Anyone else waiting for bugfixes?
Yeah.. I'm not gonna touch ECO before the major bugs are gone. Can't be the only one right? xD
Forum Discussion
@Psychotps, I did have the Fabricator audio bug but only in one house. In my other house and on the community space I didn't have the audio problem for some reason 🤔, and this was before the patch from this week. So far I have not had any problems with the fizzy juice maker.
They have been addressing bugs a lot more in the last 10 or so months than they ever have before. They just have a lot to fix so it is going to be slower than what we would prefer. And yes, everybody wants bug fixes to be done ! 🤞
I understand, but the problem is, they're all broken. I mean, look at the major features of ECO Living. What are they?
ECO Footprint - The ability to make lots "green", "Industrial", and get benefits from this.
- BROKEN - ECO footprint constantly goes up and down. As far as I can see, it's not possible to get a hood to "green" or "industrial". I put all kinds of plants, green flooring, walls, roofs on a community lot, and it ALWAYS stays neutral. If I do it on a residential lot, it goes green for maybe 30 minutes then goes back to neutral. If we can't get it to stay green or industrial, what's the point?
N.A.P.s - The ability to add new policies to hoods that add cool new neighborhood actions.
- BROKEN - Townies and sims in hoods end up being governed by ALL NAPs in ALL hoods, and since there are 42 hoods in the game with 4 NAPS per hood, the sims end up being a COMPLETE MESS. Sims end up stealing critical items from commercial lots, completely breaking them. Sims constantly interrupt ALL actions to bake cakes, play with lumps of clay and future cubes, leaving them all over the place and making it impossible to do even the simplest tasks.
New off-the-grid power and water generation items - Makes off-the-grid living actually viable! Generate and use your own power and water to go even more green!
- BROKEN - Power generation items like wind generators and solar panels generate NEGATIVE power when used, even without a SINGLE powered object on the lot. I had a completely empty lot with nothing but 6 solar panels and a wind turbine. NOTHING ELSE AT ALL. and was generating -4.93 power.
Fabricator - Create your own items from scraps
- BROKEN - (Fixed?) The sound gets stuck after a few uses. The sound is so severely grating and annoying, the item cannot be used. Haven't tested since the latest patch "claimed" to fix it.
Juicer - Create your own fizzy juices from your own plants!
- BROKEN - After a few uses, the device simply locks up. Occasionally after 3 or 4 days, it'll suddenly start working again, but sometimes won't. The item then needs to be sold and re-purchased, wasting money.
New Planters - Hydroponic auto-watering planters and vertical planters!
- BROKEN (kinda) - Vertical planters are on their own system. If you "sell all" on a ground planter, you have to do it again on the vertical. Hydroponic auto-watering planters don't auto-water all plants. Some aren't auto-watered which makes it no better than a standard planter.
(I would list the new broken billing system that was released with ECO, but technically that's an update for the base game and not a part of the pack. And if I listed ALL the bugs in the base game too, we'll be here for weeks...)
I really wanted this pack to work. There are so many things here I wanted, solar panels and turbines to make bills cheaper and actually play an off-the-grid lot... the ability to actually change the neighborhood, make it better or worse. More crafting options...
But none of it works. None of it.
@Psychotps, I'm still not sure if the Eco Footprint is broken, or just that it doesn't work like we would expect it to. I see evidence for both.
I have not had that problem with the NAPs. But like I suspected and @kreatora confirmed, that is probably because I've been playing only one household per save file. 🤔 This is how I play 98% of the time anyway. I've been playing that way since almost the beginning since I didn't like playing the rotational way. I'm planning on doing some tests with me playing more than one household in a save so I can better understand what other people are dealing with. 🙂
I've had mixed results with bills and the wind turbines and dew collector, and solar panels. On one household It reduced my bills but on 2 others if didn't. But I can see how having no appliances and having the power saving equipment increasing your bills would be a failure in this area!
I still have yet to have problems with the Fizzy juicer. I had one family use it everyday (sometimes more than once) for 2 weeks and haven't had problems with it yet. 🤔🙂
I did have the Fabricator sound bug on one of my family's lots, but not on my other family and not on the one at the community Maker Space lot. I've had them break down a few times, but I had used them a lot before that happened. Nothing out of the ordinary.😎
I have only used the vertical planters (other than having garlic in a single pot ) so far. I was playing with new Sims so their gardening skill isn't high enough to Sell All just yet. But so far I haven't had problems with them. Have not tried the hydroponic planters yet, but yes, by definition they should waler the plants! 😞
And while you didn't mention it , I did have some problems with the bug boxes. I can usually keep one alive, but if I have 2 of them one always dies. Still, I can usually get one harvest of bio fuel or cricket flour, or beetle nuggets out of the one that ends up dying.
I haven't had any problems with the candle maker or the machine that gives you Bits & Pieces so far.
I've also been able to successfully apply some eco upgrades to existing appliances! 🙌- @PugLove888
I new you'd understand. It doesn't make any sense. If I have no powered objects and SEVEN things generating power, how can it possibly go negative? It should be like +50 or +60. Even IF there is a latent power usage on every lot like @kreatora said, it WON'T be THAT high. I understand that during nighttime or during cloudy days, the solar panels should be 0, and maybe during non-windy days the wind turbines should be 0... But on a bright-sunny day in summer, at like 11am, the solar panels should be generating a TON of power, not negative. This is definitely broken.
The eco footprint? Maybe. If this is how they designed it to work, then it doesn't make any sense to me. The way I expect it to work is this... If I design say a bar and put down a lot of "green" walls, floors, trees, grass, and remove anything with "industrial", I expect it to show as a "green" lot. Not neutral. If I select the "green" community lot, I expect it to show as "green", not neutral. If I redesign my residential lot to include all green and no industrial, I expect it to show as "green", not neutral. And I expect it to REMAIN that way. Not fluctuate up to green, back down to neutral, and back to industrial for no reason at all. This tells me that the ECO footprint is RANDOM, not fixed based upon objects you put down. So, if it's random, what's the point in doing anything? I'm still considering this broken.
Regarding the NAPs, I'm not sure what caused it, but my sims didn't start getting severely corrupted until I started moving them. I started with a single sim. Wanted to do the rags to riches thing. off-the-grid lot, started gardening and working, eventually got married and enough money to move from the new world to Willow Creek. This is where things started going wrong. When their kids grew up and moved out and I started playing THEM, then they went completely bonkers. They were completely unplayable. It may not be multiple households, but moving maybe? Although the kids were considered a new household... If that helps your testing... I also had no mods in at the time.
The fabricator sound bug occurred every single time I had it in a house. Usually every 5 or 6 tries it would happen. I'd have to delete it, save and exit, delete cache, re-load, and buy it again. Every 5 uses? It's not worth it. I can't test it at the moment, I got sick of ECO Living causing so many problems so I removed it. I'll re-install it once they decide to fix it.
The sell-all thing is more of an annoyance. It's supposed to be a convenience, do it once and everything's done. It becomes useless if I have to do it multiple times.
The hydroponic planters water most plants, but not all. But if they don't auto-water everything then they're useless to me. Hydroponic planters for plants A, B, & C, but regular planters for X, Y, & Z? I don't think so.
I tried the bug boxes for a while, but it appears that they are simply re-skins of the bee-box. A new animation for "bond with bees" called "nurture", but it's basically the same thing. I never saw much use in it... And I'm NOT having my sims eat BUGS. Gross. I didn't play with it enough to find any bugs... (no pun intended) 😉
The scrapping machine itself may not be broken, but the bits and pieces it gives you are. At certain times, they just empty out. I'm not sure what causes it but I've had it completely clear out three times on one family. What's the point in scrapping if your store of them gets completely wiped out at random times?
I can't tell if the eco upgrades for the appliances works because the other power generation objects are giving false or bad returns. I tried it but when I saw the power generation constantly giving negative numbers, I deleted ALL powered devices, sinks, showers, everything to test it. Waited several days until a sunny day and it was still negative. So, I have no idea if the eco upgrades work or not. @Psychotps, yes, I didn't think about if moving Sims might cause or at least aggravate the NAPs overlapping from different neighborhoods. I don't move my Sims too often, and I don't know if moving Sims is more common with other people or not. It can be rather tedious is you want to keep your furniture and then replace it, so I was guessing that most people avoid it if possible, or at least if they do move, they just sell all their old furniture and download a house from the Gallery that is already furnished.
Anyway that is something to consider! I can see how that could convolute things. 😞
I wouldn't want to eat bugs either, but many cultures in the world do either out of necessity, nutrition, or because they like how they taste! 😉 In Mexico City they sometimes eat grasshoppers and ant larvae -- it is considered a delicacy! I had a friend who was from Kenya and they eat termites there. She loved termites and would sometimes get a craving for them! She said that the ones in the states were too tiny and that the ones in Kenya tasted like bacon! 🙌 For me, while I might love the taste of termites if I ever were to eat them, I don't think I would like the texture of them! 😞
Perhaps cricket flour like the game has wouldn't cause me texture issues?🤔 I still wouldn't want to try it though! 😃
I need to try the hydroponic planters myself. I just haven't gotten that far. I haven't noticed a problem with Bits & Pieces disappearing yet, but I will be on the look out for that.
The reason I know my eco upgrades worked is because I had that NAP enacted so I had to upgrade my appliances, and the inspector seemed satisfied and didn't charge me after i upgraded them! (Before I upgraded them I got fined! 🤨 I didn't consider the bill when upgrading appliances since that wasn't why I was upgrading them in that save. That could still be an issue🤔, but the issue I was doing them for worked! 🙌- @PugLove888 Well, when I had the single sim in the shipping container lot, there were a lot of bugs, but it was all stuff like lumps of clay multiplying in their inventory. Every few seconds another would spawn. It got so bad, I just ignored it and every day I'd just look at the current $ amount, sell all the clay, then reset the $ back to before. But I could still play them just fine. They would do what I directed them to.
I moved them once after marriage to willow creek. They lived there for a while and had the kids. They were acting a little weird. Stopping what they were doing occcasionally for gardening, had the visitors stealing, (this is where I had Bella Goth stealing a bunch of stuff in an older post) But they kept stopping what they were doing occasionally. Still had the lumps of clay spawning.
When the kids got to YA, I split the family and moved the two kids out to Windenberg and they went NUTS. I couldn't have them do ANYTHING without it interrupting. They were constantly berating each other, stopping to exercise, playing with clay, I was getting hundreds of clays a day by this point. They weren't sleeping, eating, nothing. They would interrupt ALL actions to do these NAP generated tasks.
I don't move sims all the time, but I do it quite often. Since the game always starts your sims with a HORRIBLY low amount of money, I always have to start in a burner starter home and work up to the more expensive ones. So, I end up moving every household at least once. Sometimes twice if I go from a starter house to a mid-range house, to an expensive one.
I used to do the keep all furniture thing and place it all again, but as you mentioned, it can get tedious. Plus, it tends to leave houses empty and I have to refurnish it if I move in a new household. So, now, I just place anything I want to keep in the household inventory and sell everything else. Making money is rather easy after all.
I'll leave the bugs thing alone. Maybe it's my own personal thing against bugs, they're just gross to me.
Well, the inspectors were either broken for me or I couldn't figure them out. They always charged me, even with every device having the green upgrades. Never figured out why. @PugLove888 I know I have seen positive energy bills in my game since installing Eco Lifestyle but to be honest I never paid much attention to the details before, so I decided to do some controlled testing today.
To start my testing I chose a small starter home in Grims Quarry. There were no NAPs (I have NPC voting disabled in my game options), no lot traits, no upgraded appliances, and no renewable energy sources. I kept my appliance usage steady during the test so I would not see any changes from something being on or off. The house is small and much of it is from the off-the-grid list in Build/Buy. Here is how it looked at the start of the experiment:
I tested each day at noon for 3 days and the Rate of Change was steady at -32.80. There were no changes with the weather, which made sense to me because I had nothing on the lot that should have been reacting to wind or clouds.
The next change I made was to add one ground solar panel and two ground wind turbines. On the first day it was sunny with no wind and my Rate of Change had improved to -16.50. It seemed like having these renewable energy sources had made a big difference in reducing my energy bill.
- Day 2 was cloudy with no wind and the Rate of Change dropped slightly to -17.8. It appeared that the solar panel did not work as well in cloudy conditions.
- Day 3 was clear and windy. The Rate of Change increased to -15.4. The solar panel and the wind turbines appeared to be working better under more ideal conditions.
- Day 4 was windy but snowing. The Rate of Change dropped again to -17.0 apparently the solar panel was not working as well in the snow.
None of these weather conditions had a large impact on the Rate of Change, but the effect they did have made sense to me.
For the next step of the experiment I upgraded my appliances to energy-efficient and upgraded the gearboxes on both wind turbines, all using Eco Upgrade parts (my Sim's Handiness level is too low to upgrade the wind turbines with regular parts). That day was cloudy with no wind but my Rate of Change improved to -6.6. That's much better than the -17.8 Rate I was seeing under the same weather conditions with no upgraded appliances or wind turbines.
To save a little bit of time with my testing (and while I had the cloudy with no wind weather conditions) I added two Roof-mounted solar panels to see what they would do for me. Here is what I got for my Energy Bill update:
So for this house at least the overall Rate of change improved from -32.80 to +2.85 by installing green upgrades to my appliances and adding a total of 5 renewable energy sources. For my next test I will try a larger approx. 60k Simoleon house in Brindleton Bay. I'm not trying to say this stuff will work for everyone who tries it because obviously I have no way of knowing that. I'm just saying for this one controlled test the energy bills and green upgrades/renewable energy sources seemed to be working as designed.
One other thing I noticed is that although Grims Quarry's Eco Footprint had dropped to Neutral at some point before I began my testing (I have been playing this save for several weeks now) but by the end of the test it had improved back to Green again. The only real changes in that neighborhood during that time were the green improvements I made to my Sim's house so it seems that in this case at least they made the expected difference on the Eco Footprint.
I hope this helps :D
@PsychotpsI need to try the shipping container house. I keep getting sidetracked! 😃
I've heard about the spawning lumps of clay... they are linked to one of the NAP where you have to do fun things. And since Sims were addicted to the clay even before this patch and EP, I can just imagine how it would be worse with a NAP like this! 🤨I rarely move my Sims because I start to see their house as an extension of that family. I am more likely to expand their house than to move them. I do have some save files where I have played a rag-to-riches type gameplay, but about 20 years of playing the Sims I am tired of that kind of scenario, and only play it in a few saves.
Usually, I will place a family on an empty lot, do the free real estate cheat and then move them. This way I can try out houses I download from the Gallery and don't have to wait a long time to be able to play with those houses! 🙌 And this cheat is perfect for testing other things in the game so I can focus on what I'm testing, and don't get distracted by trying to advance quickly in a career so I can get a decent house. 🙂
As for eating bugs, I doubt I would ever do that intentionally in real life. I don't like bugs in general, and the texture would be a deal breaker for me. However, I much rather my Sims eat bugs (something that many parts of the world do , and it is nutritious) over dumpster woo hoo, which is an actual health hazard! 😞🤒
@RandomBuzziness, thank you for the detailed experiment (with pictures, no less!) 🤓 ❤️ of the eco power/bills feature of this pack! 🙌😇 In your game, not only were the solar panels and wind turbines working, they were responding to the weather! Also nice to see that the eco upgrades also worked. I had only tested them for compliance to my local NAP, and didn't pay attention to the bills since I had plenty of money to pay the bills, and I just didn't want to get fined for non-compliance! 😃I think, perhaps this is more in line with what @kreatora was talking about, although he was more focused on the Eco Footprint of the neighborhood and most of @Psychotps discussion focused on the bills aspect, like yours did! 🤔
I don't know what exactly is causing these discrepancies. I don't use Mods or CC, so my lack of problems in many of these areas can't be attributed to those. I suppose some people might have individual glitches that others don't have, but then that can't really be considered a bug. Bugs usually happen to all people who meet the same certain conditions in the game, so either we all aren't' meeting those same conditions, or else it is something other than a bug that is the problem. 🤔
I haven't had most of these problems so far, and while I will be on the lookout for them just in case, I do feel better knowing I'm not the only one who isn't having a ton of problems so far! 😇
