OFB broke food shopping on community lots

[cwykes]

I've been suspicious for a while but today I'm convinced that OFB broke food shopping on community lots.  Can anyone confirm?

Suppose your sim has a half-full fridge.   
When your sim orders food delivered, you can only buy half a fridge full of food. (the dialogue asking how much you wants starts with a half full bar)  In base game, when your sim went to a community lot, you were also limited to buying half a fridge-worth of food.  The dialogue showed a half full bar for you to add to.

With OFB added to my base game, the phone delivery still works the same way as far as I know.  But when the sim goes to a community lot, the dialogue starts with an EMPTY bar.  Unless you checked the fridge before you left you have to guess what you need. Any excess you buy gets thrown away.

Can this be fixed?

I'd also like better handling of multiple baskets if that's possible.  If the sim has more than one basket in the inventory they shouldn't insist on putting them in a full fridge when they come home.

Here's the story today:
1. One of the Singles girls checks the fridge - 114 of 200 food units
2. She goes to a community lot and buys two baskets of food - 120$ for 40 units of food and 600$ for 200.
both baskets have 0 value in the inventory
3. She comes home and walks straight to the fridge with a basket of groceries in her hand.
Afterwards the fridge has 198 of 200 (!) and she has one basket left in her inventory. (how did they get to 198?)
4. She goes to work.
5.  She comes home from work and goes straight to the fridge with the basket of groceries in her hand. 
Afterwards the fridge still has 198 units and she has no baskets in her inventory.

I don't have Uni or NL - can't see that makes any difference though.  Haven't checked shopping on business lots, but I'm pretty sure it lets sims buy massive amounts unrestricted by their fridge capacity - that's what I was complaining about in the last thread I started on food shopping.   I don't think I had my facts all straight then though,
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4701.0.html

[eamethyst]

I have noticed the same thing.  I am playing a custom neighborhood.  I packaged and installed into my lot bin quite a few of the downtown and Bluewater Village community lots, and placed these in the downtown subhood of my neighborhood, which is also where I have placed the houses of my playable Sims.  When I order groceries by phone I am able to purchase just what is required to fill the refrigerator, but if I send Sims to one of the grocery stores, I'm presented with a completely empty buy bar.

I removed Inge's permafridge hack when I created this neighborhood, which was well after OFB was installed, so I can only say that when I had Uni, & NL installed, grocery stores worked as expected, and now they don't.

[jsalemi]

This was definitely broken by OFB, and not fixed in any of the patches.  It was discussed here not long after OFB came out, and even the awesome modders here didn't/couldn't find a fix for it. Having food delivered, or guessing the amount you need is the only work-around.

[dizzy]

I always use delivery or my work-deliver hack, so I hadn't noticed. In fact, I avoid community lots like the plague mostly. 

[syberspunk]

Heh, my sims are lazy. Surprise, surprise. They always have groceries delivered. They can't be bothered to hop in the car or wait for a taxi, sit through the load times going to a comm lot, and back home, just to buy groceries. It seems like such a waste of time, when they can just shop from home. I only go to comm lots if I have sims on dates, outings, or actual wants to buy or do things only available on comm lots. I don't use any shop at home hacks because otherwise, I wouldn't be motivated to visit comm lots at all. Oh, and I have yet to even play or have any businesses.

Ste

[Ancient Sim]

Hmmm ... maybe it's the game's way of saying "Think you can get out of the delivery charge by going to a community lot in a FREE taxi?  Well you can't, 'cos we're slapping on a surcharge instead.  Ha-ha, stick that in your fridge and freeze it".

[jsalemi]

Yea, my sims have been getting spoiled by doing all their shopping at home.  Only recently have I started sending them out to community lots again, and that's usually the unattached ones who haven't met either 'the love of their life' or 'the love for tonight' yet.

[Jelenedra]

Mmm, I love that come home from work with groceries hack. It's delicious.

[cwykes]

I avoid the Maxian community lots like the plague, but I use my own community lots a great deal.  They were the first thing I built and uploaded to TSR - my design goal was "load fast and play well" (3x2 lots, 1 NPC, few walls, maxis only content)    My sims always combine grocery shopping with another purpse ("meet someone new"/ outings with friends / dates / clothes shopping / scope the talent / play chess).  The broke elder sims go to save money! This broken food shopping is a real nuisance for me. 

I also got thoroughly sick of the delivery guy "two step".  Trying to greet the guys and accept the groceries wastes a huge amount of time!  They stand in stupid places.  They don't stand still.  They walk round the building, back down the long drive etc etc.  Drove me crazy!    It's even worse than the back rub trek - anyone else complaining that since OFB sims have walked miles to give a back rub to the sim standing next to them?

Might have to think about the come home from work with groceries hack although I don't usually go for hacks that change gameplay - well apart from stupid and broken gameplay like the coffee-cup hack, no "what's this"... and other major irritations.  Does it manage to check the fridge correctly or does it have a problem counting too?

Jelenedra, I've been meaning to say I love your avatar.  I'm another fan of the Kushiel series.

[buddha pest]

I also got thoroughly sick of the delivery guy "two step".  Trying to greet the guys and accept the groceries wastes a huge amount of time!  They stand in stupid places.  They don't stand still.  They walk round the building, back down the long drive etc etc.  Drove me crazy!    It's even worse than the back rub trek - anyone else complaining that since OFB sims have walked miles to give a back rub to the sim standing next to them?

Argh. That's why I had the Permafridge for so long, but I felt like a cheater.

Now I use Squinge's thing where the delivery person just plops the groceries down and leaves. But it doesn't charge you for the groceries! 
I just use FamilyFunds to deduct every time.

[MissDoh]

I notice this awhile ago and reported about it but like Jsalemi said so far there is no fix for this.

I am one of the rare community lot junkie here but I don't purchase groceries there anymore and use the phone until someone can actually fix this.

[Frankenbeasley]

Now I use Squinge's thing where the delivery person just plops the groceries down and leaves. But it doesn't charge you for the groceries! 
I just use FamilyFunds to deduct every time.

I had something like this occur naturally on one lot. It happened to be in a Sci-Fi neighbourhood where all the lots were floating spaceships. everything was fine on the lots which had both spaceships and docking towers but on a couple there were no ground based buildings and, consequently, there were no doors on the ground floor. Whenever the delivery arrived the delivery driver would wander about on the far side of the street and then, finally, would cross over the road and drop my shopping by the mailbox. Nojne of the Sims on lot could interact with the driver at any point. I actually rather enjoyed it.

[MissDoh]

I also got thoroughly sick of the delivery guy "two step".  Trying to greet the guys and accept the groceries wastes a huge amount of time!  They stand in stupid places.  They don't stand still.  They walk round the building, back down the long drive etc etc.  Drove me crazy!    It's even worse than the back rub trek - anyone else complaining that since OFB sims have walked miles to give a back rub to the sim standing next to them?

Argh. That's why I had the Permafridge for so long, but I felt like a cheater.

Now I use Squinge's thing where the delivery person just plops the groceries down and leaves. But it doesn't charge you for the groceries! 
I just use FamilyFunds to deduct every time.

FYI Buddah, Squinge recently fix that mod, it is now charging properly.

[Insanity Prelude]

Got a link to this mod? I'm getting sick of the delivery-man-shuffle myself.

[Marg]

I thought it was a game glitch that if you didn't accept the grocery basket the delivery person just left it on the ground and left the lot.    If that happens the family doesn't get charged for the groceries.    I've had it happen a few times when my simmie doesn't get there in time.     I have all the eps but no stuff packs.

[MissDoh]

Got a link to this mod? I'm getting sick of the delivery-man-shuffle myself.

Yep here it is:  http://www.insimenator.net/showthread.php?t=8988

[J. M. Pescado]

I honestly haven't looked at the entire food thing at all.  Presumably, with the new system, you keep the buckets in your inventory and only deploy them when the fridge is empty, but to be honest, I hate food and with OFB, sims rarely eat. Also, usually, the fridge runs out rather unexpectedly and inconveniently, and when you need it refilled NOW, you usually just end up buying another one entirely.

As for the "198" thing, I chalk that up to rounding errors. I'm sure the internal representation and the granularity with which you can buy food is involved in this.

Besides, with OFB, there's not much point in going to a lot to buy groceries, when you could just buy the food directly, avoiding the need for a fridge entirely. And removing the accursed thing from the greedy, grabby paws of sims, too.

[cwykes]

The stupid thing I didn't notice  is that the game no longer even recognises which fridge the shopper has.  The empty buy bar is for 600$ =  300 food units.   The singles have a cheap fridge with a max capacity of 200, so the buy bar ought to max at 400$.

If you buy small amounts of food, the game does do the maths correctly when you add them to the fridge.

EA might argue they broke it on community lots so you could own a grocery business, but in that case the resale value of the baskets needs to be non-zero.  After playing a grocery as an owned business, I'm still finding playable sims with 20 buckets in their inventory - all worth zero.  That's very, very annoying - OK there are work arounds like "noplayable shoppers" and not allowing sims to open food stores.  but 

PS While checking the directors cut for updates, I came across a "new" hack to fix the interest problem I was whinging about way back.  Adding interest points and overflowing the memory space allocated no longer results in losing all interest in topics at random.   Thanks.  or Baaaaa.