NanoTech Solar Panel – An Object Mod

Today I would like to share with you an object mod that will balance the game play of Apartment Life. We all know that the worst game balance Maxis introduced is probably the ridiculous high rent in the Apartment Life EP. The rent per week of a decent apartment unit can be as high as 4000 or 5000 simoleons! Even for a low class apartment, the rent ranges from 2000-3500 simoleons per week plus Tuesday and Thursday’s bills! Meanwhile your start up sims have a level one job earning 200 simoleons or so per day, this has resulted in an extremely unbalanced game play. In an attempt to lower the rent, builders started building smaller and smaller units on slummier and slummier lots. Why can’t our sims live in a normal apartment building and pay normal rent? This is the driving force behind the development of this mod object called NanoTech Solar Panel, it allows players to balance the game play however they want.

My mod utilizes the energy savings feature that came with the Mansion and Garden EP, i.e. the green energy source or solar panel Maxis created. Unfortunately, Maxis’ solar panel is nowhere near as cost effective, because it costs 600 simoleons to install but only provides about 75 simoleons energy savings per panel, therefore, builders could not counteract the high rent of a normal apartment complex by installing Maxis’ solar panels unless you cover up the whole roof (or the whole ground) with it, which would look silly and ugly, and your sims probably go broke first before the energy savings takes effect. So, I have developed a highly efficient and highly cost effective solar panel using state-of-the-art nanotechnology, each panel now costs 10 times less and provides at least 15 times more energy output. Therefore, purchasing one NanoTech Solar Panel in a normal apartment building will result in about 1600 to 2200 simoleons reduction in rent per week depending on the size of the Tuesday and Thursday bills, the smaller the bill, the large the energy refund and vice versa. Thus, the ridiculous high rent has now been brought down to a reasonable amount, if you want to lower the rent still, purchase more panels, the effect is additive and has a linear relationship until the energy refund reaches its maximum value at 16383 simoleons, at which point adding more panel will cause the number to wrap around to the negative value, so do not be too greedy.

This mod object has been playtested extensively in my game and in another person’s game. It works on all apartment complexes, newly built or existing ones; it also works on residential houses such as single family homes. As soon as you place one NanoTech Solar Panel on the lot, you will see the result immediately the next bill day. Since my NanoTech Solar Panel works independently from the maxis’ ones, they can co-exist on the same lot.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first energy savings mod object ever created for the sims 2 game, I have not found similar mod here at MTS or anywhere else on the internet done by others, therefore, there is no conflict of this type. However, I do not know if this mod conflicts with mods that alter the mailbox or the Tuesday & Thursday bills, it is unlikely that it does because mine is an object mod (not global mod) and has its own unique registered GUID, there is no GUIDs conflicts, so if you have custom mailboxes, you just need to make sure they are Apartment Life EP compatible.

IMPORTANT: You must have the Mansion and Garden EP installed in your game before using this mod as this object was cloned using this EP and the energy savings feature came from this EP.

Installation: Unzipped the package file, then put it in the normal downloads folder.
Location in game: Buy mode / Decorative / Miscellaneous.
Price: 60 Simoleons.
Buy mode thumbnail image: Look exactly like maxis’ but indicated with an asterisk, or a flower, or a star symbol at the corner.
From which the object was cloned: “You got Sol” by Stellar Products.
Mod parameters: ObjectData and BCON values.
Object placement: Outdoors, just like maxis’.
Polygon counts: unchanged, just like maxis’.
Does it override maxis’ one?: NO.
Can it be used together with the maxis’ ones: YES.
Does it satisfy aspiration wants?: YES.


Balancing your games however you want by:

A: Placing it on a lot before changing the lot zoning to apartmentbase or before moving any family in resulting all units can benefit from the object.

B: Placing it while playing an active family on a particular unit of the apt complex results in only that family benefiting from the object. In this case, you then need boolprop aptsublotspecifictoolsdisabled false to place the object.

See more details in comment post #9.

Thank you for viewing, enjoy and happy simming.

Credit: SimPE and its developers.
Numenor’s tutorial on Window Object Workshop.
Alanqlowell for additional testing of this object.
MTS staff for running this free site.
Advanced brick custom wall in the screenshot can be found here.
The apartment building shown on the screenshot is Stepping Stone Subsidized Living.

Related Downloads: No Negative Investing Return, a global mod created by me available here http://vogerbitssims.freeforums.org...eturn-t152.html