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Mad Poster
Original Poster
#251 Old 6th Mar 2017 at 11:02 PM
HELP!!! The Nerdists have just got their bill! It's for §744. They've only got §272. I've got to cheat this one -- they can't even look at that! Bills this high are taking away all the fun of University for my Sims, and seriously depleting my fun too.

I wonder how easy it would be to write a "No Bills in Dorms" mod. An "Affordable Bills in Dorms" mod would be better but I think it would be a lot harder to write. I am trained as a computer programmer, so I ought to be able to learn SimAntics well enough to tackle a simple global mod.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
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Mad Poster
#252 Old 6th Mar 2017 at 11:21 PM
Holey cheese, this looks like it's going to be a regular thing for you Andrew! Maybe you should troubleshoot it - might be the side effect of a mod? I've never heard of anybody getting bills so high in the dorms. And they certainly shouldn't be in one as downmarket as the trailer park where the Nerdists are living.

Oh, if you want to add restaurants to LGU, I made four of them designed to drop into place neatly anywhere on the LGU map.
The diner: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=573294
The bar and grill: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=572918
The small chain restaurant: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=573535
The big chain restaurant: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=573619
Though it doesn't sound like your sims will be able to afford to date till you figure the bills out.

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.)
Field Researcher
#253 Old 6th Mar 2017 at 11:35 PM
This is nuts! Penig's right; I really think you should have a close look at your mods, Andrew, or at any custom furniture you installed in the dorm. I noticed that some of the cheap-looking stuff is cloned from the most expensive items in the Maxis catalogue; the initial buy price was changed, but not the internal sales prices (that you can only see in the OBJD in SimPE), and I'm starting to wonder if that doesn't have a hidden impact on bills.
Mad Poster
#254 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 12:42 AM
Oh yes, influence is a *LOT* of fun at university, and can definitely nudge those beginning romances into full blown love affairs!

Let me check the dorms... I always found custom dorms to have high bills because they tend to be stuffed with items, but I would have thought Peni would have thought of that. I have a couple of bill mod set ups in various hoods, so I'll see how it goes.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Mad Poster
#255 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 12:52 AM
They're reasonably well-equipped dorms, but it's all cheap stuff and I deliberately didn't put in a bunch of skilling items, so the sims would have to visit my community lots. I didn't have bills like that in playtest and no one else has reported it either.

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
#256 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 1:30 AM
OK, test setup LGU, no changes, absolutely no mods whatsoever. Dorms look very similar set up to Maxis, though big. I've created a test group of 3 students.

Dormitory 1: $762

Dormitory 2: $522

Dormitory 3: $534

Maxis (Lot bin) Dorm, smallest: $414 Largest: $318 (but the common area is very small in comparison)

That said, these bills are not surprising to me. Dorms are big lots. What's surprising is that everyone is claiming they are extremely high! I usually play with bill mods, so I was thinking that my judgement was perhaps out but I think I was remembering normal Uni bills correctly.

Do remember that in a vanilla game, the bills come once every 3 days and the students get grants once every 3 days because of their exams. As long as they are not failing, they usually get a few hundred, and it's not difficult to get them good grades which nets them over $1000 each. (My CAS YAs each gained $700 their first semester with me only directing them to study one skill, they got the rest from attending class) The bills are perfectly affordable in this way, it's just that Andrew has increased the timespan of each semester, which hugely stretches out the time between grants. That, to me, calls for an increase in scholarships and grants to compensate or a lowering/stopping of bills. Could you ban the mailperson from the lot? I'm sure there must be an easy way to stop bills on a lot by lot basis. I know that cyjon's bigger bills mod is adjustable using his loan jar item by lot. I wonder if the loan jar would work with normal bills to reduce them.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#257 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 2:15 AM
@simsfreq Could you possibly do me a favour and play the Nerdists on the compound dorm lot and see what bills they get on Day 1? In my game they started of with funds of §278. They spent §6 (§5 for Pescado's College adjuster clock and §1 for the batbox) leaving §272. Then they got bills of §744.

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Mad Poster
#258 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 2:28 AM
Eh, if the bills are a problem, just nuke them without paying with the batbox. (BTDT, when I had that weird glitch between MogHughson's card system and bills for absolutely no reason reproducible by anyone other than gummilutt.)

Pics from my game: Sunbee's Simblr Sunbee's Livejournal
"English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it." C.J. Cherryh
Top Secret Researcher
#259 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 2:43 AM
I recently played LGU, the nerdists are now fresh out of Uni for me but when I played them I don't remember the bills being that high, and I have a 2x bills mod so they'd be twice as high as they normally would be. I believe my bills were around the 400 or so range for them..

Sorry that's no help, hope it gets figured out, that doesn't sound right at all..especially for it to go from $278 to $744

My Simblr
He/They
Mad Poster
#260 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 3:40 AM
I think the thing to do Andrew, would be for you to load up one of the Maxis Universities in your testing hood and test out some students there. If they don't have big bills then it's something about LGU. If they do then it is likely to be because of playing with 'aging off' and you need something to nuke the bills, so you can then decide what would be appropriate for them yourself and take the money out of their funds.

Oh and if you influence your townies into romantic relationships then be careful where you put the JSW Adjuster Bouquet. I had it on a community lot while my sims were having a date and I caught some townies getting naked in the bushes outside. XD
Inventor
#261 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 4:02 AM
Lately, I've been tempted to start yet another custom neighborhood and create a few Sims as young adults right off the bat. I do miss the university life sometimes, as anything can happen to these dormies while my Sim(s) are forced to study in their rooms, and I enjoy it when circumstances pop up. It's due to this mentality that I also love having the cow mascot around. ACR will most likely kick in and create some weird couples (or however many lovers bundled together); I might grow some devil horns and crank up the jealousy knob whenever woohoo is about to commence.
Test Subject
#262 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 6:41 AM
It's not exactly 'cheaty' as it's in-game, but I get around bills and earn students (as well as family homes) an income by making the dorms 'greenstar rated' aka put in solar panels and wind turbines that come with the game. That way they don't have to remain destitute or have to get a menial job if I don't want them to. Not sure if they came with Seasons or M&G now...
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#263 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 7:00 AM
It sounds like Andrew's game is right up to date. It cost my daughter £20,000 to get through Uni, so bills of §700+ seems about right!
Mad Poster
#264 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 7:53 AM
I have not played Peni's Uni yet, so my question: do these Nerdists have living parents? I'd guess not - so they should legally qualify for the orphan bursary. And it should be part of their starting funds. Kaching, kaching.
Mad Poster
#265 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 10:27 AM
Ah! I missed the Compound Dorm. I only downloaded the unpopulated version, but my test sims get charged $768. They didn't get bills on the first day they moved in, but the second day at 10am.

I don't think that the problem is caused as such by ageing off, but to reiterate. My sims went to a final exam the same day they received the bills. Because they had been moving around a lot, they had missed several classes and did poorly on the exams. However, they each got grants of $400, $500 and $700. Even if they'd gone to this exam 72 hours after move-in, rather than immediately, that still would have been fewer than 72 hours after the bills had arrived.

In addition, as sims straight from YACAS with no scholarships, they had $500 each making a total of $1500.

I don't think that the game is glitching; it's just that your students don't have a steady source of income which is timed exactly in sync with bill delivery. It seems that the designers set it up so that sims would be unlikely to run out of money even though the bills are higher than a similar sized house in the main hood.

Interestingly, I just transferred Peni's Dormitory 1 to a residence in the main hood and the bills are $286...when I deleted everything behind a Myne door, the cost went down to $148!

So, yes, now I see the alarm... I wonder if anyone knows how the bills are created. Does anyone feel like some maths experiments??

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Mad Poster
#266 Old 7th Mar 2017 at 4:25 PM Last edited by simsfreq : 7th Mar 2017 at 4:50 PM.
I've done some research, looked through various old threads and found the file which needs to be changed. It's a simple BCON edit, and I am pretty confident I can make that mod for you. I'll upload it to MTS which does mean it will need to go through the queue. I'll let you know when I've finished testing Edit: In fact, I'll need some kind people without UC to test it in AnyGame for me, so I'll upload to creator feedback first. I'm sure, Andrew, if you decide to test it, nobody should mind if you keep it.

In the meantime, you may wish to grab Cyjon's Debugger. It's a handy little item which doesn't do anything on its own but allows you to view various numbers about the game, one of which is the expected bill value. http://cyjon.net/node/148 (Don't use the Fix Student function, you're not using Cyjon's Semester Changes.)

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
Mad Poster
Original Poster
#267 Old 8th Mar 2017 at 10:11 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Raindrop_D
This is nuts! Penig's right; I really think you should have a close look at your mods, Andrew, or at any custom furniture you installed in the dorm. I noticed that some of the cheap-looking stuff is cloned from the most expensive items in the Maxis catalogue; the initial buy price was changed, but not the internal sales prices (that you can only see in the OBJD in SimPE), and I'm starting to wonder if that doesn't have a hidden impact on bills.
One mod I have which might cause problems with bills is MogHughson's Postal System. However when it glitches bills, I believe it produces astronomical bills of millions of Simoleons, whereas my bills, while extortionate, could conceivably be paid, but will give my Sims a life of unremitting toil and worry, with no time for any sort of pleasure -- precisely what I don't want for them. Peni's dorms are quite well-appointed, but they come CC-free -- it's all Maxis base game and Uni stuff. The only object I've added to the dorms so far are the object mods I need t play the game the way I want: the batbox and the college adjuster clock by Pescado, and Aaroneous's Sim Manipulator. The college clock is clearly cloned from the rather expensive grandfather clock, so I had a look at in in SimPE. This was the result (in decimal notation to make it easier for us humans to understand):

Code:
price                   5
sale price              35
initial depreciation    525
daily depreciation      0
self depreciating       0
depreciation limit      5


The sale price and (especially) the initial depreciation seem a bit high, but I don't know how the game uses these values. For the Sim Manipulator the price and depreciation values were all zero. I haven't checked the batbox, but it certainly doesn't look as if it was cloned from an expensive Maxis item! Anyway, in the light of simsfreq's posts (posted since I started writing mine) it seems unlikely that it's a glitch in my game causing my problems.

simsfreq, those bills are really quite consistent with the ones my Sims are getting. Your Sims in the Compound Dom were hammered for even more than mine! What made it worse for the Nerdists is that Peni had already pre-played them for about 18 hours of their first semester, and they seem to have spent most of their money in their first day. To get bills for §744, when you've only got §272 is pretty upsetting! What is making it especially difficult in my game is that the bills are arriving too often. The boys in dorm 1 got bills on day 1 and day 2. Even if I had been playing 3 day semesters, that would still have used up nearly all of their §1,000 grant money. Fortunately they made nearly §300 working as baristas on the Hipster Quad, so they still have something left. They got no bills on day 3 (because the postman never came?) but that still leaves them spending nearly all their grant money on bills. So they are meant to get bills only once per semester? I could certainly live with that. Even if they only came every 3 days would be a help. I don't know why they get bills so often. I wonder if me stopping the semester clock confuses the game into thinking it's still day 1. I don't actually have aging off in the university 'hood. I'm sure I once read that Maxis advised against doing that. But I freeze the semester clock, which has much the same effect. I am though a bit tempted to turn aging off, because, according to Pescado's documentation, if aging is off, the semester timer will stay frozen on community lots, as long as their is an adjuster clock on the lot. At the moment, each time my Sims arrive at a community lot, I have to find the college adjuster clock and freeze it. I'm still feeling my way towards finding a way to play university that suits me -- and my Sims.

You definitely have a point about me needing to find a way to finance my Sims through much longer semesters than maxis intended. I really don't enjoy playing Sims with serious money problems -- that's too much like Real Life. Justpetro has a point about the Nerdists not having living parents. Actually that applies to most pre-made students, CAS students, ex-dormies and most townies. (I occasionally create townies with relationships.) That is an excuse to give extra money to a lot of students.

In the longer term I also feel I may have to look at mods to make uni harder. That goes very much against the grain -- I generally don't get mods to make life worse for my Sims -- I like the company of fulfilled happy Sims. But Maxis university really is geared to 3 day semesters. If I want my semesters to be closer to real life ones, it probably won't help if you can get top grades by working hard for 3 days and then spend the next 6 months going to wild all-night parties! (Andrew says that's a great idea! )

Yes @simsfreq, I'd like to help test any mod that brings these outrageous bills under control. My full game consists of base game, University, Nightlife, OFB and the Celebration stuff pack. I currently have an AGS base game "permagame", but I could use AGS to set up other EP combinations up to my maximum. I'd also be very grateful if you could share with me how you do it, as I really think it's time I learned more about BHAV/BCON modding. As I mentioned, I was seriously thinking about trying to fix it myself. At the moment I can open mods in SimPE and look at the coding, but I don't know where to look for the Maxis code.

Quote: Originally posted by simsample
It sounds like Andrew's game is right up to date. It cost my daughter £20,000 to get through Uni, so bills of §700+ seems about right!
Too true!

But I really don't want to put my poor Sims through the sort of financial gruelling that modern British students have to face! When I went to university myself in the1980's, I tremendously enjoyed the experience both academically and socially. I was in my 30's and got a "mature student's allowance" on top of the normal maximum grant. We didn't think so at the time but, in retrospect it seems like Shangri-La in comparison to what's going on now. My Sim students should enjoy university at least as much as I did, if not more!

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Mad Poster
#268 Old 8th Mar 2017 at 11:27 AM Last edited by RoxEllen1965 : 8th Mar 2017 at 6:36 PM. Reason: Add description of magic wand
Andrew - Have you tried using Pescado's Magic Wand? It sets all objects on the lot to their maximum depreciated value and that usually reduces bills by quite a bit. Also turns on all lights on the lot and corrects any lot value bugginess associated with using the Stay Things Shrub (I don't expect that this would be a problem with Land Grant University).

Pick the folder for your latest EP and look for magicwand.zip. NOTE: This object is found ONLY in the collection folder that comes with it - don't try to find it in the Buy Mode catalog. Use it by picking it up and holding it on your lot for a few seconds, then drop it or delete it.

Edited to add description so those who haven't used it before can find it : The collections folder has an OFB icon on it and the tooltip for it says "MAGIC WAND COLLECTION!". The magic wand object itself actually looks like a yellow placeholder cube and costs $1.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/

Also recommended: Cyjon's Debugger. This has many useful functions, including Information > Appraise Lot. This will tell you in advance how much your bills will be on any inhabited residential, dorm or apartment lot. Works whether you're using a billing mod or not.
http://www.cyjon.net/node/148
Mad Poster
#269 Old 8th Mar 2017 at 1:49 PM
You know, I don't remember the Nerdists spending any money? They should have had $1500 as a group, and it would be odd if they spent $1300 of it on coffee. I wonder what I did with it? I often wish I could rewind gameplay and check things that sailed past me at the time. I don't track money very well in the game because my mind doesn't do numbers - I literally cannot remember them if they aren't ingrained by repetition over a long period.

I actually made parents for all the LGU students, but haven't gotten around to submitting them for upload here as they were a followers' gift for my tumblr. If you don't want them to be orphans, they needn't be, and the Greek bios reference living parents. But if you're looking for an excuse to kaching them, the orphan's assistance grant is an obvious one.

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
#270 Old 9th Mar 2017 at 5:17 AM
There are several sorts of scholarships your sims could conceivably have, had they been playable. The A+ one is the most obvious, especially at the Nerdists.
Bills coming every day is not normal, however. That should be investigated. They should come once a semester, every three days. (My semesters are modded to two days, so mine don't even get bills every semester.) When I had the postal system glitch, the bills were always the same, $26,000-odd on any affected lot. Not all lots were affected, which was one reason it was a pain to track down. (Another was that the most recently installed hack was Inteen . . .)

Andrew, if I were you, I'd give them ample kachings to get the bills paid for now or nuke them with the batbox, so you can just have fun. Call it a gift from your boys in Veronaville . . . aren't they millionaires? From everything you've written about them, I'm sure they'd give scholarships to help other sims enjoy college.

Pics from my game: Sunbee's Simblr Sunbee's Livejournal
"English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it." C.J. Cherryh
Mad Poster
#271 Old 10th Mar 2017 at 10:45 AM Last edited by simsfreq : 10th Mar 2017 at 11:09 AM.
Unfortunately I didn't have much luck in reducing the bills through a mod. The setting I thought would do it, didn't, and none of the others did anything at all. I thought the bills were getting lower, but then I realised it was just depreciation (you'll be pleased to know they went down to around $400 over a week or so.) From comments on Simbology, I think AncientHighway figured it out but it was a long time ago, and if he did, he didn't share a lower/no bills mod. You could try asking him. I'm afraid that modifying bhavs are completely beyond me.

I think that the coding for bills on university lots is just broken. In my game, they came on Tuesday and Thursday, assuming that the day of move-in was Monday. But other people report once every 3 days, daily, or none at all.

While I love Mog's mods, many of them do have unexpected features, and I don't think she's in the community any more to ask.

If you use the visitor controller perhaps you could allow one delivery of bills per semester and ban the mailman after that. Edit: According to The Sims Wiki, deleting the mailman on sight also prevents bill delivery. If you're fast, that could work.

I use the sims as a psychology simulator...
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