Let's say we have a game where there are two households we're playing. We want to rotate between the two households in such a way that each household only ages while we are playing them. Meanwhile, we want all townies and premades to age at the same rate as our households do.I thought the right thing to do would be to choose "aging for active household only", then have the "unplayed households aging" box checked only while playing one of the two played households, then uncheck it while playing the other. We tried that. One sim we're playing is pregnant. We rotated away from her household to the other one for a day or two. Then we came back, and her pregnancy had progressed to the next trimester, so apparently she aged even though her household wasn't the active household?Maybe I need to understand something more about the "aging for active household only" option? Or is there something else I'm missing?

It must be, I think aging works differently to pregnancy trimesters and vampire transformations, it must be separate from each other, so the days go on but your sims aging goes by your settings

A pregnancy only lasts for three days, whether you're playing the household or not. My suggestion is, if you're wishing to play a rotation, give yourself a full seven Sim days per household. That way you can plan the pregnancy to end before you have to switch households. I cannot stand some of the names the game will give the child if I'm not playing said household at the time of birth. One time it gave the baby boy the name of Hobert. No offence meant if anyone here bears that name, but it's just not one I have ever heard of prior, nor one I care for. :open_mouth: I don't play with vampires, so I know virtually nothing about them in this game. But, unless you use the MCCC mod, which allows for a pregnant woman to age during her pregnancy, she will not age a day, despite her pregnancy advancing. I do wish we could stop the NPCs/Townies from aging. In order for my families to keep their birth order (five siblings, in all) I have aging on for all. But, my Global Superstar keeps losing Paparazzi, whom he has befriended, and then he's horribly sad so very often. Now, anytime an Elder Paparazzi hangs around outside of Erik's estate, I use MCCC to age them down to Adult, trying to flatten that curve, you know?So, what did I get the last time I played? A fan collapsed during Erik's concert and not because she was overwhelmed at seeing him perform in person, but because they were in Oasis Springs and it was HOT. Oi! My bad, I placed him there, trying to avoid the endless rain in the other neighborhoods. :'( Can't win for losing, sometimes …

Pregnancy doesn't work like aging. It will always progress while you're playing other households not matter what your aging settings are, and if you stay away long enough the baby will be born and given a random name. I do this intentionally during some rotations when I don't feel like playing the pregnancy, and then change the name when they age up to toddler, but it was an unpleasant surprise the first time when I didn't know that would happen.

While I think that will work to age the townies, I think it will also age everyone, including your other household. I think most people who do it that way play with all aging off, and then turn it on for everyone while they play one household.

"mightysprite;c-17825896" wrote:Thanks for the info :) Am I right that to have townies age at the same rate as the played families, we should check the box for their aging while we play only one of our households, and then uncheck it while playing the other?Yes, that will work. When I played a larger rotation I turned aging on for NPCs only during the first rotation. The played sims and and the unplayed sims all aged at roughly the same rate. The biggest drawback was that all the NPC deaths occurred during the first rotation so my first household would get hit with all the sad buffs.

Aging question | EA Forums

17 Replies

mightyspritesims
Legend
5 years ago
@GalacticGal here are the options

https://i.ibb.co/hf5NTQP/Screen-Shot-2021-03-08-at-10-59-59-AM.png

Auto Age (Played sims) is a drop-down with 3 choices: yes, no, only active household
Auto Age (Unplayed sims) is a checkbox, on or off.
Perthelia
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
"mightysprite;c-17827388" wrote:
Thank you @Daephene and @Simpatsyann !

@Daephene Do you (or anyone else) know whether "unplayed households" in that box means "the households I've never played," or just "the households I'm not playing right this instant" ?

"Unplayed" means households you've never played, or households you've played at some point but marked as unplayed in the household manager.

@GalacticGal I just use the options on the gameplay tab that mightysprite shows above. Unchecking "Auto Age (Unplayed Sims)" is how you prevent NPC aging.
GalacticGal
Legend
5 years ago
@Simpastsyann Yeah, I get that, but it also won't allow the rest of my played households to age, either. I don't want to lose the birth order of my original household. Thanks for the explanation, even so. :)
Simmerville
Legend
5 years ago
I did not read this entire thread, just wanted to share how I age my rotating game. I play with all age related options off. No aging of anyone, played or not. Then on New Year's Eve (or whenever you feel a year is up) I turn aging on for everyone for just one night. Played, non played and NPCs - everyone will then add 1 year to their age. Then it is essential to turn those setting back off - I forgot once and played a week with full aging on before I noticed. Instead of going back to a back-up, I just continued with one extra rotations before the next growing up night.

I normally use the cake to age up sims, which feels a bit tedious when playing a full "universe". On a few occasions a sim aged up by "free will" before I get to it.
Perthelia
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
"GalacticGal;c-17828489" wrote:
@Simpastsyann Yeah, I get that, but it also won't allow the rest of my played households to age, either. I don't want to lose the birth order of my original household. Thanks for the explanation, even so. :)

If you want the rest of your played households to age, then you'd select "yes" on the dropdown menu; if you want no played households including the one you're in to age, you'd select "no." The only combo that you can't actually set, I think, is to have just the played household NOT age while all npcs and other played sims DO age. I guess the rationale there is that if you're actively playing a household you can use the other in-game mechanisms to micro-manage aging to your preference.
whubble1817
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
"mightysprite;d-987725" wrote:
Let's say we have a game where there are two households we're playing. We want to rotate between the two households in such a way that each household only ages while we are playing them. Meanwhile, we want all townies and premades to age at the same rate as our households do.

I thought the right thing to do would be to choose "aging for active household only", then have the "unplayed households aging" box checked only while playing one of the two played households, then uncheck it while playing the other. We tried that. One sim we're playing is pregnant. We rotated away from her household to the other one for a day or two. Then we came back, and her pregnancy had progressed to the next trimester, so apparently she aged even though her household wasn't the active household?

Maybe I need to understand something more about the "aging for active household only" option? Or is there something else I'm missing?

Your confusion is completely understandable. The truth is, in order to have a pregnant sim age at all, you need a mod so your sim isn't actually aging even though her pregnancy progressed. When you turn on Auto Aging (Played Sims) Current Household Only, it only affects their age, not the passage of time. for example, if you log into a household on a Thursday morning, you play them until Friday morning (sim time, not real time), then log into another household it will be Friday morning but the sims in that household have not aged at all. The passage of time is the same for all households in the save. Since pregnant sims don't age, their pregnancy progresses via the passage of time, not the aging process. I hope that makes sense.
mightyspritesims
Legend
5 years ago
Thanks for the help @Simpatsyann @SimsLady2000 and all :)

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Aging question

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