Hi all, I'm having some trouble figuring out how to configure NRaas' mods the way I like.

First of all, the perfect functional behaviour of the game for my style of play is very, VERY simple: it is simply to have the default EAxian behaviour for Story Progression when it is disabled (sims from non-active lots are still present in the world, able to visit other lots, available for romantic interaction etc) with a TS2-style aging option enabled.

I've tried Awesomemod and while it does allow me to (relatively) easily configure the game the way I want it to behave, the performance is very poor (game gets very laggy).

Using Overwatch fixes this, but breaks all TS2-style aging mods that I am aware of, aside from NRaas' Story Progression. However, NRaas' SP does not respect the ingame option to disable Story Progression, and has way too many options to fiddle with. I just want to play my game, not earn a degree in "configuring all five hundred thousand options of this massive mod to not change the default behaviour just so I can have the one feature I want from it".

Is there any other (less large in scope) mod besides NRaas' SP that can provide TS2-style aging that is compatible with Overwatch?

I've found Buzzler's Aging Manager to be really user friendly: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=447628

I loved the way it worked until it started crashing my favorite save. But, that world was LARGE and I have had it going for years.

Never thought about Overwatch being a problem. Why would it be?

Hi there. Overwatch is a script mod that replaces EA's aging manager with one of its own (so that for instance sims stop getting forever age-stuck). Awesome is a core mod that alters EA's aging manager significantly, it doesn't expect to find nor does it account for a different age manager running. Hence the conflict.

Of course SP and Overwatch are going to work well together, they were created by the same person and are now both maintained and updated by the same developers. It's not like there's some sinister plot in place that's preventing other developers from taking OW into account, all of the mods here are open sourced and available to any who want to analyze them. Whether they choose to work with OW or ignore it is really not something anyone here I believe would realistically have any control over.

There are many players not running SP who have found Buzzler's mod to be effective, there are some who find issues with it or report that it just stops working after a while. It may worth a try if you haven't yet given it one. Another approach, if you haven't considered this, is to keep aging off across the board through the Game Options and use MasterController Cheats to age up your active household (only) by one sim day each at or soon after midnight every night. When it's time for an age-up, present your active sim with a cake or a MC Trigger Age Transition command. That's less automatic than desired of course, but doesn't it get you to the same place in the end without all the heartache of a modded aging manager that may or may not be working across town?

SP's niche in the mod "marketplace" is its almost infinite customization possibilities and with that does come a learning curve. Those of us who have taken the time to learn how to tame it find it pays us back well with a satisfying experience, though I can see clearly that your play style is different from some of ours. Should you ever change your mind and choose to try a slightly different way of doing things in the future, see
<a href="http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Story+Progr ... ettings</a>
(but perhaps consider modifying the Not Active Caste instead of a custom Rotations one if your intent is to play the entire town in cycles)

We would love to hear which solution go with and what finally works for you. But if we could, please, perhaps with a bit less of the sarcasm? Or maybe it's merely hyperbole, sorry it's a bit early in the morning here for me to tell the difference.

I use Ani's Mod of Randomness in tandem with all the NRaas ones, OW included. It has the TS2 style aging enabled and I've never noticed any problems with it or any age-stuck sims notifications. Might be worth a try?

Oh, it's really good to hear there are options out there that work for people. I had come across Buzzler's but I remember reading reports that it didn't work with OW. Perhaps those reports are outdated, I will give it a try.

Igazor: I really would like to avoid the hassle of having to "cheat in" the aging process like that, and I would hope that with the popularity of TS2-style aging there is some mod that works reliably in combination with OW (honestly if there was the possibility of playing TS2 I would just go with that but it doesn't seem to be as compatible with modern PCs as TS3 is).

Aside from all that, the sarcasm was just meant in a joking/friendly way; I'm not saying that the mod doesn't fulfill its role (there's a reason it's one of the most well-known mods around) or that there's anything wrong with people who like to tweak so much, it's just that it's a swiss army knife when all I need is a toothpick and I'm having serious issues figuring out how to pick my teeth without getting the corkscrew in my eye.

Had a feeling upon further reflection that I was reading your top post more harshly than it was intended. Serves me right for checking the message boards so early in the morning (yeah, think I'll stick with that excuse). Sorry if I came down on you too hard.

We might someday win you over to the concept of Swiss army knife teethpicking. It's not really as painful as it sounds, you know. Also, if you're feeling nostalgic or really do prefer it, players are reporting that it's still sometimes possible to get the free TS2 Ultimate Collection if you have a chat with a sympathetic EA customer support agent and can prove you own at least some of the original TS2 game (Windows only, not Mac). I believe the UC was remastered so that it works better on modern operating systems, others here can correct me if I've got that wrong.

And out of this I learned that Ani's mod offers this aging option, I had no idea. Doesn't seem like it would belong in there, but it is after all as she says a collection of truly "random" things.

No worries, at least you gave me a chance to explain myself

And well, my problem with swiss army toothpicking is that I don't really want to experiment with what does and doesn't work, as I tend to get attached to my test subjects and can't see them as expendable. That, combined with the somewhat opaque setting implications of NRaas' SP make it an unattractive option to me.

As an illustration of what I mean; I already looked into the "Rotational Caste" thing (and had the idea of applying the settings to the Not Active caste) before you suggested it, but the "Romance:Allow" option threw me off. I absolutely cannot have my Sims breaking up their marriages or getting a new partner without my intervention, but setting it to False made me doubt if I would still be able to have romantic interactions with Sims outside of the currently active lot. Now I could find this out by experimenting easily enough, but it just feels scary not knowing how many of these options there are, how exactly they behave, if I misread/misunderstood any of them etc etc. And like I said, I don't like experimenting too much, a lengthy configuration phase where I have to playtest my own tweaks until it stops doing things I don't want is just not something I feel I can handle without going crazy, especially when the default behaviour (with SP off in the settings) is already "sane" enough for me.

Oh, and also, I'm running all of this under Linux using Wine. TS2 unfortunately does not seem to work in a stable way with this at all (there's some discussion of semi-functional patches for certain older versions of Wine but they merely raise the level from "doesn't run at all" to "runs but with serious bugs" - not playable by any means). TS3 runs wonderfully under Wine; I just have to find the right mods for me

Yep, got it. Just for the record though, Romance:Allow > False means that SP itself is not allowed to push romantic partnering status changes on the inactives so protected, not that they can't flirt (those are different settings), have fun with their own already existing partners, or be targets of such by user-directed active sims. But I can see where a lot of the available settings might give one pause if they aren't already used to working with them and it could be difficult to know which ones warrant asking about first.

Different perspective is all, I never played TS2. It would be nice to deep freeze some or many of the inactives in town so they don't actually do anything at all on their own when not being played, but many of us learned to cope with TS3's different ways of handling things much earlier on. Without SP and even without EA's story progression running, the thing I would be most concerned about is the inactives emigrating out of town (therefore out of the game) when the game decides, often incorrectly, that the town is overpopulated. This isn't supposed to happen with sims who have already been played actively or who have any kind of relationship with your current actives, but reports are that it happens anyway. SP shuts that nonsense right down unless the player takes complicated steps to allow it again.

But anyway, sounds like you are on your way to getting your game to work the way you want it to, which is the important part.