Forum Discussion

Iron_Cedar's avatar
Iron_Cedar
Rising Rookie
3 months ago

Two words... Star... Trek...

A full expansion pack, on a fully functional starship (either a Federation, Romulan, Klingon, etc., Player's choice).  We'll also be able to build our own, like a massive house, on a 800x800 lot, since it would be for a crew of a 100 sims.  OR maybe just the Player's quarters and key rooms that the Player works in.

We can live on the ship as a crew member.

New career; with 3 branches:  Command Division (Gold/Yellow outfits):  Captain, officer, pilots, diplomacy, ship operations.  Operations Division (Red/Gold):   engineers, security, transporter and communications technicians.  Science Division (Blue):  Alien plant botanists (should be able to tie into Strangerville), science officers, medical officers, historians (learning about the history of the alien cultures).

All of the alien species; Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Borg, etc (probably just cosmetic CAS objects as extra category features, so that we can have hats and sunglasses on Klingons.  Possibly adding a subcategory for the Alien occult for the Star Trek species, so Klingons and the others that have special facial differences can have their own skin enhancements OR have the skin enhancements be their own category, like tattoos.

New objects;  phasers that only work on stun, teleportation, holodeck, replicator, sonic showers, VISOR, tricorder, new research (ties into University, maybe High School too?), and experimental technology.

Along with a separately purchased game pack that allows us to travel to a new planet (similar to the Star Wars game pack)... perhaps to save Vulcan?

All of it would intertwine with the base game, so we can take phasers and teleporters back home!

All so that our lovable Sims can boldly go where no Sim has gone before...

(I'm hoping if there's enough interest, EA will go for it).

discussion
expansion packs
feedback
game packs
gameplay feedback
ideas

2 Replies

  • Iron_Cedar's avatar
    Iron_Cedar
    Rising Rookie
    2 months ago

    Paramount raised the license fee by 2,000%, so it might have just been the dramatic price increase that made people want to abandon it and not just the total cost.  But for the price to increase like that, it tells me that the fee is a flat fee and not a percentage or maybe a fee with a percentage? But if it's a flat fee, it could be a significant (or moderate?) investment from EA, but if EA could get the license near the end of the year, they MIGHT be able to stretch the debt/loan across to quarter reports in 2 separate years, which would make their the year's revenue appear to take less of a hit, which would appease greedy shareholders.
    But I think Paramount and took a slight dip in revenue for 2025, which explains the cost increase, so I don't know how it would go, you're probably right.

    But I think an 800x800 lot should be doable for them, they already have a good culling system in EA's Frostbite Engine - there isn't really any info on The Sims 4 engine (SmartSim?).
    I'm sure The Sims 4 has some kind of octree/box-sphere frustum culling now, with the multiple floors and such.
    But if they're clogged down with slow code, they use Python, then personal quarters with specific rooms, like the engine room, medical bay, cargo bay, etc. should be sufficient.
    I suggested 800x800 because I was thinking the Starship is huge, a quick search said it's 947 feet long and the saucer is about  834 feet wide, with eleven decks.  So it would be an extra 3 floors than the game already has.  I THINK each square is 2x2 feet, so the saucer would be about 417x417.  lol
    BUT nobody has ever actually made a set with all of the Enterprise, so I don't think Maxis would have to build the whole thing, but it'd be awesome if they went for it.

    And the excessive Sims would probably be a hard drive issue.  I imagine they don't want to use terabytes for millions of sims that aren't going to appear in the game.  lol

  • AvaSJones's avatar
    AvaSJones
    Seasoned Scout
    3 months ago

    Unfortunately, that's unlikely to happen now that the Star Trek licensing fees have been increased drastically. And the 800x800 lot with 100 sims was never going to happen anyway. The game needs to be kept performant for all players, which is why there's an 8 sim per household and 20 sim per lot limit, and the amount of objects on a lot impacts performance too. To get a 640000 square... Square? lot to work, it would have to be very sparse, on account of just how large the lot is. 

Featured Places

Recent Discussions