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!
Scholar
Original Poster
#1 Old 28th Jan 2017 at 11:27 PM
Default Special/Life Skills from Apartment Life (i.e. physiology) - From what aspects does you make them study these skills?
I'm referring to the Special or Life Skills you can learn from the bookcase when having Apartment Skills: Parenting, Couple Counseling, Fire Prevention, Physiology, Anger Management, Lifelong Happiness

Personally I'm a bit lazy when it comes to skilling sims in general as usually I give them with cheats such as InSim when I feel they would be useful. Like for example, male sims entering military usually get the physiology skill which boost their body skills (no, not the unfixed version, which they seems to learn it within a few seconds! ) and all family oriented sims tends to get the Parenting skills, Occasionally plop in fire study as well. I rarely seems to bother the others.

But, after playing the Warwickshire challenge, all skills along with badges tends to affect the scoring of various aspect of that challenge such as medicine and education, so if cheating it up by adding the skills with InSim, some scores tends to become too high for some off the social ranked families (like poverty servants) as previously, almost all of my sims was skilled enough to become an professional teacher and doesn't seems to be so realistic or make sense.

"Normal" skills like body and cooking and badges like cleaning, I usually let the sims learn them whenever they want unless when it fits the type-of-sim I had in mind for them, I direct them to it as well as certain activities which I use no-autonomy hacks for but Life Skills such as Parenting and Physiology are not autonomous (yeah, there might be mods for this, but that's not what I'm asking), the sims would never learn them on their free will.

So a general thread: IF you use those skills, from what aspects does your sims study the Special/Life Skills from AL?
Advertisement
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#2 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 12:05 AM
They study if they roll a want to study them. Well except for a few sims who needs them for their career. My day care and midwife have to study parenting, my firefighters fire safety, my minister does life long happiness and couple counseling.

"I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives." - Unknown
~Call me Jo~
Field Researcher
#3 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 12:17 AM
I use priviledge and life stage to determine if sims will study those skills. Sims who are middle class and above have the oportunity to study them, poor sims do not. Then I generally have sim kids study fire safety and physiology, as I consider safety and health something they would learn in school. I think I'm going to start limiting physiology to sim kids with 5 or more active points from now on too. I don't have any chubby kids and that's not realistic.

College is where I have sims study anger management, and sims who started out poor can get fire and phys here if they've made it to college. They can also study couples counseling here if it fits with their major, otherwise it depends on if a couple they know is in trouble or if they roll a want to study it.

Lifelong happiness I save for middle-age or elder sims. If they are well adjusted and ready to face the latter years of their pixel lives, I have them study it, so that depends on aspiration.

I hope that gives you a few ideas!

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is a severely disabling neurological, cardiac and metabolic disease.
The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E. is fighting for patients to be given recognition and appropriate medical care.
Please visit hfme.org for more information.
Scholar
Original Poster
#4 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 12:43 AM
Rielynn71. Well, I also tends to have kids study fire prevention as a habit and to "encourage" Sims to study them at certain life stages would work for my gaming style as I'm not much of a "play by want" simmer (which many seems to be) as I rarely see Life skills beside parenting as a want (more of a strategic simmer with a "touch" of realism). I also don't play with regular careers as my Sims are usually self-employed and assign to the max level of one of those custom career used for business owners and staying home parents so they don't get regular skills wants from promotion either. I use autonomy hacks for hobbies so Badges are easier to get that way, especially with seasons. (I.e kids love planting stuff apparently during spring ).

So doing it the fullfill want way would make most of them dummies with lack of intelligence. The challenge I play use them alot when determining their educational and medical skills such as Healers and Simlogical School system, but it gets boring when cheating and randomize as they get TOO intelligent too fast from doing this and most teen had roughly same knowledge as high school teachers or could become proffessors as graduates when I calcuated their scores. Sure, some kids have high IQ but not the majority.
Mad Poster
#5 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 8:09 AM
People enroll for courses teaching Life skills voluntarily all the time in RL, though - so the wants to learn life skills are not unrealistic? My Sims normally would only study these skills if they roll the want and if they have time between work and other responsibilities. They would also never sit down and study those for hours , but rather for a little while daily.
Mad Poster
#6 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 4:41 PM
Usually if they roll a want to learn them. Although I've noticed a lot of my parent sims (who wish to study parenting) don't tend to get a chance to, because they're too busy... well... parenting.

~Your friendly neighborhood ginge
Needs Coffee
retired moderator
#7 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 9:36 PM
They can roll the want as grandparents as well.

"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
#8 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 9:39 PM
I had a Sim who could give couple counselling - he was not very good at it
Scholar
#9 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 9:47 PM
I usually allow AL-skill learning by want, though in a few cases I don't wait for the want.

Jenny Smith's eventual 19-child family would have been impossible had I not decided after child #6 that she needed to know what to do with these youngsters (her husband and eldest son did not appear to need lessons, which was great until I decided their ambitions really needed the family to be split) into three houses. I think that would be Florentzina's "strategic Simmer" kicking in).

There was an ordinance at one point that all teens had to study Fire Safety, but it didn't take off and was eventually dropped.

Also, someone who wishes to learn how to cure cybersickness (a severe illness that as far as I know is unique to SimHampton) has to learn 4 of the AL-esque skills: Fire Safety, Physiology, Lifelong Happiness and Parenting. To date, only one Sim (Celiné Chii) has ever qualified to be a cybersickness healer.
Scholar
Original Poster
#10 Old 29th Jan 2017 at 10:08 PM
As far as age goes, I prefer my sims learning them when they are between teen, ya and early adult as otherwise they would be pointless with the score system I use and playing medieval theme, they rarely reach elder, which is 66 with an simlogical ageicon I modified with longer age adult span and shorter child and teen stages.. Because I don't see any point having sims study skills or badges that are specifically used for specific career. Most of my sims become parents early and I don't use fire alarms, so fire prevention and parenting study are easy to deal with. Physiology too as its important for my military and medical sims.

Btw, Justpetro. What part of the thread did you talk about: "so the wants to learn life skills are not unrealistic", didn't understand what that sentence is referring to. None of the comments above talked about RL studies regarding those skills. Personally, I use wants as inspiration rather than "you sim can only learn it if he/she roll it" method as I rarely or rather NEVER see those wants, even when using 6 slots. If a sim only roll certain life wants as elder, then my sims would never learn them as most of them wouldn't live long enough for that or in a health state where they are not allowed skillings.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 30th Jan 2017 at 12:06 AM
Every sim who needs to cook on stove learns fire safety first. It doesn't prevent setting stove on fire but sim knows what to do.
Learning physiology depends of sim's personality and need of body skill. Stephen Tinker needs to learn it to get promoted in Law Enforcement career and remain fat.
Lifelong Happiness is more like award for sims with platinum aspiration.
Couple Counseling depends again from personality and very few sims get that learned.
I don't see any reason to learn parenting. When sim has this wish they need actually be with their babies and not to sit reading a book.
Scholar
Original Poster
#12 Old 30th Jan 2017 at 2:19 PM Last edited by Florentzina : 30th Jan 2017 at 4:04 PM.
Annaminna.
I guess I'm the opposite when it comes to WHAT skills my sims studies as I don't see any of Couple Counseling
'as I find it rude when people trying to "repair" couples relationships (unless its their own spouse), particulary when it comes to cheat. "now, now, your husband/wife was just lonely, so thats why he/she cheated". (a common excuse I hear in real life, never been in such situation though). Mind your own
business, simmies (the sims, not the simmers). ;-) Other than careers that helps a persons mental problems (pshyciatrist?) I don't see any good use of that skill at all.

As for parenting, sims can always study them little at the time, so even if the sim have a infant, it shouldn't hurt to be able to read a book a little bit, occasionally.
Mad Poster
#13 Old 30th Jan 2017 at 4:07 PM
I wasn't that one who disagreed. I think I need explain.
Parenting doesn't give anything except +1 interaction with baby. As I use Romancemod and no ACR in sight, my families have few children and I am not forcing them to have many and baby age lasts only 2 days.
As I said Couple Counseling is very rare and i really choose who will learn it. It worked out though, when my sims started to insult each other from absolutely nothing (in example from dirty joke) and their relationship went very down and i saw how after counseling by their best friend they went to apologize.
I did miss anger management, I will let it learn only if it is needed.
Scholar
Original Poster
#14 Old 30th Jan 2017 at 4:17 PM
It seems like somebody else who disagreed several posts and noticed that AFTER commenting, so I wasn't arguing about your comment just found it amusing when simmers think so different about different aspect, in this case skills.

I find parenting useful because you no longer need to figure out what the baby want and it affect all babies and "check it", which is good when literary breeding them. In my games, baby's also last 2 days, so I can understand its just a 1-2 kids, but it adds up when its 4-6. Normally, I tends to overpopulating the households, but with the challenge I play, I've to be more careful with how many they get. It also boost the sims midwife/doctor and teaching level so I've all family sims learn it, along with fire prevention when they are teen. (or try to do, as I am always tempting to cheat it with InSim. )

Reading about each life skills on wikia, it doesn't says much about what they do and when you roll them, so I find the others confusing.
Mad Poster
#15 Old 30th Jan 2017 at 7:27 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Florentzina
As far as age goes, I prefer my sims learning them when they are between teen, ya and early adult as otherwise they would be pointless with the score system I use and playing medieval theme, they rarely reach elder, which is 66 with an simlogical ageicon I modified with longer age adult span and shorter child and teen stages.. Because I don't see any point having sims study skills or badges that are specifically used for specific career. Most of my sims become parents early and I don't use fire alarms, so fire prevention and parenting study are easy to deal with. Physiology too as its important for my military and medical sims.

Btw, Justpetro. What part of the thread did you talk about: "so the wants to learn life skills are not unrealistic", didn't understand what that sentence is referring to. None of the comments above talked about RL studies regarding those skills. Personally, I use wants as inspiration rather than "you sim can only learn it if he/she roll it" method as I rarely or rather NEVER see those wants, even when using 6 slots. If a sim only roll certain life wants as elder, then my sims would never learn them as most of them wouldn't live long enough for that or in a health state where they are not allowed skillings.


Think it was more a general remark - I play to wants anyway, and some Sims, like some people, generally like to learn life skills
Scholar
#16 Old 30th Jan 2017 at 8:53 PM
I generally require all Sims to learn Fire Safety and Parenting (in that order), although I only tell them to do so if they don't have a specific Want to learn a regular skill or one of the other life skills, so some Knowledge Sims seem to miss out.

The other life skills are usually learned only if the Sim rolls a Want to learn them, although in Sheffield (my high unemployment neighbourhood) I do have a lot of Sims studying the other life skills simply for something to do when they have no jobs, no small children underfoot, and no interest in learning regular skills.
Mad Poster
#17 Old 31st Jan 2017 at 1:22 AM
I've got some pixels who autonomously learn the skills by themselves..mostly knowledge ones who love to read..so if they have spare time, they will.

Receptacle Refugee & Resident Polar Bear
"Get out of my way, young'un, I'm a ninja!"
Grave Matters: The funeral podium is available here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/e6tj...albits.zip/file
My other downloads are here: https://app.mediafire.com/myfiles
Alchemist
#18 Old 2nd Feb 2017 at 9:56 PM
Some of them I never use, like Anger Management and Couple's Counseling. I never remember Anger Management when I'm actually in a household that picks fights regularly and could use it and, similarly, I don't use Couple's Counseling because when am I ever going to remember to send sims to see the sim that actually learned it, after their spouse cheats on them? It always seemed very situational to me, so I never bothered. But maybe I'll create a busybody sim one of these days and they'll go around meddling in people's relationships.

As for Physiology, occasionally my sims learn this, when they roll a want for it and/or I don't actually want to waste time skilling for body points. Romance and pleasure sims are more likely to learn it for that reason. Knowledge sims who roll a want to learn it usually only do so after learning body points the hard way--more aspiration points that way! Fire Safety I don't really do anymore, since I didn't really see an effect and because I like being able to kill my sims with fire when I need to. :D

I like the check on infant thing, though so some of my sims do learn Parenting, family sims and grandparents, if they roll for it and all my college sims--it's part of their curriculum. Graduating sims learn parenting and have to have 5 points of every skill, though I may change that now that I've installed a harder university mod. Finally, only bored elders learn Lifelong Happiness.

"May the sunlight find you, thy days be long, thy winters kind, thy roots be strong." -Grand Oak Tree, DAO

XPTL Mod Archive | Change a Mod's Mesh into a CC Object | Increasing the Game Difficulty | Editing ACR 4 Your Age Mod
Bored? Read an unfinished legacy or sim story. | aka Kelyns | she/her
Back to top