Yeah, I thought those were two separate questions.

Pleasantview had the most with 1 on ever lot with Veronaville having 1 or 2 but I can't remember but I think at least 2.
The Broke household has 2 if you do it right.

Strangetown only had 2 that I can remember.

The others did not have any.

There is a hood made by a group of players over at N99 called Larksville that has a player made controller that works great for that story but the link is not working the last time I checked so I have uploaded it to my Sim File Share account and here is the link http://simfil.es/58955/
If you need any help with this hood please send me a PM on it for now.

How many points can a child earn/lose with Encourage interaction? I know it depends on the age and points of the parent, but I have never tried that interaction.

Depends how much time you devote to it. As many as the parent can give. I've never done any more than 1 or 2 points as each point can take numerous goes at it, it isn't a one time encourage and gain a point, it might take five attempts before a point is gained. .

I agree with @joandsarah77 with the following addition: Four or five attempts is only at the lowest levels, *if* you are lucky... At higher levels, it may take a bit more than that!

Also, there is a bit more to it. If a Kid has two Neat points, and you want them to be neater, you *must* use a parent with 5 or more Neat points. A parent with 3 or 4 will not have the option!

I believe that the age difference and number of points of the parent only affects how quickly the Encouragement changes the younger sim's points, not the number of points possible to gain. A grandparent encouraging a child-age sim can get it done much quicker than a parent encouraging a teen, for example, and an older sim with exceptionally high or low levels in a trait (9, 10, 0, 1) also encourages in that same direction much more quickly than an Encourager with only moderate levels.

My experience has also been that it takes something like 7 attempts or more to change by a single point. Only if you're doing one of the faster combos (grandparent with child, for example) might it go any faster. Encouragement takes quite a lot of patience! (Edit to add: what BO, the ninja above me, said makes sense in combination with my "7" perception---apparently number of Encourage attempts required is on a curve!)

One thing I've not seen often mentioned is that the relationship level between the two sims also matters. Any older relative can encourage a child or teen (or adult, for that matter), but if the relationship is not high enough, the Encouragee will outright refuse to be Encouraged (making a "nuh-uh!" sound in the case of a teen, I recall). Don't know whether high relationship actually makes it go faster, but that would make sense.

If there is a limit to the number of points possible to gain, I would think that an older sim couldn't Encourage a younger one beyond the number of points that they have in a trait. But I also don't know whether that's true---would love to know whether they can just keep going, once they start, at least in the same session, even if they have managed to get the younger sim past their own level of Grouchiness or Neatness or whatever.

And I'm pretty sure if the practice fails no progress is made on the point! Ezekial Gavigan's mother used to try to encourage niceness in him, and he would foil her by going to hug the one person on the lot guaranteed to reject him. (Since the want isn't rolled very often, I use the Encourage interaction in response to particular situations - if Ezekial was being rude, teasing, or picking fights in his mother's line of sight, she'd speak to him about it. Because she would.) He would then come back and shrug at his mom, obviously saying: "See? They don't like me to be nice to them!" When he married 3-nice points Pigeon Hawkins, and they had a one-nice-point daughter, she would do the same thing when her granny or her Uncle Harris tried to encourage Niceness in her. Neither of them's budged on personality, but it makes good storytelling pictures.

I did once get a point change with only 3 attempts but I figured the child must have been somewhat halfway to another point naturally. Another time I had an older sister encourage a younger teen one and although I did not see a point change since I stopped after 3, from then on she could run places when told to go here.

Yes, they don't have to get all the way to 6 Active to be able to run, just a bit above 5, apparently. I noticed that too; I had a grandpa encourage his lazy granddaughter, and only a couple Encourages after she got the fifth point in Active she could run too.

And I admit that one of my favorite things about sims becoming werewolves is that they become more Active (and have other personality changes too, although I use Cyjon's Werewolf Personality so that not all werewolves will end up having the same personality; warning about that mod---though I love it and plan to keep it, as Cyjon says, it creates tokens that must be destroyed in game by one of his other hacks before you can take it out of your Downloads folder, otherwise it will corrupt your game). So Romeo Monty, a premade, starts with 5 points Active, and only a couple of werewolf transformations later (the personality changes a little with each transformation), he could run. He still wasn't (and isn't) at 6 Active either.

...which is not very pleasant to have, if you also have autosoc and want your sims to run a business. The Macrotastics/autosoc combo makes them almost impossible to control in their business. They continuously run outside to try and sell stuff to people who aren't interested, and only use HARD SELL to pendle their wares. And hard sell fails most of the time, but three seconds later, they will simply go back to the same customer and try again, all the while worsening their relationship with said customer.
For that reason, I've removed Macrotastics. Now I don't have that problem anymore.

Good for you! Yes, I have never seen a reason to put it in my game. It does automate lotsa stuff (like it also does College Rampage, which pushes the sim---or is it all YA playables on the lot?---to completely open and fill their Uni grade bar, with caffeinating and bathrooming all handled), but I don't play the game in order to just sit back and watch, so I'm still not seeing why I'd want any of that done for me.

Intrigued that it handles sales so badly. Then again, I was very surprised to see that Pescado himself admitted he had trouble getting Bluewater's Electronics Superstore to profitable levels, so maybe those two things are related!

One more reason not to have Macrotastics: it conflicts with the harvestable herbs set over at Plumbbob Keep. If you have both Macrotastics and the original versions of the herbs, some sims will drop dead with no warning. One of the worst (for sims) hack conflicts I've ever heard of.

Sun and Moon do have nontoxic versions of the herbs (they added them to the same upload page once they heard about the conflict, even though it's a conflict with someone else's hack!), but their original versions of the herbs still will be required as ingredients for some crafting stations they are planning for release down the road. And I'd rather have their stuff over Pescado's any day.

Ooh, while there to get that link, I noticed that Sun and Moon just released a major improvement to their basketweaving crafting station and the reeds you use with it. For example, now you can make 50 functional and decorative items with that crafting station, which includes the original functional woven-basket refrigerators, beds, baskets with slots and chairs/sofas plus now adds a cabinet, toy chest, and many other fabulous things. Those folks are just amazing.

So true!!!

That's how I've felt for a long time now. If there is an issue that only one of Pescado's mods can solve, then I will happily try it out. And I have a folder with about 50 of his mods to prove it. But if any of the issues can be solved in ANY other way than with a Pescado mod, then I'm sorry, but the mod goes out!

A love his Phone hack, and I love autosoc and autoyak, and there are a few others that I appreciate. But there is something about most of his automation that rubs me the wrong way. If I wanted all my sims to follow the same strict regime, I could just as well turn free will off. And if I wanted them all to do everything automatically without any input from me, then I could just as well go watch some reality show on TV. That requires no input at all. Fully automated!

Yes, for as long as I had Macrotastics, I got used to some of the automation, such as macro.../clean, macro.../repair and procrastinate! These commands made a few things much easier, and I miss them now. But at least my businesses are playable again.

.

I actually love macrotastic. Skilling is superboring and macrotastic gets it done in the most efficient manner so I can focus on other things.

Macrotastics makes the game playable for me with my bad wrist. If you've got carpel tunnel in your mouse hand, macrotastics will be your best friend. Much easier than clicking on each individual counter, tub, sink, trash can, whatever that needs to be cleaned.

It's also really good for locating the hidden stash of homework hiders.

about Encourage; the base game Prima Guide tells that the older sim needs 7 or more points to Encourage a positive trait, 3 or less points to Encourage a negative trait.
it also tells that there are 3 factors that determine how strong the Encourage is:
-age difference; an Elder would be more effective than an Adult Encouraging the same sim.
-older sim's Daily with the younger; higher the Daily, the more effective the Encourage.
-older sim's personality level; further away from neutral, the more effective the Encourage. 10 more effective than 7 in Encouraging a positive trait; and I take 0 more effective than 3 in Encouraging a negative trait.
also tells that strongest situation could Encourage 1 skill point in about 2 interactions; average situation, 3 or 4 interactions; weak, 5 interactions.


unrelated to that::
when cloning an object, would it be safe or unsafe for the new object to be in 2 or more function categories (if in Buy Mode)?
would it be safe or unsafe for a Build Mode object to be in 2 or more Build Mode categories?
would it be safe or unsafe for any object to be part of 2 or more sub-categories (if that could be set up)?

No that's not what I meant. This was before I used a no slouch mod and I wnated the teen not to slouch, meaning she needs to get to 4 activity. Well she never did get to 4 because it was a challenge house with far more important things they had to get done so the older sister only encouraged her a few times and the younger sister never gained that 4th activity point, but she could still run. I have a picture of it in a bachelor story I did since she was kind of like the host for it. I had told her (now an adult) to go here and she ran, so I paused and got a picture of it since I was so surprised that a 3 active point sim would run. All I can think is it due to the encouraging to be active she got as a teen.

SciBirg, I agree that book skilling is dull to watch, and I am heavily invested in providing alternatives for my sims. Will edit this post when I have a link to another I'm writing that is relevant to the issue!



OK, now the wrist thing, I can see. Definitely. And when you put it that way...I do use Christianlov's Sim Control Tool II. Chore>Clean gets them to clean everything, and oh yes, my favorite is Chore>Repair, because the sim in question will not only start to repair all broken objects but is guaranteed (whoopee!) to stick with the repairing until done. That may not be desirable if there are broken electrics, but for things like plumbing especially, where low-Mechanical sims will often give up before finishing the fix but can certainly get the job done at no risk to themselves, it's perfect.

And yes, it even has a "Do Homework" option, so the SCTII results in the kid or teen showing you where their homework is as well. I agree, a function like that is handy!

I still see a difference between the Sim Control Tool II and Macrotastics that I find off-putting for the latter, though. It's that Macrotastics is just....too much. I want to decide whether the sim needs to eat or pee or have fun during the process I've asked them to do. I dislike how Macrotastics is meant to do that thinking for me. And of course, there's the not-small consideration that Macrotastics is an invasive mod even by the standard of Pescado's mods, whereas SCTII has never conflicted with a darned thing that I can tell, even sends sims to bed in their Smart Beds --assigned beds if you use Need>Sleep.

One more wrist-saving note: I use and adore this USB vertical mouse . My wrist swears by it...or rather, no longer swears at all now that I have it. Perhaps not for everyone, but just in case anyone else is looking.



That's always neat, to get surprises like that! I'm thinking, though, that it was only that her energy bar was full. Any sim, whether Lazy or Active, will run if their energy bar is full, or nearly so, if you tell them to Go Here *and* the location is at least a certain number of tiles away. (Can't remember whether it's 12 or 15 tiles, but right in that range.)



Similar can be seen with Dig for Treasure (BV, I guess?) and possibly Birdwatching and/or Bug Hunting too. If the sim is well rested, any command that looks to them like "Go Here" (as Dig for Treasure definitely does and the other two also may...not sure), they will run.

What @natboopsie says is true: Under the right circumstances, most sims will run. (nearly) full energy and a long enough distance to cross is enough to get them to do it, even if they have only 1 or 2 points in Lazy/Active.

However, I've noticed that some sims with exactly 5 points can't be arsed to run at all, no matter the conditions.

And I agree with the suggestion to get the manual navigation mod. That one has saved my sanity on many occasions!

I like it that they decide if they want to run or walk slowly - no problem there. I don't always run somewhere myself (oh, actually, I never run anywhere )

Thank you all for informations about Encouraging. I will give it a try, but I would like to incerease Neat points of some children who have just one. Maybe I will just go with SIMPE this time.

I've found the default database, fell in love and started downloading. 828 MB later I realised I need the files to be properly named, otherwise I can't find anything in my folders. But I'm confused by the names of the Maxis clothes. If it starts with am the clothing is for adult males, tf is clothing for teen female, but what about ym and um? Are these clothes for young adult males?

I always drag both a picture of the default and a picture of the clothing it replaces into the folder. a U stands for unisex-or that's the way I have always taken it. Not sure on the ym.

@TychoH, yes, that site is awesome. I really like how it makes it so much easier (because of the way it indexes your defaulting possibilities) to try and get a range of styles that works together. And then if you realize back in game that whoops, you have maybe a few too many of similar styles now, it's easy to pick a few of the replaced outfits and go and get different ones for those instead.

For completeness, here's the list as I understand it:



General tip for organizing Downloads: I use and love LivLukas' method (post 5 in this thread) because as later posters in her thread say (including you, TychoH, and thank you for that information!), it really speeds up loading times. In brief, she does only a single layer of folders within Downloads, no subfolder nesting. You make long folder names instead.

LivLukas gives screenshots so you can see her organization. Mine is very similar, so for example, I might use this...




Smart idea, Jo, dragging the picture! That's a great idea for getting yourself a pic easily for future reference, and I am going to start using it.

I haven't wanted to put photos actually in my Downloads folder because of comments in that same thread I linked above; LivLukas said she shaved 8 minutes off her load times by deleting pics from her Downloads folder itself. My alternative may not be for most people, though I started doing it because I know how late I came to the game, and I know sites are closing and I may in some cases never be able to find cc I use again if I don't just keep a copy for myself.

So, I have a folder somewhere else on my system entirely (in my Dropbox, actually) where I store all cc that I am using in its original ZIP/RAR files that I got from the creator. I delete the stuff out of there that I don't want if I see that it doesn't work for me in game, so it's not as massive as it could get. So I'm thinking that I can put the pics, as Jo suggests, in that archive folder, inside the ZIP or RAR that held the original. (I do not bother to give that set of personal archives the same extensive folder structure as above, just put them in big categories like Clothing-DefRepls and such; but I have an odd quirk of being able to remember and recognize filenames later when needing to check my own records.)

One sad thing I see, is that everyone nowadays calls it "default" while it actually *is* "default REPLACEMENT". Because the "default" is what Maxis themselves made it!
Sometimes it's hard to help people, if they can't use the correct terms. We shouldn't scold them for that, I know. But we shouldn't encourage the use of inaccurate terms by giving the wrong example, either! We should educate them by using the *correct* and *complete* terms.

The Maxis item that is going to be replaced is the "default".
The downloaded item that is meant to replace it, is the "default replacement"!

Yes, BO, sir.
(Hey, I was raised to respect my elders. And you have a point.)