Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#1 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 5:26 AM
Townies dine WAY too much?
I've noticed that whenever I go to a community lot with an option to dine, that's all the townies do! Every single townie on the lot dines. My sim's been trying to find a potential mate at places in Downtown like the nightclubs and the bowling alleys, but whenever she sees someone she'd like to talk to, they end up waiting in line for dining, so my sim is unable to talk to them. They also like to dine multiple times in a row, so my sim is passing out and pissing everywhere by the time they can actually talk, which is during a surprisingly small time gap. Before I know it, that sim's out the door without any interactions exchanged. It sucks, and my sim isn't able to find potential spouses this way, which seems like the only logical solution unless she wants to pay a gypsy to pull an incompatible sim from the sky for a measly $200.

Is there any way I can reduce townies dining? Like, I'd still like to keep the whole dining concept, because I think it's realistic. What's unrealistic, however, is going to a nightclub to eat 3 bowls of lobster thermidor in a row. I'm aware of the idea to switch out the community lots with custom ones that don't have dining areas, but I'm not into custom lots unfortunately. I do use mods though, and a mod to fix the problem is fine by me. I'll even tap into SimPE if I have to. Possible things I'm looking for are ways to:
a) reduce the frequency of how often townies dine in a lot, hopefully by only allowing them to dine from 0-1 times on a lot.
b) make sims eat faster when dining (also in conjunction with only being able to eat once).
c) be able to interrupt sims while they are waiting in line (or dining), which cancels the dining action altogether.
d) only selecting a few sims out of all the townies on the lot (maybe %20-%30) to actually dine, instead of everyone.
e) turning down the autonomy to dine by a lot.

Any of those solutions seems like they'd help with the case. Honestly, I can't be the only one who thinks dining is majorly annoying when it comes to romancing. Does anyone else feel this way, or does anyone have solutions? A mod that can help? Anything is appreciated, thanks.

- an annoyed simmer who thinks dining is a major cockblock.
Advertisement
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 5:30 AM
It shouldn't be that bad, in places like Crypto, sims do dine but you should also see them dancing or drinking or just talking. Seeing this does seem a problem why not just take away the dining and put down a food stand instead. Sims still have a place to eat but I don't think they will be eating more than once.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Scholar
#3 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 5:32 AM
Don't go to places that have restaurants

"Oh look, my grandchild is now an elder. They grow up so fast. Gee, I wonder when I'll finally graduate college." Sims 2
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#4 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 5:46 AM
Quote: Originally posted by joandsarah77
It shouldn't be that bad, in places like Crypto, sims do dine but you should also see them dancing or drinking or just talking. Seeing this does seem a problem why not just take away the dining and put down a food stand instead. Sims still have a place to eat but I don't think they will be eating more than once.


I'm actually more of a The Hub type of person . And, yeah, the sims do actually dance and stuff, but their first priority is dining or getting a seat at the bar, and when they do other stuff than dining it's usually at 3 in the morning when my sim is, as I said, half dead. I could put a food stand, but I don't really like messing with Maxis lots and rearranging stuff. I'm looking for more like a mod. Thanks for your help though
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#5 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 5:48 AM
Quote: Originally posted by DizzyBoo
Don't go to places that have restaurants


Trust me I've tried, lol. Every community lot either has an option to dine or is a park where not many sims go. It sucks.
Field Researcher
#6 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 6:01 AM
I feel your pain. The absolute bane of my existence are those ridiculous grills on every single lot in the damned game. Every. Single. One. So much of my pregaming sometimes involves me going in and getting rid of those grills or any dining areas i feel are inappropriate and replacing them with sensible objects.

Bowling alley restaurant, gone. In its place, burger stand from bon voyage.

Unless it's an actual park, grills are removed everywhere. No grills at grocery stores, clothing stores, night clubs, cemeteries (seriously who goes to a cemetery to eat? That's just... ewe!), gyms, art museums, you name it.

If i think it's fitting, i replace them instead with vending machines, burger stands, or nothing at all. No eating at all on cemetery lots. That... is just... stupid!
Lab Assistant
Original Poster
#7 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 6:13 AM
Update: Thank the lord, I think I found something! MATY has a mod called restaurantbarfix. The description says:

1. Sims no longer obsessed with eating at restaurants in endless loops when not full, or drinking coffee when not tired. Also cuts down desire for sims to commit bladdericide from the above.
2. Seats occupied by your sims & bar patrons less likely to clash with host seating assignments, resulting in queue stompage. Queue stompage BAD!

Thank GOD. Hopefully this works. Does anyone use this?
Field Researcher
#8 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 6:23 AM
Darkannie, I agree so much about the stupid grills placed at all community lots! I remove all of them too and especially when my sims buy a business. At first I hadn't realized that there were grills outside the shops and I was wondering where all those flies and roaches came from (lol!)...
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#9 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 6:24 AM
Hope it works for you, I've never found this to be such a problem and I went to plenty of places like Sugar Cube bowling back when I did a legacy for spouse hunting. I was almost going to suggest you might even have a mod problem if all sims do, is eat.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#10 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 6:31 AM
I do not have such a problem either. And what is wrong with grilled hot dogs or ribs? My Sims grill food all the time, even at home (but then we do that in our country in real life too )
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#11 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 6:54 AM
Same here. Also sims don't queue for grills like they do restaurant tables. One will grill and the other come around to eat, but your sim will meet other sims if they sit down with them. Roaches only spawn when trash has been kicked over or dropped, not from dirty plates.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Mad Poster
#12 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 7:31 AM
I don't have the problem either. Your profile says that you don't have AL. I wonder if it was fixed in AL.
Inventor
#13 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 9:13 AM
That's an interesting question, Charity. For a month or so, I ran the Ultimate Collection completely without mods. I don't recall continual dining being an issue, though it might be something that just slipped my notice. I do have restaurantbarfix in my mods folder and I suspect it's been there a while. I vaguely remember installing it more to prevent the bladdercide and potential seating issues. That mod, plus Cyjon's version of noeatcrap, probably covers any holes that might otherwise leave sims too obsessed with food.
Field Researcher
#14 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 9:59 AM
I don't have AL either, and I don't have this problem. My townies do make use of restaurant facilities, of course, and I do sometimes get the situation where the townie I want my sim to interact with is chowing down, but that's only temporary. My sims have rarely had trouble getting to talk to townies.

I tend not to send my sims to restaurants much, though. If I send a sim out prowling for a partner, I tend to send him or her to a nightclub. I built a pocket-size nightclub and dropped copies of it in all my hoods and subhoods, sometimes multiple copies customised with Visitor Controller for teens or single adults. It includes a couple of hot tubs - getting a townie into a hot tub is perhaps the quickest way to build a relationship from scratch. Or a bench - two sims on a bench can chat away for hours.

As for the grilles, I put them on every community lot that doesn't have dining facilities. Including cemeteries. Ghost-hunting can work up quite an appetite.
Alchemist
#15 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 11:01 AM
Well .. maybe they are at the restaurant because they wanna eat? If you wanna find a hook-up or a potential partner then go to the club or the park or something
Theorist
#16 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 11:54 AM
@ animated, if all else fails you could simply make a note of the name of any Sim at a bar or restaurant that your Sim might be interested in, and once your Sim is back home have them use Phae's Phone Book to look up the potential partner's number.

Have your Sim call a few times or when their 'Social' is low, and it shouldn't take long before your Sim can successfully invite them over or out on a date.


“Seize the time... Live now! Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again.” ― Jean-Luc Picard
Mad Poster
#17 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 12:48 PM
Quote: Originally posted by ZenGarden
Well .. maybe they are at the restaurant because they wanna eat? If you wanna find a hook-up or a potential partner then go to the club or the park or something


They said it still happened at the club.

Oops, I do have restaurantbarfix. Well, at least you know it works.
Mad Poster
#18 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 2:00 PM
I don't have restaurantbarfix and have never had this problem. Since some of us need it and some of us don't, I think the function governing the random behavior of your sim gets stuck, possibly as a side effect of some element of your playstyle.

You obviously do have a problem and need the mod. If you continue to have a problem, you could also try changing venues frequently, and going to small lots when the purpose is to meet people. If the lot only has one grill, and the machine doesn't have to spend a lot of time rendering the lot, it'll soon have more people on it than can use the grill and they'll be doing other stuff. Also you can edit these lots - in fact most maxis lots need quite a bit of editing to render them maximally useful. So none of these venues needs to have a food source if you don't want them to.

I wish people in general would get into the habit of saying: "This doesn't work for me" rather than "This is stupid," as it makes people who like that thing feel insulted and defensive. There's nothing stupid per se about having someplace to eat on every lot. I always supply some way to deal with the hunger and bladder motives when I build a community lot, unless the concept of the lot (cf Widespot's Makout Spot) would be violated. You need restaurants at date venues to get past the dine out with want (filling that want is a breakpoint in most dates; unless the couple's established and high-bolting they won't get the higher-level erotic wants till after filling it, though changing venues sometimes serves the same purpose) and if's often necessary, especially when visiting community lots in groups, for someone to need to eat before filling the purpose for which you came to the lot. Nor can I always predict when a sim's going to need to eat - if a sim is exploring a new neighborhood, cruising for dates, or just rerolling a stuck wants panel, one of my favorite things to do is take him on a walk using the "clickable neighbors" feature to take him from one lot to the one next door. If there's food available at every lot I don't have to worry about tracking the hunger bar too closely. One nice bit of CC to render the getting of food less time-consuming, is exenem's food appliances, in the shape of doughnut boxes, buckets of chicken, pizzas, etc., which can be set on a counter and accessed as a buffet. Or you could replace grills with buffet tables, which don't have food on them unless you direct an active sim to serve food, so you can have it if you want it.

This may not fit your playstyle, animated, but if you play more than one family and make sure you use community lots fairly frequently (once or twice per play session on average) from each household you'll soon find that you don't have any problem getting everyone as many acquaintances as you need and then some. When playables appear on community lots in the backgrounds of other people's outings, they remember everyone they meet, and they will meet quite a few people, who will then be available to call for a visit, an outing, or a date. I find that when the game throws obstacles at me, I have a lot more fun thinking of dodges to get around the obstacles than trying to force it to behave according to my initial expectation.

Ugly is in the heart of the beholder.
(My simblr isSim Media Res . Widespot,Widespot RFD: The Subhood, and Land Grant University are all available here. In case you care.)
Mad Poster
#19 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 2:03 PM
Very easy to fix the dinning problem.

Get one of the mods that works for hunger like The Simblender, The Sim Manipulator or InSIMenator mod and place it on the lot in build/buy mode, also both the Manipulator and InSIMenator can be done with menu on your sim if you want to go that route.

Now as soon as you get to the lot use it to fill everyones hunger and now there is no need to feed.

All my Beginning Hoods here at MTS. http://www.modthesims.info/member.php?u=7749491
All my Beginning Hoods as Shopping Districts plus Old Town. http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=523417
MooVille, a tribute to Mootilda and her fabulous lots http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=534158
Top Secret Researcher
#20 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 9:43 PM
I steal their plate when the waiter puts it down and the townie is still sipping the water. It's
1)free food^^
2)REVENGE
3)not necessary to actually eat it, it's enough to interrupt their meal that way and they will stand and leave the table, giving you an opportunity to interact.
Scholar
#21 Old 28th Sep 2015 at 9:49 PM
Quote: Originally posted by PenelopeT
@ animated, if all else fails you could simply make a note of the name of any Sim at a bar or restaurant that your Sim might be interested in, and once your Sim is back home have them use Phae's Phone Book to look up the potential partner's number.

Have your Sim call a few times or when their 'Social' is low, and it shouldn't take long before your Sim can successfully invite them over or out on a date.


thaaaaank you. This mod is a lifesaver!

"Oh look, my grandchild is now an elder. They grow up so fast. Gee, I wonder when I'll finally graduate college." Sims 2
Mad Poster
#22 Old 29th Sep 2015 at 11:53 AM Last edited by AndrewGloria : 30th Sep 2015 at 1:57 AM. Reason: Silly typo: "home" not "hone"
This does happen on my game, but not enough to really be a problem. Occasionally though, like OP, my Sim can't interact with another Sim because the other Sim just keeps eating and ordering more food! It doesn't just affect townies; it also affects playables from families that you're not playing at the moment. I've seen Andrew at a restaurant eating one meal after another! If I interrupt one of these Sims by making them selectable with Dolphin's Control This Sim, it says that they are "autodining", and, when I make them unselectable again, they just go on eating, and queuing up for more food. Sometimes I wonder if this is how some of my Sims grow fat.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quote: Originally posted by PenelopeT
@ animated, if all else fails you could simply make a note of the name of any Sim at a bar or restaurant that your Sim might be interested in, and once your Sim is back home have them use Phae's Phone Book to look up the potential partner's number.

Have your Sim call a few times or when their 'Social' is low, and it shouldn't take long before your Sim can successfully invite them over or out on a date.
This is also useful when you're out with your girlfriend and you spot another really hot female! Just note her name, and give her a ring from home when your girlfriend isn't there.

I really shouldn't encourage this sort of thing, but some of my Romance Sims really do like Phae's phone book. It's §50 well spent.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Theorist
#23 Old 29th Sep 2015 at 4:26 PM
Quote: Originally posted by animated
Update: Thank the lord, I think I found something! MATY has a mod called restaurantbarfix. The description says:

1. Sims no longer obsessed with eating at restaurants in endless loops when not full, or drinking coffee when not tired. Also cuts down desire for sims to commit bladdericide from the above.
2. Seats occupied by your sims & bar patrons less likely to clash with host seating assignments, resulting in queue stompage. Queue stompage BAD!

Thank GOD. Hopefully this works. Does anyone use this?


I also use this mod. I have two custom restaurants where sims go (outings or dates).
If they're looking for a potential mate, they're going to the night club, to the park or the community center.
Meet Me In My Next Life
#24 Old 30th Sep 2015 at 12:52 AM Last edited by Simonut : 30th Sep 2015 at 7:31 AM.
The townies have a right to eat in any place they want, "please" don't throw the townies under the bus, because some of those townies maxis created them with jobs they have Simoleon to spent..
How would you feel if you go to a restaurant to eat and someone came in from another place or perhaps from across the world and on vacation and they are there to eat? Are you going to leave ? They are also townies on a visit

Motto " All food is good to eat in love and in war, all leftover is good to eat if you are hungry, all waste food is good to eat, just call your pet cat or dog, your pet left over is good to eat for the rats, the rats left over food is good for the birds".

"Nothing in life is a Surprise it just happen to come your way at the time".
Field Researcher
#25 Old 30th Sep 2015 at 1:25 AM
My original Sims 2 configuration was Double Deluxe, which said it was a combination of the base game and Nightlife but seems to have a few more things included than that. I also didn't have a problem with meeting townies on restaurant lots. And it looks like the user asking the question already found a Mod that does what they're looking for. Nonetheless, here's my thoughts (might be helpful to file these away for future reference):

(edit/add): I make sure to visit community lots when my Sims' needs are high and/or at least medium since when they return home it's the same time as when they left regardless of how much time they spent on the community lot.

1. I tend to pause the lot as soon as my Sim arrives and townies appear. That way, they have the chance to greet them and maybe get a conversation in before the townie starts walking to the host podium to sit down to eat. This was what I originally did before I discovered downloads at all.
2. As PenelopeT said and I will concur, I also recommend downloading the phone book, taking note of the names of Sims your playable is interested in, and giving them a call later on.
3. Using a teleporter (I use the one from Simlogical), again making a note of the name of the Sim, then teleporting them over to your Sims' place. Yes, this is the least realistic of all the options, but it also works. With the exception of apartment lots, one could use the teleporter in their front yard and make a "story" that the townie in question walked by said house, when your sim decided to greet them.
4. Visit lots with several different social activities, like "Lucky Shack Cards and Drink" or "Rodney's Hideout." I mention these two specifically as they have quite a few social games there, not just the token eating.
5. (Could be "1b") Add a few benches where possible to the areas near the sidewalk or in front of a building. Plop your Sim there so they can greet those who walk by.
6. Create a small lot (ex: 1x3, 2x2) with a minimum amount of decorative content, one social game, and at least one restroom. As I've heard the smaller lots take less resources to load, more townies may appear, and the smaller size means your Sim is more likely to meet them.
(add) 7 (Could be "5b"). Ditto for Essa's visiting the community center idea.
Back to top