Author Topic: Tip: Rotational Play  (Read 48167 times)

Offline MarianT

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Tip: Rotational Play
« on: March 17, 2015, 01:00:08 PM »
Note: Much of this information can be found in the article on Rotational Play that's on the Guide. Click here for the guide page.

As of November, 2017, a new Culling system has been put into effect. More information can be found here. Basically, any household you play should be put into "My Households" to avoid being culled. This replaces any previous information about culling.

However, I'll be adding new info in posts to this thread, so scroll down to see what's new. Keep an eye on dates -- as things are added (and taken away) in patches, the information in an earlier post might be superseded by a later.

One of the things I enjoyed in TS2 was playing several families in the same file. That wasn't easy to do in TS3, so I was happy to see that I could return to rotational play in TS4.

Initially, there were some problems in the game that made rotational play difficult, primarily losing played sims during a cull. I've found that if sims are in a household, they do stay within the game if you don't play them for a few sim weeks.

Another problem reported is that married sims get involved in romantic relationships with people they're not married to. I haven't had this to any great extent, but I don't have many sims with romantic traits or aspirations that would make romances more likely. I should say that Bella Goth, who does have the romantic trait, has not gotten involved with anyone other than Mortimer. My sims have occasionally made friends (and enemies) autonomously, though.

Babies will be born after the 3rd day of pregnancy whether you are playing the mother or not; pregnancy also lasts 3 days even if you have aging off. The game supplies a bassinet automatically, but it also provides the baby with a name. I usually play a pregnant sim until the baby is born, but if I don't, I go back and age up the infant, so I don't know if babies become children automatically. You can send anyone into a house to age up a baby as well; you won't get to choose the aspiration and trait then. One odd feature I've had -- a couple of mothers who have given birth when I haven't been playing them have had twins.

I've occasionally had a child complete an aspiration while I was not playing him or her, and I suppose the same thing could happen with adults, especially if they were left with everything done except leveling up in a skill. The game won't automatically choose a new aspiration but will keep them on the old one. They won't make progress on their jobs, but I think children and teens might manage to become B students.

You can play with aging off and age up your sims manually. If you're playing with 4 households, the long setting will give you the same ages as the normal setting if you're playing your households for the same amount of time. Using the "age active household only" with the normal setting works also.

Tip #1 -- Keep hard copy records. I use index cards, but notebooks work too. At the end of each week I've played a sim, I put a checkmark next to their age category. I also keep track of their traits, aspirations, and jobs.

Tip #2 -- Don't check the "Fill Empty Houses" box.

I like to keep some cheap houses open for adult offspring to move to and for sims like the Goths and Spencer-Kim-Lewises to move into when they can't afford their current homes anymore.

Tip #3 -- Use "Repair Game" as needed and each time you change families, if you're playing each family for a week in each round. It's a good idea to clear your cache file, too.

I tend to regard small glitches as a sign that my file is getting too large. When Summer Holiday walked through 5 walls and a couch to get from the kitchen to the living room, I decided it was time to start a new file. It took me about an hour to move my 11 households into a new version of Willow Creek.

1. Go to "Manage World"
2. For each household that you intend to move, choose "Edit household."
3. Once in Edit household, choose "Save to My Library."
4. When you have saved all your households, go to the houses that you have built or significantly altered. Click on the "build mode" symbol and choose "Save to my Library."
5. Save and exit to menu.
6. Choose new game.
7. You'll start in CAS, so go to the gallery, go to your library, and pick one of your households to replace the sim in CAS. Move this family to an empty lot.
8. Go to Manage World and click on Edit household for each of the filled houses. Once in Edit household, choose Delete. If you just evict the family, you'll have a second version running around town in addition to your version.
9. Bulldoze the houses that you have altered and replace them with the ones from your Library.
10. Go around your neighborhood and make a note of the prices of each of the houses that you intend to move your sims into. I've found that the "freerealestate" cheat doesn't work. Your families will come into the game with only 20,000 simoleons (or a little more, depending on family size).
11. Go back to your family on the empty lot and click "Play". Do Ctrl-Shift-C, and type "testingcheats true" in the white space. I use the "motherlode" and "kaching" cheats to give them enough money to buy back the house they originally lived in, but you can give them an exact amount, too, with "Money X".
12. Go to Manage Worlds again. Click on the "Move out" option for your family, and move them back into their house.
13. Click on the empty lot, and choose "Move in." When you're in CAS, pick go to Gallery. Go to your library and pick another family to replace the sim in CAS. Then click on the check mark at the bottom.
14. Keep doing steps 11, 12, and 13 until you've resettled everyone.
15. Once you've finished moving in all your families, go into Manage Worlds, then Household Management (upper righthand corner). Check your "played households" and make sure everyone is there. Then go into "unplayed households." If you have extra copies of a family, delete them.

In your new file, your sims will have the same traits, aspiration progress, job progress and household relationships that they had before. They will, however, lose their relationships with sims outside the household, and these sims will not show up in the family tree. I don't know what happens with whims -- they might still have a whim they had before but it will be unpinned.

I do enjoy playing rotationally, and I'm looking forward to GTW, when I can have my families buy stuff from the shops owned by other families. It's fun seeing them make friends with each other, and occasionally they surprise me, like when Summer Holiday and Ronan Chappell started a romance when I wasn't controlling either of them.

I have a whole story going (the link is in my signature), but I thought I'd provide a more basic "how to" post as well.

Edited to add step 15 -- I discovered a second Summer Holiday running around town.




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Offline Tawnee

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #1 on: March 24, 2015, 04:16:07 PM »
These tips are extremely helpful! DionysusDreams (who updated the Prosperity Challenge at Boolprop) addressed some of these issues but not all. So this will help me immensely when playing my Prosperity rotation. :D I'm going to check out your rotational story. It looks very interesting. :)

I've also bookmarked this topic. <3



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Offline Cheezey

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2015, 03:55:56 PM »
These are great tips.

I've got an ongoing rotation game as well, and I'd like to second the recommendation to uncheck "fill empty homes." I started determined to play every family that moved in, regardless, and even moved in one or two early on because those sims became important to a family I played in the first few rotations. After completing all the premades and a couple of the move-ins, I wish I hadn't. I've still got empty lots to build on, but I foresee a housing crisis in my sims' world in the future.  Plus, if I play each of them a week, that is a heck of a long game, making the file larger and larger each time. I have it set to age only the active family, so after many weeks of game time, for the world, it's pretty much still only a week in.

The autonomous romances with other sims that sims form when they're not under your control are a good thing to be aware of.  They make for great drama if you want a more spontaneous game, but if you're determined to have a story play out a certain way, they can be rather annoying, especially if the unplanned/unwanted love interest shows up a lot.

One hint for sims in expensive homes who get ridiculously high bills with low or no pay: the trash can that lets you turn dirty plates and cups into $10 for each sim in the home can be a lifesaver.  Giving the Goths that trash can, and working on Bella's party animal aspiration by throwing parties with lots of drinks and food (I also bought them a bar) was a huge boost to their funds and helped cover their insane bills.

Offline MarianT

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #3 on: March 29, 2015, 11:20:55 AM »
Since going into my families who have recently been moved, I've learned a few other things:

Your inventories, refrigerators, and family inventory are emptied when you move to a new version of the same town. Also, your garden reverts to a "just planted" state.

Since the patch, unplayed adult and teen sims will be given jobs. I don't know if this is a one-time thing, but if you're playing rotationally, check all your families to make sure that your stay-at-home gardeners, etc. are not now employed. It doesn't really make much difference, as they won't make any progress on the garden or at work while you're not playing them, but it is something to check.

ETA: the information about refrigerators and gardens.
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Offline MarianT

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2015, 03:10:17 PM »
A couple more additions:

I noticed recently that some sims that I moved into a new save from a previous save had lost the traits that they gained from completing their childhood aspirations.

You can send a sim that you're playing into the house of another sim to age up a baby. The game will give the child a random trait and childhood aspiration.
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Offline MarianT

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2015, 09:07:54 PM »
Another addition:

I've switched to playing with aging on for the active household and normal lifespan. This means that my NPCs don't age up. I can do it manually, however, in Household Management.

At the map, do a CTRL-Shift-C and type "testingcheat on", hit Enter, then type "CAS.fullediton". Go into Household Management and click on "Unplayed Households." When you choose to edit them, you'll have access to the Personality section as well as appearance.

While editing an NPC household, you can also add spouses, children, and even aliens.

Every 7 rounds (each household is played for 3 days), I age up the NPC children, teens, YAs, etc. I also delete elders, unless they're friends or co-workers.
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Offline MarianT

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #6 on: May 31, 2015, 10:10:15 PM »
A couple more additions:

You can change the name of a child (or older person) in CAS without having to use the cheat, CAS.fulleditmode. However, as far as I know, you're still more likely to get twins if you're not playing the pregnant sim at the birth.

I tried playing each family a week at a time and found out that married couples are more likely to have romantic interests in addition to their spouses when you come back to them. Also, I had a couple of sims who weren't teens lose jobs. Maybe a 3-4 day span is better.

Someone on the official forum has said that you get a lot of money from the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration reward if you're playing rotationally. I haven't had a sim complete that yet in a rotational game, so I don't know if that's true. I'll test it eventually, but if anyone knows, let me know.
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Offline MarianT

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #7 on: June 03, 2015, 04:33:46 PM »
I've moved my 10 families to a new save file (maybe they all have the nomadic trait). Although I dropped only 20mb (going from a file size of 188 mb to 168 mb), I seem to have solved the problems of lag and a non-functioning mailbox.

I said in an earlier post that adults didn't retain the traits they gained from completing a childhood aspiration. That seems to have changed. I haven't checked all my teens and YAs, but the ones I've looked at do have their "creatively gifted" and "socially gifted" traits.

As a negative, though, no one owns a retail business anymore, my writer and musician aren't getting their royalties, and a rocket ship that was built (and had a few upgrades) reverted to a kit.
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Offline Steellace

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #8 on: October 31, 2015, 09:51:51 AM »
Hi!  I finally found this thread again!  I kept searching for something to do with moving to a new save file, so it took me a while.  I have a rather large group, not just 10 families, but my game is now not only lagging but crashing.  As I started with 12 families and am now playing all of their multitude of offspring, I'm positive it's because of how big the save is.  I really appreciate all of the work you did to get the tips, tricks, and process outlined for moving everyone.

I hate losing the inventory the most, I think, at this point.  What I have done so far is to go into each house I want to move and make basement room.  Then I put everything from household inventory that I want to keep in that room along with stuff from the household members' inventories.  In my trials, everything arrived successfully.

It's really unfortunate, however, that their royalties will disappear.  I don't mind rebuilding rockets and regrowing plants as much of that sort of thing was done by previous generations, so this one needs to work a little too (lol).  I really wish that we could eliminate all of the NPCs from the town and stop the generation.  I will have more than enough played sims move into town to take care of all roles.  Do you know of any way to decrease the non-played sim population?

I'll share any new things I discover along the way, just in case someone else wants to do the same.

Offline dodi90

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2015, 01:21:46 PM »
I do remember that there are one mod that reduce the townie generating but sadly is not maintained anymore by Shimrod. Currently i am playing another games while waiting for Get Together and occasionally play sims to try different roleplay on my sims.

Offline Steellace

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #10 on: November 01, 2015, 09:27:06 AM »
The mod by Shimrod was picked up by Simsical and has been updated here:  http://simsicalcreations.tumblr.com/post/128543455501/reduced-townie-generating.  Unfortunately, Simsical has retired, so patches in the future may make it stop working.  I'm really hoping to find a replacement before it dies, but I'd really LOVE to find one that would make it stop generate altogether if there are sims available in the game already to fill rolls.  I'll keep dreaming, I guess, because there's no way I could figure out how to make a mod myself, lol.

Offline dodi90

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #11 on: November 02, 2015, 01:11:10 AM »
I can make some XML mods back in sims 3 since it was so easy editing the XML. But of course I have no idea how to make more complex mods. I believe townie generation will be a problem again because they will have to include new neighborhood introduced by the EP / GP.

Offline brand485

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #12 on: November 15, 2015, 12:46:09 AM »
I'm using rotational play for my legacy family. I remember in the Sims 3 that you could see the total amount of time you were playing a family by clicking on or hovering over the clock. Can you still do this somehow in the Sims 4?

Offline MarianT

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #13 on: November 15, 2015, 08:40:36 AM »
Welcome to the Forum, brand485!

Figuring out how much time you've spent with a group of sims is difficult in TS4. I have to do it manually -- making a tick for every time a family pays bills, for example. I've also moved to playing each family for a week and changing families between midnight and 6 a.m. on Sunday. I wish there was a way to track time in game, but apparently there's not.
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Offline JulianneALee

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #14 on: December 15, 2015, 01:08:39 AM »
I've always played rotationally, and mostly with the settings and suggestions here. I always play a family with pregnancy until the baby's born, because I hate returning to a household and discovering I'd missed the event. It happens even with aging for unplayed Sims turned off.

I have a couple of suggestions in response to some issues described here. Keeping track of things is sometimes a challenge in a rotational game, because of having so many Sims interacting. With Sims 2 I used to use something called Sims Database, where I recorded every detail of every Sim and household, including family tree. With Sims 4, I was dismayed to not be able to do that. So I bought a genealogy program (Ancestry.com) and set up a family tree where I could record every single detail of every single Sim, and it would keep track of family relationships, shared information...everything. It works even better than Sims Database did, and can include screen captures of Sims and their houses.

I also have an Access database (yes, I'm that anal), where I keep track of all the lots, their addresses (What, you don't give your neighborhoods street addresses? ;D), current value, current occupant, name in library, name of floor plan, etc. And another sheet tells me the name and occupants of each household, the rotation order, available cash, and notes on what's upcoming for each household. I'm a big believer in letting chips fall where they may, but it's hard to remember what's going on when I'm playing ten or twenty households.

I do use the no-cull mod because I was tired of losing my ghosts. Not because I like to play ghosts, but because I use the gravestones/urns as memorials to dead Sims and the culling was removing the names from those items. Not to mention that it was removing them from the in-game family tree. Now I keep the ghosts and manually purge the unplayed households from time to time. I feel like the Black Death, deleting NPCs rather randomly, but I think it keeps things tidier and enables me to control the gene pool. Too many NPCs with the same hair color? To the trash. Too many single moms? Out they go. Too ugly? Gone. Three families with exactly the same demographic? Doomed. I like the idea of manually aging up the NPCs. Up till now I've just been deleting folks who have been around too long. I think I'm going to try the aging up and see how the towns look then.

As for keeping track of how much time I've spent with each family, since I do a strict weekly rotation, all I need is to make note in the household database what day/time it was at the end of the last Sim week. That way I can figure out how old the Elders are. I don't know whether my problem is the usual, but my Elders have ages up in the hundreds that have no relationship with the number of Sim days played. So at the end of each household week I add those days to the age of each Elder. When one dies I note the TOD and record the appropriate number of days lived in the family tree.

One thing I found very interesting that is different from Sims 2 (I skipped Sims 3 entirely) is that a played male Sim can father a child with a female NPC. Don Lothario and his son Danny have both done it and have five such children between them. It's a little addictive, but since I always feel compelled to bring those children into the neighborhood I don't do it so much anymore, lest I end up with nothing but Lotharios everywhere.

Lastly, I've noticed that even with aging turned off for unplayed Sims I'll sometimes return to a household and find someone has aged while I was gone. One Sim gained an entire week on his otherwise twin brother. I figure that they age whenever they stroll or jog past a lot while I'm playing it. If they're hanging out, like in a park, they can gain quite a lot of age.

So far I haven't felt the need to move everyone to another save file. I did something similar in Sims 2 and ended up losing everybody because I did it wrong. It was a bloodbath. My current game was getting iffy a couple of months ago, but since the last few patches it's all smoothed out nicely. Glitches are at a minimum, and I've only repaired the game once since I began playing a year ago. I gather Maxis has been deliberately working on improving efficiency and plugging memory leaks, etc, and it's working. I do wonder how to empty a cache file.

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Offline MarianT

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #15 on: December 15, 2015, 09:03:30 AM »
Welcome to the forum, Jules!

You can find out how to delete cache files here:  http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,21899.msg401662.html#msg401662

I use index cards myself, but I don't go into as much detail as you do. What generation are you on for your sims? I tried a 10-household rotation, but I've since cut back to 3 households.
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Offline JulianneALee

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Re: Tips for Rotational Play
« Reply #16 on: December 18, 2015, 10:27:39 AM »
Thanks for the welcome and the information, MarianT.

Yes, I keep way more detail on my Sims than is reasonable. I'm sentimental, and like going back over the databases to reminisce about my old neighborhoods. In Sims 2, which I played from first release to last fall, I had dozens of households, about 600 Sims total, and had reached generation 8. I'd still be playing it except that when Sims 4 came out I liked the idea of different-sized Sims and wanted to play with those genetics. In eight generations of Sims 2, as a sort of breeding experiment, I noticed how the families mixed and developed their "look." So far in Sims 4, I'm seeing similar things, but more complex with different body types. Some Sims are skinny for life, some need to exercise, and some are just hopeless.

I've played Sims 4 for a year now, and have reached 18 households and three generations. According to my ancestry program, I've got 81 Sims, living and dead. My first generation are all dead, except for one wise woman who Knows Things and will live forever. My goal with numbers is to have as few NPCs as possible, deleting all that are spawned and leaving only the mailman and maids. I have to be careful in purging the ones that come with an expansion pack. For instance, with Get Together the Maxis households are also group members and deleting all of them would make the groups a little weird. So until I get my own Sims settled into groups and decided which groups I want to keep, I've just evicted all the Maxis households without deleting them, so I can use their houses. So far I'm keeping the total population at about 200, and that seems to be working.

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Offline Playalot

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #17 on: May 01, 2016, 10:45:38 PM »
@MarianT I rotated back to a married household to find that the sims were no longer married, in fact they had to be reintroduced to each other again. The only thing I can think of that might have caused it was since playing on this rotational save file I did a uninstall/reinstall. Have you had this happen to any of your married sims while playing rotationally?
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Offline MarianT

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #18 on: May 02, 2016, 12:59:45 PM »
Yes, if I look in the relationship for one sim, she's married to a young adult female. But her husband's relationship says that she's still his spouse. I'm not currently playing the family, though.

I've never done an uninstall/reinstall on an active so don't know what other pitfalls might lurk.
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Offline Shewolf13

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #19 on: June 05, 2016, 02:16:45 AM »
Question for you rotational players, especially you @MarianT

I'm currently playing a family that I adore.  I want to keep the town alive but I'm not as interested in playing all of the families, especially not as much as I would play my main family.  I know I can go into manage households and play with genetics, etc to add kids and whatnot.  I'm just trying to think of the easiest way to do it.  I plan on playing my main family for 2 weeks at a time, then switch to just kinda deal with the other families.  What settings should I use do you think?

Offline MarianT

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #20 on: June 05, 2016, 07:32:00 AM »
Question for you rotational players, especially you @MarianT

I'm currently playing a family that I adore.  I want to keep the town alive but I'm not as interested in playing all of the families, especially not as much as I would play my main family.  I know I can go into manage households and play with genetics, etc to add kids and whatnot.  I'm just trying to think of the easiest way to do it.  I plan on playing my main family for 2 weeks at a time, then switch to just kinda deal with the other families.  What settings should I use do you think?

I think the simplest thing would be to turn aging off when you go to play the other families in town and then turn it back on again when you return to your main family.
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Offline Shewolf13

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #21 on: June 05, 2016, 01:04:53 PM »
@MarianT

Thanks ^^ That's what I was thinking too.  I haven't played around enough with some of the settings to know them as well yet.  Appreciate the advice ^^

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #22 on: June 06, 2016, 03:48:50 AM »
@MarianT

I'm having a problem with unwanted ageing in my current challenge file.
Sims who max their career are moved out to a house during their adult phase, so they can enjoy eternal life while looking good.
My settings are
Auto-Ageing (Played Sims): Active Household Only
Auto-Ageing (Unplayed Sims): No

Premade and townie sims who have never lived in the Challenge House have not aged at all.
When I move a sim out, their new household sometimes get the Played Sims symbol, which I click to remove so that they don't appear as a Played Household.
However, I kept getting birthday party announcements for sims who have moved out of the Challenge House.
Oddly, however, two such sims had a baby (she got pregnant while still living in the Challenge House) but the baby had to be aged up manually.

What happens to household members who move out is not part of the challenge, but is important to my playing enjoyment.
In your RDC, when the heir moves to a new place, the family left behind stops ageing.
I wonder what I'm doing wrong or if the two scenarios are fundamentally different.

Offline tjtemple

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #23 on: June 06, 2016, 05:57:58 AM »
@oshizu I had the same thing happen with a previously played sim, but actually when I switched across to the home of the sim with the birthday invitation they hadn't actually aged at all from the last time I played them.  So hopefully the birthday message is a glitch/bug.

Offline MarianT

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #24 on: June 06, 2016, 07:10:44 AM »
@oshizu, The birthday party invitation can come whether a Sim is ready to age up or not. My Sims have received several from their older relatives. You can send your Sim to attend, and the Sim might age up -- I think that happened for me quite a few months ago -- but might not. As for babies -- I'm not sure how long the game will let you go before aging them up, but I usually do it manually unless it's in a house I intend to play soon.
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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #25 on: June 06, 2016, 08:26:10 AM »
@tjtemple and @MarianT

Thank you for your replies. I'll try ignoring the next birthday party invitation my sims receive. I feel compelled, though, to send my sims to attend the birthday party of their siblings and relatives, lol.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #26 on: July 03, 2016, 07:08:53 PM »
Playalot alerted me to a problem for rotational players -- the patch for Dine Out introduced relationship decay within a household. This means that if you have an infant in a household, the relationship with the parents may decay to 0, causing the infant to be taken by the social worker. Hopefully, this will be fixed in the next patch, but in the meantime, it's a good idea to check on your families with babies once a week and to keep the relationship at "friend" if not higher.
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Offline zembee

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #27 on: August 08, 2016, 10:06:01 PM »
MarianT,
I've been playing my single save file for awhile not knowing that I was doing rotational play. I've been playing this for quite awhile now with the Patel's, Holiday's, and four other families along with my original Sim that I built for the initial game, so that makes seven families total.

I basically moved all the sims out that I wasn't playing and kept the houses empty, in fact I bulldozed the original houses since I enjoy building in this game.  Building a house as the family goes through it generations gives the a bit of history.  I just kept the families that I was interested in, pulled a few 'unplayed' sims in to satisfy a cousin problem I was running into.  Currently the Patel and Holiday family is into their sixth generation, soon to be seventh.  I had no major problems as of yet (knock on wood).  With the genealogy, the family tree gets quite interesting.

I play with aging set to long time span, this gives me ample time to spend with most of the Sims, but I do concentrate mainly on my original Sim family.  I keep a spreadsheet of all the sims and produced some story lines as time goes on. I like this style of play because when you see the other sims, around parks and other venues you know who they are.  I must admit though keeping relationships is the most frustrating aspect of this style of play, since upon returning you find the child's BFF is no longer in her relationship list. I was hoping the MCC mod would fix this but it appears to only work on the existing family being played.

The families are spread across the different neighborhoods, of which most are located in the new neighborhood of Newcrest.  I abandoned Windenburg but kept the venues, three families were added from that expansion, the Villareal, Fyres, and Bjergsen.  Theses three families are in their third generation are are like a half generation apart from the Holidays, and other original sims.

I play matriarch style in naming, since that is the game's default and I pretty much allow the game do the naming of the babies.  I don't age via CAS, for it retains the number of days, if I want to age up a sim, I use the birthday cake, for it sets the days to zero.  This almost messed me up.

Reading these posts was quite interesting, for I'm pretty much been doing what was described in your first post.  I haven't checked my game save file size, probably something I should look into, but I'm not experiencing any lag.  I do get a few sim resets, but I been seeing those occur since the beginning.

I'll be keeping up with your thread, its nice I'm not alone.
Thanks. z



 

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #28 on: August 09, 2016, 07:41:28 AM »
Welcome to the forum, zembee!

Back when I was playing TS2, I didn't think of it as rotational play, either. I just had a few families that I circulated among, first in Desiderata Valley and then in Veronaville. But when TS3 came along, I discovered that I couldn't play that way anymore. TS4 enabled me to come back to playing several families -- a whole town if I wanted. So I wrote about how to do that for my friends on the forum, most of whom came to TS4 after TS3.

As for the relationship decay -- I'm hopeful that they'll fix it in an upcoming patch. Currently I'm rotating between 2 families in one game and 3 in another and haven't had any major problems, but then I don't worry too much about friendships. A BFF should stay a BFF, though, and I do hope they fix that.

I'm a little less worried about file size than I was when I started the thread and wrote the chapter in the guide -- TS4 seems to be much more stable than TS3 was. As long as you're not experiencing lag, you're probably okay.
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Using "Save" vs. "Save As" when playing rotationally.
« Reply #29 on: June 27, 2017, 09:25:19 AM »
Some people have had questions about using "Save" vs. "Save As" when playing rotationally.

I use "Save as" only when I'm creating a template. If I've done a lot of work on buildings -- placing venues or different houses, then I use "Save as" for my town.

For regular rotational gameplay, I always use "Save." If something happens to corrupt my current game file, there is a small save icon at the bottom of the load screen that can be used to recover a previous file.

I would not recommend using "Save As" for each different family in a rotational game. The reason is that you'll lose the progress of your other families that took place in a different file. The single "save" file will keep track of everyone in your town, no matter which family you're playing.
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Re: Using "Save" vs. "Save As" when playing rotationally.
« Reply #30 on: June 27, 2017, 09:08:53 PM »
Just for the sake of having another viewpoint: For more information on the issues with Save-As read here (click) I always use Save-As but rewrite over my current save and rename it the same name. As long as you are saving over the current game all the other families progress will continue etc just the same as using only the 'save' feature.

The benefit in using save-as this way is that it stops the potential problem of that sometimes just using 'save' can cause the last save game to be saved over by the current played game. This is a problem mostly for people who have more than one played game in their saves folder.

This doesn't seem to be happening in all players games but it can cause games to be lost if it happens to you.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #31 on: November 08, 2017, 10:27:59 PM »
I've read through the rotational play articles, but I'm feeling really dense. Aging sims in rotational play is drifting just outside my grasp.

I want to manually age my played households (shooting for two or three to start myself slowly) while allowing NPC households to auto-age. I can set those options at the game options menu, I believe. But my confusion is: Will my played households auto-age during the period I'm not playing them (like an unplayed household)? or will they still count as a played household that I can manually age when it's their turn?

Thanks,
RiotKitty

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #32 on: November 09, 2017, 07:49:15 AM »
I've read through the rotational play articles, but I'm feeling really dense. Aging sims in rotational play is drifting just outside my grasp.

I want to manually age my played households (shooting for two or three to start myself slowly) while allowing NPC households to auto-age. I can set those options at the game options menu, I believe. But my confusion is: Will my played households auto-age during the period I'm not playing them (like an unplayed household)? or will they still count as a played household that I can manually age when it's their turn?

Thanks,
RiotKitty


The way it's supposed to work is that if you have Aging on for Active Household Only and Age up Unplayed Sims, then the Sims you play in rotation should get older only when you play them. And I think this is currently working, but it's something that might get broken with a new patch.

A safe way to check, if you plan to play with normal age length, is to set your age length to long. Note the ages of one household when you leave it, and if they're the same when you come back after playing the other households, then you're okay.
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Offline RiotKitty

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #33 on: November 09, 2017, 06:27:38 PM »
Thanks, MarianT. I think I understand now. I'll test the settings you mention and see what happens.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #34 on: November 11, 2017, 12:45:07 PM »
As of November, 2017, a new Culling system has been put into effect. More information can be found here. Basically, any household you play should be put into "My Households" to avoid being culled. This replaces any previous information about culling.]here[/url]. Basically, any household you play should be put into "My Households" to avoid being culled. This replaces any previous information about culling.

Also, good news for rotational players -- if a death occurs when you are playing a different family, the tombstone or urn can be found on the lot of the Sim who died.
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Offline Shewolf13

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #35 on: August 09, 2018, 11:00:47 PM »
I was curious what everyone's experience has been with the new Season's calendar and rotational game play. I am curious, since I would like to get back to my RKC, but am terrified of ruining something XD I have done some testing myself and the one thing I have a question about is Holidays and how it works when you are playing rotationally.  Currently, I am playing families a week at a time and the way things are set up, each week technically takes place at the same "time" in the story, so was just going to go with 28 day seasons. But that moves Holidays around and when I went to delete one (in a test file) I noticed it would delete it off the Calendar for all families.

So mostly, I'm just curious what everyone else has noticed with their rotational files.  If I can't figure a way to set it up, I may have to change how I am telling the story, at least a little.  I may even be over thinking this heh.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #36 on: August 10, 2018, 07:18:18 AM »
I was curious what everyone's experience has been with the new Season's calendar and rotational game play. I am curious, since I would like to get back to my RKC, but am terrified of ruining something XD I have done some testing myself and the one thing I have a question about is Holidays and how it works when you are playing rotationally.  Currently, I am playing families a week at a time and the way things are set up, each week technically takes place at the same "time" in the story, so was just going to go with 28 day seasons. But that moves Holidays around and when I went to delete one (in a test file) I noticed it would delete it off the Calendar for all families.

So mostly, I'm just curious what everyone else has noticed with their rotational files.  If I can't figure a way to set it up, I may have to change how I am telling the story, at least a little.  I may even be over thinking this heh.

I've been playing with 10 families and 28-day seasons. Obviously, I don't even try to arrange it so that it appears I'm playing everyone at the same time. But with only 3 families, you could do 4 holidays in a year; you could even do as many as 5, one per week. Set up your calendar so that you have 3 Love Days, 3 Winterfests, etc. It doesn't matter what the households you're not playing are doing on those days, although if you choose streaking for one of your traditions, other Sims will streak when your Sims are on a community lot.
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Offline Shewolf13

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #37 on: August 10, 2018, 09:27:16 PM »
@MarianT

Thanks for your insights ^^   At the moment, I'm playing 3 families, but once the mini challenge is done, then I will have 10 to play through (I don't know why I do this to myself XD). My current testing hasn't run long enough for me to see what happens when you have aging on for active families only, and how it works with the calendar.  If the illusion of playing them "at the same time" won't be feasible, no matter how I set it up because of Seasons, I may just go with a smaller, calendar but haven't decided yet. Again, thanks for the insights ^^

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #38 on: August 10, 2018, 09:45:19 PM »
I'm sad to read that, while playing the active household, the seasons will continue to progress for the non-active households even though they don't age.
Thank you for asking that question @Shewolf13 and thank you for responding @MarianT

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #39 on: August 10, 2018, 11:05:34 PM »
@oshizu

Yeah, I'm a little bummed myself in how the Calendar operates, at least for rotational games.  The concept is great, but it makes it hard now for something like the RKC.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #40 on: August 12, 2019, 06:58:41 PM »
Hello Marian,

I have an untested question about rotational gameplay with Seasons (which I've never experienced).
These are my plans:
Conditions: 3 households, played one week each
Lifespan: Normal
Auto Age Played Sims: Active household only
Auto Age Unplayed Sims: No
Seasons 28 days

My question is this:
If my first household manages to achieve the Handiness L8 upgrade (Temporal Modifier Unit) on the Weather Machine, could I simply switch seasons in 21-day cycles from Household 1's Week 2?
That way, every household could play the same season, albeit at different points of that season.
I considered playing 4 households on Long with "Auto Age Unplayed Sims/Off" (so the townies wouldn't need auto-ageing), but I worry about my played households' youngsters ageing up without me.

My apologies if my questions are merely a variation of questions you've already answered...
And thank you for reading.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #41 on: August 12, 2019, 08:04:24 PM »
Hello Marian,

I have an untested question about rotational gameplay with Seasons (which I've never experienced).
These are my plans:
Conditions: 3 households, played one week each
Lifespan: Normal
Auto Age Played Sims: Active household only
Auto Age Unplayed Sims: No
Seasons 28 days

My question is this:
If my first household manages to achieve the Handiness L8 upgrade (Temporal Modifier Unit) on the Weather Machine, could I simply switch seasons in 21-day cycles from Household 1's Week 2?
That way, every household could play the same season, albeit at different points of that season.
I considered playing 4 households on Long with "Auto Age Unplayed Sims/Off" (so the townies wouldn't need auto-ageing), but I worry about my played households' youngsters ageing up without me.

My apologies if my questions are merely a variation of questions you've already answered...
And thank you for reading.


I haven't done anything with the Weather Machine, so I don't know whether 21-week seasons are possible.
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Offline oshizu

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #42 on: August 12, 2019, 08:40:49 PM »
I haven't done anything with the Weather Machine, so I don't know whether 21-week seasons are possible.

Thank you for your reply (and for reading through all that).
Since I'll play 3 households for 7 days each, I was going to try for 21 days per season (with a 28-day setting).
Once I get started, I'll report back to let you know if it works. :D

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #43 on: August 13, 2019, 09:04:28 AM »
I haven't done anything with the Weather Machine, so I don't know whether 21-week seasons are possible.

Thank you for your reply (and for reading through all that).
Since I'll play 3 households for 7 days each, I was going to try for 21 days per season (with a 28-day setting).
Once I get started, I'll report back to let you know if it works. :D

Thanks for looking into this. One problem I think you might have is with plants. Your summer-blooming plants will still think that it's spring, etc. But as long as you always use greenhouses, that should be okay.
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Offline mousef

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #44 on: August 15, 2019, 04:20:55 AM »
I haven't done anything with the Weather Machine, so I don't know whether 21-week seasons are possible.

Thank you for your reply (and for reading through all that).
Since I'll play 3 households for 7 days each, I was going to try for 21 days per season (with a 28-day setting).
Once I get started, I'll report back to let you know if it works. :D

That's not what you asked (and for those doing challenges this won't help), but LittleMsSam has a mod for 21-day seasons:
https://littlemssam.tumblr.com/post/176559815578/21-days-seasons-instead-of-28-days-this-mod

I'm curious about your experiment with the weather machine. Please let us know how it goes ;D

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #45 on: August 19, 2019, 04:37:26 PM »
MarianT
I'll be sure to let you know how my summer-season plants fare during Week 4. that is, during the last week of spring that has been changed instead to summer.

Today, I have a few more about how rotational play affects seasonal gardens.
In my casual rotation, I am on Day 20 (3 households, one week each; 28 day-seasons) so I'll soon be returning to Household 1 and using the weather control machine to switch to summer.
I have two questions about seasonal gardens & rotational play:

Q1: Generally speaking, what happens to the gardens of my non-active played households when the seasons change?
       (If my households' non-summer plants are left outdoors (unsheltered) when we shift to summer, will I later rotate to Househols 2 and 3 to find their unsheltered spring gardens wilted and shrunken?)

Q2:  My three households each have an outdoor (unsheltered) fenced-in seasonal garden; out-of-season plants are grown in a basement garden.
       My question is, do you always shelter each outdoor garden before rotating to a different household? Or do you grow all plants in greenhouses?
       I'm not using greenhouses this time around, so I thought I'd just add 4 pillars and a roofed ceiling...

@mousef
Thank you for the link to the 21-day season mod! If the weather control device doesn't work, I might look into that, or just use MCCC.
Will let you know what happens, though.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #46 on: August 21, 2019, 11:11:24 PM »
@oshizu

Hey! Welcome back ^^ I can't speak to everything, since I haven't done a lot of gardening, but I use the season cheat from MCCC (but it functions just as the changing seasons cheat) and reset my seasons. It does reset them, though. I haven't messed around with the weather machine in a rotational play style yet though. But thought I'd mention the cheat case it might help.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #47 on: August 22, 2019, 09:59:35 AM »
@oshizu, sorry for not getting to your questions sooner.

With regard to Q1, your unsheltered spring plants will be patches of brown dirt when you switch back to them in summer. You don't need to replant or anything; they'll come back when it's spring. At least that's been my experience, but I'm playing with longer seasons and more families means that I'm away for a season or two.

Q2. Willow and Vlad have a greenhouse; the others just have outdoor gardens. Money trees grow in all seasons, if you're interested.
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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #48 on: August 30, 2019, 08:48:24 PM »
@oshizu

Hey! Welcome back ^^ I can't speak to everything, since I haven't done a lot of gardening, but I use the season cheat from MCCC (but it functions just as the changing seasons cheat) and reset my seasons. It does reset them, though. I haven't messed around with the weather machine in a rotational play style yet though. But thought I'd mention the cheat case it might help.
Hi Wolfie! *waves

Every sim household I've ever played is heavy into gardening, lol.
I'm aware I can advance seasons with MCCC, but I'm looking for rotational strategies that don't involve MCCC or other mods. :D

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #49 on: August 30, 2019, 08:56:18 PM »
Hello!
I'm reporting back on the use of Dr. June's Weather Machine that has been upgraded with the Temporal Modifier Unit (which requires Handiness Level 8 ).

Again, I was playing 3 households in rotation using a 28-day seasonal cycle, starting with spring.
After playing all 3 households for a week each, a Household 1 sim used the Weather Machine to advance the season to summer at the very start of their second week (Day 22).
The sim who advances the season doesn't need Handiness 8 (in game, a sim from Household 3 performed the Temporal Modifier upgrade).

I've only played 5 in-game days into their first week of summer, but everything seems fine.
Household 1's summer plants register as "in season" while growing outdoors (unsheltered).
Household 1 also visited Granite Falls which has also entered the summer season. In the campground area, elderberry/noxious elderberry and chamomile/toxic chamomile have sprouted.
Other areas of Granite Falls haven't been visited yet, but the two chamomile species only grow in summer so I think the seasonal change is "world-wide."

So I will certainly make use of the upgraded Weather Machine for any rotational game that either (1) would benefit from 21-day seasons or (2) involve 4+ households that I wish to keep within the same season.
That's all. :D

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #50 on: June 02, 2020, 06:34:33 AM »
Thank you for all the work that you put in helping us enjoy the game :)

I have a question regarding rotational play. When I'm playing one of my households the members of other households that I play will show up at locations as NPCs. For example Household 1 Sim is at the Bar and a Sim from Household 2 will arrive and act independently. Is there any way to prevent this?

Thanks for for your time!

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #51 on: June 02, 2020, 06:46:51 AM »
Thank you for all the work that you put in helping us enjoy the game :)

I have a question regarding rotational play. When I'm playing one of my households the members of other households that I play will show up at locations as NPCs. For example Household 1 Sim is at the Bar and a Sim from Household 2 will arrive and act independently. Is there any way to prevent this?

Thanks for for your time!

Sorry, there's no way to prevent that. There are a couple of ways to take advantage of it. If you send a Sim from household 1 to the gym, Sims from household 2 and 3 will also show up and gain fitness. If you send Sim 1 to the park, some of your other Sims might show up and gain logic from playing chess. And they will all make friends on their own. They used to get involved romantically, too, but I think the devs altered the mechanics somewhat to diminish the probabilities.

I actually enjoy seeing Sims from my households out and about, but if you don't like that, then the only solution is not to send your Sim to places where you don't want to see your other Sims.
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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #52 on: June 02, 2020, 11:29:52 PM »
Thank you for the info - much appreciated!

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #53 on: September 04, 2021, 02:40:21 PM »
It's been a while since I've played a rotational game but today I have a question about non-active sims and their personal inventory.

Let's say Sim A's household is the active household.
If she invites Sim B from a different household to go fishing, does Sim B keep any fish he catches in his inventory? What about looking for frogs?
I vaguely recall someone saying that if, using the same two sims, Sim A is running a clothing store and Sim B comes to shop, any purchased items stay in Sim B's inventory (wardrobe).

In my current game, I also accidentally discovered that Sim A could both fertilize and evolve plants in Sim B's garden.
And it might just be my imagination, but the garden of a non-active household seems to grow a bit while visited by a sim from the active household.
I don't plan turning the evolve-each-other's-gardens into a habitual routine, but thought I'd share.

Mostly I'm interested in the personal inventory.  I know a non-active sim can gain skills, just not sure if there's any reason to invia sim with Fishing 10 to go fishing, haha.

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #54 on: September 04, 2021, 04:15:45 PM »
I haven't looked into this much, but my impression is that fish caught might not show up in Sim B's inventory. However, if Sim A gives Sim B a fish that would show up. I didn't know that about gardens.
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Offline nomo

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #55 on: September 04, 2021, 04:48:37 PM »
If items show up in the personal inventory of inactive sims, just by autonomous behaviour in the world, I think you should report it as a bug; it seems that could lead to performance issues, and so not be a design choice. Given that you don't have mods of course. I also play rotational, but I have a lot of households, and have not returned to many of them often enough to see anything of the sort. You could easily check it though, by just loading the household in question, afterwards. I'd be interested to know.

Plants grow/develop while the lot or the neighbourhood they're planted on/in is active/loaded.

Clothing is not separate items in inventory. In my clothing stores (retail) sims buy clothes and walk out in them, and I've loaded a household like that to look at them in CAS, and they did have the clothing piece available.

Offline oshizu

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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #56 on: September 04, 2021, 05:17:53 PM »
I haven't looked into this much, but my impression is that fish caught might not show up in Sim B's inventory. However, if Sim A gives Sim B a fish that would show up. I didn't know that about gardens.
Thank you for your response. Yes, I know that gifting works . Since not all of the game's tweaks make it into the patch notes, I was wondering about fish and frogs.
As for gardens, I only noticed that yesterday. When Sim A visited Sim B's lot, she saw that some of the plants were sparkling. Clicking on those plants showed the Evolve and Fertilize options.


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Re: Tip: Rotational Play
« Reply #57 on: September 06, 2021, 05:21:36 PM »
If your sim is visiting another household and get the message that the household's egg is ready to hatch, don't let your visiting sim hatch the egg.

My farmer is unable to rename, put in inventory, or trade the chick a visiting sim hatched, because the game claims the farmer doesn't "own the item."
I guess he has to continue feeding the chick until we rotate to the other sim, so she can make another visit and take "her" chicken home.
Not a game-breaker but still rather annoying logic: his hatchable egg and chicken coop, so I didn't expect him to lose ownership of the chick.

Edited to add: I had the sim who originally hatched the farmer's egg make another visit.
                     The game says she doesn't "own the item" either. I guess that chick is glitched.  I'll just delete it.