Forum Discussion

pearlbh's avatar
pearlbh
Seasoned Newcomer
2 years ago

Ranch Hands Need Improvement

What do you all think of ranch hands? Here is a list of things I think are either broken with them or by design but it's bad design, in my opinion:

1. Every day you have to reset the tasks. It seems to me that if you choose, say, don't garden, that should stick until you decide to change it. But it resets to having them do everything every single day.
2. They do house cleaning and you can't even turn it off. In my opinion, this is not a ranch hand's job! Instead of taking care of the animals they're in the house doing the laundry or mopping the floors.
3. Their schedule gets screwed up if you go off the lot with a Sim. It seems that they have to be on your lot a total of 12 hours while you are playing the lot, so if you leave it at some point, the ranch hand stays way past 7 pm, which messes up the amount you're charged when they leave.
4. And number 3 often leads to number 4: Every so often they don't show up and you have to rehire them. This always happens to me the day after I've been off the lot with a household member.

As for the work they actually do, they are very good at socializing with the animals. They're a little lazy about cleaning, it seems they'll never clean a horse bed when it's "slightly dirty" and that often leads to my Sims having to be told to clean it at "very dirty" in the middle of the night.

  • I hired my ranch hand, and he would spend time cleaning animals that were already clean, and leaving the horse beds and chicken coop dirty. He was a very good gardener though. He has now moved in with my sim anyway.
  • #1 is just a dumb programming error. Clearing out the 'Gardening' and 'Repairing' should remain set until changed.
    We can hire Gardeners and Repairers, why is this even part of Ranch Hand? Programmatically, this should just be a flag set when you click the control, and the NPC 'reads' that in the morning. Either the flag isn't preserved, or it isn't being read when the server tries to spawn them @7am.
    #2 My hands either want to make destressing concoctions or bake white cakes. I have stuffed my grill and refrigerator in my inventory to try to prevent this. The idea that Foodies Unite makes NPC uncontrollably bake cakes in my house is Silly.
    3# is annoying, but I don't care much about the extra few hours at 12 per.
    #4 has happened a few times
    #5 When Ranch hands garden, they take your harvest. I did NOT fertilize Perfect Apples for this idiot to steal them. Mitigation: Have them move the picked stuff to an inventory i.e. refrigerator, flower bench etc. My garden produces almost 10K simoleons per day, I don't want it stolen.

    Can we keep the Ranch hands in the field or barn, following the instructions given? I am 'paying' for this schmuck to wander around on my property taking pictures of flowers rather than clean my sheep or horsebeds. If the chores they were hired for were performed, it wouldn't be so bad, but the dumb stuff they are doing is covered by others.
    I can't even lock them out individually, you can only do that for household members. II can Unlock for Rach Hand, but Not Set the Lock.
  • My only problems with the Ranch Hands is that they don't Fix Barrels and Fix Horse Jumps.  That's definitely more in their wheelhouse than taking spoiled food out of your refrigerator.