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, 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 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
