I've been trying to set up the mod suite so that my girlfriend and I can play our own families in the same neighbourhood without StoryProgression changing anything in our respective families while inactive.
Requirements:
<ul><li>Our personal Sims will not age when inactive</li><li>Our Sims' careers will not progress when not being actively played</li><li>Our Households' funds remain frozen when not being actively played</li><li>Other sims (NPCs, misc residents) will age, progress, etc. passively as is intended by StoryProgression</li></ul>
Ideally:
<ul><li>No need to change castes when switching households</li><li>Relationships will not decay (nor any new ones be made passively)</li><li>Our sims still appear to lead their own lives, go to work, appear on community lots, etc. despite no progression</li></ul>
Another way to think about this is I want TS2 style aging for only specific inactive households.
I read the page about rotational play but neither of those seemed to fit what I needed so I tried creating my own solution.
I have added two castes to attempt this:
CurrentlyPlaying: This is a manual caste that is added to each Sim in our personal households.
Priority: 5
Stasis: True
Income Tax: 100%
Property Tax: 0%
Apply to Household: True
Inherited: True
ActiveOverride: This is an automatic caste that includes Active sims. The purpose of this is to override the CurrentlyPlaying stasis options so that the active household can be played normally.
Priority: 10
Stasis: False
Allow Aging: True
Income Tax: 0%
Property Tax: 18% (my default)
Apply to Household: True
What is working properly:
Aging is working as I intended
I'm assuming other story components are working too.
Issues:
The inactive family (in the CurrentlyPlaying caste) is still making money despite the 100% income tax
Sometimes Sims in the inactive family just stand outside their house for hours (a side-effect of static motives)
In one test a pets was added to the household
Has anyone else tried doing similar and have a setup to share or recommend?
Playing Multiple Households (Another take on Rotational Castes)
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igazor
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Hi there. I see why a couple of things might be going wrong with your caste setup.
1 - The Income Tax rates are not true percentages. Many of us have found by experimenting with them that at around 40, sims end up with a negative paycheck whenever they should get paid. We're not sure exactly where the break even point is, possibly around 32 or so? I suspect that 100 is far too high a value to be using there and is getting ignored or not applied in any consistent manner. The only thing we've been able to conclude about the math is that the rates are relative to each other (10 is higher than 5, etc.), not that they act as true percentages in any way.
2 - Our Households' funds remain frozen when not being actively played
You can't really do this. But by deactivating SP's money and inventory management on your manual caste, it should be reasonably close.
3 - Relationships will not decay (nor any new ones be made passively)
You can't really do this either. As long as sims cannot be locked in their houses, they will be out and about in the neighborhood, be called upon by the game itself (not so much SP) to act as extras on community lots, and they will to some extent be interacting with sims whom they already know, those whom they have never met before, and even each other so their relationship scores will fluctuate. TS3 is not TS2 and never will be completely so.
4 - Our Sims' careers will not progress when not being actively played.
This you can do, sort of. SP > Caste Options > Career:Allow Progression > False. Inactives will still gain or lose career performance points within the level they are currently at, but they won't get promoted.
5 - In one test a pet was added to the household.
Caste Options > Pregnancy:Allow Adoption > False. This applies to the adoption of both human and pet sims.
6 - Sometimes Sims in the inactive family just stand outside their house for hours (a side-effect of static motives)
Correct, that's how stasis works and is why most of us don't use it for this kind of setup. These sims are going to be pulled into situations around town regardless but if their needs are maxed out at 100 all of the time, they become really boring and not very realistic to be around.
Except for the parts about freezing household assets and a total freeze on relationship scores, which are not entirely feasible, this sounds a lot like the setup suggested in Option 1 on the Rotational Caste page with the added bonus of the overriding automatic Active caste. What else am I missing here?
<a href="http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Story+Progr ... ettings</a>
1 - The Income Tax rates are not true percentages. Many of us have found by experimenting with them that at around 40, sims end up with a negative paycheck whenever they should get paid. We're not sure exactly where the break even point is, possibly around 32 or so? I suspect that 100 is far too high a value to be using there and is getting ignored or not applied in any consistent manner. The only thing we've been able to conclude about the math is that the rates are relative to each other (10 is higher than 5, etc.), not that they act as true percentages in any way.
2 - Our Households' funds remain frozen when not being actively played
You can't really do this. But by deactivating SP's money and inventory management on your manual caste, it should be reasonably close.
3 - Relationships will not decay (nor any new ones be made passively)
You can't really do this either. As long as sims cannot be locked in their houses, they will be out and about in the neighborhood, be called upon by the game itself (not so much SP) to act as extras on community lots, and they will to some extent be interacting with sims whom they already know, those whom they have never met before, and even each other so their relationship scores will fluctuate. TS3 is not TS2 and never will be completely so.
4 - Our Sims' careers will not progress when not being actively played.
This you can do, sort of. SP > Caste Options > Career:Allow Progression > False. Inactives will still gain or lose career performance points within the level they are currently at, but they won't get promoted.
5 - In one test a pet was added to the household.
Caste Options > Pregnancy:Allow Adoption > False. This applies to the adoption of both human and pet sims.
6 - Sometimes Sims in the inactive family just stand outside their house for hours (a side-effect of static motives)
Correct, that's how stasis works and is why most of us don't use it for this kind of setup. These sims are going to be pulled into situations around town regardless but if their needs are maxed out at 100 all of the time, they become really boring and not very realistic to be around.
Except for the parts about freezing household assets and a total freeze on relationship scores, which are not entirely feasible, this sounds a lot like the setup suggested in Option 1 on the Rotational Caste page with the added bonus of the overriding automatic Active caste. What else am I missing here?
<a href="http://nraas.wikispaces.com/Story+Progr ... ettings</a>