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Simmerville's avatar
Simmerville
Seasoned Ace
3 months ago

ECO Lifestyle - NAPs

The ECO Lifestyle pack probably goes deeper than I explored. Ie the influence points and household bills are based on misc calculations.

Now I wonder if the set of NAPs set up for an election is based on anything in that community, or if they are totally random? I'm playing a detailed political system in my game, and because of some adjustments to my routine, it would be very useful to know.

I understand that already active NAPs can not be up for election, and that sims (simmer) can perform actions to influence on the election, but it would be good knowing if the basic selection that sims can vote on is random or not. Anyone dived into this?

  • I think that when the voting period begins, the NAPs are just randomly selected from whatever is possible in that neighbourhood (in certain Evergreen Harbor neighbourhoods, extra NAPs specific to Evergreen Harbor are possible, like the ones that encourage modern development or clean up the trash).

    There's always an extra free slot where the player can add their own suggestion for people to vote on if the NAP they wanted isn't in the randomly chosen bunch. Then they can dump all their influence in to that or encourage other sims to vote for it to make sure it wins.

    When Eco Lifestyle came out, that's basically what I did when it first activated in my game, switching between all my played sims in every neighbourhood to make sure things I wanted were being voted in. After four weeks, the four NAPs for each neighbourhood will then all be in place and will stay that way until the player makes a petition to change them.

    If you have any households placed in a neighbourhood the moment Eco Lifestyle is added, then NAP voting happens, even if you don't play there. For example, even if you don't play Brent or Brant Hecking in their neighbourhood in Brindleton Bay, after four weeks if you visit them, or just go to the vet or pup park, then you'll find four random NAPs active there.

    If there's an neighbourhood with no living residents, then there won't be any NAPs until a household moves there, for example the unspoilt Mua Pelam island in Island Living which starts with no sims living there.

    For neighbourhoods like Magnolia Promenade, I had a sim who owned a business there, and I think that triggered NAP selection to take place, even though no households lived there, it's like the game treated the owned business and my sims owning it as a trigger, even though I had no power to vote in that neighbourhood.

    After years of having Eco Lifestyle, I'm pretty much satisfied with all the NAPs active in every part of my sims world. I only have to keep an eye out when new packs come with a new world to check that no undesirable NAPs get voted in, like the paper bags on head one. Once you've picked four NAPs you like, then it will stay that way forever until you change it.

  • Also, you can (in game settings) turn off NPC voting so that new NAPs aren't selected at all until you have a played sim vote on them.  From what you've said above, this may not be to your liking, but I thought I'd mention it as an option if you want to have a little finer control over NAP options.

    Now, the game will say that a new NAP has been chosen each week, but if you check (And have voting off) it won't actually have been implemented.

    • Simmerville's avatar
      Simmerville
      Seasoned Ace

      Thanks. Oh, I actually have voting turned off by default. Up top now I activate the voting for one weekend every 5th sim year, as part of my 4 political parties program, and 5 years election. But I am planning adjustments because with nearly all worlds there are way too many hoods to keep checking before and after my elections. In a way I wish I could choose to have one NAP voted per world instead of per hood. Knowing they are picked randomly for each election will probably make me skip the elections totally. I will still add new NAPs after each election, so the extra benefits and taxes will still be around. I like that the hoods/worlds are having slightly different politics. Just would be even better if we could alter NAPs like we can alter say Club activities.

  • I also didn't understand very well how it works, it's a good pack, but there are some mechanics very confusing.