Re: Outgoing and Nice - I see these as totally separate things!

Outgoing vs Shy for me is how likely I am to make a sim interact with sims that they don't know, plus what activities they will perform. I'm not super-strict with it, especially since I can't control how they act in the background of community lots, but as a rule of thumb:
0 Outgoing = Sim is afraid of strangers, will never invite anyone into the house except for people they already know (generally, relatives), may even tend to avoid situations like jobs out of the home, uni, unless they can hide in their dorm room all the time and study alone.
Low (<3) Outgoing = Sim unlikely to approach a stranger, but may interact with somebody they have met before, or a trusted friend/family member introduces them to. Won't perform any risky socials like pranks or flirts unless very close to the person, or attack unless in retaliation. Would definitely avoid any kind of performance in public such as music, dance etc. Tends to prefer one on one contact, not parties or big outings. Might meet people at work/school but would not greet walkbys.
Med (4-6ish) Outgoing = Sim may approach strangers if they have chemistry or are particularly lonely and looking for new friends, especially when younger, but prefers to interact with those they already know. May have parties or outings for a special occasion. Just balanced really. No restrictions, no obligations. Might use influence to ask a favour of a good friend, matchmake between sims they know or make a party/outing more lively.
High (7+) Outgoing = Sim very likely to approach strangers, likes to have parties/outings/company when possible. If they want to make friends with someone or have a relationship they will do anything to achieve that. If they don't like you, they will more freely insult, attack, etc. Use influence with abandon.
10 Outgoing = Sim has a phobia of being alone and needs company at all times. If they live alone they are constantly inviting people over or going to community lots to mitigate this, but they try not to ever live alone.

I tend to play 0 and 10 personalities as extremes/phobias as they do not come up that often. If a sim has a combination of 2 or more 0/10 personality traits they can be quite challenging to play.

Then niceness/grouchiness I kind of interpret as sensitivity - Nice sims are kind, will put the needs/wants of others before themselves, but also easily upset. They prefer socials like chatting and admire. Grouchy sims are more self-centred, not evil, but more robust socially as well - they tend to be competitive and prefer socials like jokes, pranks, showing off and competition.

So Nice + Outgoing would tend to be a bit of a people-pleaser, want everyone to like them and feel quite hurt or left out if things are happening without them.
Nice + Shy would be someone who keeps to themselves because they are sensitive, perhaps prefers the company of animals to people, or finds it hard to trust.
Grouchy + Outgoing would be that person with a thick skin who can perhaps be a bit annoying and sometimes take jokes too far, but overall people tend to like them as they are fun and unpredictable. But they may be a bit manipulative and use people for their own ends.
Grouchy + Shy would probably be someone who prefers their own company, doesn't especially like socialising/sees it as a waste of time. They probably don't see the point of the "silly" interactions like pranks, games etc, unless they are also playful (but I think playful in that case would manifest more as video games, sports, creative pursuits or playing with pets).

On dates, if a sim has more than half nice points they look at their date's wants and follow those. If they have less than half, they look at their own wants and follow those.

I love little rules like this. I may steal this one, if you don't mind. I never look at the date's wants because I figure that if I wouldn't know my date's wants, then neither would my Sims. But this distinguishes between Sims who may be more thoughtful and considerate of their dates and those who are more into their own wants--I like it.

I would love seeing other little rules like these that people use to guide their gameplay. I know a lot of people have complicated rule systems, but it's nice to also know about those little things that make the game more realistic or enjoyable. Here's one I just instituted. If anyone in Pleasantview sees a family member walk by, they greet them, even if their relationship is not high. (Unless they're enemies, I guess.) I figure family would always open their doors to family and it helps build relationships. For instance, I had Bobby Broke greet Dustin when he walked by, even though they barely know each other, and Dustin came in to meet the new baby. A little while later, Angela showed up in the yard autonomously, so Bobby greeted her too and they had a nice, impromptu family dinner. I love it when the game does things like that.

My own rule about that is that the sim has to learn to read people - or at least that particular person - before opening the date want panel. If sims are dating who became best friends as children, the date's want panel will be open on the first or second date because they already know each other so well. Sims who start off dating people they don't know very well require three dream dates (total; not necessarily with this individual sim) before they can open the panel. (I can't expect myself to keep track beyond that.) Married couples always have the date want panel open, and I switch back and forth between active sims so neither of them is stuck doing all the work. You can also sometimes tell if a sim is being honest and forthcoming by interpreting conversation bubbles - if they're talking about kissing, woohoo, cheating, etc., they are presumably expressing themselves on romantic subjects and giving the active sim information that will help them decide what moves to make.

Because of my rule about wants representing physiological conditions, so that a woohoo want must be present in order for woohoo to be possible/allowable, if things are getting to the "back to my place" or "let's find a photobooth" point I open up the date panel regardless of experience level. If you're getting to the woohoo point you'd better be reading your partner's responses, and they'd better be volunteering information unasked, or nobody's having a good time.

I definitely don't love the feeling of posting an upload hoping that most people will just look at it, rather than download it. It's the last of a handful of lots I made to push the limits of the game and my new computer, so I know it's really just too big for most people to be able to use unless they've got ridiculously OP computers too.

Think I need to go back to normal-sized lots for a while.

I tend to assume that people on a date will probably be talking and hinting about what they want to do "Nice" at the extreme can be a bit of a pushover, so they can end up going along with what other people want even if it's at the expense of what they want themselves. I'm sure we all know couples in real life where you sense everything is driven by one half and the other goes along with it because they are just so happy to be in the company of the person they admire. It does not always make for the healthiest relationship long term, though.

I'm just curious. What do you do when you want two Sims who aren't Family or Romance Sims to have a baby? Do you just send them on a date in hopes that both of them will eventually roll a "woohoo" want?

In hope? If they love each other, it's practically inevitable! I date people just to get their aspirations up sometimes, and a married date will end in woohoo near enough to every time as makes no never mind.

However, the situation as you present doesn't arise very often for me. Any aspiration can roll a have baby want. It commonly happens shortly after filling a want to get married, but can also occur out of the blue. If a woman rolls a have baby want, and I have no reason to oppose it, I lock it and she dates suitable father candidates until she gets pregnant, which doesn't normally take very long. Passionate couples can roll multiple mutual woohoo wants per date (I think the record of fulfilled ones is four, for Ted Ottomas and Harriet Hawkins, while they were still in college and she couldn't get pregnant - bed, photobooth, hot tub, and car). If circumstances are such that birth control may not be available or reliable, I have a number of contingency rules for determining when to try for baby during a date without a baby want.

My sims date a lot, and I never have any shortage of babies or chances to make them.

Just seems elaborate to me, to go through that, just to have two Sims woohoo.
But as long as you have fun with it.

I tried making sims without wants woohoo during my early experimental phase and found it wasn't any fun like that at all. No sense of foreplay, no platinum rush - woohoo should be fun and satisfying, or why do it at all? It's not like inducing the want is difficult, usually, and it makes me feel that sims have actual sex drives.

It also leads to interesting situations, especially when the want is unexpectedly difficult. Turn-ons/offs become actually important (which a lot of people complain they aren't), because without at least one turn-on hitting the odds for that woohoo want are substantially lowered, even for couples in love. I've gone on about the Romance of Ernest and Sage Ann before, how they basically made the relationship themselves and forced me to acknowledge it, but then Ernest stalled out and couldn't get any of the high-value romantic wants, even though his wants panel was full of her even when not on a date. I put some earrings on her to trip his jewelry turn-on, and Katy bar the door, that little ED problem was solved! Interpreting other stallouts has given me characters with kinks, internalized homophobia, and other character angles to play with.

Other people make things interesting with higher bills or intricate motivation systems. I make a few simple rules and interpret results to get complex characters without any math or spreadsheets. Whatever floats the boat.

I wanted to upload a totally clean version without sims of my custom neighborhood. Even having left the community lots without bars or objects that create NPC, I had the brilliant impulse to add drink bars while decorating a club thinking that without any families created would not happen. My game have already created two beautiful NPCs that I imagine must be waiters .... -.- I had kept the neighborhood clean for months and I refuse to look for an old version and decorate it again. So I should put "hey, version without sims but with two npc waiters "

Like Peni, I have one particular pair in Tinsel Town that would not be denied, no matter what I did..marry them off to other people, make them have families-nope, this one is going to happen, and I'd better get used to it.

Rebecca Walton Shaw has always had a thing for Sheldon Lloyd. I ignored it at my peril, but when the opportunity came, they jumped on it.

Now all I have to do is clean up the mess they (or rather, I ) created. They were going to be together no matter what I thought and Rebecca told me in so many looks, "See what I did? Now, make me happy!"
Yes, Ma'am!

I only manipulate the wants if it is their very first kiss or their very first Woohoo, because those are situations were they should get the "platinum rush" as you call it. As for why do it at all without the wants? Well, either one of the Sims does want it, or i want the family to have a baby, plus, well the fun need gets satisfied, so it IS fun for them, regardless of a want
And if they really wouldn't want to woohoo...well it IS possible for Sims to decline their partner's suggestion to woohoo.

Most of my town populations aren't that big on having babies before getting married and usually stay married for life unless one died long before the other.They won't even woohoo on a date or even consider it until after marriage and will take precautions to prevent pregnanices until they're acually ready for a baby.That will slowly change in more modern times like when the later part of the 17th century brought the Purutan Movement to the colonies.That would be folloed shortly after by witch trails and the collapse of the Puritans.

You could use HoodReplace to copy all of the deco from your version with waiters, to a clean version without waiters

@simsfreq Maybe I will, thanks for the idea.

Many thanks for all your kind thoughts about the death of my dog Fudgey on the weekend of 8th-9th May. They are very much appreciated.

That's why I strive so assiduously to keep it out of my game. It's bad enough having to deal with it in real life, without my Sims dying too. Most of the Sims that I play are much younger than me. I feel that in the normal course of things they ought to outlive me.

That's what I did. I went along to their little house at 19 Chorus Court. It was Sunday morning and, as a professional sportswoman at the top of her game, Gloria had to go to work after a good breakfast. (She made omelettes.) Andrew told me that he, Julian and Garry would be going to church as usual. In his other role as my not-so-invisible friend, he suggested that it might do me some good if I came along too. Now I always suspect listening to one of the Rev. Elspeth Anderson's three hour sermons in Simlish probably does more for Andrew than it does for me, but, especially as my real life church has stopped doing Zoom services on Sundays, I thought I might as well go along and try to listen to what she had to say. And of course, what with the predominantly young crowd that usually goes there, they usually have a bit of fun before and after the service at St. Simeon's. This time Julian noogied Andrew at the back of the church before the service started. "You didn't use to do things like that, Julian!"

It was the usual small young congregation, consisting mostly of teens and children. There were only two adults there, and they were Romance Sims. Anyway, when they got started, I tried to listen, and of course I do have the speech bubbles to help me.


The Rev. Elspeth Anderson was clearly saying something about setting prisoners free. I looked it up on Google and soon found her text: It was Isaiah 61:1:
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound
(Jesus quote it in Luke 4:18)

"Heal the brokenhearted." That was helpful. "Thanks Andrew. You're a good friend. It was worth coming to church with you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@Softlism This is the church (St. Simeon's, Veronaville) I mentioned to you in your thread about Germany. It's not clear from the interior, but the exterior is in the traditional Veronaville "Fachwerk" style with the walls half-timbered brickwork up to the height of a normal single storey building, and half-timbered "way off white" stucco above that level. I've never consciously seen a half-timbered church in the United Kingdom, but I have seen "Fachwerk" churches in Germany. However I can only think of small village churches in this style. I don't think I've seen one as big as St. Simeon's. Nonetheless it definitely looks more German than English to me. I promise I'll post about it in your WCIF thread soon.

btw the Sim in the front row, who looks almost naked, is Andrew's boyfriend husband Julian. He's not quite naked, but he's certainly not wearing much. He dislikes the feel of textiles next to his skin, and he says that, since God made him naked, it's really the most appropriate way to dress for church! Julian is German in origin, and I think he's a bit of a fan of the FKK movement.

I had a random thought while out on a walk: when townies move in with someone and become part of a playable household, I guess that makes them "homies" instead.

A lot of us have a laugh now and then at the stupid things we think our Sims do, but I think, when Sims tell each other jokes, they're having a good laugh at the stupid things we players do.

I used to not understand why sims would choose to sleep in their food.
Until I was tired (and drunk) enough one day to sleep with my face in a cake.

I spend so much of my playing time trying to get my Sims on a reasonable sleep schedule.

I put in a mod, clearly, into my AGS 1.

Mind you, I don't know what mod. Must have been six months or more ago.

Because all of a sudden, all my townie ladies who marry playables aren't getting pregnant. Or maybe it's all the ladies aren't getting pregnant. Except I've only had townie ladies marrying playables there, so . . . but gentlemen are still getting impregnanted by aliens.
But it's ACR related, because that's how my sims try for babies (I have the files to require it that way, no regular try for babies) , and even with high settings to try for baby, they aren't trying for baby because the dialogs aren't turning up. And it's more than one neighborhood.

And I don't feel like troubleshooting. And AGS 2 is working just fine, so it's some mod I put in AGS 1. And I hadn't played with AGS 1 for quite some time, until just a couple weeks ago, so . . . I still don't feel like troubleshooting.

Ah, it's probably to do with their tokens - you could try resetting them on the ACR controller. Or their "days old" might be set really high for some reason - if you have some kind of mod that affects townie aging, their internal age might be out of sync. Again you can fix it by playing with their tokens, set their token to static instead of dynamic and change the odds manually to affect how fertile you want them to be.

Or if indeed it's all the women in your hood and you have a custom aging mod, you need to change ACR to be compatible with that, otherwise they're all infertile by the time they are adults.

Shouldn't have an aging mod. They are all newly generated sims by townie gun, so . . . I'm thinking I got something in wrong or wrong version. The tokens look right, odds of trying for baby, etc, but they aren't trying for baby at all, so something related to woohoo/try for baby.

I'm playing in AGS 2 right now, though, because I just want to unwind and I don't want to trouble shoot.

I just watched Plumbella's new building in the sims 2 video where she uses build cheats to do things and. Honestly.

The sims 2 becomes a psychological horror game when building cheats are involved like, I have never been more scared of a split level house in my life.

Watching the HBO Chernobyl series, aside from the absolute nightmare fuel of a reactor meltdown and massive radiation leak, I keep thinking about how a nuclear reactor might actually be one of the easiest "power plants" to make in TS2... though some fossil fuel plants might be interesting too. Kind of ironically, solar and wind (the only two ACTUAL power-plant things to function as such in the game) seem like they'd probably be the least interesting!