Life of The Sims. I don't know what to do.
I'm starting to get very discouraged with The Sims. I don't know what to do any more. There are just far too many bugs in the game now. I literally can't play any more without getting massively frus...
Forum Discussion
I can only consider things you have mentioned here and the fact is that a lot of it is not bugs but is confirmed working such as bills and other things you mentioned. That aside there are a lot of bugs still present in the game. I can document these so they hopefully gets fixed and in the meantime provide workarounds if possible.
You can deny it all you want, but I'm still trying to figure out what's broken, since NOONE else will.
I've figured out part of it. The power generation devices are definitely broken. Going through the code, I've discovered in certain circumstances, the devices like the ground wind turbine will actually DRAIN the power from your storage by almost 500% more than it should add to it.
I'm just not sure yet what those circumstances are. I made a mod to remove that unknown enormous "drain", and the power generators are phenomenally more stable. I also slightly increased the power generation so you won't need like 8-10 to "break even", now you only need 4-6.
I'll be looking at the broken fabricator and juicer next when I'm done testing the power generators.
It looks like the huge drain is only effecting the wind turbines and not the solar panels. Ground turbine has a random drain of 490%. Roof turbine's drain is around 200%.
I won't be fixing the broken billing system since another modder has ALREADY posted a fix for that.
From what I am seeing on this and other sites there are quite a few people trying to figure all of this out, so you should not feel like it is just you who is working on this. Some of these things have been difficult to reproduce. I've been tracking daily my energy bill for about 75 in-game days and I have not seen any unusual power drains or other unexplained fluctuations with the energy and water billing system. Five renewable energy sources has been the break-even number of devices for me all along. This is for a 60k Simoleon, medium-sized 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in Brindleton Bay with quite a few electrical devices (computer, TV, stereo, oven, refrigerator, all that kind of stuff). I'm not using any mods that affect energy bills.
This is a typical energy bill I will see with 5 renewable energy sources (two upgraded ground-mounted wind turbines, one upgraded ground solar panel, and two roof solar panels) and one upgraded dew collector for a water source. This day was partly cloudy with no wind. I see better numbers on sunny days or on windy days. It does drop in the negative at night but over-all the average has been right around 0. I had 3 days in a row with the same weather and the same day-time energy bill rate of +7.81 per day.
I have done a lot of green upgrades to the plumbing and electrical appliances and I am using many off-the-grid lights. These things made a large difference in my energy bill, which I would have to believe was the intent of the developers. The Eco footprint for this neighborhood did change to "green" about half-way through my testing so all of these upgrades appeared to have an impact on that as well. I wanted to grab a screen-shot for a sunny day, but well you know how the weather in BB is xD Here was the next change in weather, which was cloudy with more wind.
I'm not sure what would happen to a non-upgraded wind turbine if it suffered a lightning strike but perhaps this might have something to do with the large energy drain in the code? I can only guess on that for now, I've been waiting for it to happen in my game but so far it hasn't. At any rate I haven't been able to capture any large changes in the energy bill during my testing.So yeah, I mean there are quite a few things with the NAPs that bug me, but so far I haven't been able to reproduce any problems with the energy, water, or rent billing systems.
As I said, I don't know what the circumstances are. But they're there. I built a house specifically to test it. No Geo Thermal or Well lot traits, No "green" or "industrial" walls, roofs, or floors, No bill surcharge items, no water generation walls or roofs, made sure there were no powered devices at all. All candles, no fridge, stove, radio, computer, etc. I waited a week before placing any power generation devices and kept checking and saw the "Rate of change" on the bills remained at a flat 0.0 the entire time.
After placing a ground turbine, I still watched the power go from +5 to -14, which should not be possible.
I know about the eco footprint modifiers. I found those too. If your lot is "green", there is a small bonus to power generation, conversely, if your lot is "industrial", there is a small reduction in your power generation on all power generation devices. But this is on the order of like 10-15% bonus or reduction. There are other modifiers, like if it's a windy day, turbines generate 20% more power. For solar panels, cloudy days are 20% lower, snow covered solar panels also have reduced power generation... etc.
This "special" 490% power drain has something to do with ECO, but I don't know what. I just know it would randomly kick in on my lots. Heck, I can even show it to you in the code. The basic power generation on a normal (non-windy) day is +0.00357 per unit. Windy days are +0.00417 per unit, which is 14.4% higher. When commodity 233233 takes effect, the power generation is -0.0175 per unit, which is 490.2% and it's negative so it drains power.
Whatever it is, it's commodity #233233. If that occurs, you get a random 490% power drain with wind turbines. I originally thought it might be when they're broken, but it occurred when they weren't broken, and didn't when they were. The commodity isn't there for solar panels so I assume it's something specific to wind turbines? Either that or its some bug.The numbers are calculated like this. What is currently produced versus what was produced earlier. Say windy gives plus 20 then if it becomes wind still (0) then the rate of change becomes -20. This will of course fluctuate over time so you will see both positive and negative numbers. If you have no power generators the rate will of course always be 0 as you discovered.
