Hello! So I've recently started a new neighbourhood and for the first time I'm playing in rotations and trying to have all the households in sync. My question is, when adding new households into the neighbourhood, how do I keep them in sync with the others? I end each round/rotation ( <--- are they the same thing?) on Monday mornings. Do I have to play the new households for a couple of weeks to catch up? I also use the Lot Sync Timer by Pescado. Sorry if I sound like a dummy.

Thanks!

also, is this in the right forum? o.o

Yep, right forum.

I use the day setter http://modthesims.info/d/318007 and the weather controller from simwardrobe.

When I add in a new household I make sure they are set to the correct season and correct day. I don't make them catch up unless I decide they should really have been placed sooner, so I am correcting my own mistake. I rarely move in new sims.
I don't use the LST so I can't help with that.

You don't "have" to do anything - it's your game and you make the rules. Try one way and if you don't enjoy it, try something else.

Personally, I just play everybody one-day rotations with the occasionally extra aging-off day and let everything fall as it may. The change of seasons and days as I go from house to house gives me a much stronger sense of time passing and the composite nature of each sim day than rigid synching would do; also rigid anything is antithetical to my enjoyment of the game; also University is going to throw the synch off anyway since it doesn't even have weekdays and days themselves vary according to how many community lots you go to. In the GS Uberhood I've been playing for over a year now, no two subhoods even have the same seasons and I'm playing lots of aging-off days for various reasons anyway.

I have been trying to play Strangetown matching day to day. Strangetown has three seasons of summer and one of winter so there's not much variation in season anyway, and I tried to make some rules about how often new building could be undertaken. This started getting awkward the moment the first graduates moved in - I wound up moving them in and seeing them wander around town in their jobhunting suits for ages before actually playing them. This was partly mitigated by creating a boarding house, so they could move into a house that was already synched up and move out on the next Monday, but the boarding house filled up faster than it could empty. A sim week is a long, long time! So I'm gonna have to rethink that when I finish the uberhood challenge and finally get back to it.

Anyway, I really enjoy playing fluidly and having room for aging-off days and so on; but some people get antsy if they can't synch up their lots, and all those people swear by the lot synch timer, so you go do you.

The notion of 'catch up' seems to imply you imagine your new sims are starting at the same point as the old ones. No need for that - just imagine they are newly moved to the neighbourhood. Little Carping is so old I couldn't possibly sync up families like that. I just have people arriving in the neighbourhood for the first time. I use the day setter and season setter like Jo.

I apologize in advance for me being tired and my not so great English writing skills but I hope I'll make myself clear.
I use Pes' Lot Sync Timer and I wouldn't play without it. I like to keep my sims in sync but I sometimes play with aging-off when I feel like it. I admit I'm so used to sims aging that it's odd when I play with aging-off.

This is how I play my rotations:



It's currently fall in my game which started at day 175 and will end on day 179.
Since I'm doing one-day rotation, I'm currently playing day 175 and left the family on day 176 (around 6:00 AM). If my students are due to go back to the main hood and start their own household, I set the Lot Sync timer at the required day for them, set the season if needed and play from here.
For example, Cole Morand will start his own household on day 176. So I set the LST to day 176 and will play from there.

In case of a new family, I'd play them if I want to know them better (maybe with aging off or maybe not) and then would set the LST when I'd want them to be sync with the hood.

Have to agree with maxon--no need for sims to catch up in the sense of playing everyone for the exact same amount of time. I view rotations as all the sims in the hood syncing their calendars. This is their life during a particular point in the year; everyone's not in the same life point/stage though. Does that make sense? Anyway, I just make sure they're in the right season; I don't worry about days as much because I play weekly rotations and try to get out of a house by Monday morning. Which is why I don't usually have to sync weekday for sims that move out. I know I've read that some simmers try to move people out on specific days to help sync up lots, though, and that can certainly help too. You could use mods to set a new household to the exact day, season, and hour the sim moved out of his or her old home (and I think I just read a thread on here where a simmer did just that). I personally prefer to play new households at the start of a new rotation.

As for round vs. rotation--I always see it as rotation as the part/individual and round as the whole. Rotation usually means the time you played one household/ a household's week (or x number of days) in the round you played. Which leads me to round--that's the entire hood. Every time you've finished playing every household in your hood, you've completed a round (think of singing). In that situation, lots like Peni Griffin's boarding house or a moving station would come in handy as a place to hold sims until their rotation starts. That way other sims can call and invite out the person during their turn but you don't start playing the sim until the top of the next round.

For sims fresh out of CAS, again, I go back to maxon's comment you don't need to catch up. If I'm on round three and I add new sims to my hood, I'm not going to play them for three weeks straight to "catch up;" they'll start in Season Four and my record of that new family starts from that round and continues onward. On my pen and paper chart, I just leave rotations 1-3 blank, because they didn't exist for the first three rounds, but on the lot sync timer, which I sometimes use, I would set my new sim's lot day to the number the rest of the hood has. I play Monday to Monday too, so their number should be 21 or 22, depending on how strict I was about leaving the house on time and my new CAS sim would start at that number. Is this what you are asking about nonamenut?

As for university, it can be tricky and I admit my young adults get out of sync because how often and how long I play them usually depends on how enthusiastic I am to play it. But each semester lasts 72 hours or 3 days, so it's not hard to make/keep a schedule. I don't use the lot sync timer in uni; with a 7 day rotation I just play two semesters and don't worry about syncing exact days of the week and such. I may move Dustin in during a round but I don't play him until the current round is finished. I think of any lost days as my sims moving/driving to college and getting set up there, maybe doing a little off-screen back-to-school shopping.

But if you wanna be more exact, just keep track of the day a sim moves out. For example, if Dustin moves out on Wednesday and you want to start his rotation there, instead of at the top of a rotation (the next Monday) like I do, then, as Essa described, make note of the day it is on the timer when he leaves and set it to that day when he gets to his new lot. Then, when you get to the number it's supposed to be at the end of the rotation (which should be the number his old household is at, if you finished that household's rotation) you simply stop playing and you don't have to worry about the hours left til finals and what not. Again, if you wanna get really nitty-gritty you can also set it to the exact time and day he moved out and so that when you start to play him it's season 3, 7 pm. Or if he's moving to a campus in a non-university subhood (a different section of the main hood, a regular subhood, etc.) it's season 3, wednesday, 7pm, day 20 on the sync timer. Or you could simply have a rule to only do move outs/move ins on a certain day. Like everyone in your hood moves on Sunday at 8 pm and if they don't they have to wait another week, aging be damned.

You really just have to decide if you want to start new households in medias res or at the top of a new rotation.

I don't really get this lot syc timer or what benefits it gives. The season jar sets the season and how many days are left, the day jar sets the day, what's left for this syc timer to do?

To each their own, Jo. It depends on how one simmer plays. Maybe you should read my post #5 to understand how LST is essential for me. ;-) If my memory doesn't fail me there's a threat about this mod at Maty.
As far as I'm concerned the day jar is useless for me as it doesn't fit my playing style. Yet I don't say that I don't get how some people could play with the seasons and the day jars only. Their choice and I totally respect that.

I'm sorry if I sound rude but I'm getting tired of reading how people should playing that way or using that mod instead of the way they're playing or the mod they choose to use.

I don't think anyone was saying you should play one way or another or that anybody really does that here. I think Jo was just asking a question.

I was saying I don't get the mod, not that I don't get why people use it. I don't care how people play, I think I've said that many times over the years. I didn't realize the LST was a play style, thought it was something to help with rotations. o_o

Ninj'd by maxon.

Yes I was asking a question.

I just start my new sims from the point they entered the time stream. I do try to keep seasons in sync with the first household, but I use Sim Tracker so it's not all that critical if I forget. Sim families just get added to the list as they are created and played from that point forward. My rotations vary in length, from one day in most neighborhoods to one week in my BACC neighborhood. I wouldn't play "catch up" with your new families, but you can play however you wish - it's your game!

LotSyncTimer lets you set the date. If you tend to skip off to another neighborhood and forget where you stopped playing at, LotSyncTimer will tell you which day each household is on from whichever household you entered. (Goth-5, Broke-4, Dreamer-4, Lothario-5, Caliente-4, Pleasant-4, for example.) It lets you set upcoming event notifications--which if you play longer rotations is very helpful, if, say, Donny has two pregnant girlfriends, and you usually play Nina's house before Kaylynn's, but Kaylynn got pregnant the day before Nina, then that notification that Kaylynn has an event on day six will remind you to save Nina's and go play Kaylynn's until the baby's born so the memories are in correct order. If you're perfectionist about that, it's great. I also use that feature to remind me of kids who need to change custody.

I don't know about the day jar, the LST sets the day, hour, and even minute. Complete with a very Pescadoan warning that bad things might could possibly happen, but I've never had problems with it.

Makes a change

I don't like to limit how much time I spend in a particular house because I barely have time to play as it is! This is just my preference, but for the most part I plop sims down when I feel like I need new ones, and play each house as long as feels right. I get bored after a bit, and then go play the next one. But if a birthday's coming up, or I need to advance the story somewhere, I'll keep playing until I've done it.

Time-wise, if one house is a season behind another then it's because that's what that house was doing while I was playing the other one. So a bit like how in a show, there's a 'meanwhile' break that shows you what other characters are doing while you were watching events elsewhere. The Unos are in Autumn, but the Greens are in Winter now, so when I play the Unos, I don't feel like I've missed anything because they're in stasis until I turn up to see what they're doing. In a way, it's really realistic to me because a lot of my family is in another country, or in different parts of the country, so we don't all experience the same seasons at the same time. Everyone kind of moves through life at different paces, and I don't mind it all in my sims. (again, that's just my preference.)

The one thing I do like to keep in sync is the aging of children and babies. Right now, my hood population is still so small that there are only one or two kids in each year, and when school starts it won't work properly if I don't keep age-similar kids together. My sim's lifespans are so long that it's unlikely that a toddler will end up a child after a newborn, but still. I like to maintain the age-gap between characters - particularly those in the same family. Otherwise, the fact that it's two different seasons in two households headed by two sisters doesn't bother me at all. (I don't mind when or how adults age as there's no logistical reason for them to age up and I use community time, so everyone gets their days done lol)

I don't get what you mean by catch up? If it's straight out of CAS sims, why not let them be the new blood of the hood? And if it's a fresh out of UNI student, I usually wait one round before adding them in. Since their time away at school still counts as a round being played. Though that's pretty easy for me to do. I play 3 day rotations with it totaling 1 year. It also gives me accurate ages for the sims so I can keep them in sync far easier imo.

Jo, for me the lot sync timer is just to help with rotations. And since it does set the day and time, I don't use the day setter. Thinking of it as a calendar is probably the best way to explain it, too, so thanks Sunbee. Setting up events days is kinda like having the mts calendar that tells you all the holidays. It's helpful for me because I don't play in a strict order and tend to hop between neighborhoods often-ish, so it's a good way to keep track in game of who needs to be played. And terula8, keeping ages in sync is one of the main reasons I might choose to do rotations in the first place. I like sim kids bringing home other playables off the bus and inviting over that friend to play on weekends. And syncing seasons avoids the pet peeve of having sims show up in snowsuits when it's still fall or even summer.

What I do personally is try to make moveouts to new houses or new families coming in on a Monday, mostly because that's how it started, might as well in sort of in sync with them, as well. I do move the sync timer to the next day that they started at-which is the hood's time. So if it's day 7, their LST will start off at it.

Phantomknight, thanks. I'm not bothered about how many days I have played, my sims are pretty much in sync anyway. An event prompt sounds like a good thing, but I'm not overly bothered and I prefer to avoid Pes mods where I can. I guess we all get used to what we use.

I don't bother with seasons being in sync. I just play each household for two Sim days then onto the next household, and the newbies get included in that rotation. It's the easiest way for me. I don't see the need to overcomplicate things.

That is probably it as well, I keep my rules for everything simple. I just look at the hood and see who is still in one season and who has moved on and pick one that is still in last season. Right now I have four houses still in autumn (probably because they are the ones boring me right now lol) and the rest have clocked over to spring, so I know not to load up any of those and just pick one still in autumn. Many times I only have time to play one or two sim days anyway. I would not like to have houses in very different seasons though, say summer and autumn (there is no winter there as it's far too tropical to get snow)

To keep things as simple as possible I place a newly made (CAS) Sim or household at the end of the que. When a student goes off to University they are played right after their parents. Basically, when a household member moves out on their own I place them on my list to be played after their parents. University graduates usually move back home for a while. I don't fuss about the timing of things being exact. Close enough to make some sense is good enough for me. Sometimes I play each for a season and other times I play each for a day or a week. In other words during each round or rotation cycle each household is played for the same length of time.

I think new simmies don't have to be in sync with the old ones. I just like to think they're fresh new sims ready to start their lives in this new pretty 'hood surrounded by nice and not-so-nice other simmies.

I like to play three sim days, and then move on to another family. Seasons matching up with every household is important to me tho, so I try to keep those in sync, but everything else doesn't matter to me because I don't really care that much about rotations.

Oops. I guess I didn't really think about how new sims would be new to the neighbourhood. Thanks you guys!

If you want them to have a feeling of already having lived a life somewhere before else moving there you could always create them with kids, give them higher job levels and randomize their skills instead of them coming with nothing.

Since no one's mentioned it, you can use the life bars to keep track of the dates in a household. If, say, a sim grows up from child to teen on Day 20, then he's scheduled to become an adult on Day 35, and if next time you play the house the life bar says he will grow up in 11 days time, then you know it's currently Day 24 in that particular household. You need a notebook or something to keep a written record of who's scheduled to grow up on what day, and make appropriate adjustments for any Elixir of Life your sims might pour down their throats.