[ARCHIVED] [CoL] [FR] Farm Animals in Rental Neighbours' homes run away

I don't think this "rentals are not programmed to have animals" is a thing. I mean animals besides pets tho.

And I say that because we can easily have animals in community lots so why not in rentals? It doesn't make any sense and EA never said anything about this so I believe this is a bug.

I have a community farm set as a community garden with a bunch of animals that one of my Sims bought and none of them are owned by my Sim, they are a property of the lot. So the chickens, cows and llamas should be a property of the rental lot and not of a rental unity specially if the hennery is in a common area. And I've never seen them flee or anything. 

I'm gonna do some testing to see if I find anything. 

@amjoie 

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.

edited to add image of lot layout

Ok, I did a refresh of my Sim 4 entire folder to get a new unmodded game, like I had just purchased Sims 4 and was starting the game for the first time. I made a sim couple, Lord and Lady Wyndon. They were supposed to be married, but I forgot to do that in CAS. Anyway, they bought a residential rental property and lived in the main house that I placed from my personal Library, the Duplanier Dwelling. I placed a llama shed in the common area and had them buy a black sheep and black goat.

Then I built a tenant dwelling by placing a large square of walls in build mode. I changed the walls to fences, put in a gate, and deleted the floor and roof. Then I made a home inside the fenced area by placing a kitchen, living room and bedroom from the prebuilt rooms in build mode and adding a roof. The entire fenced area and home showed it was owned by the 2nd rental unit on the lot. I did the same thing for the 3rd rental unit. The two tenant homes/properties were identical. I placed a cow shed and chicken coop in one tenant home and a just chicken coop in the other. The game allowed placement of the farm animals.

I put a tenant in one tenant home, that I took from the homeless bin, Dustin Broke. He could feed the black sheep and goats and take care of the llama in the common area.

While on his own rental property, I had him buy a white sheep and white goat, which he fed and cleaned. I had him buy a cow, which he took care of. I had him buy brown chickens, and he scattered feed for them. I saved the game.

I put a tenant in the other tenant home from the homeless bin, Dreamer. I had him take care of the llama. I did not see the black sheep or goat to try caring for them. I had Dreamer buy a brown sheep and brown goat which he cared for and also he scattered feed for his white chickens.

I switched back to the Lord and Lady. Lord Wyndon could care for the llama in the common area, but could not feed either the white or brown minis because there was no option to feed or clean them. He could only socialize. He could not get near the cows or chickens, so could not care for them.

Lord Wyndon's black sheep and goats were gone. He had a relationship with them and they were not in his relationship panel anymore. They were not on the property.

Lord Wyndon did, however, walk into Dreamer's home and start to cook something, autonomously when I was controlling Dreamer. When I switched over to Lord Wyndon to see if he could feed the chickens since he was already on the property, not only did he fail to feed the chickens, but he failed to be able to leave the property. I had to transport him out. So him walking into the kitchen to cook autonomously was a glitch. He should not have been able to go there.

I am concluding from this that in a vanilla game, the game glitches badly if tenants own farm animals on their own tenant property. It is definitely a problem.

One more test: I tried having the Lord and Lady's house along with two tenant houses, but all land held in common on the lot. The tenants did not own or rent any land, just their homes. The game still glitched.

The Lord and Lady purchased all livestock: 2 chicken coops, one cow, one llama, a pair of black minis, a pair of brown minis, and a pair of white minis. All livestock was on common land. The Lord and Lady fed and cared for each one of the livestock purchased. They had relationships with all of them.

I switched to the first tenant. He could care for all the livestock. I switched back to the Lord and Lady. Now they could NOT care for the minis. They could only socialize.

I switched to the second tenant. He could care for all the livestock. I switched to the first tenant. Now he could NOT care for livestock.

And during this test run, the sims kept freezing. I had to debug more than one of them to continue playing. The longer I played the worse the freezing became until it was nearly unplayable.

From this experience, I would strongly advise not buying farm animals on residential rental lots with tenants, until this glitchiness is fixed.

Hey all,

Just checking in to see if anyone is still seeing this on a modless game as we've been unable to reproduce it on our end.

If so please share your save file with us (instructions: http://x.ea.com/74420) so we can take a look.

Thanks!