two families at the same time

"aaronrulz;d-958827" wrote:
Has anyone ever played two families/households at the same time? I'm not talking about rotational play. I'm referring to if you had two houses on one lot or a created an apartment complex with different living spaces for multiple families?

In Sims 2 Apartment life you could have up to 4 apts to play at the same time and each one could take a full household not have to have just 8 sims you played on the lot but up to 8 in each apartment. I used to like making retirement homes where the Sims in the block had grown up together and once they grew older and retired from their jobs they moved into a retirement home where they shared a back yard together. Played cards and had cook outs every week-end night. You did not have to worry about door locks or sims going into other sims apartments and such. It was fun - and the elder Sims enjoyed the company of their lifelong friends. Also I gave each couple a two bedroom apartment and sometimes their grandkids would visit for some week- ends and stay in the spare bedroom. That way these old former best friends grandkids got to know each other as well. I always put the retirement homes on the beach so the visiting kids could enjoy swimming and sand castle building and such.

I remember when my elder Sims were teens they had all went to college together (in Sims 2 you could send 8 teens to college together from the neighborhood), in college they had bands together etc. They got to end their lives in the same company with Sims they were best life long friends with. It was so much fun - for playing with elders. It was the only one of the Sims games that truly let us play a sims from birth to death and it was fun to do even - instead of sims elders being all but forgotten. Also in Sims 2 elders could teach their grandkids skills faster so it was fun to send the grandkids to visit for that as well.

Yes, a few times...apartment complex, duplex, and a tiny house village. My advice is don’t have too many small children, kids are ok and can care for themselves. Lock doors to specific sims. Working on one family on the lot at a time to get skills/careers/grades up worked best for me. Pause is your friend. Laundry day items like washing/drying machines are a nightmare because there was always laundry everywhere. Make sure you have a couple sims with the “neat” trait so you are not solely in charge of cleaning everything. You only need one thermostat on the lot, it controls all AC/heat needs of the apt/homes on the lot.

Yeah! Actually a couple of households in my game have this sort of arrangement and it's a lot of fun.

In one of the apartments there is a lounge area that is accessible to everyone. It also has a laundry room at the back and my sims will sometimes go down there to hangout with their neighbours.

Yes! I have a split lot in the trailer park of StrangerVille that has two trailers on it. In one lives a military father and his teen daughter, in another lives a low income, downtrodden, juice-drinking angry mom and her teen son. I wanted the two teens to meet and do the mystery together, so the setup works really well as long as the permissions are set on the doors. Sometimes I change them to let one teen visit the other, but it can be tricky to keep the parents away from each other so I have to keep them busy.

I also have another large lot that has a senior housing community where there are small, separate units that each have two tiny rooms and a bathroom. Then there is a common house with activities and a patio and yard. I actually really like the setup, it works well with the community area so that the rooms can remain private.

I just wish it was like Sims 2 apartments in Apt Life - then you don't have to worry about all of that plus the 8 person limit.

Yes, I created a split lot/row houses, where 2 families live. It's a bit chaotic as doors must be locked etc, but other than that it worked well as long as they were just 3 or 4. Now that they are 8 I think one family will move elsewhere, and maybe a single sim will move in. I pretend it's rented house. Must admit I didn't play these families extensively, though. Mostly played them a little on birthdays etc.

Adding: I also didthis in a San Myshuno apartment, splitting it into 2 units intended for 2 single young sims.

Yebb. My BFF household is an apartment complex with 4 apartments and I am juggling 7 sims + a cat. Well. Not the cat. Juggling cats not a good idea. But it works quite well. I lock the apartment doors by barring each name of a Sim that doesn't live in that apartment. That means that visitors of one apartment can barge in into a different apartment but that is easily fixed by just grouping visitors with the visitee and keep a firm reign. You should also be able to hire a maid but she will of course clean all apartments (although I haven't tried it).

About toddlers and babies. I do have a toddler because one of the male tenants got kidnapped and inseminated but I don't worry about babysitters or things like that because as it happens, the building's owner and caretaker (Liberty Lee) is good friends with the dad and she (who has been very supportive friend) babysits when he and his girlfriend goes out. So, when he or them both leave lot on a date or something like that (they are senior citizens so they don't work) and I don't get the 'so-and-so has gone to daycare' message (can't remember the little tyke's name ATM) it just means that Liberty is babysitting. When the kid was a baby, the dad was home 24/7 and I aged the kid prematurely because I was afraid I would accidentally send the little one home to alien land.

You could set it up in a way that when your Sim is away for work or other things, then one of the other inhabitants will babysit.

Liberty being the caretaker, gets limited access to all the apartments because she fixes all the poop that goes wrong.

I've done this once and I did not like it. The big issue isn't having sims barge into the others' houses, but having the toddlers/babies go to daycare. I fixed it with hiring a nanny before the parent leaves for work. I didn't want neighbors to take care of the kid for the sake of the story. I eventually just Shift Clicked\Cheat Need\Make Happy (I always age up babies ASAP so that cheat not working for infants wasn't an issue with me. Btws, has anyone ever been able to fulfill a baby's needs with this cheat? Because I can do it with pets.)

The other issue I had was the bills/earned money. I though about making a spreadsheet for that, but my sims never make money via jobs. I had one sim in each house be a gardener and fixed that with having a community garden on the lot. For bills... There was really no way to figure it out unless I tallied the cost of all the items of each household on the lot (Do items in sims personal inventories count towards bills or just the household inventory?) and that would have taken a while. So the assumption was the community garden paid for that.

Of course, all this could have been fixed-storywise with just making the two families be a part of a cult and then there'd be no worries. But I'm not fond of cult play. Has anyone tried this kind of play with the two families being in the same "cult" (I could see some interesting gameplay with the Get Together Clubs.)

I'm also curious if anyone has ever done this with a family with a dog and another with a cat that are both territorial? This could be an interesting story.