Dining Room I've become rather fond of making islands instead of a Dining table, it's cheaper when theres only 2/3 ppl, but then one of my familys got \7 members so of course i got rid of the islands. They take up room and get pretty expensive , my sims ALSO refused to clean up the dishes when there done using the islands. (weird thing only when i had 8 members the wouldnt pick up the dishes usually the do/did) unless i move them on the floor What's with the dinning tables? i need to buy two tables to fit the whole family which looks awful, and my sims won't talk to the ppl on the other table when i get them all to eat together! (socail raising) does anyone else have this problem. Is there a way to get a bigger dining table?
The biggest 3x1 table seats 8: 3 on each side, and 1 at each end. You can only normally have 8 sims on the lot, and I doubt all of them will need to eat at once....so what's the problem?
Social Mayham Well first is i have not poor poor but pretty poor sims so I have a cluttered house. I have to put the table against one side of the wall, so there I lose 3 sims. I prefer to have my sims eat dinner and breakfast together for social reasons. I need my sims to do other things so I find mealtimes are the least time consuming times to make my sims have good realationships with the OTHER family members. I know this has nothing to do with the toopic by why waste more room? What is the cheat to increase the maximum of guests to get invited to a party and how do you do it is there a particular place you need to do it?
You may have to give up the idea of a table to eat at, then. Try "bench dining" instead, where they simply dine at benches instead of having an actual table. That'll save you the space of having an actual table. Also, while it's nice to have Sims eat together when possible for that social reason, it is often not feasible make them do so, because they're not hungry, and therefore should not eat, or else they will become fat. With "Free Food At Work", this becomes a much more difficult exercise to synchronize, since a Sim who receives free food at work, basically never needs to eat a meal during working days. So having a Sim actually eat is a waste of time for him: He can, however, still engage in the socializing simply by being seated near the eating area, but then he doesn't need table space. CRTL-SHIFT-C, "intProp maxNumOfVisitingSims X", where X is the new maximum. The highest normal setting in the game is 8, for high-end machines. Naturally, exceeding limitations is done at your own risk, particularly if you have a full house of Sims already, and want to add 8 more...or even more than 8 guests!
Doesn't matter. The setting is global, however, so will persist even when you go to the neighborhood screen and go to another house.
One other thing ... re island counters and plate clearing. Flameangel said that his (her?) sims weren't clearing the island counters of plates unless the plates were moved to the floor. For some reason known only to Maxis, Sims cannot get at the plates, for clean up, from the stool/eating side of the island. They serve and dine from the "Eat/Stool" side, but only clear from the cupboard door side. It is possible to place the siland unit door against a wall or other obstruction without moveobjects being "on". Islands are a huge waste of space as you need 3 squares to serve each and every sim. I no longer bother with dining tables and chairs until there are plenty of funds and a teen in the house capable of making a half decent pancake breakfast. Also there is no point in providing seating for more than 6 diners as a meal is always limited to six covers. This is a source of minor irritation for me. What kinda bozo cooks for 6 when there are 3 in the house ... or 6 when there are 10? Also only an idiot would dish up food for toddlers still in the crib ...
Ohh I do agree about the serving of 6 thing. I've wasted countless food supplies needing to serve 2-4 people only. What do they expect you to do, Have Food -> Cancel 3 times? This should be remedied in a future EP. Actually, I'd say this should be added for free (i.e. patch), but given Maxis' reputation for game updates, that's probably too far-fetched. And serving for toddlers is funny too
I've never liked big tables. I prefer well made 1 tile ones that fit together seamlessly. I could make tables work in the space rather than have to design a room around a table. I find the food servings the biggest pain when you have to cook for one adult and a child or a huge family. If the ability to key in or choose from a huge assortment of quantity options is too awkward, I'd settle for "have meal", "serve meal" (4), or "serve feast" (8). What programming twit thought 6 servings was average? (Probably the person that finds making toaster pastries a challenge in RL.) I like the idea of the kitchen islands. It provides extra work space and convenient seating for one or two. Only snacks and instant breakfasts seem to trigger a desire to eat at one if any table exists on the property. I'm not sure how EA would fix this either. I do like that they gravitate to the same table to eat usually. I don't want a repeat of TS1 where one sim took a plate to the patio, one to the balcony, and another stood to eat while a perfectly good kitchen table sat empty.
Well, the really simple, "braindead" option, would be to simply have the amount of food servings served be equal to the number of people present on the lot. Of course, the problem with this is that it assumes that the people on the lot will be satisfied at one serving of food per person, which is only true at high levels of cooking: For lousy cooks, a Sim often needs to eat maybe one and a half or two servings of the food before they're satisfied. If you wanted to be REALLY sophisticated, what you could do is serve food at quantities equal to the amount a Sim wanted to eat, and then when the Sim himself fetches the food, he fetches a serving size equal to what he wants, rather than even having discrete meal-plates. Sort of like an all-you-can-eat, where you simply go and get as much food as you feel you need, no more, no less. Naturally, such a concept is way too sophisticated for the simple minds at Maxis.
Tables The advantage that i find to tables is that they provide many Sims the chance to increase hunger / social / comfort in one sitting.
That is not, however, a feature of the table. You don't have to eat a a TABLE to benefit: You can eat, for example, on a couch together, and simultaneously increase all of those (and it's rumored you can also watch TV at the same time, but unconfirmed), and no table needs to be present. What the table DOES seem to do is suppress the Sim's "plate disposal" urge, so they're less likely (but it still can happen) to mob the dishwasher upon meal completion.
I suppose but even with a bigger family you need like 2 3ppl couches and one chair. J.M.P. you know the cheat you gave me for more ppl at a party it's not working! i don't know what's wrong but it doesn't work.
Food supplementation/replacements Greetings, A near-ultimate solution to the food "problem," aside from IV drips and/or mods removing the food necessity, is and oft-repeated subject found here: caffeine. Having an average daily intake of 10-12 cups of coffee, (or it's equivalent) I can say truthfully that it is the ultimate way to fill multiple RL "needs" simultaneously. Lessee, fun, hunger, comfort,...heck, I could honestly say it's an aspiration of mine. Not to mention fulfilling the RL "addiction" meter. Semi-seriously, caffeine suppresses appetite, heightens central nervous activity, and fulfills your daily exercise requirement. I'm serious: the recommended amount of exercise to MAINTAIN your weight at a given level of caloric intake is 30 minutes of moderately strenuous aerobic exercise, 5 times per week. If you consider that 1 cup of coffee given to a naive imbiber (aka, non-coffee-drinker) will race the heart for 10-15 minutes, then all that is required for complete fitness in the US is 2-3 cups/day/citizen. Of course, some of us (this writer included) have developed rather high tolerances to these beneficial effects and require for advanced methods of drug delivery. IV drips and caffeine pills have been recommended before, but my choice is simpler and more enjoyable: chocolate espresso beans. Which brings me to my game-related point: an availiable "snack" should be espresso beans. Fitness, fun, comfort, addiction, hunger,...fun fun FUN! I course, another "death" method would need to be added: fatal tachyarrhythmias. A little ghost running around with a broken heart icon would be amusing. Very seriously: it IS possibly to die of fatal tachyarrhythmias from caffeine overdose, especially if you have a heart condition. From coffee would be unlikely, you'd need the equivalent of 100 cups in one day. Pills are another matter entirely. Only let your Sims do this, assuming this snack mod is ever implimented. Thus endeth the suggestion. Silmaril Dragon
Mmmm. Caffeine. You're likely talking to the world's great caffeine junkie here. This would greatly explain why I find it nearly impossible to gain weight even when I want to, and always wonder how it is that people manage to become fat. I wouldn't know about "suppresses appetite", though. I feel pretty ravenous. Then again, maybe it *IS* suppressed, if I can ignore it in favor of playing more TS2. Expresso beans don't do it for me. I buy purified powdered caffeine, grind it to a fine powder to smash up the larger crystals, measure it out onto a table, and snort it in lines. Mere beans cannot get me my fix. And they taste awful. This is about the level of dosage I consume, actually, although I lack a heart condition and have a family genetic history of being tougher than nails. Overdosing would certainly be on the list of effects if I were to make this, though.
