How do you feel about green?

Hacked telescopes for all! And an eight sim multi-PT, so they aren't all half-sibs.

Lots of buggy plants and insecticide! And an eight-sim multi-Ideal, so they aren't all half-sibs.

I once had a nanny set fire to the kitchen and burn. The social worker came and took my baby away. That was years ago, but I'm still shuddering.

MTS should consider adding a *frustrating* button. Or a..*I hate this when that happens* one. I would have shrudded too...

Yep, I think I will use this method! I want some Townies, but not 7000 of the buggers that the game will inevitably decide to generate.Thanks, RoxEllen! (and Charity!)

Is there a way (I don't mind hacks) to force a sim to put a bowl of food on a specific surface, rather than presumably the closest one? It's a slight annoyance when using counter-islands in lieu of dining tables.

Without hacks you need in buy mode put serving platter and bowls where you want. It is pretty annoying and I prefer hacks in that case.

Thank you for the advice, everyone
I will do something of everything - @Sunbee, I love green And I always have some same sex couples.
The main thing is - there are 8 families, and more than 20 kids (mostly due to twins) - so I am not up to more pregnancies right now.I may end up with more than 40 kids. I gave up on more kids when one couple with twins promptly produced another set. (One chaotic household, that one).

Thank you for this. Interesting that the Sim with the want is the one who must age up, though. In my case here, it's one of the parents of the household who has the want for a birthday party, but it's his toddler son who's due to age up, not the adult in question. So...am I doomed to failure, then? It'd suck if the only birthday party I've thrown in....in....years? would be a lame one. (Then again, that might be hilarious. )



Well, I know I'D be pissed if I showed up to a birthday party, with bells on and present in hand, and someone threw out the cake before I could get my grubby paws on it! So yeah, a lot of pissed-off guests = bad party. Makes sense to me! But you know, given this, I'm kind of surprised that cake is optional. That's kind of a bit of complex coding there, from a purely technical point of view...

EDIT:


There are eight-Sim Ideal Plantsim replacements? Hmmmmmmmmmm..... I don't do a lot of plantbabies because I don't much care for the lack of child/teen stage, but I will sometimes spawn them, cure them right before they're due to age up, and then manually turn them back into a plantsim when they hit adulthood. If they weren't all half-siblings, I might do this more often...

If I remember correctly the Ideal Plantsim doesn't appear in the family tree so your Plant Babies won't all be half-siblings even if you use the standard EAxis one. However they will all inherit the same genetics so a multi-Ideal-Plantsim might be a good idea anyway.

I'm wondering about one of my townies. I'm pretty sure I saw him alive at some point (he was an elder regular of one of my sim's restaurants) but later when he visited, he was a zombie. Coincidentally, I'm also sure that the evil witch has visited the same restaurant quite a few times. Could she have turned him into a zombie?

Actually, I *know* that the number of Ideal Plantsim replacements is of no concern, because I have only one. And both parties in my Lesbian Plantsim couple, Xena and Wanda, have each had a Plantsim baby before they met. And these kids of them don't consider each other as siblings at all, even now their parents are married.

It makes sense, too. Because - unlike Pollination Technicians - Ideal Plantsim does not show up as a parent in the kid's family tree.

But replace him I did, anyway. With a single beautiful female



Exactly! Though even a single one is quite an improvement.



I've had a guy hit by lightning three times and it didn't faze him. But much later, the relatively low-charge shock of a computer he was repairing, did him in mighty fine! Luckily his son was more fortunate than Grimmy, and won his father's life back.



Sure, because that is not the case. The thing is, the person with the want must call the party by phoning guests in. Whoever has a birthday is not relevant. The same with marriages. Whoever gets married is irrelevant. Whoever has the want to throw a wedding party, only gets it fulfilled if they themselves organize it by calling in the guests. If you have a couple who are about to be wed, and they *both* roll that want, you are actually forced to give one of them the stiffy, being cheated out of some huge reward points.



I don't remember if it would help with this issue, but if I recall correctly, Inge Jones has a Table and Counter Controller which should help with setting up how sims use the available surfaces... Let me see if I can find that...
Edit to add: yup, here it is, look under Eating and Serving Control



I cannot imagine how she would have done that autonomously, as the default pre-generated arch-witches don't have any reagents required for casting their spells. Apart from that, she *should* be capable!

I think I have that mod where witches don't need regeants to cast spells, so she probably did it. Haven't played supernaturals in a while though.
Not exactly a sims question but where are witches, vampires, werewolves, etc. called supernaturals? I think only plantsims fit that description literally. How did the other acquire the title?

@Rinchan7: with that mod, it might be doable. Although I still wonder if the pre-generated arch-witches would actually do that. But you're right: she has the motive and the means. But is there a spell to turn live sims directly into zombies? I thought she would need a corpse for that...

About the "supernatural" lingo: yeah, sometimes, someone decides to call something by an inappropriate name, and it sticks with the majority. But you're absolutely right: most of what we now call supernaturals in this game, actually are not! Heck, even Aliens are considered supernaturals by some. They probably just mean that these aren't 'regular normal sims' whatever the <...beeeeep...> that means.

It's a problem when the exe's decide to invite themselves.
I've had that happen, and I should have seen the results before they happened-shortly after the ceremony, the uninvited guest decided to give the groom a 'good luck' kiss and the bride took great exception to it, mostly because her new husband thoroughly enjoyed it and didn't resist the temptations of the other woman.

Needless to say the bride slept in a tent later that night, alone. The groom slept in the bed-puzzled as to why she wouldn't join him.

Yes, I understand that, but I'm not talking about filling the want. I know how that works. It's simple: Pixel has want for party, pixel with want has to make the call to organize the party. I'm talking about making the party, once started and the want to throw one fulfilled, a success , which is usually the next want that rolls up. Meaning, not a "Snoozer." For a wedding party to be a success, a wedding has to happen and if one doesn't by the end of the party, the party's score takes a big hit. For a birthday party, an age-up has to happen. Since I have a general "hands-off" policy when it comes to running parties, preferring to just sit back and watch the (usually very amusing) interactions rather than directing anyone to do anything, I have a somewhat lower chance of having a successful party to begin with, so I want to at least make sure that I fulfill the requirements that the game has for the success of a party of a specific type but then let the rest fall where it may. So, my initial question was if that age-up that's required to make a birthday party a success had to be forced with a cake or if it could just happen "naturally" at 6PM without a cake, as all my age-ups do, in general.

Buuuuut perhaps the person I quoted was talking more about the requirements to fill the want when they said "The Sim with the want has to be the one who ages up" (Or something to that effect, anyway). I'm thinking not, though, because, so far as I've seen in my game, birthday party wants are usually rolled by parents when their kids are aging up, usually for the toddler-to-child age-up. Toddlers don't roll birthday party wants for themselves and, even if they did, they can't organize a party, the want wouldn't be fillable. But if it's the case that the Sim with the want has to be the one who ages up in order for the party to be a success, then very few birthday parties would be a success since, at least in my game, it's usually NOT the person aging up who has the party want but rather, as I said, a parent wanting to throw a party for a child. So...Yeah, confused. But then, that happens to me a lot. I'm thinking, though, that it's simply that an age-up has to happen for the party to be a success, and apparently cake is optional. So...I think I'm good to go, once I get back to that household in the rotation.

EDIT @FranH
Wait, HE cheated, yet SHE'S the one who had to sleep in a tent? That hardly seems fair.

Personally, I've always thought it'd be funny if adults could sleep in doghouses like toddlers can. Then one could literally send a misbehaving spouse to the doghouse.

Only if you don't/can't tell the child to walk to school, or get a teen/adult to give them a lift to school. You do have to remember to do this manually, though.

The guests will enjoy the party as long as a Sim ages up during it. However, unless there's a little face in the bottom-right-hand corner of the want picture, the adult with the want has the want for their own birthday, so the want wouldn't be fulfilled; it'll be as if nothing happened at all as far as the adult's wants are concerned. (If there is such a face in the bottom-right-corner, that's the Sim that must age up in the party for the want to be fulfilled, but I've never seen that version of the want in my game). If you have the version of the want with no face in it (i.e the standard one), I'd advise locking the want until the over-eager adult is ready to become an elder.

I quite like the challenge of gender-unbalanced generations.

I've had a mostly female one and I had a few get abducted, some turn into plantsims, a couple of adoptions, and while there were no townies, you can pull NPCs into the game - delivery people, maids, gardeners, butlers, mailpersons, hobby people, newspaper girls (you could either fall in love with them as a teen and move them in and age up manually, or use inteen to ask them to move in). There's also the modded genie wish to make me young, you could use that on a nanny or other elder female who is supposedly past breeding age.



Really? I've never heard of this special face-version of the want.

In my experience any sim can roll a "Have birthday party" want when another sim on the lot is due to age up. As long as the sim with the want makes the call, it doesn't matter that it's another sim whose birthday it is. The want gets fulfilled. And both the caller and the grower-up will get the memory of having a good or bad party, whether there was a want involved or not.

In short, what BO said is true. And the success (or not) of the party is nothing to do with any wants, a party's score increases when guests have positive interactions with each other and it lowers when they have negative interactions with each other. It starts with a low score of "snoozer", so if all guests ignore each other, that's what you'll get. When it's a special party like a wedding or birthday, then the special event (age up with cake, or wedding with arch) applies a huge boost to the score, and I believe the threshold is also higher, so that it's difficult to get a good score without that special event.

A *somewhat lower chance*??? I'd say most of your parties are doomed by default.
What else do you expect? If you insist on playing hands-off, the only guarantee anyone can give you, is that 95% of your parties will tank by default! It's like TV show: whatever happens, happens!

Birthday sims age up automatically, usually somewhere between 6 and 7 PM, unless they are at that time absent, asleep or otherwise unable to act - in which case they age up at the earliest convenience AFTER that. Never before.

So if you want the party to start at 2 PM, you will need to TELL them to age up, or to blow out the candles, or whatever you like, because they will not do that by themselves, and CERTAINLY NOT before 6 PM! Result? Party started at 2, tanked at 5, sim aged up at 6, nobody had a party. Guaranteed!
The alternative is to make sure your sim is present, awake and in good health/mood shortly before 6, all props are there, and the guests are called around 30 minutes before. And then just see what happens. Still no guarantees, but slightly better chance of success.

At a wedding party, don't you tell the happy couple to get wed? And if not, do you have *any* married couples at all? Sure you do, but none of them had a party, I suspect.

Really, playing completely hands-off may be funny and entertaining, but it's NOT a recipe for fulfilling big wants. Sure, you don't have to tell EVERYONE what to do! Most sims will enjoy themselves anyway! But the key events *must* be triggered by the player, or they will not happen as expected!

@iCad and anyone else who wants to know about throwing a successful birthday party, I have just run almost a dozen birthday parties (actually several versions of 2 parties, one where a teen was aging up and one where a toddler was aging up) to check all this out.

I am sorry to say that my results support very little of what @ieta_cassiopeia stated. I have to wonder whether perhaps she has just misremembered, maybe is confusing what makes successful birthday parties with what makes successful wedding parties (cake is optional for weddings but as my results show, it is not optional at all for birthdays). Or, with all due respect, possibly she just does not often throw highly successful parties and so has not been noticing that her party score is tanking during the last minute---which is what happens if one uses some of the practices she suggests.

Or possibly it may just be as simple as confusing two separate wants. As iCad describes, there's an easily fulfilled want to Throw Birthday Party (pick up the phone and Throw Party>Birthday Party during a decent hour of the day or evening, and it's fulfilled). There is also the want to Have a Great Birthday Party, with its companion version, that a specific other sim (named in the want) on the lot has a Great Birthday Party. It is those last wants that I primarily was concerned with, because the Throw Birthday Party want is so straightforward.

I'm providing the details of my testing behind the button, but I'm summarizing my conclusions right afterward also, for those who just want to get to those. So the first button is the detailed testing description and the second is the summary of my results (still kinda long, just not quite as long).





One extra note about parties in general: Some parties that look like failures when the timer runs out actually get recalculated by the game before it announces the final results, so the final results box reflects some last-second check by the game to see if the requirements for that party type have been fulfilled.




My apologies, ieta_cassiopeia, but I have not seen that any of this is true.
*As stated above, the guests will *not* enjoy the party unless a Maxis birthday cake (or possibly recolors of those cakes, but certainly not hacked cakes or even the Grow Up self-interaction) is used to do the aging up.
*Without the little face in the corner of the want to throw a birthday party, the want is a generic want, not the sim's want for their own birthday party. They can fulfill it by throwing a birthday party for anyone on the lot, and the want is fulfilled instantly upon issuing the invites by phone.
*Again, who ages up during the party has nothing to do with the throw-birthday-party want. The throw-birthday-party want only requires that the birthday party be called for using the phone. The party can tank because nobody ages up during it, and it still will have already fulfilled the throw-birthday-party want. Nor will that fulfilled want be treated as if it has now been reversed.
*There is no reason to lock a throw-birthday-party want until the wantee is ready to personally age up. Sims on a lot with *anyone* ready to age up may all roll the throw-birthday-party want. As long as "Birthday Party" is available under Throw Party on the phone, that want is fulfilled...for the sim who dials. If multiple sims on the lot want to Throw Birthday Party, then each one must start their own party---so to fulfill multiple such wants, you'd have to have multiple sims on the lot who each can age up using a Maxis cake, or someone (as BoilingOil said about wedding-party wants) gets screwed, unfortunately.

ETA: partially ninja'd (in my response to that last quote by ieta_cassiopeia) by simsfreq, with whose response I entirely agree.

Regarding whether parties can be successful hands-off...well, actually, I recently have found that the party controller prevents sims from leaving the lot as they normally would, even when all your controlled sims leave the lot (for work or school) after the party starts. Even *those* parties of mine have usually been successful, as long as a good mix of folks was invited. ("Good mix" meaning they mostly like each other already and preferably don't include a disproportionate number of Grouchy sims, who will tank such a party just by choosing aggressive actions---however, you can have plenty of Grouchy sims as long as they already know each other well enough to be more likely to choose friendly actions, and in that case the party, even continuing in the total absence of your household members, still ends up just fine. Though those are the sorts of cases where I may need to be content with only "Not Bad" as the final score.)

I've edited my recent posts in this thread, the ones which address the birthdaying topic, to reflect this post's findings.

Thank you very much, @natboopsie. That was thoroughly educational and informative!

Quite welcome. And you, sir, are a fast reader. I was just ETA-editing to put in a couple details of the testing I forgot to mention!

Are you sure about this? I am absolutely certain most family-aspiration parents in my game roll a want to throw a birthday party when one of the kids is due to age up, and I am about 90% certain it's fulfilled if they throw a party for the kid even though they themselves don't age up. The general rule in my hood is parent wants a party, kid fears party, parent ignores kid and is happy, kid is ignored and first sad then happy.

Edit: Forgot there was a second page I had not read, so majorly ninja'd by other people.

BO, a party is in no way an instant fail just because one has a hands off approach. I do A LOT of parties in my game, and the key to having good parties is not directing Sims. You need to not have items that dominate Sims attention and keep them from interacting with others, and if possible, have guests that know each other. If they are friends they are more likely to interact naturally, as long as they don't get stuck on solitary obsessive objects.

I am about to throw Windows 10 and my Laptop out of the window!!!
I can't make it work despite following the rules on LeeFish ... I'm very annoyed at this moment. I demand Microsoft get my Sims 2 game working! It shouldn't be this hard!

Okay I've said my peace...for now!

pm justpeitro. I know she upgraded to windows 10 and didn't have a problem.