So in a couple of my neighborhoods it wouldn't really make sense, story or setting-wise, for Sims to travel to go to university. I've got everything I need to set up homeworld universities in these worlds, but is it worth it if I don't play with epic-level lifespans? At a minimum of three terms to graduate, it'd eat up most of the enrolled Sim's YA stage.

The University rabbitholes have some other neat features and ways to make a few simoleons (posing nude for art class, etc.) and the lot seems to be attracting inactives to visit even though as far as I know nobody's enrolled. Keeping it around just for flavor (and manually assigning degrees, I guess) wouldn't break anything, right?

Also, how can I get social groups to populate outside of the University world? It'd be nice to be able to unlock their exclusive careers/interactions sometimes.

I play long lifespans (with YA/A set to 90 days) and when I use homeworld universities I tend to send teen sims, who are also homeschooled so they do both their high school education and pursue a university degree concurrently.  In the past I've tried sending YA/As thinking it would be an interesting challenge to balance university enrollment and raising kids - but that didn't work out as my sims tended to drop enrollment whenever someone in the household aged up.

I've had a homeword university set up in some worlds without any of my sim enrolled and that didn't seem to break anything.  The only lots that seemed appealing to the rest of town was the Student Union.  I ended up using NRaas SP to require university enrollment to enter the Student Union lot, and that eliminated non-enrolled sims from showing up on the lot.

Dunno about giving non-active sims ranks in social groups.  That shouldn't be required to get the careers though.  There are enough activities that an active sim should be able to reach the top of any social group without attending EA's university.  I know I've unlocked the additional trait slot before sending a sim to university.  I would think qualifying for the careers wouldn't be a problem.

It doesn't seem like my sims have been gathering points, but I've also had a mod in for ages that gets rid of the little "[Nerd/Jock/Rebel] ++" sign when you do a qualifying activity, so maybe I just haven't been aware of it? For some reason, I was under the impression you had to interact with a group member before you would start accumulating points.

I realized today that for the two neighborhoods I was thinking of using homeworld unis in it actually makes a fair amount of narrative sense for Sims to be able to visit and take classes/do activities at the rabbit holes without going for formal degrees, so maybe I'll just run with that rather than overthinking it so much...

InsanityPrelude wrote: ↑

November 19th, 2018, 7:24 pm

...For some reason, I was under the impression you had to interact with a group member before you would start accumulating points.

That's not been my experience.  In my current game, for example, (in Isla Paradiso) I have a Bookworm sim who rolled a wish to read 5 books, then 10 books. I used the comic books since they are cheap and hardly take any time.  He ended up with a few levels in the Nerd group due to that.  In other games I've had teen sims play video games routinely before school in the morning and ended up making at least the 1st level in the Nerd group due to that.  And my homeless/jobless sims who end up dumpster diving for a living end up with a few levels of the Rebel.  I usually don't have sims get into the Jock group in a homeworld, not without a lot of bowling, at least. 

I created a tuning mod for myself so that social group levels don't decay so my sims who pursue social group related activities eventually level up.  The natural decay of social group levels may also explain why you might not be seeing it so much in the homeworld.