One Desk To Rule Them All Have you ever been curious as to what, exactly, motivates Sim-children to drop their homework where? How in some families, children seem to take them all to one specific place, while in others, they just throw them on the ground, bury them in the bushes somewhere, or drop them by the front door? The truth is surprisingly simple: In a house where there is at least one desk present, one of those desks is "The One Desk". That desk is the drop target of every single homework in the family. Much like "The Slapper", that desk is, in all likelyhood, the oldest desk in the home. It has nothing to do with how expensive it is, or anything so complicated: It's simply the lowest-numbered desk in the home, which, in most cases, is the oldest desk. If that desk is too far from the bus unload point, perhaps because it's on another floor in the back of the house, your Sim children will then begin burying their homework in bushes and doing other weird things. If you HAVE no desks in your home, your simchildren will then attempt to deposit their homework just inside the front door of your home....if there is one. Once you buy a desk, though, that desk becomes The One Desk. It doesn't matter how many empty desks you have, or what's on the desk, or if it has a chair, or anything. The One Desk rules them all. Even if that desk is completely full, it's still The One Desk To Rule Them All.
Yep, I read the same explanation before somewhere, and also noticed that kind of behaviour. It's a bit ridiculous if you ask me, and in my opinion that would even be a bug. Now that we're on the topic of "where stuff is put" I also noticed some annoying behaviour with the Thinking Cap. Even when you've got plenty of free counters and tables next to your sim who wants to get rid of his Thinking Cap, he/she will go to an empty "End Table", very annoying when that end table is on another floor!! Anyone any tips for this one? I don't really want to put my house full of end tables. If you've 3 sims who can all 3 use a Thinking Cap at the same time until now the only option that I see is to put 3 end tables close to the place where the Thinking Caps are used and keep them free from other stuff...
Thinking caps are always put down on the nearest desk, coffee, or end table preferentially, AFAICT. I've had good results with telling a sim to go there before taking the hat off, and they usually always put it down on the coffee or end table, or desk. The more interesting thing is that when your Sim buys or receives groceries, it works in REVERSE for fridges: Instead of going to the oldest fridge, they go to the newest. Which is usually the milk storage one in the baby nursery on some other floor.
I have noticed the same problem with the coffee cups. When a Sim has finished his coffee, he wont put the cup in the dishwasher, but always goes upstairs to put it on the nightstand. It is driving me mad!! If I cancel a Sim in the action of drinking coffee, I have to wait for them to go upstairs and leave that cup before I can make them do anything else. Is there a way to stop that from happening all the time? Besides removing the espresso machine that is...
I know that thinking caps can be dropped at the location where the Sim is currently standing by ordering him/her to take off Thinking Cap, then as the Sim in question roves across the house to deposit it on a table, cancel the action. The Sim will drop the cap wherever he or she happens to be standing. It's then a simple matter of entering Buy/Build mode and manually moving it to the desired surface. I'm pretty sure it can't be done with homework though. I might have done it with coffee cups, but I'm not quite sure.
This is incredibly useful. I have this one family where the kids always put their homework in the toilet room; others put it around the steps leading up to the house, so when it comes to homework time they have to trek most of the way across the lot and sit down in the garden in the early morning to do their homework; others put it in the road. The thing is, all of my families have desks and rooms designed for study and homework. The kids don't seem to care though. I will try taking and computers/lamps/sculptures off the oldest desk in the house so they have somewhere decent to work in future. Thank you Mr. Pescado! It doesn't work, I don't think. Sims with coffee cups go even crazier then Sims who are trying to throw themselves into fires, in my experience. The only way is to put a coffee table very near the expresso machiene, maybe even rethink the role of the expresso machiene from a kitchen appliance to a living/dining room thing, which seems to be how Maxis see it, & very strongly so.
The whole AI thing that decides where sims put thing is (deliberately, IMHO) skewed with a view to making us think about our designs. Coffee table for coffee cups, right? Have to be careful tho, cos coffee tables are also handy places to put other stuff. Slightly untidy sims will never put a book away on the bookshelf if there is a suitable table a much further distance away that can be used. Especially if the table is the one placed there for the thinking cap to go on. Cos then they happily trek much further than most sane people would be prepared to commute to work in a rocket sled just to reach the only vacant counter in the house at the exact moment that someone needs it to assemble some burgers. Re Cyricc's cancelling the thinking caps thing ... I have lost several this way. Sometimes they sit half embedded in the floor and can be picked up and used again or else they completely disappear. Also the fingerprint scanner. I've lost a few of them, too. Do they wear out or have I just lost them in the bushes?
If there are multiple kids, this won't help. The One Desk still rules them all, and only the first homework will land on the desk. The rest will land on the floor in the general vicinity, even if other empty desks exist. Even if that desk is occupied, they'll all go there anyway.
Before I figured out the "one desk" thing, I would just cancel out their School icon after the bus left. Then they'd usually drop it right where they did. However, I've found that the little brats will continue to drop it right in the same place, even if you have a "one desK' if they are asked to drop it even once. (The only good thing I figured out was that mine always then put it onto the same spot, so I didn't have to dumpster diving or bush driving to find it.) I've trained my Sims to do the same thing with the bills. That way I don't have to have an end table on the street. They start by wanting to put it onto some surface, which is much more general for the bills, but then end up always dropping it on the same spot on the sidewalk, where I can have them immediately pick it up and mail the bills back. Saves a lot of walking! But I do hate it that the expresso cups end up on endtables. I'm diligently trying to train my Sims to at least put it on the kitchen floor (instead of walking to the far end of the house to leave it on the kid's desk.)
Heheheh. Err, we, uh, made a hack that eliminates that little bit of silliness, too. Instead of dumping the one bill onto a table, or having to be watched like a hawk, they now automatically turn around and pay the bill immediately after getting it from the mail, unless they can't afford it. Most of our stuff is over in the MTS2 beta forums, though. We've actually eliminated a LOT of nuisances from the game. You might want to check it out sometime.
my sim children leave their homework on the floor while the desk is right next to them and they do their homework sitting on the floor. i've always wondered if my sims are just different since i've seen in stories in the exchange where the sims do their homework at desks....
I've found a couple ways around the "one desk". One is to simply buy all the desks at the same time. Though obviously if you're planning on having need of more desks that you currently do, you'd have to store the "extras" somewhere. The other is to designate which desk belongs to which child by leaving a homework notebook on it all the time. Since having 1 unfinished homework assignment when they go to school does not effect their grades, my Sim kids always have at least one homework notebook on their desks. For the most part when they get home they go and put their new homework on top of the old one.
I don't think this change the fact that one of your desks will remain "The One Desk". That desk is usually, but not always, the first desk, although this can change if you deleted even objects, and then bought more desks. One of your desks, however, will always be The One Desk, and you have to identify which one it is and plan accordingly. Note that deleting the One Desk and immediately replacing it with another desk will cause that new desk to become The One Desk. That is certainly an interesting way of doing things. This "designator" style behavior could prove to be interesting for study in tweaking this behavior.
Ha ha that is a fabulous trick and one I hadn't thought of. Now ... I'm sure it was me who first mentioned the one desk thing ... Yup ... here it is
