought this was common knowledge.  It's been mentioned so many times here now I don't know how you could have missed it.

Is the sim pregnant?  Editsim won't work if the sim is pregnant, and neither will any other cheats or mods that send the sim back to CAS (such as the tweak option in ISM).

In TS2 I was using the Director's Cut set of hacks, with included a hack to allow elders to find adult jobs.  Once I had that in my game the only difference between elders & adults was the fact that female elders couldn't bear offspring (although they could adopt).  Are you arguing that it is the ability to get pregnant and give birth that makes sims not be a "complete bore"?  Why would an elder male be any different to an adult male in terms of interest and playability?  There is no difference in the things they can do, and Motoki's "adult clothes for elders" mod got rid of the pot bellies and saggy boobs.  Elders in TS2 were always useful.  If I didn't keep them working in their jobs to bring in money for the household, then they were useful as unpaid, controllable child-care workers.  They were great for encouraging personality traits in their grandkids.

BTW, we have a modify button for a reason (and yes, it does work).  There is no need to double post.

You need to have one, for a few seconds at least.  Silence one house phone and you silence all the cell phones as well, and the silent setting carries over to other lots you may play in the same neighbourhood.

Nothing.  If you can't find the instructions when they were in the post you downloaded the zip from then you are obviously too stupid to use your computer and you definitely shouldn't be messing with beta hacks like AwesomeMod.

As long as you don't lotbin any occupied lots it's safe.

This section of the board is not for asking questions.

As for your question, I have no idea.  I switch off the house phone so that none of the phones ring.  Incoming phone calls distract my sims from whatever it is that I told them to do (and yes, they do still get opportunities with the phones turn off).

OK, I'm confused.

You said you wanted individual aging so you could grow toddlers up early.  Then 20 minutes later you said that "after having multiple kids" you now play along with their aging schedule to get all the training in.

You must have a very fast computer to have had "multiple kids" in that 20 minutes.

It's just getting harder to kill your sims as the series progresses.

The first time I saw TS1 was when a friend of my daughter was playing it, and she showed me some of the different ways you could kill off your sims.  It looked like fun, and I went out and bought the game for myself so I could have fun killing off sims on my computer.

TS2 made it harder to get accidental death.  I never had the choking-after-giving-birth death glitch, and I never had an illness that went around my neighbourhood killing off my sims.  I think I had less than half a dozen genuine accidental deaths in all the years I played TS2.  I tried to get both "death by flies" and "death by satellite" the first time I played a Legacy, but I lacked the necessary patience and eventually gave up.  Sure, EA gave us "running with scissors", but then they took it away - they replaced the download with a less-fatal version.  Hello EA?  What's the point of that download if it doesn't kill our sims?

Now in TS3 it's become even harder to kill our sims.  We've lost "remove the ladder" to drown our sims, instead we now have to wall the pool in.  Removing a ladder was much quicker.  Electrocution isn't as easy as it used be, now we get a warning when trying to electrocute our sims - the singed moodlet.

I like the idea of accidental deaths, they add interest to the game.  They're almost impossible to achieve now, probably due to too many complaints from whiny BBS sheeple who didn't know how to look after their sims.  It's also become harder to deliberately kill our sims, and there's no reason I can see for EA to have done that, after all we wouldn't be deliberately trying to kill our sims if we didn't want them to die.

In TS3 you don't have to wait until the birthday to age up your sims.  You can age them up any time using the birthday cake (or by using the cheat on the shift-click menu).  Your toddlers can grow up without the adult aging a single day.

I know this isn't the same as separate aging, but it does deal with the situation you mentioned.

Cowardly sims will faint, and so will cowardly ghosts.  The Goth lot has a ghost with the cowardly trait, and she is constantly fainting when she sees any of the other ghosts there.

As you've noted: the recent patches (1.3 and 1.4) added this bug to the game.  It seems to be connected with an adult male one-piece outfit.  YA males are not affected.

I don't know if there is a fix for this bug, but there is a workaround - try dressing the sim in two-piece clothing (i.e. separate top & trousers).

I must be either blind or stupid (or possibly both) because I can't find a way to mute the build/buy/cas music that doesn't also mute the music in live mode.  I want music in the game, I just don't want music in build, buy, cas, or that music that plays when I am exiting the game. 

On the music tab I can see lists of the tracks that play in most of these modes (except the exit music), but the only option I have is to "preview" the tracks.  On the sound tab I have an option to mute music, but that would mute the in-game music as well.

So how do I fiddle with the audio settings to turn off music everywhere except in live mode?

I know that.  Figwit was saying that in their game it is automatic, and I was curious about how that was happening.

I was also wondering if perhaps they were confusing house name with household name, which may explain why AM's "ancestral home" feature doesn't seem to work for them.

How are managing to have the house name automatically become the same as the household name?  Do you have a mod that renames the house to match the name of the household?

I know ISM had an annoying feature where it would rename the household to match the surname of the family, but that's not the same thing as matching the house name to the household name (which is what AM requires to keep the family from moving out).