BaCC - Sort of rules
Jun. 18th, 2012 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
genlisaeI was asked to post the rules I am playing my BaCC with.
I am having a really hard time actually calling them rules, more like guidelines and suggestions plus they are still being worked on as this is the first playthrough where I will be using them, but for giggles we will just go with them being rules. They were a combination of borrowing from other people (mostly kizzy-sims and redmond flats) and much hysterical laughter as I read through the "official" rules and said "Yeah that will never last in my game!" Also, a lot of them aren't clear yet (when exactly are all careers unlocked for example) and I am working that out as I go along.
A couple things to keep in mind here. The first, I knew I would have at least 2 founders and their stats were already set. Additionally they would have "Roll immunity" to certain aspects (choice of getting married or not and who their spouse would be) as those were also already set. I was rolling to see if there would be additional sims in the founder pool.
I also had a certain number of sims (family members of the two founders) who would be in the townie pool again with stats already set but NOT with roll immunity. I wanted a limited townie pool because I want to see how the families intermingle down the line.
Also, any time rolling dice is mentioned that is done with this page. I have all of these dice somewhere. No way I would ever be able to find them and even if I did I would only loose them almost immediately afterward. I also use a number of hacks and mods. ACR (all children are ACR induced unless the parent is rolling a want to have a baby, then they get one, exactly one directed try for baby each day the want remains in their panel.) all marriages by everyone not in the "Under 25 club" (more on that in a moment) are facilitated by the wedding arch found here. Aside from that I have a ton of other mods and unnoffcial expansion packs in place that add things like religion and hospitals to the game. I don't expect either of those to come into play for this round of the challenge, but in the future I may see what they can add to it.
There was some set up that needed to be done before playing of course, starting with occupations.
I have seen occupations handled in many different ways. My way is to simply make a list of all occupations I plan to have available to my sims and assign each a number. It is important to note at this point that I make a major distinction between a "business" and a "home business". The first must be an owned community lot purchased with the family funds. They can be purchased at any time and must be played at least once per rotation. A "home business" is exactly that and does not count as as owning a business nor can a sim designated a business owner also own a home business. My list looks like this:
1. Job. The sim gets to take an actual job from one of the jobs available in the "unlocked" list. More on the "unlocked" list in a moment.
2. Business Owner. This sim will own a community lot business. I try to make it something that is both "unlocked" and fits their interests/is helpful for advancing their families interests.
3. Farm*. This sim will be providing food for their family first and the rest of the community second. By extension, if there is not a sim designated to own a business living with them, they get a "home business" to distribute the food they sell. If there is a business owning sim living with them, that sim must be the distributor (sell the produce) along with whatever else their business may or may not sell. Alternatively, they can sell the produce to another business owning sim at wholesale cost and that sim will be the distributor. For example, in my current challenge Emily is a farmer. She grows all the vegetables for the whole community. Rein is a Business owner. She owns a grocery store. Rein purchases the produce Emily grows along with the fish caught by another family and sells it at her business.
4. Fish. Exactly the same as 3 but with fish instead. Obviously this will require access to fishable water. I decided they can have a community lot (not owned by any sim) with fishable water for the sim to visit to fish at or build them a pond at home. The community lot didn't work out too well so they have a pond at home. I remain hopeful on the community lot though!
5. Sewing. This sim is the local clothing provider.
6. Florist. fairly straight forward again. They may have their "home business" to sell the flowers, sell them to a "Business owner" or simply sell them back through build/buy. I prefer the option to have them sell to a business owner to keep the money circulating within the population.
7. Robotics. Same as Florist and Sewing.
8. Pottery. Same as 5,6 and 7.
9. Mechanic. This one is a little different. This sim will be restoring the restorable car for a living. if your sim wishes to own a car, they must purchase one from the Mechanic. It works exactly like 5-8 except the mechanic may work on commission (sim wishing to purchase a car pays for it before hand).
10 Toy Maker. exactly like all the rest of the craftable professions here.
11. Novelist/Artist. This sim will either write novels or paint for a living BUT NOT BOTH, thier choice which one (writing with a computer obviously requires electricity and I try to pick based on their interests). Additionally, due to the extreme financial restraints that come in at the start of the challenge, all sims may paint for cash until they unlock their required career item (the flower and robot benches for example require electricity). Once they have the required items they may not paint as a source of income any longer (for fun is another matter entirely) Farmers and Fishers may not paint as a source of income ever. Their time is much better spent getting to work on growing or catching food.
12. Unemployed. This sim may never earn an income of any sort. They may find other things to occupy their time of course but they may never recive any money for doing so. No crafting, no farming or fishing. I kind of see them being the designated cleaner/repairperson/gardener/childcare for their household. And pray I never roll this for a fortune sim.
Married in spouses will automatically take on the profession of their spouse. The only exception to this being if they come from another playable house and already have a designated profession or the sim they are marrying (in the currently controlable house) has rolled unemployed. In the case of marrying in to an unemployed sim the sim being married in will roll for their profession. In this case the new addition may also end up unemployed! (I am giggling with sadistic glee already).
At some point in the future I may up this to a d20 with all currently unassigned numbers = Job because I can't see having 30 florists but only one sim with a job outside of the home working too well. We will see how it goes.
* I wavered a bit on keeping gardening restricted to farmers. I ended up with a house who needed to unlock utilities before they could move on to their professions and painting barely kept them in funds to pay the bills. I quickly realized that not only would a small garden help them out, but it would be plausible in the situation. Therefor each family may have a small garden plot (no more than 8 squares of workable soil) if one of the family members has at least a 5 interest in nature. If nature is the predestined hobby for one of them they have the option to grow all of their own food but may not sell any of it. I suppose you could work this the same way with fishing, but that would require they have a pond as well. Everyone has a pond and can fish seems a little cheaty to me. This might be where the fishable community lot comes into play.
The "Unlockables" (that I have worked out)
Merchandise
Playable owned businesses may only sell what is available locally (crafted, grown, caught by another playable) until downtown is unlocked.
Utilities
Candles for lighting, the cheapest, most prone to breaking sinks, a toilet (though I considered leaving them stuck with the peeable bush) and the cheap fridge (because iceboxes don't exist, super extreme start and they only get the mini fridge! No leftovers for you!) I hedged back and forth on a bathtub but figured that was way too much sponge bathing in the making. So they get a tub. BUT NO SHOWER! Also no stove, a bbq only if they can afford it.
Any crafting stations that would require electricity and/or running water would also be on the "locked" list until this restriction is lifted such as the floral crafting and robotics stations.
Electricity and real running water are unlocked for the household (and ONLY that household) once a sim in the household reaches max mechanical and the family buys a windmill or solar panel AND a water tower. (Water tower can be anything you decide it is. In my case I actually downloaded mini water tower deco. Don't remember from where, but I will supply the link when I do.) This costs them about $2700 and was cause for much MUCH celebration on my part once they finally got it. Further by having this be two separate objects the option exists to unlock whichever would be most useful first should the family be low on funds.
Once 10 households have unlocked utilities and the town pays $30 000 utilities will be unlocked for everyone.
Jobs.
First let me say that I have no recollection of which professions came with which expansion and I don't actually care. A job is a job as far as I am concerned and they will be available as they make sense for them to be so, which, to my twisted logic based on the spirit of the profession is as follows.
Given that each career has a top position that implies "There can be only one" there can really be only one. Only one sim may have the top position of a career at any given time. How one wrestles that top position away from another sim if they really want it is up to me (and them) to decide (there may be promotional murders). Also, in a small town not a lot of choices are going to exist for employment outside the home. The small handful of jobs will have limited positions available.
Law Enforcement: One position opens up for each robbery/attempted robbery, because some sims really do want to put their life on the line to keep lawn gnomes in the hands of their rightful masters.
Criminal: One position opens up for every 3 robberies/attempted robberies. Someone, somewhere is profiting from pilfering what doesn't belong to them. This sim thinks that someone should be them.
Education: Kids need to learn and people keep having kids! One position for every 5 children born.
All other careers are still being worked on because I haven't worked out where they make sense yet, though I do know that at a population of about 20 000, provided I have unlocked a university, all careers will be unlocked. It is possible they will be unlocked once someone shows an interest in them and can reach an insane amount of requirements I will place on them at the time. I like insane requirements. It makes for lots of tanking aspirations and near death experiences. As these are decided on I will update this list.
And of course all of this is still hinging on someone eventually rolling a 1 on the occupation di. :/
Clothing
Yeah, I locked clothing. They get what they grow up into until someone takes up sewing as a career. hooray?
One exception popped up for this, if a pregnant sim is wearing an outfit that does not have a morph. Then they get a "free" outfit, but only for use while they are actively pregnant.
Community lots and addons.
I have put zero restrictions on player owned community lots. If they can afford them they can have them. They do have to pay taxes of $100 per level of rank per week, but they can have as many as they want provided they follow any other restrictions put in place.
Downtown
Unlocked when population reaches 5000. At which point the clothing restriction, utilities and merchandise restrictions are also lifted if they haven't been.
Business District
I don't actually plan to have one so ... moving on!
On further thought I will put one in place if the player owned community lots are threatening to use up all available real estate at which point it will also be considered unlocked, otherwise, do not want.
University.
This one is subject to change (and if it does I will justify it in another way at the time and update this). It doesn't make sense to me that the town HAS to have their own uni, what does make sense is that it costs a ridiculous amount for them to go off somewhere else to go to uni, so should a sim absolutely HAVE to go to uni before the town manages to build a community college (cause that makes sense!) it will cost their family $20 000 which funds will go toward building the Community College.
As for the community college. Those are expensive, and require connections. Like say $100 000, a downtown and three sims in the education profession with one of them having topped it. Once this is done it is open to everyone who can pay the $2500 entrance fee.
Vacations
This one stumped me for awhile because, yeah, I could have just said "Okay when the town gets X amount of money they can build an airport/train station/cruise ship terminal" and be done with it. Only if the people can get to this place in the first place, it is logical that they can also leave it. So:
Until the town gets $500 000 to build an airport any sim may go on vacation at triple the cost of the vacation ('cause somewhere with an airport is far enough away that getting there and the hotel costs while traveling to it is like a vacation in itself ... then they have to get home again) provided they own a car (which also means there must be a mechanic around somewhere). The extra money they pay goes into the "Build an airport" fund.
Taxes and other Money Stuff
Taxes
Will be paid at a rate of $100 per $20 000 net worth per sim per week.
Starting funds
$5000 per sim. Full stop. This includes when moving townies into established households. All excess money is to be sent to the Overseer (more on the overseer further down) to be used to further the town. The cost of whatever lot the sim is moving into must be deducted from the $5000 per sim so if your founder is a single sim and the lot they are moving into costs $4800 they get a whole $200 to get "set-up". Thus why I did not have single starter sims! Though a long time from now in a challenge far, far way I plan to. For the Lulz.
Sims moving out of established households get to take a portion of the household funds with them. I use "No 20k handouts" from MATY to take care of this for me.
The Sims.
Founders
I randomized the whole damn thing from here out (except for the small group previously mentioned 2 of which were founders the others, townies) I used the family generator here. It gave me a family of 4 so I had 4 founders. They were created and moved into the sim bin.
The Overseer.
So, usually, there is a founder who is dictated to hang on to the town funds from taxes, etc. You know what happens when I get to that house in the rotation? Yeah. "Oh a few hundred won't hurt and it will stop him from whining at me ...." The town doesn't have any money after that. So I use an "Overseer'. This sim can be anyone and doesn't really have anything to do with the challenge. They are simply there to hold onto the town funds and be the placeholder for the lot used to create the townies. For me this placeholder was Binky. This sim will never age, not be played during the challenge at all.
Townies
I have a townie free game (Finally!). I like it this way. That does mean though that for this one, given that I have zero intention of "earning CAS sims" (More math and things to keep track of ... NO!) I needed to build a few.
Again I used the family generator and wrote down ages and stats. I also used the Transition to Teenhood generator for turnons/offs because I was going for a completely random set up. I ended up with 18 sims additional to those I had already chosen. This gave me a townie pool of exactly 24 sims. Those 18 were then randomly split up into groups of 3 and when they were created in CAS each group of three became a family. They share the same lastname and are somehow related (parent and child, siblings, grandparents, etc they also have the same genetics as each of them were randomly generated by picking two sims, who were later deleted, already in my CAS pool and then rolling the pacifier to get the 3 sims I needed for each family). Children were not aged up for this, toddlers were skipped entirely, elders remained old. Diversity! Actually no, I just think this will lead to some extremely entertaining scenarios as soon as I start playing (and it did!)
Once all sims are created I moved them into the overseer lot and townified them. Simple. Plus, the Overseer now has a sizable amount with which to go around building community lots for sims to wreck havoc on later. Or, I may delete it all. I haven't decided yet.
Marrying them in and other randomizable stuff
This is no where near as simple as it sounds and borrows very heavily from redmond flats.
To wed or not to wed?
Only in this case it is not so much a question as a dice roll. A couple of them. First (with the exception of the 2 founders who had roll immunity for this portion) a d100 is rolled, if they get a 25 or less they hit the magic "Master of their own destiny" mark, join the Under 25 club and are free to go about their lives making their own choices on who they have relations with, or not, as they so choose. They will only marry if and when they roll a want to do so and only whom it is they have the want for. This is made even more entertaining by a sim in this mystical group having veto rights over all other per-existing relationships. Like say if they want to marry a sim who is already married. the under 25 club sim gets priority and the married sim will be getting a divorce.
It is good to be in the under 25 club.
For the other poor sobs who get one of the other 75 numbers I move on to the d2 to find out if they will be getting married. A simple question of yes or no. 1=No 2 =Yes. 1's stay unmarried, but not necessarily removed from the gene pool forever. If they can manage to contribute to the next generation anyway, good for them, carry on, try not to hook up with anyone who might have a jealous spouse or at least don't get caught.
Should they roll a 2 it is on to this page to generate a random number. Which random number? Well...
All of the townies are placed on a list and assigned a number. The townie whose number corresponds to the number generated is the spouse of the sim being rolled for. I was nice this time around and sepearted the townies by gender and I then use the list that corresponds to their (randomly generated) gender preference (but not necessarily to the gender pref of the townie selected!). If I ever do this again I will not be doing that. Their gender preference will be set for whatever the gender of their intended is. The townie (and all available relatives of said townie .. gotta meet the in-laws after all) are teleported in and the lucky couple are married on the spot. Hilarity ensues as the "happy couple" attempt to work out how to get along ... or not.
At this point, and upon growing into teenhood for those born in game, I also roll a d12 to decide their career. For those born in game the teenhood transition is also when they roll for everything else and get married (if that is their destiny). Is it thus possible for an adult to end up married to a child or a teen to an elder? Yes, yes it is and even more hilarity unfolds, though in the case of children I consider it a "betrothal" until the child transitions to teen ... and promptly rolls up a completely incompatible aspiration and turn ons as the brunet family sim with glasses suddenly finds himself chained, for life, to a newly teenified romancer who likes blond zombies and absolutely can not stand glasses. Good times!
Should a sim have a high relationship (I require a minimum of 100/75) with any townie not yet in the playable population they can, at any point ask that sim to move in with them for whatever reason. Should the moving in sim accept they are then treated as a founder of a new household (though they do not have to move out) and are subject to all the rolls including for spouses that any other founder would have.
I realize at some point I will be out of townies on my list and I do not plan to add more. Part of this challenge for me is to make a "closed gene pool" work. I have two options as I can see it. The first is to start adding the children born in game to the list which could get complicated in a few generations trying to work out who is related to whom. I can see many, many rerolls in my future if I go this route.
The second, and possibly much more entertaining in my opinion is that as the last townie is selected from the list all future sims gain the status of "honorary under 25 club member" and get to make their own choices for relationships. I am leaning toward this one just for the potential drama. We shall see when I get there.
The Sim Multiplier
I almost did away with this concept because I hate math, but really what kind of city only has 42 sims? So I reworked it.
Utilities: Each house (up to the 10 to unlock it for everyone) earns +1
Each rank 5 business, community or home, earns +1
Each owned community lot earns +1
Each time a sim tops a career is +1
Each individual occupied residential lot is +1
I keep track using a simple table and tally marks. At the end of each round I count up the tally marks and multiply it by the number of playable sims. Easy.
From here on it is just a matter of building the population and trying to unlock stuff while my sims live out their lives under the restrictions they still have. Each house is played through a full week and then I move on to the next one.
So there you have it. The "Rules" I am working with. They are open to comment, suggestion, pointing out of things I overlooked that are about to snowball into a mess, whatever.
I am having a really hard time actually calling them rules, more like guidelines and suggestions plus they are still being worked on as this is the first playthrough where I will be using them, but for giggles we will just go with them being rules. They were a combination of borrowing from other people (mostly kizzy-sims and redmond flats) and much hysterical laughter as I read through the "official" rules and said "Yeah that will never last in my game!" Also, a lot of them aren't clear yet (when exactly are all careers unlocked for example) and I am working that out as I go along.
A couple things to keep in mind here. The first, I knew I would have at least 2 founders and their stats were already set. Additionally they would have "Roll immunity" to certain aspects (choice of getting married or not and who their spouse would be) as those were also already set. I was rolling to see if there would be additional sims in the founder pool.
I also had a certain number of sims (family members of the two founders) who would be in the townie pool again with stats already set but NOT with roll immunity. I wanted a limited townie pool because I want to see how the families intermingle down the line.
Also, any time rolling dice is mentioned that is done with this page. I have all of these dice somewhere. No way I would ever be able to find them and even if I did I would only loose them almost immediately afterward. I also use a number of hacks and mods. ACR (all children are ACR induced unless the parent is rolling a want to have a baby, then they get one, exactly one directed try for baby each day the want remains in their panel.) all marriages by everyone not in the "Under 25 club" (more on that in a moment) are facilitated by the wedding arch found here. Aside from that I have a ton of other mods and unnoffcial expansion packs in place that add things like religion and hospitals to the game. I don't expect either of those to come into play for this round of the challenge, but in the future I may see what they can add to it.
There was some set up that needed to be done before playing of course, starting with occupations.
I have seen occupations handled in many different ways. My way is to simply make a list of all occupations I plan to have available to my sims and assign each a number. It is important to note at this point that I make a major distinction between a "business" and a "home business". The first must be an owned community lot purchased with the family funds. They can be purchased at any time and must be played at least once per rotation. A "home business" is exactly that and does not count as as owning a business nor can a sim designated a business owner also own a home business. My list looks like this:
1. Job. The sim gets to take an actual job from one of the jobs available in the "unlocked" list. More on the "unlocked" list in a moment.
2. Business Owner. This sim will own a community lot business. I try to make it something that is both "unlocked" and fits their interests/is helpful for advancing their families interests.
3. Farm*. This sim will be providing food for their family first and the rest of the community second. By extension, if there is not a sim designated to own a business living with them, they get a "home business" to distribute the food they sell. If there is a business owning sim living with them, that sim must be the distributor (sell the produce) along with whatever else their business may or may not sell. Alternatively, they can sell the produce to another business owning sim at wholesale cost and that sim will be the distributor. For example, in my current challenge Emily is a farmer. She grows all the vegetables for the whole community. Rein is a Business owner. She owns a grocery store. Rein purchases the produce Emily grows along with the fish caught by another family and sells it at her business.
4. Fish. Exactly the same as 3 but with fish instead. Obviously this will require access to fishable water. I decided they can have a community lot (not owned by any sim) with fishable water for the sim to visit to fish at or build them a pond at home. The community lot didn't work out too well so they have a pond at home. I remain hopeful on the community lot though!
5. Sewing. This sim is the local clothing provider.
6. Florist. fairly straight forward again. They may have their "home business" to sell the flowers, sell them to a "Business owner" or simply sell them back through build/buy. I prefer the option to have them sell to a business owner to keep the money circulating within the population.
7. Robotics. Same as Florist and Sewing.
8. Pottery. Same as 5,6 and 7.
9. Mechanic. This one is a little different. This sim will be restoring the restorable car for a living. if your sim wishes to own a car, they must purchase one from the Mechanic. It works exactly like 5-8 except the mechanic may work on commission (sim wishing to purchase a car pays for it before hand).
10 Toy Maker. exactly like all the rest of the craftable professions here.
11. Novelist/Artist. This sim will either write novels or paint for a living BUT NOT BOTH, thier choice which one (writing with a computer obviously requires electricity and I try to pick based on their interests). Additionally, due to the extreme financial restraints that come in at the start of the challenge, all sims may paint for cash until they unlock their required career item (the flower and robot benches for example require electricity). Once they have the required items they may not paint as a source of income any longer (for fun is another matter entirely) Farmers and Fishers may not paint as a source of income ever. Their time is much better spent getting to work on growing or catching food.
12. Unemployed. This sim may never earn an income of any sort. They may find other things to occupy their time of course but they may never recive any money for doing so. No crafting, no farming or fishing. I kind of see them being the designated cleaner/repairperson/gardener/childcare for their household. And pray I never roll this for a fortune sim.
Married in spouses will automatically take on the profession of their spouse. The only exception to this being if they come from another playable house and already have a designated profession or the sim they are marrying (in the currently controlable house) has rolled unemployed. In the case of marrying in to an unemployed sim the sim being married in will roll for their profession. In this case the new addition may also end up unemployed! (I am giggling with sadistic glee already).
At some point in the future I may up this to a d20 with all currently unassigned numbers = Job because I can't see having 30 florists but only one sim with a job outside of the home working too well. We will see how it goes.
* I wavered a bit on keeping gardening restricted to farmers. I ended up with a house who needed to unlock utilities before they could move on to their professions and painting barely kept them in funds to pay the bills. I quickly realized that not only would a small garden help them out, but it would be plausible in the situation. Therefor each family may have a small garden plot (no more than 8 squares of workable soil) if one of the family members has at least a 5 interest in nature. If nature is the predestined hobby for one of them they have the option to grow all of their own food but may not sell any of it. I suppose you could work this the same way with fishing, but that would require they have a pond as well. Everyone has a pond and can fish seems a little cheaty to me. This might be where the fishable community lot comes into play.
The "Unlockables" (that I have worked out)
Merchandise
Playable owned businesses may only sell what is available locally (crafted, grown, caught by another playable) until downtown is unlocked.
Utilities
Candles for lighting, the cheapest, most prone to breaking sinks, a toilet (though I considered leaving them stuck with the peeable bush) and the cheap fridge (because iceboxes don't exist, super extreme start and they only get the mini fridge! No leftovers for you!) I hedged back and forth on a bathtub but figured that was way too much sponge bathing in the making. So they get a tub. BUT NO SHOWER! Also no stove, a bbq only if they can afford it.
Any crafting stations that would require electricity and/or running water would also be on the "locked" list until this restriction is lifted such as the floral crafting and robotics stations.
Electricity and real running water are unlocked for the household (and ONLY that household) once a sim in the household reaches max mechanical and the family buys a windmill or solar panel AND a water tower. (Water tower can be anything you decide it is. In my case I actually downloaded mini water tower deco. Don't remember from where, but I will supply the link when I do.) This costs them about $2700 and was cause for much MUCH celebration on my part once they finally got it. Further by having this be two separate objects the option exists to unlock whichever would be most useful first should the family be low on funds.
Once 10 households have unlocked utilities and the town pays $30 000 utilities will be unlocked for everyone.
Jobs.
First let me say that I have no recollection of which professions came with which expansion and I don't actually care. A job is a job as far as I am concerned and they will be available as they make sense for them to be so, which, to my twisted logic based on the spirit of the profession is as follows.
Given that each career has a top position that implies "There can be only one" there can really be only one. Only one sim may have the top position of a career at any given time. How one wrestles that top position away from another sim if they really want it is up to me (and them) to decide (there may be promotional murders). Also, in a small town not a lot of choices are going to exist for employment outside the home. The small handful of jobs will have limited positions available.
Law Enforcement: One position opens up for each robbery/attempted robbery, because some sims really do want to put their life on the line to keep lawn gnomes in the hands of their rightful masters.
Criminal: One position opens up for every 3 robberies/attempted robberies. Someone, somewhere is profiting from pilfering what doesn't belong to them. This sim thinks that someone should be them.
Education: Kids need to learn and people keep having kids! One position for every 5 children born.
All other careers are still being worked on because I haven't worked out where they make sense yet, though I do know that at a population of about 20 000, provided I have unlocked a university, all careers will be unlocked. It is possible they will be unlocked once someone shows an interest in them and can reach an insane amount of requirements I will place on them at the time. I like insane requirements. It makes for lots of tanking aspirations and near death experiences. As these are decided on I will update this list.
And of course all of this is still hinging on someone eventually rolling a 1 on the occupation di. :/
Clothing
Yeah, I locked clothing. They get what they grow up into until someone takes up sewing as a career. hooray?
One exception popped up for this, if a pregnant sim is wearing an outfit that does not have a morph. Then they get a "free" outfit, but only for use while they are actively pregnant.
Community lots and addons.
I have put zero restrictions on player owned community lots. If they can afford them they can have them. They do have to pay taxes of $100 per level of rank per week, but they can have as many as they want provided they follow any other restrictions put in place.
Downtown
Unlocked when population reaches 5000. At which point the clothing restriction, utilities and merchandise restrictions are also lifted if they haven't been.
Business District
I don't actually plan to have one so ... moving on!
On further thought I will put one in place if the player owned community lots are threatening to use up all available real estate at which point it will also be considered unlocked, otherwise, do not want.
University.
This one is subject to change (and if it does I will justify it in another way at the time and update this). It doesn't make sense to me that the town HAS to have their own uni, what does make sense is that it costs a ridiculous amount for them to go off somewhere else to go to uni, so should a sim absolutely HAVE to go to uni before the town manages to build a community college (cause that makes sense!) it will cost their family $20 000 which funds will go toward building the Community College.
As for the community college. Those are expensive, and require connections. Like say $100 000, a downtown and three sims in the education profession with one of them having topped it. Once this is done it is open to everyone who can pay the $2500 entrance fee.
Vacations
This one stumped me for awhile because, yeah, I could have just said "Okay when the town gets X amount of money they can build an airport/train station/cruise ship terminal" and be done with it. Only if the people can get to this place in the first place, it is logical that they can also leave it. So:
Until the town gets $500 000 to build an airport any sim may go on vacation at triple the cost of the vacation ('cause somewhere with an airport is far enough away that getting there and the hotel costs while traveling to it is like a vacation in itself ... then they have to get home again) provided they own a car (which also means there must be a mechanic around somewhere). The extra money they pay goes into the "Build an airport" fund.
Taxes and other Money Stuff
Taxes
Will be paid at a rate of $100 per $20 000 net worth per sim per week.
Starting funds
$5000 per sim. Full stop. This includes when moving townies into established households. All excess money is to be sent to the Overseer (more on the overseer further down) to be used to further the town. The cost of whatever lot the sim is moving into must be deducted from the $5000 per sim so if your founder is a single sim and the lot they are moving into costs $4800 they get a whole $200 to get "set-up". Thus why I did not have single starter sims! Though a long time from now in a challenge far, far way I plan to. For the Lulz.
Sims moving out of established households get to take a portion of the household funds with them. I use "No 20k handouts" from MATY to take care of this for me.
The Sims.
Founders
I randomized the whole damn thing from here out (except for the small group previously mentioned 2 of which were founders the others, townies) I used the family generator here. It gave me a family of 4 so I had 4 founders. They were created and moved into the sim bin.
The Overseer.
So, usually, there is a founder who is dictated to hang on to the town funds from taxes, etc. You know what happens when I get to that house in the rotation? Yeah. "Oh a few hundred won't hurt and it will stop him from whining at me ...." The town doesn't have any money after that. So I use an "Overseer'. This sim can be anyone and doesn't really have anything to do with the challenge. They are simply there to hold onto the town funds and be the placeholder for the lot used to create the townies. For me this placeholder was Binky. This sim will never age, not be played during the challenge at all.
Townies
I have a townie free game (Finally!). I like it this way. That does mean though that for this one, given that I have zero intention of "earning CAS sims" (More math and things to keep track of ... NO!) I needed to build a few.
Again I used the family generator and wrote down ages and stats. I also used the Transition to Teenhood generator for turnons/offs because I was going for a completely random set up. I ended up with 18 sims additional to those I had already chosen. This gave me a townie pool of exactly 24 sims. Those 18 were then randomly split up into groups of 3 and when they were created in CAS each group of three became a family. They share the same lastname and are somehow related (parent and child, siblings, grandparents, etc they also have the same genetics as each of them were randomly generated by picking two sims, who were later deleted, already in my CAS pool and then rolling the pacifier to get the 3 sims I needed for each family). Children were not aged up for this, toddlers were skipped entirely, elders remained old. Diversity! Actually no, I just think this will lead to some extremely entertaining scenarios as soon as I start playing (and it did!)
Once all sims are created I moved them into the overseer lot and townified them. Simple. Plus, the Overseer now has a sizable amount with which to go around building community lots for sims to wreck havoc on later. Or, I may delete it all. I haven't decided yet.
Marrying them in and other randomizable stuff
This is no where near as simple as it sounds and borrows very heavily from redmond flats.
To wed or not to wed?
Only in this case it is not so much a question as a dice roll. A couple of them. First (with the exception of the 2 founders who had roll immunity for this portion) a d100 is rolled, if they get a 25 or less they hit the magic "Master of their own destiny" mark, join the Under 25 club and are free to go about their lives making their own choices on who they have relations with, or not, as they so choose. They will only marry if and when they roll a want to do so and only whom it is they have the want for. This is made even more entertaining by a sim in this mystical group having veto rights over all other per-existing relationships. Like say if they want to marry a sim who is already married. the under 25 club sim gets priority and the married sim will be getting a divorce.
It is good to be in the under 25 club.
For the other poor sobs who get one of the other 75 numbers I move on to the d2 to find out if they will be getting married. A simple question of yes or no. 1=No 2 =Yes. 1's stay unmarried, but not necessarily removed from the gene pool forever. If they can manage to contribute to the next generation anyway, good for them, carry on, try not to hook up with anyone who might have a jealous spouse or at least don't get caught.
Should they roll a 2 it is on to this page to generate a random number. Which random number? Well...
All of the townies are placed on a list and assigned a number. The townie whose number corresponds to the number generated is the spouse of the sim being rolled for. I was nice this time around and sepearted the townies by gender and I then use the list that corresponds to their (randomly generated) gender preference (but not necessarily to the gender pref of the townie selected!). If I ever do this again I will not be doing that. Their gender preference will be set for whatever the gender of their intended is. The townie (and all available relatives of said townie .. gotta meet the in-laws after all) are teleported in and the lucky couple are married on the spot. Hilarity ensues as the "happy couple" attempt to work out how to get along ... or not.
At this point, and upon growing into teenhood for those born in game, I also roll a d12 to decide their career. For those born in game the teenhood transition is also when they roll for everything else and get married (if that is their destiny). Is it thus possible for an adult to end up married to a child or a teen to an elder? Yes, yes it is and even more hilarity unfolds, though in the case of children I consider it a "betrothal" until the child transitions to teen ... and promptly rolls up a completely incompatible aspiration and turn ons as the brunet family sim with glasses suddenly finds himself chained, for life, to a newly teenified romancer who likes blond zombies and absolutely can not stand glasses. Good times!
Should a sim have a high relationship (I require a minimum of 100/75) with any townie not yet in the playable population they can, at any point ask that sim to move in with them for whatever reason. Should the moving in sim accept they are then treated as a founder of a new household (though they do not have to move out) and are subject to all the rolls including for spouses that any other founder would have.
I realize at some point I will be out of townies on my list and I do not plan to add more. Part of this challenge for me is to make a "closed gene pool" work. I have two options as I can see it. The first is to start adding the children born in game to the list which could get complicated in a few generations trying to work out who is related to whom. I can see many, many rerolls in my future if I go this route.
The second, and possibly much more entertaining in my opinion is that as the last townie is selected from the list all future sims gain the status of "honorary under 25 club member" and get to make their own choices for relationships. I am leaning toward this one just for the potential drama. We shall see when I get there.
The Sim Multiplier
I almost did away with this concept because I hate math, but really what kind of city only has 42 sims? So I reworked it.
Utilities: Each house (up to the 10 to unlock it for everyone) earns +1
Each rank 5 business, community or home, earns +1
Each owned community lot earns +1
Each time a sim tops a career is +1
Each individual occupied residential lot is +1
I keep track using a simple table and tally marks. At the end of each round I count up the tally marks and multiply it by the number of playable sims. Easy.
From here on it is just a matter of building the population and trying to unlock stuff while my sims live out their lives under the restrictions they still have. Each house is played through a full week and then I move on to the next one.
So there you have it. The "Rules" I am working with. They are open to comment, suggestion, pointing out of things I overlooked that are about to snowball into a mess, whatever.
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Date: 2012-06-19 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-19 11:35 pm (UTC)Rythe, Winston, Rein, Ripp, Tel, Lyla, Justin and Lilith. Who ....
You know what, I am just going to post the random because that is way easier than trying to explain it!
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