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Original Poster
#1 Old 2nd Aug 2020 at 9:05 AM
Default Sims Autonomy Tunings
This thread is dedicated to Autonomy tuning fans. Let's brainstorm, troubleshoot and support each other in our attempts to make active and townie sims do more autonomously the actions of our choice.

Please share your ideas, work-in-progress projects and testing files and let's work on them!

My own tuning file which started this discussion (and where @jje1000 originally suggested the creation of this very thread) can be found here. It's an override ITUN file (to put in the Overrides folder) for @Buzzler's Moar Interactions mod. It pushes townies to read skill books more autonomously because I found it *very* frustrating after 7 generations of sims in my save, to keep seeing 90-day old townies stuck at level 3 of their careers and only at level 1 in just a few skills. Stop idling, start reading!

What would YOU like to see happen more autonomously in your game?
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 2nd Aug 2020 at 2:13 PM Last edited by jje1000 : 2nd Aug 2020 at 2:41 PM.
As someone who likes to play the Sims 3 really more as a community simulator and more as the sim's 'conscience' rather than as an all-intrusive god, my personal dream is:

  • Have sims live their lives as autonomously as possible. They should be able to run their daily routine on their own- keep their needs relatively high (under normal circumstances), go to work, and pay their bills on their own. Autonomously, sims should be able to satisfy most of Maslow's hierarchy of needs on their own.
  • The player's role is to act on their wants, and introduce disruptions into their lives. We are that spur-of-the-moment whim! We don't need to micromanage lizard brain activity!
  • Sims should engage in self-improvement, and if possible, some level of self-actualization towards their aspiration.
  • Not sure if it's completely autonomous atm, but sims should be able to initiate major relational changes in-person without StoryProgression abstractly assigning relationships. Lots of in-Sim drama, please!
  • Some autonomous actions sims currently overprioritize (i.e. the computer, smart phone, books) should be toned down so that they do more things
  • Active Sims should be able to travel around with their families- Arsil has an unfinished mod here that can do some of it, but I think it needs some tuning to optimize (and possibly expand on).
  • Preset NRAAS settings could be helpful as well, since it's sort of overwhelming to find optimal settings (took a few months to develop something for my own world).

I think this could end up being a whole suite of Tuning mods + other minor mods/NRAAS settings to improve the game in those manners. They could be divided into several parts:

  1. Needs
  2. Self-fulfillment (Aspirations, careers & skills)
  3. Relationships
  4. Miscellaneous (Other tuning tweaks + mods to improve the experience)

On the note of Needs Fulfillment- I always found it strange that sims basically enter existence failure after a day or two of neglect- to this end:

  • I think the needs bars need to be rethought- possibly extended to give sims more wiggle room since humans tend to be more durable.
  • For instance, the sleep bar. Currently, sims will basically get completely exhausted in a day- but I think that 1 day should take 50% off the bar, and add a hefty negative moodlet (Tired, with an even more extreme Exhausted coming in at maybe 25%)- this allows sims to pull off all-nighters, but at the cost of their mood!
  • Needs fulfillment below the halfway point should usually take priority over other tasks, and could be tweaked to be filled faster.

Also- I wonder if any of Thalassicus's Sims Enhanced mod might come in handy? https://modthesims.info/d/489873/si...anced-pack.html

Just some thoughts!
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Original Poster
#3 Old 2nd Aug 2020 at 7:59 PM Last edited by MissPat : 5th Aug 2020 at 4:38 AM.
Thank you for your first post! Going to see how we can work on some of your ideas:

Field Researcher
#4 Old 2nd Aug 2020 at 9:19 PM
Quote: Originally posted by MissPat
10) "sims basically enter existence failure after a day or two of neglect": I think this is more of a question of gameplay preference and maybe this can be influenced by a hidden trait? Like, there are LTRs that basically grant sims to have less bladder issues, less need for sleep, etc. so I guess EA 'rigged' sims that way so you'd find it fun to spend hours in your game striving towards LTHPs acquisition and then spending it on these "rewards". What we could do is put all these LTR effects together into a fancy-named custom trait and tie that custom trait to custom moodlets the way you mentioned them.
11) "Needs fulfillment below the halfway point should usually take priority over other tasks, and could be tweaked to be filled faster." Do you know of a mod that somehow works like that? I'd need to look at the code not so much for the priority thing (though that'd help), but to see whether you can only *temporarily* achieve certain tasks faster, like, if your sim had a specific mood bar status / moodlet.

I'd be interested in helping with these mods if they need scripting! We talked over at NRaas (I'm aede_ofThuul, hi!) about my not being a fan of LTRs, and I often use MC to just give my sims the need-decay-slowing LTRs as soon as I create them, so a mod that handles that automatically would be nice to have. From a quick look into the code it looks a little challenging to do this as a non-core mod, but I'd be willing to give it a shot!
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Original Poster
#5 Old 2nd Aug 2020 at 10:07 PM
Hey there! I remember the forum thread in question, I actually refer back to it every now and then!

Great to have you join the Autonomy Unite :D. Let's hear back from jje1000 and evaluate our best next step.
Mad Poster
#6 Old 3rd Aug 2020 at 4:06 PM Last edited by jje1000 : 4th Aug 2020 at 1:35 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by MissPat
Thank you for your first post! Going to see how we can work on some of your ideas:

Thanks! More answers below:



Let's see if this chart works: https://ethercalc.org/nyicwgq4fcym

Can anyone else add more things to it?
Field Researcher
#7 Old 3rd Aug 2020 at 5:42 PM Last edited by lizcandor : 3rd Aug 2020 at 6:57 PM.
About making major relational changes autonomous - I'm pretty sure you could change that by just changing the SocialData and ITUN for the go steady/propose marriage/get married interactions? SocialData can definitely be changed with a script mod, which in my opinion is easier to do en masse than editing XML files and also avoids conflict with other SocialData edits. I've done that recently for a different purpose, so I can say with certainty that it's possible and I know how to do it; and I imagine it's possible to do the same for ITUN modding, to change the advertising of the interaction to something that makes sense once it's enabled autonomously.

Overprioritizing of actions could also definitely be changed with tuning mods, or with a scripting mod that changes interaction advertising if I can figure out how to do that.

About the safety of custom traits - I'm working on a mod that uses them so I've been thinking about this. The conclusion I came to was I'm going to figure out how the mods I've seen that make their own cheat codes do that, and then add an "uninstall mod" cheat that removes the custom trait and substitutes a standard one for every sim in the world that has it, so it's safe to remove the mod afterwards. Haven't tested that yet but it seems like it should work! Also though, I'm not sure a custom trait is the best way to mod motive decay, from what I've seen of how it's controlled; but we could change the motive decay multipliers for the LTRs with a tuning mod and then automatically apply them to every sim, that's the simplest fix I can see. If we want to leave the LTRs alone I think we'd have to somehow freeze the standard motive decay entirely (could check how NRaas SP does that), and then create our own motive decay system in parallel.

Quote: Originally posted by jje1000
Let's see if this chart works: https://ethercalc.org/nyicwgq4fcym

That looks great! About fulfilling wants - since there are some that just aren't possible to do autonomously (like using build/buy mode) I wonder if it would be useful to have a notification pop up whenever a sim outside the active household gets a want like that so you can switch to them and fulfill it if desired. Since I'm pretty sure non-active sims don't get wants at all without SP's dream catcher enabled, it would also be possible to control how many sims are being monitored like this so it's not overwhelming.
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Original Poster
#8 Old 5th Aug 2020 at 4:38 AM Last edited by MissPat : 5th Aug 2020 at 4:53 AM.
For @jje1000:



For @lizcandor

Field Researcher
#9 Old 5th Aug 2020 at 2:35 PM
1) I've used Woohooer's method for action data editing to change the availability and rules of interactions without directly editing the SocialData XML in the other mod I'm working on, and yesterday I found what appears to be a similar method for editing interaction tuning without using the ITUN file, which I've attempted but haven't gotten it to work yet (not sure if the method itself is the problem, or if I just broke something unrelated in the process of inserting it into my mod - I suspect the latter). I haven't looked at how SP does pushes, though; actually I feel like I've seen "push" used to mean different things by different people/in different contexts, what do you mean exactly? Encouraging sims to do it autonomously depending on what commodity kinds apply, or something specific to SP?

2) Cool, I'll give freezing motives a try when I get time! Might not make real progress until this weekend, got to get that education I will report back!

3) I've played rotationally since starting to use the NRaas mods and like to switch households whenever the currently active one is doing something boring, so getting a notice when one of my rotational households needs me to switch over and make them do something they can't do autonomously would be good for me; I prefer to only make big purchases like cars and appliances when my sims roll a want for them instead of making that decision from on high (I believe that's the same style @jje1000 was describing) so not missing those wants when I'm "away" would be nice. It wouldn't be that useful if you don't play that way, though, yeah. I've never tried AwesomeMod, but SP handles what I'm describing if you make a caste of sims whose dreamtrees you want to preserve (for me that's just the rotational sims caste) and turn on "retain dreams and promises" for it.
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Original Poster
#10 Old 6th Aug 2020 at 12:10 AM
1) "yesterday I found what appears to be a similar method for editing interaction tuning without using the ITUN file, which I've attempted but haven't gotten it to work yet" -> Fingers crossed you figure it out eventually!
- "I've seen "push" used to mean different things by different people/in different contexts, what do you mean exactly?" I mean something specific to SP. Essentially, when I switch to a townie family and pause the game, some of the household members have SP leftover queued "collecting" actions. More details here: https://www.nraas.net/StoryProgress...#What-is-a-Push

2) No rush! Keep us posted on how it went.

3) Thanks for the extra insights - it makes sense why you'd want these notifications! I think I could warm up to them as long as they can be toggled on and off (optional type feature).
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