Friday, March 2, 2012

Community Lot Skilling.

Tuesday, Yulia went straight home from her store, bought a chessboard, and sat down to increase her Logic so that she could improve her cash register skills.

ScreenShot003

Tuesday evening, the time came for the twins to grow up. Yanastasia was first,

ScreenShot002

ScreenShot005

and grew up into a nice-looking young girl.

ScreenShot006

Her dad immediately taught her how to do homework (using older sister’s Yevgenya’s assignment).

ScreenShot007

Then, it was Yedrek’s turn.

ScreenShot012

Yed was so high in “Active” that he immediately started bowling.

ScreenShot004

Yana showed that she shared the family interest in reading cookbooks

ScreenShot011

Genya got up from her nap just as Yana was going to sleep,

ScreenShot008

and was delighted with the new chessboard.

ScreenShot009

She played chess with her mother well into the night.

ScreenShot010

Wednesday morning, there was so much snow that school was canceled!

ScreenShot001

Genya and Yana enjoyed pelting each other with snowballs,

ScreenShot016

while Yed built a snowman.

ScreenShot017

Once the butler arrived for the day, Yulia left for her store.

She assigned Shelby to the register, and both Bruce and Komei to restocking,

ScreenShot019

and Christian to make more snapdragons, then sat down to play chess with Troy, who had a want to gain a skill point.

ScreenShot018

Very soon, Troy had a Logic point, and with it gained a Gold mood and 1,000 aspiration points, and so was able to get and wear a thinking cap.

ScreenShot020

By evening, the store had reached Rank 9.

ScreenShot021

Yulia noticed that Shelby was in a Red mood, and wanted a skill point,

ScreenShot022

so she sent the young woman on break, which Shelby enjoyed,

ScreenShot024

and took over the register herself.

ScreenShot028

(She had taken the precaution of resetting the prices of all of her merchandise,

ScreenShot023

figuring that “Average” would slow down both the number of customers waiting to be rung up, and the demands on her restockers.)

ScreenShot025

Bruce earned a Silver restocking badge! Yulia congratulated herself for sticking with him, despite his early unsatisfactory performance.

ScreenShot026

Because Yulia was busy on the register, she had Troy, one of her Managers, give Bruce a raise.

ScreenShot027

And soon thereafter, Yulia had Troy close the business for the day, because—though her register skills were supposedly a bit better now that she had maxed out Logic—she still couldn’t keep up with the customers.

She also had Troy send Christian and Shelby home for the day. Troy crawled into one of the tents for some sleep, and Yulia, noticing that Komei wanted to reach Level 5 in Logic, played chess with him for a while, before heading home to her family.

ScreenShot029

_______________________________

NOTES FROM THE AUTHOR:

Thanks very much to SirenPrincess for telling me yesterday that there’s a mod at MATY that allows skilling on community lots! I THINK this is the link below (but today MATY won’t let me in for some bizarre reason (and it accused me of being a "bran muffin" ??? when I tried to register anew!). I agree with SP that this mod is NOT cheating; it’s only reasonable that a Sim should be able to build a lot where she/her employees/her customers can skill. (That’s just real life.)

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11216.0.html

When Yulia was trying to leave the house for her store this a.m., she clicked on her car and got "Go Somewhere". As soon as she passed her kids playing in the snow in the front yard, though, her car interaction disappeared, and the only one available was "Take to School". It was a SNOW DAY!!! So, in order to go to her store for the day, she had no choice but to take the kids to school, even when there was only an hour left in the school day....

Here’s something I always forget—once you promote an employee to Manager, and he becomes controllable, the way to get him to restock is to make him the active Sim, have him click on himself, and pick “Restock”. I was getting frustrated having Yulia click on Troy, then click “Management”, and the “Assign” option wasn’t there. This doesn’t happen with the register, because Yulia can just click on the register and “Assign” comes up. (Same with the flower arranging bench.)

I noticed a pile of shopping bags on the floor, so exited without saving and went back in to see what had happened. Matthew Smith had been the only person in line, and Shelby was at the register, and she still had “Be Cashier” active, but she inexplicably wasn’t ringing Matthew up. I clicked on “Ring Up These Customers”, and she rang up Matthew, but the problem kept happening. Her motives were all fully green (because of the snapdragons), except that her Energy was about half. Her mood was red, though, and she had a want to earn a skill point, so I sent her to play chess.

Remember that raising the merchandise prices temporarily will slow down traffic at the cash register, and also the pace at which the restockers have to keep up with their task. It's up to you what you want to accomplish at any given time--do you want to be selling Ridiculously Cheap items (and thereby increasing the customer loyalty stars/Business Rank), or do you want to take a couple of hours to increase a Sim's register skill without chaos (i.e., littered shopping bags everywhere) ensuing?

Another great thing about Managers is that they can—as Troy did tonight—take over Management functions from your owner. Believe me, Yulia could NOT have spared the time away from the register to give Bruce a raise or close the store for the day!

6 comments:

  1. I'm so glad you like the mod! I like it because it seems to add more realism--you can go to the gym to exercise and gain athletic, go play chess in the park, etc.

    You don't need an account to download mods from MATY. You only need an account if you plan to post, which I do not recommend. You can find all the MATY TS2 mods here http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/board,5.0.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay, is this it:?

    http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,11216.0.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. That was a great day of business. Also, who doesn't love snow days?! It gives kids time to do much more productive things! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have OFB and I haven't noticed the tents in buy mode... do they come with a different expansion, or is that downloadable? Also, will beds work just as well, or do they have to be the tens? I'm enjoying the story, I like the family-themed tutorial, very entertaining:)

    ReplyDelete
  5. The tents came with Bon Voyage, I think (they're a feature of the mountain campground). They're in Buy Mode under Comfort - Miscellaneous. I don't think employees will sleep in beds on community lots, but maybe I'll try that in the next venue.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Alright, thanks! I thought it might be a Bon Voyage feature, but I wasn't sure.

      Delete