Thursday, October 20, 2011

Autonomous Pet Woohoo and Less Chance For Pet Pregnancy (Testers Wanted)

So hey, autonomous pet woohooing. Seems reasonable.

Default pregnancy rate for dogs and cats: 60%.
New pregnancy rate: 2%.

Mods are separate just in case you want to have hundreds of puppies without trying.


Less Chance to Startle Deer

This mod halves the chance a sim will startle a deer. Pretty simple.

This file also changes the Wildlife Friend skill or whatever it is. By default someone with this skill (I honestly don't know what it is, might be hidden?) gets the chance of startling dropped by 20. Since this mod drops the chance of startling a deer at mid-range distance to 25, I have dropped this to 5. Once the skill is maxed, it normally drops the chance by 100- meaning the sim can get right up to the animal no problem. This mod will drop that to 50. This is because the chance to startle a deer when you're very close is now 47, so there's no need for it to be that high. It also means that you won't get an enormous jump in your sims' ability to approach animals just by getting one skill point.

Not entirely sure how all that works, but the gist of it is that this will make it harder to startle deer, no matter what.

Tougher Bills (updated for Pets)

This is a mod that makes billing much harder. Now updated for Pets!

The default billing rate is .013 the value of a sim's household. This means that if your house was worth exactly 20k, you would be billed 260 simoleons a week. This raises it to .05, meaning a home worth 20k would bring 1,000 simoleon bills each week.

That means that if your sim was, say, level 1 in the Business career, they'd bring in 810 simoleons in a week. Woops! Can't afford the bills, sucks for you. A sim at level 1 business career could afford a 16,000 dollar home, at 800 a week- but they wouldn't be able to afford food. This means a sim at level 1 business career must have a home of, say, 15k to live comfortably. That would cost 750 simoleons a week, allowing 60 for food. 

A criminal sim at level 1 will bring in 510 a week, meaning they could live in a 9,000 simoleon house with minor discomfort.

Two sims working business and law enforcement at level 1 would bring in 2010 simoleons a week. They could easily live in a 20k home.

Level 1 jobs are no longer something sims can live on, especially if living on their own. You will NOT be able to afford a comfortable house until you work for it or get promoted. Part time jobs won't properly pay for a single sim's housing until they get to level 3.


With the base game a sim at level 3 of the culinary career, bringing in 1170 per week, could easily afford a 50k house (650 per week). Not so now- they'd need 2500 to do so- something they won't get until level SIX! (Unless they have a partner or roommate)

This means you will have POOR sims. This means you will NEED to advance in a job. This means writers, painters, etc will NEED a part time job. This makes disposable income MUCH harder to come by. It makes saving important- don't go and immediately spend as much money as you can when making a new sim, you damn well better do the math to make sure they can actually afford the house you're building for them! The more money you make, the more expensive your home can be, and the easier it is to sustain it. The more money-bringers you have the easier it is, as well.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Grandma's House Collection

A collection of items to decorate Grandma's house, including Grandpa's chair. Nobody else can sit in it!

I've discovered that if you save an object's specific recolor, that recolor is the one saved to the thumbnail in a collection. It also becomes auto-selected when the object is taken from the collection. So the objects are colored in the collection as you see them here, for quick and easy placement if you like the colors. :)






Remember- you CAN use collections that contain items you don't have. You just won't see those items in the list.

Missionaire Collection

The Mission item set in The Sims 3 is totally ridiculous. Tons of the objects do not say "Missionaire" in the name. Some say "Mission" instead of missionaire. Some have spanish-influenced names. Some don't. So finding all the items in regular play is downright impossible.

So hey, here's all the Mission items along with some Mission-like items and some walls and floors I felt went with them, all in one collection. The collection icon is that of a Spanish-ish cluster of buildings, like the ones in Pleasantview in Sims 2. :D




To install, place the file in Documents/ElectronicArts/TheSims3/Collections/User.

HOW TO: Share Collections

Step 1. Make a collection.
Step 2. Exit the game. (Do not make multiple collections to share at once- their files are not named and you may get confused when sharing them.)
Step 3. Go to MyDocuments/ElectronicArts/TheSims3/Collections/User
Step 4. Arrange the folder by Date Modified. Find the package file that matches the time you last added something to your collection. It should be the most recent file.
Step 5. Change the name! You can rename collection files. Give it a really good descriptive name so people know what they've got.
Step 6. Share it!




All it takes to share the collection is that one single file. Another player sticks it into their Collections/User folder and it appears in game! You can use objects from any expansion/stuff pack and even custom content- the objects simply won't appear in the collection if the other player does not have them.

Pool Collection

If you add this to your ElectronicArts/TheSims3/Collections/User folder, you'll get a Pool collection, containing all sorts of pool-relevant objects. The collection does include things from each expansion/stuff pack, but it will work fine regardless of which expansions/stuff packs you have. It simply will not show objects you do not have.