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
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.
@jpkarlsenThat's interesting. It's the rate of "Change". So then, what's the cooldown time? Per minute? Per hour? Per day? That seems like an unnecessarily added component of complexity. Why not just show current values?
There's still a 490% power drain configured in the code. It's there. Wind turbines on a non-windy day generate +0.00357 per unit, and randomly "generate" -0.0175, or a 490.2% drain. Well, it's more like instead of +0.00357, -0.175 is like just under 600% lower "generation".
Plus, I've seen the negative "rate of change" number stay there for more than a day, with NO powered objects.Edit: Pondering...
Yeah, I don't think it's that simple. If it were a "rate of CHANGE", then shouldn't it always reset to 0.0 after the cooldown time expires and conditions haven't changed? I can't remember it EVER resetting to 0.0 unless I had no power generators at all.
As you can see on the bill it is rate of change and it is listed as being per day so if two days had the exact same power production it should say 0 but I think you need to wait a long time for that to happen.
@Psychotps All of the modifiers you mention are what I would expect to see in the game so I am glad you have verified those. Solar panels function better on sunny days and wind turbines better on windy days. I'd be more disappointed if all of these things acted otherwise. Even the Green Eco footprint bonus makes sense to me as a reward for players who invest resources and effort in green upgrades-- just as people can see an energy bill reduction for doing these things in real life.
The 490% power drain has not yet popped up during regular game-play in my several weeks of testing so whatever it is it must be rare and perhaps intentionally catastrophic. I think it would be cool to see what could actually do this (I like a little random destruction in my game-- there's not enough of that in Sims 4). The wind turbines have an upgrade option to act as a lightning rod while the solar panels do not so that is why I brought up lightning in my previous post. The coding might even be an artifact from the pack development for testing something that never made it into the game. Maybe just lazy programming? I mean kudos to you for testing it but I'm not sure it's something regular Sims players should be overly concerned with.
@jpkarlsen Thanks for that explanation on the Rate of Change. That makes a lot of sense! In my testing I see a slightly positive change during daylight hours and slightly negative change at night (from the solar panels) but the actual energy bill stays right around zero (which is where I want it for my testing). In my other Brindleton Bay test house I've added more wind turbines, solar panels, and dew collectors (without going too crazy) just to see how much power and water my Sim can generate with a modest increase in renewable resources. It typically looks like this:
I've never seen a large enough rebate to make all of this worthwhile from a strictly financial point of view. I think it's more about a way of life for some Sims who want to improve the environment in their area-- which is exactly what happened in my game when my neighborhood Eco footprint improved to Green. There are many in-game benefits to a Green Eco footprint beyond earning a few Simoleons.
@Psychotps wrote:
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.I think you might be misinterpreting the object tuning file? Commodity 233233 is the lot's individual Eco Footprint.
The modifier for -0.0175 per unit is telling the game to decay commodity 233233 (the lot eco footprint) towards
Industrialgreen (negative) every 10(?) sim minutes. It's not changing the amount of power generation – that's commodity 233027 and that's a positive number multiplier in the places I checked.I saw the same modifier on the solar panels too towards the end of their tuning file.
- @RandomBuzziness I was actually wondering if it was related to the lightning strikes. I can't find anything in the turbine files related to lightning. I was wondering if they got it backwards? When a lightning strike occurs it's supposed to give a large boost of energy. Maybe they coded it as negative by mistake?
I've never seen one happen either, I don't think there's a way I can trigger it to happen so waiting for a random strike could take a long while. If it ever happens to me, I'll watch the numbers and see if I get a large boost or drain. @simvasionThat actually makes more sense... well, no it doesn't. Why should using wind turbines or solar panels cause an industrial footprint? I can understand the gas powered generators, but wind and solar should be green, not industrial. Unless negative is green... I'll check some of the other object files to verify this.
I need to go back and play my old eco save and see the power generation numbers again since it was most broken on that lot.@Psychotps you’re probably right. The negative figure could be green footprint. The commodity files doesn’t name the two extremes.
EDIT: Yes, a lemon tree makes the lot eco footprint go towards negative (which must be green).
@simvasionYeah, I looked at over a dozen items. Fireplaces, gas generators are all positive modifiers. Plants, turbines, solar panels, gardening plants like Tomato bushes and onions are all negative. It's interesting, even things like Cauldrons, campfires, and setting off fireworks will make the lot more industrial.
I really need to get into script modding. There's a limit to how much I can understand with just the tuning files.EDIT:
Tried another ECO playthrough. Didn't get very far before I got fed up with all the bugs.
Fabricator's still broken. Still making that godawful noise. It breaks 4 out of 5 times as it always did. Not refunding anything. The dyes are worthless. I have to buy at least 5 or 6 of them because the fabricator fails or breaks 4-5 times (at high fabrication skill levels) before it actually works and you lose the dyes and bits every time. Good thing is, the dumpsters provide a TON of B&P. Dyes are costing money though and it takes at least 5 of them to make any one thing.
Juicer's still broken. Last attempt it was frozen for 2 days (and still frozen when I gave up)
Power generators and the Nanocan are better since I mod-fixed them.
Billing system is still broken, still reporting "300" for all lots, regardless of how expensive it is.
Gardening is still all messed up. Had ECO footprint on and freshly planted plants went from normal to Magnificent and back again within 24 hours.
Off the grid is acting weird since the latest update. Three times my plumbing said "Doesn't work off-the-grid", even with a water and power surplus. Had to remove the Off The Grid lot trait and put it back before it worked. Had to do that three times.
Haven't tried the NAPs yet. Likely won't. Bug reports say none of them are fixed yet and the last time I used them they completely corrupted my save,
Looks like ECO is down for the count.
