Build a Penal Colony

Post Reply
User avatar
MichelleCYoung
Posts: 1624
Joined: August 15th, 2014, 6:12 am
9

Post Counts

Build a Penal Colony

Post by MichelleCYoung »

So, I got to thinking about building a prison, and this just naturally came out of it. Build a Penal Colony! Warning, setup requires mods and/or cheating, but nothing too onerous.

Background: Decades (or centuries - take your pick) ago, the Dread Cow of Simtopia attacked the Grand Llama of Simvania, and the war ravaged both lands for years. At last, Simtopia bombed the Grand Llama's summer home in the island province of Simbia. The dirty bomb destroyed all buildings on Simbia, and poisoned the land for many years to come. The nearby island of Simber was not hit directly, but was close enough to be destroyed in the blast radius, and was also poisoned, but to a lesser degree.

Now, the Grand Llama and his Councill of Ellders want their summer homes back. The Corps of Engineers have been sending robotic worker drones to clean up all the rubble on the islands and testing the environment for poison, and they are now 68% certain that Simbia could support sim life. This level of certainty is NOT good enough for the leaders of Simvania, but they need some sims to test it out. So, they have decided to form a penal colony in Simbia. Since Simbia was hit the worst, once it is safe (read: Once Simbia reaches 50,000 population, according to BACC rules), they'll know for sure that Simber is just fine for them to rebuild for the use of actual Simvanian citizens.

In Simvania, anyone who commits a crime, such as theft, embezzlement or playing their music too loud, is summarily executed by CowPlant (thus keeping the Grand Llama, the Councill of Ellders, and their families alive and youthful), so clearly, criminals are the ideal candidates to test the lethality of the island province, since they are "dead," anyway, and have lost their citizenship. The Councill, therefore, chooses eight adult sims, young, healthy, and fertile, and places them in a processing center on Simbia.

The processing center is the last remaining ruin on the island. The worker drones have demolished all the other ruined buildings, and gathered all the scraps together in four piles around the island (place four 3x3 lots with a bonfire on each), from which the prisoners will be able to use the salvage to build their own homes, after processing. Build your processing center/prison in a ruined state: There are mods for ruined doors/windows/wall coverings. Use them, or just the cheapest stuff, but generally make it look as trashy as you can. Alternately, Bon Voyage bamboo and leaves for wall and floor coverings make a good "we just pulled this together from the land" sort of look. Log cabin works, too.

Design the prison with free will in mind, as your adults will be allowed only two commands per day for the first week. Yes, all of them. This is not an asylum with a keeper. ALL the prisoners are on free will for a week. Slmlogical prison/school downloads would be ideal for this, as are Paladin's Palace business mods, which allow automatically refilled buffets. Also, you are allowed to cheat when building the prison, to supply career rewards, including the Resurrect-o-Nomitron ("bone phone") or get the purchasable one (I think it's ModTheSims?). If one of your prisoners dies during the processing week, then at midnight, you may cheat to teleport in one of the Grand High Witches or the NPC of your choice, make them selectable, and make them resurrect (at $10,000, so kaching ten times or use FamilyFunds to get the money) the dead sim. The sim has lost whatever skilling/relationship building time he would have had, had he stayed alive, but ALL the inmates are to be alive and kicking at the end of processing. Start your building with all 8 prisoners on the lot, and one "motherlode" cheat.

Note: The townies/downtownies (and vacation sims, if you choose to load the vacation neighborhoods), are other prisoners being held at an off-shore detention facility, that was once an oil derrick, but has been refurbished and repurposed as prisoner holding. While your founding prisoners are testing the long-term effects of living permanently on the island, your off-shore prisoners are testing the long-term effects of visiting occasionally, and they are randomly dropped off on the island for brief stints, before being brought back to the off-shore detention facility. They are being force-fed Elixir of Life to keep them going, long-term, and carefully monitored (this explains the presence of townies/downtownies/NPCs and any visiting vacation/locals that show up). Children and teens are capable of committing crimes, such as jaywalking and not getting off the Grand Llama's lawn, so that explains their presence there, as well. These "orphans" have lost their citizenship, and been taken from their families, to take part in the experiment.

Processing is a time for them to autonomously build skills and relationships. The week starts on Monday, and on Sunday is the wedding day. The Grand Llama is old-fashioned (read: reactionary and despotic), and insists that all male prisoners be married to a woman. Mind you, he doesn't care if they are straight, gay or bi; they just have to be married to a woman. SimBlender is good for this, as you can assign a married relationship, regardless of the sims' actual relationship or sexuality. So, on Sunday, sometime during the day, the marriages are announced. The Grand Llama, in is infinite mercy, will allow the men to choose their brides, IF they have at least two bolts and best friend status with the woman. However, if they have not achieved that, or if more than one man has achieved that level with the same woman (somebody has to lose), then a bride will be chosen for them, from among the female prisoners. The pairings are arranged and performed. (If you don't use SimBlender to marry them, an alternate way is to put in "Boolprop TestingCheatsEnabled true" in the neighborhood screen, then load up the lot, and you can drag the relationship bars high enough for love and marriage, have the wedding, and then drag the relationship levels back to where they were before the wedding. Whatever it takes to get them both married and back to their original level. Married sims who hate each other is perfectly fine for this scenario!)

After the weddings, each man takes his wife and claims one of the 3x3 plots of land, with scrap heap, and builds his family shelter. Every Wednesday and Saturday, the prisoners and their descendants will have the opportunity to trade with the regularly scheduled trading ships. They can sell artifacts that they dig up (a lot of stuff got buried by erosion and explosion, after all), or anything that they create/catch/harvest/find or otherwise earn, and they can buy things from the Build/Buy catalog. Each man is issued the following: One tent, one fully-stocked food cooler (junky fridge), one counter, one grill, one table, two chairs, one bookcase, one toilet, one bathtub, one sink (free-standing) one mirror (cheap), one floor lamp, one wall lamp (candles or oil lamps would be fitting here - low-tech), one cheap telescope, one easel, two side-tables, one cheap stereo (the $99 boombox), and one desk phone (or one side table and one wall phone - your choice). These are the ONLY items you can buy from the Buy Catalog. You may choose anything from the Build Catalog that is within your price range and looks appropriately trashy, because everything you build comes from your "scrap heap." Burn the bonfire at the end of the day, or delete it. If you don't have the expansion pack to allow you a bonfire, then either use decor (and then delete it), for pictures, or just imagine the scrap pile and take your pictures around it. If you have Seasons, set them to all four seasons, but you are free to choose the rotation order.

For extra fun, if you have SimBlender or another mod that will allow you to rename your sims, your men will be assigned last names on Sunday, based on how well they succeeded at your choice of competition/goals during processing. So, you could have the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta families, or the Winner, Second, Third, Loser families, or whatever you choose. This ranking may be merely "cosmetic," or be the basis of a class system. Again, your choice. I highly recommend this, if at all possible, because it allows each man to have his own last name, and each household to have a different last name, as you play through.

Breeding Program: Every man is required by law to have an heir and a spare. This does not mean two children. This means two sons. He may have as many or as few daughters as he likes, but he MUST have two (or more) sons. These may be born from his wife, adopted (either via the adoption menu or by using the Tombstone of Life and Death to add a baby, toddler, child or teen to the family - ideal if you want to keep the family small or just hate children, because you can choose to have two boys quickly, and even jump straight to teen this way), or alien babies. Adoption and alien babies are considered legitimate and part of the "bloodline," which is excellent for those sims who can't stand their mates, or whose sexuality does not align. Any children fathered on a woman (or man, if you have same-sex or male pregnancy mods installed) who is not his wife are considered illegitimate and do not count toward his legally mandated heir and spare, although they are considered "bloodline" for any such purposes you may decide to play. All legitimate children count for the legally mandated breeding requirements, but illegitimate children do not. However, illegitimate children DO add to the population, and so are smiled upon by the Grand Llama.

Processing: As the children grow up, they are all required to spend a week in the processing center, either as adults or as teens. Teens who volunteer to go to the processing center early (use Simlogical's School controllers, if you want, and you may need to assign an adult staff member to house them - you MAY choose an NPC to move in for this purpose, or assign a playable, but only if they are not being used for breeding purposes at home - that is, they have already done their breeding and are free to be single), are given a reward of being allowed FIVE commands per day, rather than the adult's two. Also, once you have established a university, only teens who have been properly processed are allowed to attend. They will have their mates assigned to them at the end of processing, although they must wait until they are adults to actually get married. If you do not have a perfect balance of male/female island prisoners, you will have to assign mates from the townies/downtownies/NPC population. Use any randomization technique you like, or just choose based on your own preferences. The minimum requirement is that the teens must be acquainted with their assigned spouse before they check out of the processing center on Sunday. If that means you teleport in an NPC for them to meet, just before they check out, that's fine. They can "woo" their spouse later.
Note: Unlike the original founding prisoners, these sims MAY be killed during processing, and stay dead, unless someone in the processing center chooses to revive them.

Use standard BACC rules for establishing community lots and Sim Multiplier numbers, as well as for reaching the end-goal of 50,000 living sims in the penal colony. Once your colony reaches 50,000 living sims, it is considered successful enough to be welcomed back into Simvania, and its inhabitants are once more granted citizenship. However, there are limitations, not found in the standard BACC rules:

1 - Each household may purchase ONLY ONE community lot per week. So, if your sim has a Lifetime Want of owning 5 top level businesses, that will take at least four weeks to achieve, including a home-based business. Likewise, they may only sell ONE business to the community, per week. They may do both during the same week.
2 - Doing the "Downtown Time Warp" is limited. Each sim is allowed to spend only one week of Downtown Time, per week. No hopping around downtown for months at a time, racking up the skill points and date rewards, and building up the family business, while no time has passed at home. You can do it for up to one week, per sim. One week of downtown time, per week played, is probably sufficient to build up a family business, have a sufficiency of dates, meet people, and do things, but the limit serves two purposes - a) slows down the sims' individual progress, and b) keeps the rotations flowing faster.
If you want to build up the family business, and are willing to spend the time, you may want to send one family member at a time to run the business, thus extending the time the business may be open during the rotation.
3 - NO CAS sim points will be earned. You build your population by breeding and moving/marrying in non-playable sims or Sim-Binners. If you move in a Sim-Binner, move in the entire family, at once. If there is no room in the household to move in the entire SimBin family (such as the Ottomas family, which is full), then if you get the option to move in one of that Sim-Bin family, you may, instead, place that Sim-Bin family on their own 3x3 lot, keeping the family intact.
Note: Moved in/married in sims who join the family as adults do not need to go through processing first. They have been processed at the off-shore detention facility.
4 - Travel is restricted until the first born-in-game or adopted child finishes adult processing or leaves university. Once the 2nd generation reaches full adulthood, travel to vacation destinations is allowed, but no more than one trip per household per week.
5 - When you have earned a University, do not use a pre-made university that comes with SimBin and playable students. Create your own university, or download a pre-built university that does NOT have any SimBin or playable students. Brainania at ModTheSims is a great choice for this, as it does not even contain "dormies," and you have to create your own. University community lots are only accessible by students, and cannot be owned, so they do not count toward the BACC community lot count, nor do they need to be earned, individually. When the college is earned, it comes complete.

These limitations will slow down the progress of the BACC, because this is a penal colony, and it's not supposed to thrive at first.

There are two things that will slow down the population growth of the penal colony: Simbia Sickness and Murder. :diablo:

Simbia Sickness: The land is, indeed, still poisonous. Remember the engineers being 68% certain that the land was safe for sim-life? Each sim who comes to live permanently in Simbia, whether as an initial prisoner, born into the game, or moved/married into a Simbia family, will have to face the disease. Every inhabitant of Simbia gets two weeks of incubation, where they will certainly not die of Simbia Sickness. For this purpose, go by calendar weeks. If a Sim moves in or is born on a Saturday, their first week of incubation will be very short. Basically, the incubation timer resets every Monday morning. Any sim who is permanently platinum, via Lifetime Want, Lifetime Happiness, or Peace of Mind, has become immune to Simbia Sickness. All other sims (those past their incubation period and NOT permanently platinum), will be entered into whatever randomizing system you choose, and names will be drawn each week, at a rate of 32% of the eligible sim population. So, if you have 100 eligible sims (not Sim Multiplier, but actual playable sims!), you will pick 32 of them to kill off! These sims will then be killed (use Boolprop TestingCheatsEnabled true, and spawn the Death Creator, kill the sim with Death By Disease, and then delete the Death Creator). When your penal colony reaches 5,000 sims, you will reduce the sickness lottery to 25%. At 10,000 sims, the rate will be 20%. At 20,000 sims, the rate will be 15%. At 30,000 sims, the rate will be 10%. At 40,000 sims, the rate will be 5%. By the time you reach 50,000, the Simbia Sickness will end. Always round death numbers DOWN. So, if 32% of eligible sims equals 2.8 sims, then you'll kill off two sims. The .8 sim has enough health (.2) to pull through.
Note: This is why a spare is required in the breeding program. Children can die of Simbia Sickness, and the parents are NOT required to breed more children to replace them. If a family should lose all its sons, then that family line is dead (daughters marry into other families, after all). Too bad, so sad. If the parents are still around, and able to produce more children, they MAY revive the family line, but it is not required. Only the initial breeding of an heir and a spare is legally mandated.

Murder: The inhabitants of Simbia are not citizens, and so the regular laws about murder do not apply here. Murder is allowed, under two circumstances: :fight:
1) A sim may murder their enemy (red frown face in relationship panel required).
2) A sim may take vengeance on the sim who murdered a) a father (not mother - women get the short end of the stick in Simbia), b) a brother (not a sister), c) a child (daughters included! Reason for this is that it interferes with the breeding program). Vengeance is not allowed on murders of grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins or friends.
You may use downloads to get weapons, or use more traditional sim-murder methods, such as luring a sim into a room, and locking them in to starve, or luring them into a pool and removing the ladder. However you do the murder, though, you MUST assign a specific sim as the official murderer, for vengeance purposes. Depending on who murdered whom, this could start a long-lasting blood feud, although if women are the victims, probably not.
Note: If a sim murder is witnessed by three or more witnesses, the murderer will have to go live in the processing center for another week. It's allowed, not encouraged.

Due to the high death rate, it is recommended that all males ensure they get their heir and spare in as quickly as possible (one reason adoption via Tombstone of Life and Death is allowed)

Aspiration and Career rewards are unlimited, including Elixir of Life and Cowplant use, if you want to keep your sims around longer. The only exception to this is the ReNuYu SensoOrb. Your aspiration can only be changed by reaching Junior Year of college. Lifetime Happiness points cannot be reset. You MAY use a ReNuYu PortaChug to reset turn-ons and turn-offs. Any sim who dares to break this rule, and use a ReNuYu SensoOrb MUST be turned into a GrilledCheese sim (If you don't have the expansion pack for Grilled Cheese, then just don't use the Orb). Children who are platinum when they grow up (they may drop to gold upon growing up, but if they are platinum in the moment of growing up) may choose their aspiration. If they are gold or below at the moment they grow up, they must roll for their aspiration. Young adults who reach Junior Year of college may choose their new aspiration.

Taxes are set at 5%, for all (unless you want to do a class-ranked system, and set higher taxes for higher classes. You certainly have that right. Heck, build a Royal Penal Colony, if you want!). It is allowed to have a dedicated Tax Collector, who will live in the neighborhood ("off-shore habitat") and not be played, but is free to visit, just as any townie would. If you use Monique's Computer, and have your sims donate the money to the Tax Collector's account, the interest will accrue quickly, allowing you to build a University as soon as the Tax Collector's account reaches $1,000,000. Ideally, this Tax Man should wear some sort of protective gear, to keep him safe from Simbia Sickness.

Finally, Living Arrangements:

Sons: 1) Heirs return to their father's house upon completion of processing or leaving university, and take the family surname.
2) Spares are handled differently. Spares must return to their father's house if the heir has not yet provided his own heir and spare, and stay there, until the next generation heir and spare are born. They MUST marry during this time, but they may wait to breed, if they so choose. Once the heir has produced his own heir and spare, the adult spare may move out into his own household (and take a new surname), and start breeding his own heir and spare (if he hasn't already). In this way, spares can become founders of their own families. However, if the heir dies, for any reason, before he produces both his heir and spare, then the adult Spare takes over as heir and stays in his father's house forever. The dead heir's first-born son, born while the heir was alive or posthumously, retains his right of heirship, and the spare is then required ONLY to breed a spare for the family (although more are certainly allowed). If the heir has already provided his own heir and spare before the spare finishes processing or leaves university, the spare goes straight to his own lot.
3) Extra sons (those born third or later) will be assigned a new family name upon finishing processing or leaving university, and go off to start their own family units, on their own lots, starting on a 3x3 plot of land.

Daughters will move into their assigned husbands' homes upon finishing processing, or leaving university.

Widowers (males) who have not completed their required breeding of heir and spare will be assigned a new wife to live with them. Widowers who have completed their required breeding may live singly, if they so choose. IF they choose to marry again, they are allowed to choose their spouse for themselves, including same-sex marriage.

Widows (females) whose husbands have completed their required breeding may live singly, if they so choose (they can, then, be assigned to live as prison/school staff, and be fully controllable at the processing center). If they choose to marry again, or if their husbands did not complete their required breeding, these women will be put back into the marriage pool, and assigned a new husband by end of the day on Sunday. Again, women get the short end of the stick in Simbia, and don't get to choose their own husbands. Men do the choosing, and women are brood mares. Why? FOR THE DRAMA! Widows who are assigned a new husband will move out of their late husband's home and into their new husband's home. If they marry a playable, then they will move into that playable's home. If they are assigned a townie husband, then they will move into a 3x3 lot with their new husband, and start that husband's family line. I'm getting squicked out by this, and the feminist in me is enraged, but hey, it's a penal colony, and I just saw "The Handmaid's Tale."

Heads of Household may move the family to a different-sized plot of land (or even an apartment, if you want), at any time they choose, but all new families (started by spares who are not needed at their father's house) will begin on a 3x3 lot. You may re-use any 3x3 lot that has been previously built up by another family, or start on a blank lot. However, after the initial four founding families are started, no new supplies will be issued to men starting a new household, so either buy the supplies in advance and keep them in inventory, or else stick it out until you can purchase your furnishings on Wednesday or Saturday. Or, if one of the sims has established a furniture store, your playable sims may shop there, any time. Stores that sell goods purchased from the wholesale catalog are considered to "stock up" on the two weekly shopping days, and they "maintain an inventory in the back room," for play purposes. (For story-telling purposes, such stores should not be established before the first Wednesday of play. Ideally, only expand the store's stock on a Wednesday or Saturday, to reflect the ability to stock up on those days, but that's up to you to decide.)

If your family moves from one lot to another, you should choose whether that will extend the play rotation, or cut it short. Choose one style, and stick to it for the duration. Note that if you extend the play rotation (that is to say, if your family moves out on a Thursday, they move in on the Monday, and play until Sunday), they will go through their lifetimes faster than the other families, which will lead to weird "growth spurts" among the children, meaning the generations will be very staggered. Likewise, if you choose to cut short the rotation (they move out on a Thursday, and move into their new lot on Monday, but are not played until the following rotation), that will slow down their growth. Either way, moving on any day other than a Sunday is going to skew your growth rate across the neighborhood, so pick your poison, and stick with it. The advantage to this skewing of growth rates across the generations is that it helps to avoid inbreeding, since your teens and new adults will be more likely to have to be assigned a non-playable spouse, as opposed to the old friends with whom they grew up and fell in love. The disadvantage, of course, is that you have less chance for childhood sweethearts to grow up together and actually be able to marry for love.

However, if teens fall in love with a non-playable teen, and have two or more bolts of chemistry, then when they are ready for processing and growing up, they may choose to grow up their lover, and have that sim be assigned as their spouse. The Grand Llama does encourage marrying for love, if possible within the rules he has set down. Even a young woman can marry for love, if her male lover "requests" it. In order to enable that, move in the young male lover, and he can then request her as his wife. Women are not allowed to request specific husbands, but they can pull strings behind the scenes. Moving in a potential husband into the processing center should be done as late in the week as possible, but definitely before Sunday morning. The reason for the delay is because 1) non-playables have already been processed, and 2) on free will, there is a chance that they might tank their relationship before the man has a chance to request her for his wife.


Edited to add: Since it is fun to add CAS sims and of course people are still committing crimes, I'm adding a rule that after you have earned CAS points, according to BACC rules, you MAY spend them to add new CAS sims, but you can only add them if someone is perma-plat. Each perma-plat (Lifetime Happiness, Lifetime Want, or Peace of Mind) sim who has earned immunity to the sickness may be replaced in the sickness raffle by a CAS sim, if you have the points to spend. But if you have 20 CAS points, but no perma-plat sims, you can't add anyone new. This is entirely optional, of course. Any new prisoners coming in through the CAS system MUST go through processing (unlike townies who move in from the off-shore detention facility).

Also, I like Radiochocolate's usage of the twice-weekly trading days for adoption. That is, while you may adopt as many times as you want, you can only get new adoptive children on the twice-weekly trading days. So, if you're calling for adoption, call the night before Wednesday or Saturday, and if you're using the Tombstone of Life and Death, do it on the day. She also suggested that the gender of adopted children must be swapped, so that every other adopted child (in the family) is female, thus taking at least 3 adoptions to get the required heir and spare. This works great if you use the Tombstone of Life and Death, and can specify the gender, but if you call for adoption, it's up to luck. Therefore, the gender requirements for adopted children rule will only apply if you actually have control over their gender. However, once you establish a method of adoption (phoning or using the Tombstone), you must use the SAME method, throughout the game. Personally, I'm in favor of the Tombstone rule, and the demand for females.

Finally, I agree with Radiochocolate that you can also get a fire barrel or fire pit on the first day, in addition to what was previously listed. Anything else you want to buy from the catalogue has to wait for the first trading day, however. The basics will get you through until Wednesday, and after that, you can buy whatever you want and can afford, twice a week.



This is a slowed-down version of a BACC, with a quick start (four households). Poverty will last much longer for the founding households, and even for later Play should be handled on a weekly rotation, not seasonal, although if you do choose to go seasonal, the Simbia Sickness and processing will also be handled by season, and so will go faster. Possibly too fast? Your choice.
Badass Alphabetocalypse (Complete!)
All of my other projects should be moved to the graveyard. But I have a new computer, at last! WOOOOT!
Post Reply

Return to “Sims 2 Rulesets”