The Next Generation

[cheshirekat]

The Next Generation Challenge (For University)

This is for all the players who think the University expansion is too boring. I haven't seen many challenges specifically for Uni and decided it was time to have one for those that love to send their teens off to college, and those who want to find out that it can be fun to have sims go to college.

This challenge will help you populate a new hood with sims that have some skills. There is a bonus at the end of the challenge. If you already have an established hood, you can still play the challenge, however, teen sims must be sent to Uni immediately when new families are created so the teens don't have time to build any skills. If you want to send a teen that has skills, you will need to use a mod that allows you to subtract skill points. All sims must start out with zero skill points and zero scholarship funds when they move into a challenge house.

The Seasons expansion is required. Obviously, University is required.

Cheating is allowed. Hacks and mods are allowed except any mod that allows Young Adults to be pregnant or even bring children to the campus. Your sims will be much too busy to care for children. The challenge ends/fails if any sim becomes pregnant.

I suggest you use Christianlov's Easy Computer from MTS.

Using Simblender from Simbology is encouraged.

Using macrotastics from MATY is encouraged.

Using any gardening hack/mod is strongly encouraged, especially Perfect Gardens from Simbology

Using community lot skilling hacks are strongly encouraged.

No Finals at Night from Simbology is recommended so your sims can sleep after spending all their waking hours working hard.

No Secret Society Abductions from Simbology is recommended - see above.

No Autonomous Napping from Simbology is strongly encouraged.

Money hacks and cheats can be used, but only at certain times.

Simwardrobe has some large shelving units that are required. The produce and fish packing stations are also required.

You can probably play the challenge without any hacks at all, but you are on your own. Of course, the Seasons expansion is not optional - it is definitely required.

Preparations

Create 2-6 young adult sims in CAS and give them any aspirations you want them to have. They can be males, females, aliens, or whatever. This is just to get your first house going. You can populate your Uni hood with as many houses as you want for this challenge, but the challenge applies to each house individually. In other words, one house can fail, but your other houses are doing well enough to continue because each house is it's own challenge.

Or you can play one or more houses for the challenge, and have some non-challenge houses on the campus for when you need a break. Some micromanagement is required for this challenge, so you can't let the game run while you are somewhere else having supper. You will need breaks so you don't get too frustrated.

Make several houses for your sims on the Uni campus of your choice. Your sims aren't allowed to live in dorms, so don't even think about it. Make at least two houses for the girls and the same number of houses for the boys. Or you can download your houses if you don't like building them. However, the house must meet the below criteria, so build/download carefully.


If the house is on a medium-sized lot, there can only be two restrooms. On a large lot, you can have three restrooms.

All restrooms must be on the first floor so all the main daily activities are on the first floor or away on a community lot.

The kitchen should be small and should never seat more than three sims, no matter what size your house/lot is.

The kitchen should be large enough to have a door leading to an outdoor eating area and several counters to hold coffee and juicers. No microwaves, no food processors, no toasters - unless a sim rolls a want for one. There should also be a grill and counter for the outside eating area. Your sims are expected to eat most of their meals on a table outside. They can be cooped up inside for other challenges but enjoy the outdoors for this one.

You can have multiple tables outside for eating, including enough for your guests. Or you can have one large table. However all sims must eat outside if there are more than three eating. You can not have some sims eating inside while others eat outside. Indoor eating is only for members of the household when there are no guests. Even if the weather is bad, sims eat outside with their guests.

If a sim dies for any reason, the challenge is a fail. So, keep those moods up so they won't die when struck by lightning while eating outside.

You may have a foyer (entry room) large enough for all sims in the house to have their own 1-tile desk. This will be the main study area.

You may not have more than one sofa/love-seat in any room in the house. Your sims can do their class assignments at the table in the kitchen, at the outside table, or on the floor anywhere on the ground floor or outside.

You must have a phone room in the house. When your sims are home, they must make and receive all calls from the phone room, even if they have a cell phone. The phone room does not have to be in the house. You can make a totally separate building/phone booth. One sofa and one dresser are the only other furniture allowed in the phone room. You can also have an end table for the phone itself if you don't care to use the wall-mounted phone.

Your sims may NOT move into a furnished house. They must earn all their furnishings and even their decorations. However, there should be a pond so sims can fish and the area around the pond may be decorated/landscaped as you wish, before the sims move into the house.

You must have a garden that includes at least 15 of each type of plant and 20-30 fruit trees of your choice. I recommend more plants for eggplants and strawberries. But never more than two types of fruit trees for each lot. One house can have 20 apple trees and 10 lemon trees. But not all apples, lemons and oranges.

If you choose to do so, one house can plant only all the fruit trees, but they can not plant any other type of fruit or vegetable. I do not recommend this because you will want Pepper Punch to keep your sims' energy up. But you can always set up something to barter/trade with another house for extra produce they may have.

Trading with other houses is allowed, only if the house being traded with is a challenge house.

Additionally, each house should have a House Ambassador. See below. Each trade takes place between the House Ambassadors. You can not trade with another house if your House Ambassador is not best friends with the House Ambassador of the house you want to trade with. So, make sure you have your sims use every opportunity to build up their friends. Make phone calls, send email, chat online, send greeting cards (MTS download by MogHughson.), invite them over. Be willing to do whatever it takes.

(Choose a lot, cut it in half using fences. On one half, put in a pond. The rest of that half, where you have the pond, should be where your house is built - or at least that many tiles if you want to count them. Your house should not take up more than 1/4 of the lot size. The other half should be for the garden and fruit trees. Don't forget to leave some empty tiles for your sims to easily walk around the garden when tending their plants and harvesting. You can go ahead and place your fruit trees before the sims move in if you want. You can plan ahead for future growth by adding more floors or making very small houses. More about future growth below.)

The doors to your sims' homes may not be locked. The only exception is when the cow mascot appears. You can lock the doors to keep the cow mascot from entering your sims' homes.

Your sims must not lock the doors for the llama mascot. The llama mascot is the challenge's special mascot and is ALWAYS welcome. One of your sims must stop other activities to greet the llama mascot whenever he/she arrives on the lot.

Your sims' homes may not have any recreational items. They can play computer games only during their senior semester. This means darts, radios, televisions, stereos, pinball machines, swimming pools, bubble blowers, pool tables, poker tables, etc. are NOT allowed. To build body skills, you must go to a community lot because there should be very little room on the home lot for extra stuff.

Each bedroom should be large enough for one double bed. Sims are not allowed to share bedrooms or beds.

You can have other furniture like end tables and dressers, bookcases, etc. No radios, easels, or electronics allowed. The bedroom is for sleeping only, not hanging out. Of course, they can woohoo, but only with a sim not living in the house.

Bedrooms are only allowed on the second floor. If you want to play a lot of sims, you may have additional bedrooms on the third floor. The sims may go upstairs only to sleep. They should not have any other reason for leaving the ground floor.

You can have a living room on the first floor, but it can not be furnished at all. It is furnished as a reward for making it to their senior semester. When furnished, it can have only one sofa or love-seat, one television, one radio or stereo. No other electronics. Of course, end tables and coffee tables are allowed. Once earned, you can fully decorate the living room as well.

On the top floor of the house, you must have a pantry. This is where all the fruits and vegetables harvested are kept. You may use some of the produce to fill one juicer and keep it filled/stocked. However, all other produce must be stored. This is where those Large Shelving Units from Simwardrobe come in handy and are pretty much required. The packing stations pack the produce 12 per crate. Each shelving unit can hold 10 crates. Selling produce by the crate is more profitable than individually. You will sell them at a future time.

If you don't want to build an additional room for the pantry, the house can have a flat roof for storing the harvested items and fish. Or, you can also make a basement pantry. Just remember that the pantry has to be fairly large so putting it on the top floor si to keep it out of the way and not take up space that could be used for gardening.

At the end of the challenge, you should have at least three shelving units filled for each type of produce grown for the house.

Additionally, you can have a pantry to store some fish that your sims catch - if they don't eat most of it to survive. The packing stations fill each crate with five fish.



See the next post for more.

[cheshirekat]

The Next Generation Challenge (Part 2)

Community

Your sims' success will depend on them being able to make new friends while also giving attention to their duties. You may use the community lots that come with the campus you choose but I strongly suggest that you use only lots with ponds for fishing when starting out. Your sims can fish and invite others to join, which improves their social needs and helps them gain friends simultaneously. Your sims will need friends and your community needs your sims to have a lot of friends, so if you don't like visiting community lots because of lag or whatever, this may not be the challenge for you.

You can modify the existing campus community lots if you want. Some are large enough to be able to fit in a pond.

Your sims may never buy groceries. They can eat out at different diners, restaurants and cafeterias on the campus, but their fridge can not be stocked with bought food or the challenge ends/fails.

I suggest having several different community lots where your sims can work on skills, fish, and eat all in one place. Parks are great because your sims can catch some fish to eat and they can feed other sims and socialize. Put in a few instruments and maybe some exercise equipment and your sims can enjoy the park for many hours. I even place a few counters with a coffee pot, hot chocolate and a juicer on almost all the lots. Vending machines with energy drinks and snacks are allowed also. I guess some of the expansions have them. I only found one vending machine and one popcorn machine that work with the expansions I have.

The only skill items allowed in your houses is a bookcase, and a mirror. So make sure they can gain other skills from the comm lots.

Your lots should have restrooms that have showers or bath tubs for your sims to use when they are away from home. The community lots are a group outing. All sims in the house must go to the community lots together. In order to meet the needs of the whole group, your sims should be able to have all their needs met while making friends at the community lots. No going home because one sim is in hygiene failure. And no, your sims aren't allowed to go home with green stink fumes. They should return home nearly fully refreshed in all motives. Yes. There is a reason for the showers, coffee pots, and juicers on each lot - use them!

That's about all I can say about community lots. Use your own judgement when deciding how many lots to make/download for your sims to enjoy their outings.

New Students

When your first students arrive at the campus, choose one of the empty houses for them to move into. They should immediately begin to fertilize the garden that should already be pre-designed so you know for sure that you have enough space for the required plants. If you have enough garden plots and not too many sims, one of your sims may get a bronze gardening badge after fertilizing. If so, use your favorite hack, like Sim Blender to make that your House Ambassador and give them a Gold gardening badge. If not, just give that sim a silver badge. When that sim earns their gold gardening badge, they will become the House Ambassador.

The gold badge sim will have to plant the eggplants and peppers immediately because they take the longest to be ready for harvest. If you have more than two sims, you may give a silver gardening badge to another sim so they can plant the peppers, while your director plants the eggplants. Your gold badge sim has earned the right to be the House Ambassador.

The sims should all plant until at least one has a critical need nearing failure. Then you may use maxmotives one time, or your favorite hack/mod (Sim Blender, Merola's painting, etc.) to boost all the needs of all your sims. Your sims should not go to class on this first day. The garden must be complete before they can move on to any other activity.

After using maxmotives once, your sims have to go to a community lot to eat if the garden is not complete when one or more of your sims nears hunger failure the next time. Use the community lots to get all your sims' levels as high as possible then return to finish the garden. Your sims can only miss their classes on the first day. The second day, they must all go to class.

Earning and Living

Your sims earn the furnishings in their house by working the garden and other duties. Feel free to modify these based on the priorities of your own sims or how much you want to torture them. They do not have to be done in a specific order, except the refrigerator and grill have to be added only after the entire garden has been planted.

When all the plots have been fertilized, you can add toilets and sinks to the bathrooms. If one of your sims reaches bronze, you can completely furnish the bathrooms. However, I strongly recommend that your bathrooms include at least one bath tub. Your sims are going to need them to restore comfort from gardening and fishing. Two bathrooms can have one toilet, one sink one bath tub, one shower - with the showers and baths in separate rooms. So potentially, with the max three restrooms, you can have six showers/baths total among them.

For each fruit/vegetable successfully planted, your sims earn; outdoor seating enough for the entire household to have meals, desks and computers, bedroom furniture, phone room, counters and other surfaces, and finally, the refrigerator and outdoor grill.

Your sims should be finished with the garden some time on the second day. If not, they have to continue to eat all meals at community lots until the garden is done and they can not have any visitors at home. When the garden is all done, as a treat, they get to have one meal at home, but it must be a group meal with them all eating together. They can have guests for this meal but it must be fish caught from a community lot or their home pond. I have the meal cooked by whichever sim was the last one to catch their first fish.

Once the garden is planted, the sims have to quickly begin skilling just enough to meet their requirements for the freshman term. Using hacks to earn skills are okay, as long as the sim actually has to do something. You can't just give them their skill points with the click of a button. For instance, with Christianlov's computer, points can be earned quickly, but the sims do the work. If you don't have such hacks in your game, this challenge will be very hard.

After each sim has completed a task, i.e., finished class assignment, finished term paper, attained all body/mechanical/cooking skill points needed for the semester they earn decor for their rooms. (Remember, they should all have their own rooms. If you like to add a lot of clutter, you may add decor for each skill point.)

If all the sims in the house finish their required skill points/class assignments/term papers before their final exams, they can all go on a group outing to a community lot just to have fun. But keep an eye on their needs.

When the sims are home, they spend all their awake hours tending their garden. If no gardening is needed, they must fish from the pond on their home lot, call friends, entertain guests, chat on the computer to meet new friends. The fridge must be kept stocked with their fish. They can keep some fish in their inventories if you wish. They must visit the community lots as a group at least once each term.

After the garden is established, they may invite friends and greet walk-by sims. When they have guests on the lot, at least one sim must be fishing or gardening. The others can entertain the guests. They can take turns entertaining the guests so that every sim has their social needs met. When guests are on the lot, all sims eat with the guests and must stop whatever they are doing for the meal. However, they still have to attend at least one class per term.

Food

When the sims reach their sophomore semester (second semester), they should have started harvesting their fruits and vegetables. However, they are not allowed to make any juice with the produce until they harvest all the plants and can make Pepper Punch. When they have all the ingredients required for Pepper Punch, they can start stocking the juicer. And they can stock the fridge with some cucumbers and tomatoes. No other produce can be stocked in the fridge.

Your sims can eat at the community lots when they are hungry, but the entire household must go. Your sims can not go to class from the comm lots. They must return home in time to head off to their classes. (Remember, they only have to attend one class and the final exam.) If they have Pepper Punch, they can drink that at home or on the comm lots where you have placed the juicers. They should always keep some produce in their inventory for this. Otherwise they will have to drink coffee and waste a lot of time in the bathrooms. (Juice also fulfills their hunger needs and they never get fat from juice.)

Sims may drink eggplant juice if they roll a want to earn a skill point. If they roll a want to gain a specific skill point, like creativity or logic, they have to use a regular skill object.

Sims may drink any other juice they want as long as there is enough to serve the juice. Sims may not make a single serving just for themselves. I have them keep a tray of different juices on the kitchen counter or a counter by the pond where they are frequently fishing or entertaining guests.

If your sims roll a want to learn to cook or eat a specific meal, they can cook it for one of the group meals. At all other times, they should eat fish they have caught or eat at comm lots.

Leftovers should be stored. With group meals, they have to eat together, but they can eat different things if they are eating leftovers. Keep leftovers in their inventories instead of the fridge for quick access. Then you can set a dish on a counter near the table and have the sim come get it to eat. If there are guests, one of the sims should cook a fresh meal. Save the leftovers for the sims in the household when they don't have guests.

Earning Money

You must use the familyfunds cheat to give your sims the money needed to move into the house you built. Although it isn't furnished, the game doesn't give much money and the lot should have fruit trees and garden plots that are costly. The garden can also be fenced off. If you want, you can even build a greenhouse for the plants, but trees have to be outside. To get as many trees as possible, space the fruit trees with no empty tiles between them if you have the Perfect Gardens mod. These things really require money, so build as you like, but remember to plant the required plants and trees and build the necessary rooms.

To furnish the house and pay for all the seeds for your gardens, give your sims at least 20,000 more when you use the familyfunds cheat. But not more than 25,000 so your sims aren't living in a posh home. Use only the cheap furniture and decorations, no expensive statues or paintings when you decorate. It is, of course, okay to use cc. Use whatever plants, shrubs and trees for landscaping around the pond, but not too lavish elsewhere.

I recommend you set the Uni hood's seasons to fall-fall-fall-fall so that your sims will earn their skills faster and the success of your challenge depends on the harvests.

Your sims may earn money on comm lots and you will probably want them to do so to earn money to improve the house. They can do cafeteria duty, barista duty, freestyle, perform with the musical instruments for tips, etc. Whatever you can think of. However, they can not sell any of the produce from their gardens or the fish they catch.

During the senior semester, the sims can use their aspiration points to get money trees and may harvest as many money trees as you wish so they will have some pocket money when they graduate and head back to their hood to be successful adults.

When they reach the senior semester, your sims can move to a Greek House. However, the Greek House has to be built in the same way as the other houses with the exception of one additional room on the first floor where they can learn skills like robot making, flower arranging, etc. Some of the Freetime extras might be useful for this, but FreeTime is not required. I don't have FreeTime so I can't advise anything. You can have as many of these skill/talent builders as you would like in the Greek House but they can only be in one room.

In addition, the Greek House can also have a garden but it does not have to be as large. The Greek House can have only 10 plants of each fruit/vegetable and however many fruit trees you would like. But none are required. It is required that each sim earn a badge of some type while living in the Greek House, whether it is cashiering, robot making, flower arranging, makeovers, etc., is up to you.

Before a sim can move to a Greek House, there has to be at least one other sim in the household. Much like the Greek Houses, the houses close down when no sims are occupying them. If all sims graduate or move out of the house, then you can have another batch of sims move into the house, but they must start over completely. This includes the garden and earning all furnishings. However, the pantry is the only room that is never emptied until the challenge is done.

Otherwise, your goal is to create a house that can sustain through several batches of sims - minimum of 4 batches, but you can play the house longer if you want. After the second batch of sims have moved out, you can remodel your house, or add-on more rooms to the building to accommodate more sims or pantry room. However, no other rooms may be modified while sims are living in the house. If all sims move out by graduation, the house starts over with batch one.

If a sim moves out to join a Greek House, she/he is still a part of the house's batch. If that sim fails to graduate, not only does their challenge house fail, but the Greek House is now tainted and destroyed and no more challenge sims can move into the Greek House. In general, once sims move into a challenge house, they should remain in the house until they graduate.

If you want to move in a maxis pre-made sim or dormie to one of your challenge lots, you can. But, that sim must be friends with at at least one member of the house. They automatically become the designated cook for all group meals and the live-in maid. So I hope they have some cooking and cleaning skills! If the pre-made sim fails to graduate, it does not effect the houses challenge status.

When the first batch graduates, the graduates can take their bedroom furniture and all the decorations in their bedrooms with them as they start out their new lives. They can also take no more than half of the produce. This means the pantry must have half of the produce grown when the first batch leaves. The other half must be split evenly between the sims leaving. So after every batch of sims, the pantry should increase in quantity of items and always have more produce than when the last batch left.

It will be completely up to you to decide how much of the household income the sims leaving should take with them. If you decide to keep the house going, keep at least one sim in the house by moving them in during the last batch's last couple of days before graduation. I recommend moving in at least two at a time on graduation day. The only time a sim may be moved in is Graduation Day, unless it is a pre-made or dormie - they can move in any time.

After graduation, all rooms are emptied of furniture and decor so the next batch of students can earn their keep and contribute to the pantry. When the fourth batch graduates from the house, you can choose one of the sims from that batch to take all the produce from the pantry when they leave to start up a produce store for your main hood. That is, of course, the goal of the entire challenge. If each batch of sims put through the house was successful at their duties, you can consider it taxes paid for their education that benefits the community.

(If you want, you can also make a separate pantry for stocking up on fish so your new hood can have a fish market.)

However, in order to successfully complete the challenge, all sims from each batch must graduate. No drop-outs. If any sim drops out, the house is considered tainted and must be bulldozed. You have to start the challenge over with another house and try to get four batches of sims to graduate successfully from one house. All produce in the pantry of the destroyed lot must be given to another challenge house before the lot is bulldozed.

Extra bonus. When the fourth batch of sims graduate, you have the option of taking half the pantry inventory from another challenge house that isn't on it's fourth batch. However, only the House Ambassador can take the food from another challenge house's pantry, and ONLY if she/he is best friends with the House Ambassador and graduates with honors.

If the House Ambassador graduates with honors (makes the Dean's List), another member of the household can take half of the fish inventory from the other challenge house - it must be the same house for the produce and fish.

I know this has been a LOT to read. But believe me, the details are so necessary - it will keep you busy with your Uni students and is a different way of playing them. I currently am playing just one challenge house but will add more as my hood grows. I already have the challenge houses built and I have a bunch of sims I created in CAS to move into a challenge house. But there is so much work to do that I wanted to run through the challenge once to make sure I have written all the details.

If you have any questions or want to share your experience, post in this thread.

[cheshirekat]

The Next Generation (Part 3)

This is for the stuff I forgot, or when I need to make edits or additions to this challenge.

I will only edit part 3, so don't expect to have to read through all the previous parts to look for changes I may make. I know it is a lot of reading and I wouldn't make you do that. Although I really hope I will not have to add more or make too many edits. I've already been editing this over and over as I play the challenge in my own game. However, I know you sim players are a smart lot and will probably notice some little detail I overlooked or didn't make clear enough. Bring it on!

You must buy the sims a compost bin so that it is available when the sims first move in. The House Ambassador of the final (fourth) batch will get to take that with her/him when she/he graduates. Hopefully, you will plant trees that have leaves that fall for your sims to rake to keep the compost full. Buy another bin if the first gets full.

Your sims may only eat fish they have caught when home, juice from the juicers (Once they have all the ingredients for Pepper Punch, but not before this.), or meals they rolled a want for. Otherwise, it is fish at home and anything they want to eat on the community lots.

The familyfunds money has to last the entire University time - until graduation. If you don't have a lot of cheap cc, you probably won't have enough money with the more expensive maxis stuff. Bills must be paid, so don't hesitate to make it possible for your sims to earn money on the community lots. You are never never never allowed to sell any produce or fish, or the challenge fails.

Don't forget that seniors have earned the privilege of getting money trees for their aspiration points - if you make it that far.

This challenge is much easier when you get to the second batch of sims, when you know all the stuff that isn't allowed. I suggest printing all this up to refer to. There are a lot of rules. If you are craving a crazy time, start two or more challenge houses simultaneously. It is quite a rush!

[ani_]

Ok, that was a lot of text :D
Even thou I wont be doing this challenge, some of the rules struck me as strange and was wondering could you explain what's the point in them and how exactly do they contribute to the challenge.

1. Why the rule that sims have to eat outside, and not inside?
2. Why with the rule of the locked doors.
3. Why all restrooms in the first floor
4. You mentioned that all skilling should be done on a community lot, but you also mentioned you can have a chess board on the home lot, but it has to be fenced off so no autonomous skilling
5. Why does one sim always has to be fishing when there are guests over
6. Why does the pantry has to be on the top floor
7. Why only beds upstairs and no reason for Sim's, other than sleeping, to be on the upper floors.
8. Why do sim's need to be fully refreshed before returning home.

These are just a few examples that I though made no sense in the actual challenge part.

This post seemed more of a very long post on how you play the game, instead of a challenge post. The challenge itself gets drowned in the unnecessary details and it was very hard to see what is the challenge part, and what are your gameplay rules.

Maybe if you summed it up some more, made a shorter text on what are the challenge rules, how to win/loose, when the challenge ends and then another post on how you played this challenge it might be a bit more clear.

Anyhow, I did enjoy reading this post, even if I did get lost in the details some times.

[cheshirekat]

Thanks ani for your feedback.

1. Sims eat outside with their guests to make it more interesting. They are always eating inside for most players.

2. The rule is that all doors must be unlocked, except when the cow mascot comes along. No one likes the cow mascot. Having all the doors unlocked means that friends can come in any time - the sims are trying to make a lot of friends. But locking the doors when the cow mascot comes along keeps the cow mascot from causing trouble.

3. As soon as sims awake, they make their beds and spend the rest of their entire day downstairs on the first floor. With all the restrooms on the first floor, it is also easy to keep track of guests who won't have any reason to be on the upper floors, and will stay around with the sims of the house.

4. Yes. The only skill building really okay for the home are the bookcase and the mirror. However, if a chess table was really wanted by the player, they could include one, as long as sims aren't playing chess autonomously and failing to do their duties of making friends, fishing, learning skills and gardening.

5. Sims can't just abandon all their duties and invite friends over for a long party. If at least one member of the household is fishing, then their duties are still being met. Of course, they can also have the guests join them in fishing also. But one sim can't get stuck doing all the fishing while the others have fun, which is why I stated that they can take turns entertaining the guests so that everyone has their social needs met.

6. The pantry has to be out of the way of the daily activities without taking up any of the ground space that can be used for gardening. The more rooms on the ground floor, the less room for gardening. Guests aren't likely to go wander off to check out the pantry, so you won't have to skip up several levels to find them. But the pantry can also be put in a basement as stated.

7. The sims will be busy taking care of their needs, learning skills, visting with guests, gardening, and fishing to be messing around upstairs. Keeping them all on a single level makes it much more intense so no sim really gets a chance to wander of to do something they shouldn't because they will be spotted easily. Since there are no items on the upper floors the sims need to use to take care of any needs or perform their duties, they should keep to the ground floor.

8. If sims go to the community lots just to quickly fulfill a skill need, they won't spend time enjoying the lot. With multiple sims going as a group, their needs won't all be the same, so it would be too easy to just turn around and return to the home lot just because one sim needed a shower or something. The sims should take their time to make friends and visit with friends while still having the opportunity to build skills and not slack on them just because they are away from home. Just like home, they don't all have to be doing the exact same activities at the exact same time. One sim can entertain while another serves a meal. Or one sim can earn skill points while another fishes. The idea is to keep it mixed up so the community lot is an enjoyable place.

I'll look at making the text more brief. Thanks for looking.