Teens too long of a span. I think that teens have too long of a time to get from a teen to an adult. I think teens should have maybe 8 days before becoming adult, and adults should have a lot more of a lifespan than any of the others. What do you guys think?
Me too Yes, I agree, I think 15 days (or however long it is) is too long. I think it should be 8 also. It's just too long. I think children should have a shorter one too. Like 5 or something.
That's what I thought too. Teens become adults in 12 days. Adults become elders in 28 days. So, from baby to adult, the span is around 20 days. So, let's say an "adult" is 18 real people years old. So it takes 20 sim days to be 18 years old. And I'd consider an "elder" to be someone who is retired and collecting social security. So, about 65 years old. So, it takes 28 sim days to advance from the age of 18 to 65. So according to my math, your sim would actually be around 32 years old after the 20 days it takes to go from baby to adult. I definitely agree that they are young for too long. I think they should shorten both the child and the teen stages both by three or four days each. But of course, it is just a fantasy world that our sims live in and Maxis is their God. If you want to make your teen age faster, try this trick: Get a few Elixir of Life dispensers, drop your teen sims aspiration level to the red, and drink the Elixir. Since they are way below gold level, they'll almost always lose a few days of life and get a little closer to being an adult.
I'm glad that it wasn't me who brought this up ... I had far too much to say on the subject when TS2 was still more theory than fact. I also agree that the teen span is too long. There was always going to need to be a degree of unrealistic time-spans. eg the 3 day pregnancy vs the 28 day adult life span. Geez them poor sim gals have longer pregnancies than elephants! But a 12 teen days is several too many, IMO If there is a ever an option to customize the age spans. I would choose to change the child, teen and adult ranges to 7, 7, and 35 respectively. If integrating into the university EP ... I'd change it again and have 7 (child), 5 (teen) 5 (uni) 32 (adult). Frankly the teen's are a bit of bore. They can't do anything in 12 simdays that they couldn't as easily do in 6. (I also break my heart over them cos they do suffer from the worst acne I've ever seen!)
actually, i'm glad that it isn't any shorter!! a sim's life is short enough at it is!! but i do think that the adults' lifespan is way too short. once they're an elder, the fun ends. i'm alays afriad of making my elder sims commit to something like a baby or marriage because they can die anytime!
I agree I think that they should take away say 4 days from teens, 2 from kids and add 6-10 days to adult life. It is boring with a teen because it takes very few days to do everything a teen should do first kiss etc... But when a sim has reached adult stage you need to find a bf get married get high in your Job good social life etc.. so u need more time especially if u want ur sims to have kids!!!
It is sort of long, proportionately speaking, but from a game perspective, the length isn't a major problem. Sure, there's not a whole lot to *DO* there, but that's just a nice quiet 12 days you have to get a head start on skilling before you hit the adult stage. If you simply transmuted that same time into the adult stage, well, you'd still be doing the same sort of stuff. 12 days of free mindless skillpoint gaining ain't too bad. I don't see what's so "boring" about this stage that makes it any less boring than doing the exact same thing in the adult stage. Except maybe if you don't want to deal with school in the same time period, but you can always just not go if you already have the A+, which cuts you down to every-other-day or so. What, you don't even get a single weekend? The entire phase could flash by and you don't even get to have a weekend. Not once. Man, that sucks. I dunno about THAT. I mean, maximize all skills in 6 days is crazy. Maximize all skills in 12 is feasible. Okay, maximizing skills is not the most EXCITING thing in the world, but that *IS* the thing to do, right?
Don't worry JMP. I was in a strange mood that caused me to write complete and utter tosh. In my current favorite family played without cheats I have been trying to build a sort of dynasty. So the family home has to end up looking like a mansion and with cash in short supply at the start it has been a challenge to design it in stages; the more so because it is on a steepish slope that couldn't be levelled (my rules - aesthetics and cash limits). Ma and Pa are both knowledge sims (Gen1) They have a newly adultified son, a teen daughter, a boy child, a girl toddler, and mom's been making the toilet bowl green again so that cot ain't gonna be sent to the thrift store any time soon. The eldest kids are all maxed out in everything but cooking (both are also knowledge sims). The dad recently made a bad decision at work and bummed out of his Pro Party Host gig and is busy working his way up the rungs of the science track, which is what he should have been doing all along ... but hey! being an ace slacker for a while was fun ... and his hours meant they never needed a nanny. Mom (a general) has 12 days vacation in store and 24 days adulthood left. No more elixir for her or pop, who has 23. She'll be able to stay home for the last fortnight of her working life to look after her grandchildren ... if I can ever make that stupid swot of a son charm a lady sim into marriage. Failing that there's always the telescope ....
Yeah, slope areas are pretty much just wasted space if you can't level them. You've effectively paid extra for lot space you can't build on. You might be able to bore a foundation into them and thus sorta give the impression you've drilled your house into the hill itself, but this is really hard to do in TS2, unlike in real life, where being able to drill your home into a mountain to protect it against enemy attack is a good thing! I've never been able to create a home starting from 20K that looked like a mansion of any kind, though. I always either ditch the starter house entirely and hawk it off as a hand-me-down home to the next up-and-comers, or if I keep it, it ends up looking like a blocky thing or a military base. Or a blocky military base.
When I said no levelling I meant no wholesale levelling. Development has to be in sympathy with the contours of the terrain. Frankie bought the 3x4 plot for 6,800 and had just enough to build a shack to attract his mate (and her 20 g's) into his lair) Once they were wed the shack came down and a level foundation was put in to mark the house's footprint. Foundation costs the same whether it is 4 steps high or 44 and the plot slopes away from the road. The new house was only one room deep. The foundation is 'hollow'. A cellar will eventually be added, the cellar will lead directly outside and will contain all big clutter ... I mean large career/aspiration rewards. Once the third child was born I extended the foundation backwards to build on a single child's room and to divide the kitchen/diner from the living room. (I recently added a second floor over one wing giving 2 extra bedrooms and a second bathroom ... I'll get some more pics later.) My only dislike of the house is that I started it a tad too close to the road. Once the funds build up I plan to extend the gound floor to make it L shaped around a backyard whose central feature is a large square pool with landscaped gardens.
Very nice, Mirelly! Your house looks lovely already. Are you trying to do the Legacy Challenge from the Official Site Boards?
Thanks Aragorn. No, I'm not doing the legacy challenge(s). I didn't know there was one on the EA BBS? The one I do know about is over at Neighborhood 99 and I thought about ... but not for long. I am not that competitive. My challenge is a purely personal one and it has no fixed rules. The 'hood is called Drakesfield and that is Francisco Drake's house. He was the first male born to Rocky and Alice. I started this back in October but have been well around the block since then. There are around 2 dozen families now, some on generation 3, some still figuring out how to open a packet of cereal ... that one always freaks me out ... Aspiration: Learn to make Poptarts! Mind you I'm not a lot better. I currently have the aspiration: Drink Glass Of Wine but I am still kinda hoping that the player controlling me will use Ctrl + Shift + C - MoveObjects On and just plonk it down here on my desk for me ... maybe if I wave my arms at the ceiling and grumble incohrently ... nope he/she/it must have set their The Reals game to run when minimized.
Isn't it awful? I have this one Family-oriented family, whose skin I made in Bodyshop and so they are a little bit of a breeder family (also an experiment with the Family asp, which I haven't used that much before really). My goal is for them to achieve 10 children, a la uberwant. But this entails the mother to be preggers all the time, which means that, as the rest of the family flourish, she spends most of her life with green-to-red aspybar, meditating on the bedroom floor. I have a policy of never getting anyone pregnant when there's already a baby/toddler in the house, else it all gets too hectic and the Sims left to look after it are run off their feet (depending on the size of the family of course), so this Sim has minimal skills and a reasonably fulfilled life at least (especially considering she *is* a Family Sim), but honestly, she spends so much of her life pregnant, I feel very sorry for her. It's quite tragic, when you think about it, having 10 kids within the confines of a marriage, because it means the female Sim is reduced to just a baby machiene, and not a full Sim at all. I would have the husband just have lots of extra-marital affairs to spread his Bodyshopual seed, but I don't want to, I want to have them have 10 genetically pure kids which are birthed and raised in-game rather than Created. So I must, in effect, sacrifice this Sim's life so that her descendents may look as cool as she. Another relevant point regarding big families is that teens are extremely useful for looking after their younger siblings. They can do everything an adult can in this respect. Actually, they can in most respects, bar move out (though they can quite happily live alone) and WooHoo/Try For Baby. They are really quite competant, and potentially mature individuals, depending on how you play them. I had this one house with these four teens living on thier own (I killed thier father). It was a no-cheats family, and they all had jobs, reasonable grades, and fulfilled lives. They cooked excellent meals for each other, had fulfiling, committed and mature relationships, and generally behaved in a very impressive, adult way. In conclusion, wo0t for teens, may they live forever!
Well, you COULD actually try to play them rather than have them meditate away draining their ASP bar on the floor. It *IS* possible for a Sim to be functional while still pregnant. You think it's somehow better in real life? It's no healthier or sane for a woman to have 10 children in real life, either. At least in the Sims, this is mostly safe. In real life, this would probably kill her! 10 children is a far more achievable desire if you're a male, as you have a considerably longer lifespan to achieve this in, and it's actually quite likely to happen if you're a sheik with multiple wives. Alas, we can't have this in TS2. I would have the husband just have lots of extra-marital affairs to spread his Bodyshopual seed, but I don't want to, I want to have them have 10 genetically pure kids which are birthed and raised in-game rather than Created. So I must, in effect, sacrifice this Sim's life so that her descendents may look as cool as she. While the 15 day teen stage is not as awful as some people would say, I wouldn't want it to last forever, either. The voices are pretty grating when they whine. They're cute when they're satisfied, but they shriek in an earpiercingly excrutiating manner when they're excited or upset.
I know, but the big problem with that is, I can't be bothered with the hassle(passing out, peeing self, dying of hunger etc). I know. This was just part of a general whine in favour of shorter pregnancies and longer adult lifespans. Our Sims should be able to have 10 kids and still have a life if we want them to dammit! - which'd be possible if they lasted longer before being sterilised upon reaching elderhood. You can so! Just, you can't be married to all of them, which isn't that big a deal, as marriage in the Sims is really quite a superficial state of affairs anyway. And he would have to be quite careful. It could actually be quite fun ... I feel a project coming on. Me neither, I was just extolling the teen's virtues and sank (or ascended!) into hyperbole. My bad! RL, RL RL RL, RL (to the tune of that football chant thing).
LOL!!! We have all become such pampered whimps in the technological age, haven't we?? My Grandmother had 10 children, and raised them all herself: My Grandfather died in a Coal Mining Accident when she was about 6 months pregnant with her last baby. My father was 8, and he was one of the "middle" children. Did they turn out okay? Well, looking back now, I tend to think so. They were all able to have normal families, hold down careers, some even graduated college and built small fortunes. My Grandmother died when she was 72 of diabetes. Was she the perfect mother? No. But, I often look at my three kids and think, "There is no way in h___ that I could have raised 10 children! I struggle to raise 3!" Yet back then, it was the norm.
None the less, plenty of women died in childbirth trying to put out those kids. Plus, in this day and age, kids have gotten much more EXPENSIVE. Putting 10 children through college is enormously expensive, and in the modern world, not having a college education more or less assures one a future of saying "Would You Like Fries With That?". It's not the sort of thing you want to doom a child to on account of being unable to afford an education.
