Re: [ARCHIVED] [GTW] Plants at science lab don't produce harvestables

Hi @Psychotps 

I merged your post with existing thread.

Please click me too on the first post.

I am having the same issue with the science lab but I think I might've found the reason why I can never water or harvest anything.

When I landed for work, I saw my sweet co-workers watering and taking care of the plants already!!

They probably harvest everything there is for their own experiments too.

I wish I could somehow change the time my scientist goes to work in order to be there before they grab up everything...meh

Well, they didn't harvest because plants at the Science Lab don't spawn fruit... well, they do but only at 5am and noone is ever there at 5am so it's the same thing.

But your comment gave me an idea.  What if a mod redesigned the Science career so the start of the work day was at like 4am?  Since spawning only occurs at 5am, this might allow the plants to spawn, right?

Psychotps, yesss!!! Exactly!!

Or just stop have the co workers do the gardening unless they're ordered to.

Because I saw them again do all the watering and tending when my scientist arrived for work.

So my thought is, they might "steal" all the harvestables.

Another fix could be to have a mod that makes them drop off all harvestables they took in a "harvest chest" or whatever, if they indeed do the harvesting when gardening.

So that all have access to the harvest when needed.

Oooor, make it an option for the scientist to order them to hand over their harvest to him/her.

Just for the fun of testing, I now put bees in the lab to see if that has an influence on anything that happens to the plants there.

Now I wish I knew how to write mods because the ideas for fixes are endless. I wonder why none of the great modders worked something out yet.

It only happens the first time. After that, the plants don't spawn fruit. I think we need to be there before 4am so the spawning action occurs.

Well, I'm currently working on a solution. Ran into a snag.

I successfully created a mod that moves the science career hours from 10am-7pm to 12am-9am. Since my sim is now at the lab at 5am, the plants are working properly now. They spawn fruit, dry out, get weeds, etc.

There are a few problems with it though. Since you are now at the LAB at 5am, you are no longer at HOME at 5am, so your plants at home don't spawn. However, since you are still home at 5am on the weekends, you can still grow fruit at home 2 days a week. (But that's only a problem with the science career) I can live with that bug.

The second problem is, none of the coworkers are showing up for work at 12am. I don't know why not. I'm still looking into it, but at least I'm making headway.

I wonder if I shift the work hours to 4am-1pm, would the coworkers show up at 10am? That would at least give you 3 hours with your coworkers. But I'd rather have them show up at 12.

Well, at the moment, it's not any better. I may have bypassed the gardening problem, but I created new ones in the process. Now all tasks that require interaction with coworkers can't be done... which actually may be a bigger problem.

Sorry about the additional issues ☹️

But at least you tried. And you might find another way in the process ^^

Do you think the plants in the lab could be made to spawn at 11 am or 1 pm (or really any time that the scientist is actually there?

Then everything else could stay as it was and the scientist would be there when it happens.

That's another method I want to look at. Thing is, I'm not very good at modding Sims. Now Skyrim or Fallout, I'm pretty decent at modding. Sims, not so much. There's very little I can see I have access to in Sims. Basically just what's in the Tuning files.If Maxis didn't put the option there, I don't think it can be done.

Fixed the CoWorkers bug. Mod is now working properly.

It's currently up on both the Nexus and Mod The Sims. It's called  Scientist Career - Graveyard Shift and Gardening Fix

@Psychotps OMG, that's so awesome!!! I'm seriously thrilled!!!

I'm gonna run grab your mod and try it immediately.

This is gonna be a great day in the lab!! Yay!!

@helenthehunter I'm super new to Sims but eager to learn 🙂

What determines whether a lot is considered "active/inactive"? Obviously, the lot where my family is living is def active, but what about others?

I only play with one household for starters.

The stuff on my neighboring lot always grows and spawns fruit even though I'm not playing that lot.

My scientist spends lots of hours at the lab and the plants hardly grow even though I let him talk to them.

I did let me sims hang around in Sylvan Glades forever just to get the cherry tree to finally grow up so I could get a cutting from it.

Was about to start thinking that it was broken too...lol...it just took so crazy long.

Next up I will have them be there before 5 am to see if that tree will have fruit then ^^

Gardening only spawns on "Active" lots. Those are lots you are currently playing.

For example: If you create a "Park" lot and put say Strawberries on it, they'll never grow unless you are actively playing the lot at 5am. It doesn't matter if you have a sim there. Unless you are actually playing it at 5am, they'll never spawn.

That was the problem with the Science Lab. Since the vanilla work hours are 10am-7pm, you would never be there at 5am when the plants spawn.

I wonder what they were thinking when they programmed that part. 

Somehow makes no sense to the player at all, does it?

Anyhow, I'm soooo very happy with your mod!!

Thanks so much once again 🙂

It WAS working before. An update last year broke it.

I assume the way it used to work was if a lot was loaded that hadn't been loaded since before the previous 5am, it just spawned the fruit at the first opportunity. But that's not the case now.

As for my mod, I have noticed a few quirks. The only one I'm even a little concerned about is holidays. The new schedule acts a little ... wonky ... around holidays. Don't know why. I don't think I can fix it either. Instead of one day off, it gives you two? Dunno, need to play it more.

I've been playing it all day and for the most part, seems to work just fine.

Thank you for that mod, it's made playing a scientist much easier, though I still can't order my coworkers to garden, even when there are obvious weeds. I'm mostly commenting on this thread to confirm that the problem is still a problem. 

Seeing how very little to no fruit grows at the lab, even if you plant a new plant, that's not harvestable. They need to fix this eventually, they cannot avoid this issue, same goes double for other issues in the game.

Wish they would roll back the plant syncing thing :/ Makes no sense that public lots don't regenerate plants, and i often manage to be out at syncing time for the home lot as well so i'm not getting anywhere with gardening. I remember it working perfectly earlier when i played a few years back. Also it's sort of aesthetically displeasing for all of the plants to dry out/grow weeds/get bugs at the exact same time every night.

I wish they would fix the problem with the plants at the Science Lab already, I have to use cheats to make them grow or need watering and even that doesn't work 100% of the time.

All they got to do is make it so as you leave workplaces that you can't return to at will, they refresh all plants that CAN grow, as in either inside and taken care of, or outside and in the right season and taken care of. It's starting to make me annoyed at how many of these small things are around in the game. Inventory management is already a huge pain in the behind and you don't want to drag around a gazillion things with you. Like you scroll down for an item, mouse over to read tooltip but then the scroll resets to top again by itself. No sorting feature, it's an really a joke how no one at their office can work it out.

The cheat created by @Psychotps can be found here:

It's currently up on both the Nexus and Mod The Sims. It's called  Scientist Career - Graveyard Shift and Gardening Fix

This bug is so old....! EA, please could you fix it???!!! The mod is nice, but I don't like work hours...

I’m not sure it has been fully fixed as of now- but every few days I have at least one plant that needs to be watered. Sometimes two. I did plant something in each of the starting empty planters. So at least there is that. I take most of the harvestable items from my house and the neighborhood to work to make my serums. I am able to get microscope samples at work though.