So yeah, I've seen all the tips, but I'm thinking there's some stupid glitch here because my sim in law enforcement and my sim news anchor (I have one or two in several games and it's always the same!) each write at least three or more a week and nothing seems to change in those stupid smiley/frowning faces under those categories. They are all 10's in writing so it's not about that either. Everything else is green and great. Just how many is one supposed to write to appease the powers that be in Simland?
Of course I find it more than a bit annoying that we can't review more things or write more types of reports, (reviewing books would be a cool option! or for law enforcement writing up about the criminal element would be cool too, but those reports all seems to be the same regardless of the sim) but I just keep doing the same things and my poor sims have seen every movie and eaten at the same two restaurants for years! Does one of the mods here actually handle this quota problem? I can't seem to find anything regarding that other than having NA sims to write them as well. It's not a huge deal because most of those sims are all at the tops of their careers so it didn't hurt them, but it bugs me a little not seeing everything doing well by game standards. My apologies if I miss a glaring post some where, but I have looked into this in several areas and only find the same tips, but I've done them all and my sims still can't seem to get that smiley green!

I don't know if there's a mod to adjust the count. But there are a couple things to note. First is that credit for writing a report only lasts a certain amount of time—I think it's a week. So you could be seeing your sims' previous work come off the board, so to speak, just as it's replaced by the newer stuff. But I have been able to max the metric by making a sim work all day Saturday and half of Sunday, because I'm stubborn too.

The second thing can be much more convenient, if you use it to your advantage. I recently realized (after I recently installed WA) that the metric can get stuck after a sim returns from vacation. My high-level cop was back in town and writing reports but losing credit; I figured the game was confused as to how much time had passed since the previous reports were submitted. But then I realized I was tired of making my sim do interviews and rummage through trash cans and then spend all evening at the library typing when she was supposed to have a day off. So I decided not to bother; if she took a performance hit, I could live with that. However, the reports metric didn't change at all—it's been stuck on "bad" (one level below normal) since she got home three vacations ago. It's quite convenient, and as a level 10 cop, she can still get a promotion if she works hard for two consecutive four-hour shifts. The kids who weren't born yet when she stopped writing reports are teenagers now, and still the metric doesn't move.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying that if you can get your sims' metrics up and then send them on vacation, you might not have to worry about their reports ever again. Or it could be that my game is broken and I'm not aware of it. With TS3, it's a very real possibility.

Don't know if this is helpful at all, but some of the career metrics never go all the way to the top or bottom on those smiley face ranges by design. Not as familiar with those two careers on the upper end, but in the medical career the sim has either read the assigned journals on their own time or has not, they don't get extras to study if they have finished the current ones, and the metric for that one only advances or retreats one slot in either direction from the middle. It's just not meant to go any higher.

I know the medical career metric works like that, but the law enforcement and journalism report metrics can in fact be maxed out. It's just annoying to spend all that time doing so. Plus, as I should have mentioned earlier, the total number of reports necessary to get a bright green smiley face keeps going up as the career level rises, so between that and the older reports not counting anymore, it's a royal pain to keep things maxed. Hence my fervent hope that the vacation trick works overall and isn't just a one-off in my otherwise (apparently) unborked game.

I looked into the game resources for the metrics in LE - I had it copied into a txt file when I was creating my career - and at max level for either branch, it's asking for 9 reports to get it to the greenest smiley (the one most to the right) and 4 reports just to stay at the normal smiley (the one in the middle). So if reports only count for the metric for a week and you're only having them write 3 a week, at least for LE, that would be why it doesn't get any higher than that.

Are those too many reports? Yeah, I honestly think so, since it takes a lot of time to question or rummage through trash to write those many a week. But that's what I found in the game files, and that's EA's fault. Luckily you can still make it to the top without maxing all metrics (just by keeping mood up, levelling skills and choosing Work Hard), but I understand this must be really frustrating.

Other levels are (in case you ever wondered, min is to stay at Normal, max to get the highest level in metric): lvl9 - min 3, max 8; lvl8 - min 3, max 7; lvl7 - min 2, max 6; lvl6 - min 1, max 5; lvl5 - min 0, max 5; lvl4 - min 0, max 4. These are for both branches in Law Enforcement. I didn't look for the values for Journalism, but I'll bet they're similar.

As far as I know there's no way to alter this that wouldn't be altering game files, or overwriting them, and if there is something in any NRaas mods that allows that, I don't know of it. All I do know you can do as far as performance goes (the bar at the right of the metrics that's influenced by them) you can set its value in MC >> Intermediate >> Career >> Job Performance, but that's not what you're asking for.

Also, to Puzzlez - I've never had my metrics freeze after any travel (though the other thread shows how many issues I've had with travelling itself and I really don't need more xD)
Then again, I'm only following this specific metric on my sims with my custom career, and not one of EA's base careers, so I really don't know.

Well, then. Basking in the glow of my first contribution on this thread being spectacularly unhelpful, I'd like to try again. If this one is also a dud I get one more shot at it before being demoted to the minor leagues (although I'd probably just cut my losses and run at that point).

Found this in the ITUN file, which means Retuner should be able to reach it.
<FullClassName>Sims3.Gameplay.Careers.LawEnforcement,Sims3GameplaySystems</FullClassName>
<FieldName>kWindowForRememberingReports</FieldName>
<Value>7</Value>

So that should make it NRaas > Retuner > Settings > General > By Tunable XML > Sims3.Gameplay.Careers > LawEnforcement > kWindowForRememberingReports > (something more than 7)

There's a similar entry there under the Journalism career for reviews. If we can't easily change the number of required reports/reviews for each level, would it help to increase the number of days for which they have impact?

Thanks, Stark, for the information. I'd always wondered what the numbers were, but with the credit for the reports disappearing at some point (not to mention the promotions), it felt almost impossible to figure out. As far as altering the metric goes, some days I'd be okay with a quick and dirty MC > Intermediate > Career > Set Reports. But then again, I often give the journalism career at least to sim kids I plan on moving out eventually, so it's not as big a deal to keep up with the reports for only a couple of in-game weeks.

And the stuck metric I described was only stuck as long as I didn't tell my sim to write any more reports. When she did file a couple, she lost credit, probably due to the metric becoming unstuck all at once. But when she came back from the next vacation, she had a fiancé and several better things to do than keep up with that particular job requirement, so I let it go, and she apparently still has two or three reports credited to her, several sim-weeks later.

Actually, igazor, that's perfect. (Well, perfect for me, or at least it would be if I were using Retuner and hadn't somehow borked the metric already.) It takes outright cheating out of the equation while still allowing some adjustments to account for, you know, the sims wanting some free time every now and then.

By the way, if you were at risk for getting demoted to the minors just for a couple of unhelpful responses, I think that would probably mean that the rest of us were literally bush-league. And I'd rather not play out in the desert a three-hour drive away from anything resembling civilization.

@Igazor - I see no reason why it shouldn't, and didn't know or look into tuning files, so that should be helpful. As example, if a sims gets two weeks to write 8 reports instead of just one without them 'disappearing' from the metric counter, assuming this works as we're thinking it does, then they'll have double the time to go out and rummage and question without having to cut it out of other daily sims activities.

Or doing it like me when I really want to pack a sim-day: going to Relativity >> Set Speed and making the sim-day longer. But that's my preference.