Please use this thread going forward: [FR] [CoL] Farm Animals in Rental Neighbours' homes run away | EA Forums - 4942970
I am confused as to how this is a bug. The farm animals will always be apart of the 'common area' within the entire Residential Rental lot since they are not members of a household and can only live outside on the entire lot. The game can't know which unit you want to take primary care ship for the animals, so that's why it becomes the active household's responsibility.
If you used move objects on and forced the animals into a building / unit, they wont be visible, (and runaway) once you load into the unit that isn't meant to take care of them. Perhaps that is the best solution?
@rory_nutt I think you have a misconception of the problem. Individual tenants can own cats or dogs and have them live only in their individual apartments, or be also be allowed to roam the common areas. So animal ownership is not an issue in and of itself.
The issue is with mini sheep and mini goats, and other farm animals. The game has apparently not been coded for tenants to own mini sheep or goats, or other farm animals individually like they can with cats or dogs. This is the cause of confusion and glitching. Whether the lack of coding for mini sheep and mini goats or other farm animals was by design or something that was overlooked is now moot.
The salient fact is that mini sheep and mini goat or other farm animal ownership by tenants is now glitching the game.
I am confused as to how you would expect them to fix this. The mini sheep & goats can only live outside and in the 'common area' of the residential rental and therefore are automatically designated as the responsibility for the active household playing on the lot, regardless of what sim actually bought them. The game doesn't remember who actually owns the animal, it just assumes the sims on the active lot do (property owner or tenant).
I tested this in my game, it's not glitching. I interpret this as OP forgot to feed them because they assumed the sim who bought them (non-active household) would autonomously feed them.
I feel like this makes sense, whoever is playing on the active unit should be responsible for feeding them. If you don't want to, just hire a ranch hand and subtract the cost for the hired help from rent or something. 🙂
@rory_nutt No, this is not correct. I have had sims in SM own mini sheep and mini goats, as well as cows, INSIDE their apartment. These animals do not need to live outside only.
Bunnies and birds, on the other hand, cannot live indoors. The game will not allow it. But the game will allow them to live on balconies that are technically outdoors. I have done that too, in SM.
Horses are not allowed in rental units in SM at all. Not in any circumstance, even huge penthouse lots.
But farm animals are all allowed in rental units in SM, indoors or outdoors.
So the issue is not rental units or indoors or outdoors.
The issue seems to be that tenants in residential rental lots were not coded to individually own farm animals, like they can cats and dogs. The coding could be changed to reflect that, possibly.
But regardless of intent, the game should not be glitching if someone tries to have tenants own farm animals. That needs to be stopped, either by disallowing ownership like the game does for horses, or by ignoring the attempt at ownership of tenants and forcing all animals to be owned by the owner of the lot, no matter where they "reside."
I do not care how they code it, I just do not want to see the game glitched. 🙂
edited to address second issue mentioned:
The OP did not forget to feed the farm animals. They were inside a rental unit and not available to feed. Read their post again, and you will see that the tenants owned a piece of land as well as a house. So even if the farm animals were outside, they were not in the common area where they could be accessed by the lot owner.
The experience of the other person posting was that the game glitched, not just that the animals were not fed. So this is a coding problem, and a glitch in the game.
