LESS free will than EA story progression?

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nobodyimportant
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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by nobodyimportant » August 11th, 2021, 10:40 am

Let me rephrase.
1) Where to i set the automatic progression speed to the slowest possible speed in SP?
2) Is there any way to disable emigration in SP like Shimrod's mod does for EA progression?
3) Is there any way to disable the game automatically making decisions for the non player controlled sims in town, essentially freezing them apart from relationship changes, but still letting me have interactions with them?

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igazor
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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by igazor » August 11th, 2021, 11:20 am

Not sure why there is still an open question here. Let me try to clarify.

EA's story progression - Will cull (emigrate) sims whenever it feels like it. This can and will also happen when story progression is off and the game goes into emergency overpopulated or unbalanced corrections even when it doesn't need to.

Shimrod's mod that I linked to is supposed to block that kind of emigration, specifically targeting EA control (not NRaas or AwesomeMod).

NRaas StoryProgression - Emigration is disabled by default. It can be switched back on, this is actually not easy to do and it's not easy on purpose because so many players hate surprises, but emigration will only happen under a few very specific sets of circumstances. The player has total control.

AwesomeMod StoryMode - Individual households can be marked to never be emigrated. I don't remember the rest of how this works, to be honest, but I don't recall having any surprise emigration at all many years back when I was an AM user.

puzzlezaddict
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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by puzzlezaddict » August 11th, 2021, 11:22 am

From your first post, I thought you wanted some progression to happen, not just emigration:
nobodyimportant post_id=83651 time=1628376646 user_id=19970 wrote: Maybe some sims progressing in their career, making new friends or enemies, maybe having kids maybe not, but not splitting up their family, especially not when the family is still small, or god forbid moving out of town or something.
I have tried setting this up, but that disabled basically all interactions on the active lot as well.
SP could be configured how you want, or maybe Shimrod's mod would work better, but it's difficult to help without knowing exactly what you'd like to accomplish.

Anyway:
1) NRaas > SP > General Options > Adjust Speed
1a) You can adjust each manager's cycle length further if you want to slow down some more than others.
2) Again, emigration is disabled with NRaas SP by default.
3) Yes, SP lets you do that, and in fact applying igazor's suggested settings to the whole town will do so. If you break the link between SP and Woohooer, your sims will still be able to romance inactive sims who SP is blocking from advancing romantically.

If you want to use SP, people here can help you set it up. If you don't want to use it, that's also totally fine. But please decide either way, and we can go from there.

Edit: Ninja'd again. That's what I get for trying to look up a bunch of stuff before changing my mind.

nobodyimportant
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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by nobodyimportant » August 11th, 2021, 6:18 pm

I wasn't entirely in the clear about what SP did and didn't do.
I wasn't decided about whether or not to use it because of this, because i suspected that some issues i have had might have been caused by it.
It seems that StoryProgression did not cause those issues, and has emigration disabled by default. This means that it should be okay. I would still like a way to lessen the constant career changes i get alerts about, but this is only a minor question.

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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by igazor » August 11th, 2021, 6:43 pm

There shouldn't be constant career changes, but the mod will in the beginning of its usage attempt to put sims into careers that are more in line with their traits and LTWs (Lifetime Wishes) than the random career they may have picked up by way of EA or for premade sims, whatever it is they had as an originally defined career. That can make for a flurry of career changes seemingly all at once, but then things should settle down pretty quickly, with only an occasional career change. Of course sims newly arriving to the world and newly aged up YAs are going to get jobs (as well as Teens picking up part time jobs along the way), Elders are going to retire, etc. Sometimes sims get fired for poor performance, then they will also be pushed to pick up a new career. Sometimes other sims in town just need some co-workers and bosses for their own advancement to happen.

This isn't Free Will or sims doing stuff just because they randomly feel like it, this is SP pushing sims into what it "thinks" are logical paths for them to follow.

If you don't want sims changing jobs at all without your involvement, then SP > Town (Caste, Household, Sim) Options > Allow Find Job > False. If you don't mind a flurry of activity all at once and then only the occasional career change but just don't want the notifications, then the stories can be suppressed. These things will still happen if stories are suppressed, just without the notifications on-screen.

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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by nobodyimportant » August 12th, 2021, 10:35 am

Well i am getting constant career changes.
I'm playing in Oasis Landing and not a sim day goes by without a new message coming in about someone having started on their way to stardom or beginning their acrobat career.
And because Oasis Landing has scarcely any job opportunities, this means that the entire town should by now be acrobats or stars.

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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by igazor » August 12th, 2021, 10:56 am

I don't know how the discussion shifted to Oasis Landing, but that is not a homeworld. If we want to run SP's progression on the three WA worlds, Uni, and/or Oasis (not everyone wants to), that's fine but we do have to take into account that there are limited to no career rabbitholes. Place a rabbithole diner or hospital in one of these worlds and yes, under default settings the local population would be expected to flock there to get jobs because SP doesn't have anywhere else to push them. These worlds require special handling, at least in terms of careers, and I would think just switching off Career: Allow Progression (which also switches off Allow Find Job) at the Town Options level would be a good way to handle that until we decide what we want to see happen in these worlds.

SP doesn't push street performer assignments, it's actually Showtime itself that does that. SP can't prevent it entirely in any world, but disallowing the three performance careers and the three performance career skills (SP Skill module required) can at least slow down the unwanted assignments.

Since the local population in Oasis is meant to be fluid anyway, depending on sims visiting it and who their descendants are supposed to be, you may want to just switch progression off entirely there unless you had some specific reason for wanting to run it.

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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by Turjan » August 12th, 2021, 2:48 pm

Oasis Landing has quite a few rabbithole careers available. My issue there is more related to the point that all my travelers to the future get pushed to go to work there, if they happen to have a job that's represented in town (like music, cooking, science or medical careers). Only those with jobs that aren't represented are on a vacation.

Nowadays, I switch SP on there in order to prevent all the homeless from being deleted during the first night. You can't prevent that without switching SP on. Then I have to switch most of SP's features off.

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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by nobodyimportant » August 12th, 2021, 9:39 pm

I used OL as one of my main homeworlds, ever since i wanted a backstory for a sim coming from the future, and it got a bit out of hand.
Wouldn't disallowing it on the town level prevent the active household from engaging in those careers as well?
This is precisely the thing i'm trying to prevent.
I want the other households to make as few decisions on their own as possible, (except in relationships) but i want every option for interaction available for the active household. This is the only thing i want and i want this in every world.
And each time i tried to set this up i failed.
This is why i made this thread. Sorry if i didn't phrase things right.

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LESS free will than EA story progression?

Post by puzzlezaddict » August 12th, 2021, 10:18 pm

You can set all the restrictions you want at the town level, then enable the actions you want for your active household at the household level: click on the house itself or its map tag and select NRaas > SP > Household Options. Some actions will still work even if SP blocks them, but others won't, for example your active sims would be able to find a job but couldn't gain skill levels if SP was blocking it.

If you want your sims to be able to romance inactive sims, break the link between SP and Woohooer: NRaas > Woohooer > General > Link to StoryProgression > False. With this setting on False, you'll be able to direct your sims to do anything Woohooer allows regardless of whether SP also allows it.

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