Sul sul, everybody.My daughter and I have been playing TS4 for about a year and a half now. We've almost always focused on one household, usually only one Sim. But our current favorite save has several intriguing characters, and we're thinking about giving some simple rotational play a try. We don't think we want to maintain a set schedule; we'll just switch households when we feel like switching. We're curious about what will happen to our other played households when we rotate away from them. 1. Will Sims with jobs continue to go to work and earn Simoleons? I know what happens when I move to a new household while a Sim should be at work--I see a warning about the Sim being late for work. If we don't visit a working Sim at all during their work day, will they report to their job and do their thing?2. Will students attend their classes, either at Foxbury/UBrite or the high school? I'd hate to see a Sim flunk out while I was away from them. 3. Will Sims tend their plants and gardens while we rotate away from them? One of our Sims has a very lucrative side hustle, growing Birds of Paradise. Will she harvest them while we're away from her? (I'm thinking "no," because Sims have several choices about what to do with the flowers they harvest...sell or keep). 4. How likely are Sims to start romances on their own? I've seen them develop acquaintances before, but I've never seen a Sim get a pink romance bar while I was away...even if I caught them flirting at the Romance Festival. We have no problem using mods to end unwanted romantic collections.I'll apologize if the answers to these questions are somewhere on the forum, buried deep below the surface. Thanks, in advance!

1. They don't go earn simoleons or go up or down in work performance, but under some circumstances they aren't available to socialize with the sim you're playing during their working hours.2. They don't go up or down in grade school or high school performance. That's essentially paused. University students on the other hand can do poorly when unplayed, so I prefer either to rotate away from university students on the last day of class after all work is in but before the grades are posted, or else click "no" on the re-enrollment prompt right after grades are posted and then re-enroll them the next time I play them. I like weeklong rotations partly for this reason.3. Nothing happens on lots that aren't the lot you're playing on.4. I think they can, a little bit, but for me so far either the pink bar fades before I rotate back to them or else it never existed.

@mightysprite Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. 1. I'm just fine with working Sims not being available to socialize when they should be working. I've seen too many Sims who should be working or at school at the gym, the park, or the café. Is the same thing true for careers that can be active? I have a Sim who's a Doctor, and I hope his career "freezes" and doesn't suffer when I'm not playing him.2. I thought university students needed to be played actively in order to succeed. I'll have to be careful about rotating a student Sim.3. That's good news. I might swing by in the morning and have the gardener Sim pick her flowers on days when I'm not playing her actively.4. As long as the Sims don't ruin their relationships, angering their significant others by flirting or, worse, making nooboos...

1. Yay! And yes, the active careers do freeze in the same way.2. Right, that's what I mean. I prefer to rotate away before they have a chance to enroll in a new term, so they don't have a chance to go through a new term without me.3. Yay! 4. Oh they can anger their SOs by flirting. It creates that "furious about cheating" sentiment. It happened one time with the Pancakes when I invited them both to a party. I don't even play the Pancakes. Something or other happened at the party and all I saw was the sentiment thought bubble pop up over them. I can say that I haven't noticed that kind of thing happening very often. It would make my large rotational game pretty complicated if it did.

Rotating away from student sims is fine if you do it on Fridays after 5 pm, before they are prompted to sign in for the next term. Then they dont loose any progress while you're away.

Nothing happens in the other households, per se. You may see them walking by the active lot, from time to time. (I always found that fun to see Sims I've created walk by.) I know you can invite them to the active household for an Event, if you wish.No. They don't go to work.No. They don't attend classes, either. They just aren't at a complete standstill as they were in Sims2. Back then, since there was no story progression — at all, when you returned to the other household, you would find your Sims just as you left them. This part I miss.

What happens when I rotate away?

mightyspritesims
Seasoned Hotshot
3 years ago
Ohh @Simmerville that's right, the butler fee bug! I forgot about that one. It definitely caused the Fengs a bill of just over 6000 simoleons one time.
simsimsere
New Adventurer
3 years ago
"Simmerville;c-18211710" wrote:
The family and their cash account will normally be as you left them. If staying away for a while, their relations might be randomized and they might lose friendship even with relatives not living in the household. Also, there might be non-logical changes to cash, I never managed to figure out what causes it. I've played on rotation forever, and I normally write down their cash value when leaving a household, then I can easily adjust the cas when I return. Most times it will not be needed, I suspect retirement pay for certain careers and butler service might cause it. Maybe royalty income as well.

It's good you bring up the retirement pay because I haven't seen it mentioned before. One of my households ended up with 80k extra and I suspected the retirement pay. For me I think the best solution is no retirement for any sim. Also butler generally takes away all my sims savings (which is 60k) when I return. I just cheat it back.
Brd709
Seasoned Veteran
3 years ago
I often
"GalacticGal;c-18211664" wrote:
Nothing happens in the other households, per se. You may see them walking by the active lot, from time to time. (I always found that fun to see Sims I've created walk by.) I know you can invite them to the active household for an Event, if you wish.
No. They don't go to work.
No. They don't attend classes, either. They just aren't at a complete standstill as they were in Sims2. Back then, since there was no story progression — at all, when you returned to the other household, you would find your Sims just as you left them. This part I miss.

Sims behaviour is different when playing other households. When i'm not playing as my sim self, i send the active sim i'm playing at the time round to check on my sim self's family. I've sighed at the number of times i've seen my sim self or his step children pull out cake ingredients and just leave them on a counter or a table and not do anything else with them. When i return to his household as the active sim this behaviour stops.
Simmerville
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
"musteni;c-18211824" wrote:
"Simmerville;c-18211710" wrote:
The family and their cash account will normally be as you left them. If staying away for a while, their relations might be randomized and they might lose friendship even with relatives not living in the household. Also, there might be non-logical changes to cash, I never managed to figure out what causes it. I've played on rotation forever, and I normally write down their cash value when leaving a household, then I can easily adjust the cas when I return. Most times it will not be needed, I suspect retirement pay for certain careers and butler service might cause it. Maybe royalty income as well.

It's good you bring up the retirement pay because I haven't seen it mentioned before. One of my households ended up with 80k extra and I suspected the retirement pay. For me I think the best solution is no retirement for any sim. Also butler generally takes away all my sims savings (which is 60k) when I return. I just cheat it back.

Yeah, I don't know if the retirement pay bug is related to just a few careers, so I just stopped retire elders, and jus have them quit their job. I intended to just cheat them a one-time bonus when quitting, but I forget to do so most of the time. Those with average or small bills will not suffer much anyway. There's always some way to raise a little extra money from digging minerals or selling a painting etc.

I wish EA would address the retirement pay bug though, because it is a BG feature that makes sense and should work as expected.
SheriSim
Seasoned Hotshot
3 years ago
If your sims have very high friendship bars or romance bars they usually don ‘t take a very big hit while rotating away. However, if they have low bars they sometimes take a bigger hit on relationships when rotating away.

When rotating families, most people have aging on only for the active family they are playing, at the time, with aging off for non played sims as well as played sims except they turn on aging for non played sims during one household rotation, considering you rotate each family a specific amount of time ( and the same amount of time as other families ), so nonplayed sims stay the same age. Some people ( like me ) play with aging turned off most of the time and age sims as we see fit. I don’t play each family a certain amount of time. I play some families much more than others, and for different periods of time. I usually change households when I get bored of playing the household I’m playing or want another household to catch up to another one. But, I do try to keep my children, toddlers, and high schoolers about the same age as their friends, the same goes with older close friends. I have a very large rotation, and most of my rotations interact with my other rotations most of the time rather than establishing deep relationships with non played sims. I may cheat with some rich sims ( like the Landgrabbs ), who own a lot of my businesses,

One thing I found rather cute is that if you have a doctor in your rotation that is high enough to deliver babies he/she will be the one to deliver your other sims babies!
Brd709
Seasoned Veteran
3 years ago
"SheriSim57;c-18211857" wrote:
One thing I found rather cute is that if you have a doctor in your rotation that is high enough to deliver babies he/she will be the one to deliver your other sims babies!

My sim self's second wife's mother is in the medical career level 1 and she has delivered all of my sim self's kids and grand children and two great grand children!
MoonlightGraham
New Scout
3 years ago
@Brd709 I JUST saw something like you described! My daughter and I rotated away from a Sim, only for a few hours. When we returned, he had cooked up 12 servings of Macaroni & Cheese...and left 10 of them on the kitchen counter. We got them into the fridge before they had spoiled, but unless our Sim invites a bunch of friends over for a meal, a lot of Mac & Cheese is going to waste...

@SheriSim57 Thanks for the insight! I have aging turned off for everyone, so we can age our Sims up when we think it's time. We're also rotating without a plan, moving from household to household when we get the urge. My daughter might suggest, "Let's see what that townhouse...no, not that one, the one with Emily and Grace and Moshe and them are doing," and off we go. Or we'll decide it's time for Jalen to finally ask Taylor out on a date, and we'll switch to him.
GalacticGal
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
"Brd709;c-18211834" wrote:
I often
"GalacticGal;c-18211664" wrote:
Nothing happens in the other households, per se. You may see them walking by the active lot, from time to time. (I always found that fun to see Sims I've created walk by.) I know you can invite them to the active household for an Event, if you wish.
No. They don't go to work.
No. They don't attend classes, either. They just aren't at a complete standstill as they were in Sims2. Back then, since there was no story progression — at all, when you returned to the other household, you would find your Sims just as you left them. This part I miss.

Sims behaviour is different when playing other households. When i'm not playing as my sim self, i send the active sim i'm playing at the time round to check on my sim self's family. I've sighed at the number of times i've seen my sim self or his step children pull out cake ingredients and just leave them on a counter or a table and not do anything else with them. When i return to his household as the active sim this behaviour stops.

When Sims leave my main household, I only play them when it's time for another child to be born into the satellite household. or to get a job promotion, for which I cheat. I love MCCC. Once I sent one of my active Sims to Joey's house. He and his wife had triplets, mind you, that I didn't promote. All three of the babies were upstairs in their little bassinets and wailing! Brianna, being the kind soul that she is, took the time to bottle feed all three before she left. Here she was a mother of twins, herself, but that's just who she is. Couldn't leave until the crying stopped. The worst part about it was, the parents of this trio were on the premises. And they tell us Sims are smart. Ha!

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