Decades Challenge

"LuckyFreckle;c-16473042" wrote:

"Ashubii;c-16465430" wrote:

"LuckyFreckle;c-16459725" wrote:

"Ashubii;c-16459685" wrote:

"LuckyFreckle;c-16459652" wrote:
@Ashubii I loooove those!

@Black_Betty I'm so sorry! One rule that I have in wars, is that if siblings are both (or all, should there be more than 2) called and both fight, should one die, the other returns home immediately with mental trauma. From what I understand, especially in earlier wars, that would happen in the interest of keeping the family line. They would send home the sibling.

I do my war rolls differently. I don't use the cowplant and my rolls are based around actual U.S. war statistics. It is a lot more complicated than just rolling odd or even and feeding them to the cowplant, but I felt that it gives a little more depth or immersion to their war participation. I also felt with how wars have changed over the course of time, earlier world wars may have had less mental trauma percentages as opposed to a war like Vietnam or our current wars, and rules of engagement have changed as well. So that's just how I do it. I was using a website number generator, but it is said that it is hard to get "true" random rolls from those, so I'm using my tabletop dice. I will be elaborating on this in my next blog post for those who are interested.

I also start decades differently. Every sim day is equivalent to six months, so two sim days = a year. I have my sims life spans set to normal, and it matches up with it. The time from infant to toddler, toddler to child, child to teen, teen to young adult, etc. it matches up pretty good. They will die in their 50s as elders that way though. But if you have the MCCC, you can set their individual age spans like Elder and increase it if you like. You can also tweak the other ages as you see fit. But if you don't use it, it runs pretty in line with two days = 1 year.

Also, if you want to keep track of the family tree, even as others move out and start their own families, there's the Plum Tree App which is a family tree website just for your sims. That's what I use, as my tree has grown pretty big and will still be going for the next few decades.

Thank you!

And that style of aging the sims is pretty much how i do it, too. I've been following @CuteCoffeeGal's modified rules and aging system <3
I like the added immersion!
I also like your method of sending the sibling home from war! I'm in the 40's, but had few eligible men to send off for this gen; ended up creating several college boys to add into the mix, lol. I don't use the cowplant either, just sort of kill them off with MCCC (I've only had one war-death so far, though).

I had no idea you could set individual age spans with MCCC :o I might have to try that! I tend to turn aging on and off frequently so I can get scenes for my story alongside the gameplay - and I've missed the deaths of Sims who's household I wasn't playing :(

Yes you can! It's in the MCCC Settings when you access it through a sim's computer. Also, there is a setting where you can get notifications for any marriages, births, pregnancy starts and deaths of sims who are not in your household. I think you set it by relatives of active household. So I get notifications when sims outside of the household, but still relatives of my played sims, die or marry or have kids. It is VERY helpful!

For the age span change, when you access the mod through the sim's computer, it's the first option called MCCC settings - then you go to Set Age Span Duration and go from there. For the notifications, just start from same place. MCCC settings, then Notifications/Console/Menu Settings. In Notifications you can get death notifications and I chose "related to active household" - so it will show most relatives when they die, but not their spouses. The marriage notifications are in the marriage area itself, not in the MCCC Settings. So if you go to Pregnancy > Other Marriage > Show Marriage Notifications. I just chose all for that, personally. For children, it's Pregnancy > Other Pregnancy > Notification Settings > and you have a few options in there for how you like it. I do elect to have it shown the gender and what they named their babies.

As for deaths of spouses that you may not be notified for, depending on how you set it, you can just check the sim's genealogy, go back to your founder, and just have a look through there to see if any spouses have died. Doing all of this eliminates almost entirely the need to switch back and forth. The only time I have to go do anything with any of the other households, it's to change their fashion to resemble the decade, and take their pictures as well as note their traits/aspirations/etc.

If talking about MCCC isn't kosher per forum rules (not sure on this), apologies in advance, and if so, anyone is welcome to contact me privately with any questions. I mostly had to watch YouTube videos to understand a lot of the settings with that mod, I can understand missing anything or being confused. It's pretty detailed.

Ooo! Thank you for all of this info and tips! I'm going to have to figure this out and get it set up to suit my challenge :D
Unfortunately I do have to switch between households no matter what, just for the sake of storywriting and getting screenshots xD And I have to turn aging off a lot when I'm working on that specifically so sims don't age or die before I need them to storywise lol! But I don't mind having to do that, it makes the challenge more fun for me~ <3

Yeah I just realized that I have to do the same thing anyway. The genealogy tree thing glitched, so I can't look at the whole family from the founder anymore, just the direct line. Uuuuuuuugh I wish they'd fix that somehow.

@takenbysheep That's a great find!

I started using Family Echo to make my family tree for this challenge :D And I can just pop into CAS for each family to get a portrait screenshot to use there xD
I added the icons in and I have an updated version of the tree that contains story spoilers, but this is the old one for my challenge so far. It's a bit more work than just using the in-game one, but I like it better.