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MidniteTheDSiXL's avatar
MidniteTheDSiXL
New Rookie
2 years ago

Possible Foal Nursing Bug?

Hi! I couldn't find any other topics with this weird issue, but every time my foal nurses from her mother, she sometimes completely depletes her mother's hunger bar...? I had the foal (Pirate) selected and noticed her mother (Captain) became uncomfortable, so I selected Captain and saw her hunger bar depleting at an alarming rate as Pirate nursed. It turned red and then when Pirate was done, Captain immediately disappeared to be "rescued" from starving to death. I was staring at my screen like huh? and I'm 100% certain that was not supposed to happen.

I checked it out in a new save with no mods except for TwistedMexi's "All Cheats" mod to restore the cheats that have been disabled in the game, and one of those cheats was the ability to select pets (cheat is pets.toggle_selectable_pets and I have no idea why Maxis removed it, much less made pets unplayable Sims. Honestly what was up with that, Max?). The hunger bar depletion happened again, so I checked it out a second time by removing the All Cheats mod and locking the two horses in pens to make the foal hungry. Obviously I couldn't see the mother's hunger bar but I did see she quickly went from Low Hunger to Poor Hunger when the foal nursed, and the foal didn't even get his hunger filled. It just went from "Low" to "Good".

I can't tell if this is a bug or intentional game design, but it's a really dumb thing to happen regardless. Foals don't suck their mothers' life forces out of them when they nurse, much less make their mothers immediately starve to death.

Maxis, please fix this if this is a bug, and if it was intentional then remove it! My foal can't properly nurse if her mother is low on hunger or she'll kill her!

If it's a bug then I can move it to the bug forum.

gameplay issue

8 Replies

  • PipMenace's avatar
    PipMenace
    Hero
    2 years ago

    @MidniteTheDSiXL Nursing does more quickly deplete the mother’s hunger for human sims, and so would make sense to also do so for horses. You need to keep the mother well-fed. Are you getting the mother horse taken away if the foal nurses while their hunger is good, or only if they start off already low?

  • MidniteTheDSiXL's avatar
    MidniteTheDSiXL
    New Rookie
    2 years ago
    @PipMenace From what I remember, Captain got taken away when Pirate's hunger was lower, maybe a bit less than halfway? The bar was yellow, I do remember that. With the test horses, the foal didn't fill his hunger all the way when it was low, but he caused his mother to go from low to poor almost immediately.

    I must say, that is pretty dumb that nursing depletes the hunger bar of the parent Sim, I hadn't noticed since I don't play with babies much and my main Sims are vampires. Surely there's a mod to prevent that somewhere? I'd hope so at least, since that doesn't happen in real life.
  • PipMenace's avatar
    PipMenace
    Hero
    2 years ago

    @MidniteTheDSiXLIsn't it generally important for pregnant and nursing mothers to get more/better nutrition since they're eating for two? I think that's what it's emulating.

    For my previous question - I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I meant are you getting the mother horse taken away if the foal nurses while the mother's hunger is good, or only if the mother starts off already low?

  • MidniteTheDSiXL's avatar
    MidniteTheDSiXL
    New Rookie
    2 years ago
    @PipMenace If that's what it's emulating then it's pretty unrealistic, since nursing doesn't make the mother starve to death, is what I mean XD There should be a stopper of some sort to prevent death by starvation, or in this case, the horse being taken away.

    Oh my bad, the mother's hunger was about halfway gone because it was in the yellow (still about half full, so low-ish) when I clicked over to her and that's when I saw it draining fast. I keep the hay feeders stocked and I have prairie grass on my lot so they have access to a bunch of food. She was getting ready to eat prairie grass when the foal went to nurse.
  • PipMenace's avatar
    PipMenace
    Hero
    2 years ago

    @MidniteTheDSiXL I don't have a mod to play as the horse, so I can only see Excellent, Good, Low, and Poor. I've been trying to test and having a hard time getting the horses hunger to drop low enough to match what you describe - Excellent and Good are green, Low is a sort of yellow orange, and Poor is red - but it takes quite a while to drop the hunger and only a single bite to refill quite a bit.

    I did finally come somewhat close: I did manage to have the foal down to Poor before it went to nurse (I hadn't got the mother to Low, but she'd been at Good for some time after I'd removed all food from the lot so she may have been close to it?) and for the foal to go from Poor to Excellent still only dropped the mother from Good to Low. If she'd already been at low, I can see at least dropping to Poor, and I suppose if she'd been nearly at Poor before the foal started might have gone all the way through to starving.

    Does this happen often for you, or was it just the one time? If it's just a rare occurrence of bad timing, I would recommend keeping an eye on the horses' hunger and bottle feeding the foal if mom hasn't had a chance to eat. But if it's frequent there may be some bug in your game or mods as I haven't been able to reproduce it yet.

  • MidniteTheDSiXL's avatar
    MidniteTheDSiXL
    New Rookie
    2 years ago
    @PipMenace It's just been a one time thing so far, but I will be keeping an eye on the hunger bar of the mother horse when the foal nurses. My guess is a rare occurrence of bad timing, it was just out of nowhere and I had never seen anything like it so I wondered if it was a bug. It's likely that a mother horse at Low hunger (or close) would be taken away after a foal nurses.

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