A few lingering questions
So I have a few questions about my games. Some of them may have been answered before, but not that I've seen. Some are probably bugs, and others are merely minor quirks or irritants... but I'm curio...
Forum Discussion
And... I have more questions. Because of course I do. Thinking about this thread has made me remember stuff that I hadn't thought about in a long time, so why not ask if anyone knows what's going on?
7) Is there a way to turn off the gifts that arrive in my mailbox? I'm talking about the mostly decorative objects that just appear in the family inventory when my sims get the mail. I don't have the Late Night EP, so no celebrities, but my sims do have a lot of friends. I realize I can just sell the items, but I don't want the money either, and it would be a pain to keep readjusting the family funds every time I emptied the inventory.
8) In the medical career, a sim receives a research book to read after every shift, and "research" is a performance metric for the job... but I've never found a way to raise this metric to "outstanding." It also resets to "normal" after every shift. Is there something else that I could be doing to raise it? I kind of resent the hit to my sim's rate of gaining experience, although it doesn't matter as much during the longest shifts.
9) I know that the game is supposed to regenerate the Grim Reaper if you move him into a house in the neighborhood, but what can I do if this doesn't happen? A long time ago, I broke a game this way—there was no new Grimmy to reap an elder sim, so he just floated in midair indefinitely. Resetting made him selectable again and able to act normally, but I couldn't move anyone out of the house as the game still thought someone was dying. I had mods at the time, though I might not have installed Overwatch yet. I've avoided using Grimmy since then, but in my current save I have a particularly emo almost YA girl whose elderly grandfather is due for a visit in a week or so, and I'm getting ideas again.
10) I've noticed that collectibles seem not to start spawning right away when I load a save. At first, I wondered if this was just some sort of bias on my part, so I started using MC to monitor the total number of gems and metals on the map at any given time. Often, there will be nothing new at all for 12 hours or so, just a couple of new rocks in the next 12 hours, and then a much more rapid rate of spawning going forward. Is this normal? Or is there something I can do to kickstart the process when I open a game?
11) Years ago, an update to my game (maybe the one that came with Seasons, but I hadn't updated in a while and only did so when I decided to install mods) caused all of my plants to grow at the maximum speed. All plantables, from tomatoes to life fruit and money trees, were ready to harvest four days after planting, even without fertilizer. I should note that this only kicked in after I harvested some plants around town, so that the grape seed I planted on day one would grow at half the rate of the other common plants, but if I planted another one on day three (or fertilized the original), it would start progressing every day like my other plants. I actually posted about this on the nraas forums, but no one knew why this was happening. I play on normal lifespan, and it occurred to me that this change might have come with Seasons, to compensate for the winter hibernation phase of plants. But I wouldn't know. I also thought that it might be a indicative of an issue with my old computer's game files, but the same thing is happening on my new computer, with fresh Origin downloads. It doesn't bother me much anymore, but making well over §50,000 per day just on moneybags seems a bit unreasonable. That's just from one founder sim's own personal garden (24 money trees), and she hasn't even met Grimmy yet, although with half a dozen death flowers she'll be around for a while.
12) I've heard rumors that sims have hidden metrics for certain activities, not traits per se like the ones inherited from a parent with special abilities, but more like varying levels of skill that are independent of anything I might do in CAS. For example, maybe some sims would *naturally* be better sculptors or writers, producing more masterpieces or bestsellers, respectively, regardless of or separately from the traits I assigned. Also, in one game, even though I didn't do anything to change the game's default 75% success rate, my original couple and their descendants succeeded in their attempts to conceive 15 consecutive times. The chances of that are... hang on... 14,348,907/1,073,741,824, or about 1.34%. Other times, my family (from different CAS sims) has had a noticeably harder time reproducing. I'm just wondering if there's any truth to the rumor that the game has hidden metrics for sims, and if so, whether I can do anything to see them.
I think that's everything, but I'm half-expecting to wake up in the middle of the night with a handful of new questions. Maybe I should work on developing an off switch. But not yet; I'm having too much fun right now.
7) Is there a way to turn off the gifts that arrive in my mailbox? I'm talking about the mostly decorative objects that just appear in the family inventory when my sims get the mail. I don't have the Late Night EP, so no celebrities, but my sims do have a lot of friends. I realize I can just sell the items, but I don't want the money either, and it would be a pain to keep readjusting the family funds every time I emptied the inventory.
8) In the medical career, a sim receives a research book to read after every shift, and "research" is a performance metric for the job... but I've never found a way to raise this metric to "outstanding." It also resets to "normal" after every shift. Is there something else that I could be doing to raise it? I kind of resent the hit to my sim's rate of gaining experience, although it doesn't matter as much during the longest shifts.
9) I know that the game is supposed to regenerate the Grim Reaper if you move him into a house in the neighborhood, but what can I do if this doesn't happen? A long time ago, I broke a game this way—there was no new Grimmy to reap an elder sim, so he just floated in midair indefinitely. Resetting made him selectable again and able to act normally, but I couldn't move anyone out of the house as the game still thought someone was dying. I had mods at the time, though I might not have installed Overwatch yet. I've avoided using Grimmy since then, but in my current save I have a particularly emo almost YA girl whose elderly grandfather is due for a visit in a week or so, and I'm getting ideas again.
10) I've noticed that collectibles seem not to start spawning right away when I load a save. At first, I wondered if this was just some sort of bias on my part, so I started using MC to monitor the total number of gems and metals on the map at any given time. Often, there will be nothing new at all for 12 hours or so, just a couple of new rocks in the next 12 hours, and then a much more rapid rate of spawning going forward. Is this normal? Or is there something I can do to kickstart the process when I open a game?
11) Years ago, an update to my game (maybe the one that came with Seasons, but I hadn't updated in a while and only did so when I decided to install mods) caused all of my plants to grow at the maximum speed. All plantables, from tomatoes to life fruit and money trees, were ready to harvest four days after planting, even without fertilizer. I should note that this only kicked in after I harvested some plants around town, so that the grape seed I planted on day one would grow at half the rate of the other common plants, but if I planted another one on day three (or fertilized the original), it would start progressing every day like my other plants. I actually posted about this on the nraas forums, but no one knew why this was happening. I play on normal lifespan, and it occurred to me that this change might have come with Seasons, to compensate for the winter hibernation phase of plants. But I wouldn't know. I also thought that it might be a indicative of an issue with my old computer's game files, but the same thing is happening on my new computer, with fresh Origin downloads. It doesn't bother me much anymore, but making well over §50,000 per day just on moneybags seems a bit unreasonable. That's just from one founder sim's own personal garden (24 money trees), and she hasn't even met Grimmy yet, although with half a dozen death flowers she'll be around for a while.
12) I've heard rumors that sims have hidden metrics for certain activities, not traits per se like the ones inherited from a parent with special abilities, but more like varying levels of skill that are independent of anything I might do in CAS. For example, maybe some sims would *naturally* be better sculptors or writers, producing more masterpieces or bestsellers, respectively, regardless of or separately from the traits I assigned. Also, in one game, even though I didn't do anything to change the game's default 75% success rate, my original couple and their descendants succeeded in their attempts to conceive 15 consecutive times. The chances of that are... hang on... 14,348,907/1,073,741,824, or about 1.34%. Other times, my family (from different CAS sims) has had a noticeably harder time reproducing. I'm just wondering if there's any truth to the rumor that the game has hidden metrics for sims, and if so, whether I can do anything to see them.
I think that's everything, but I'm half-expecting to wake up in the middle of the night with a handful of new questions. Maybe I should work on developing an off switch. But not yet; I'm having too much fun right now.
