That's really interesting! Thanks for the elaborate explanation - I think I'm going to figure out something like this two, based on your system. It's bound to shake things up a bit.

Ive come up with a strategy, Im gonna make every household own and run 5 businesses each so each household can get 1 sm each

Bexx87 wrote:Ive come up with a strategy, Im gonna make every household own and run 5 businesses each so each household can get 1 sm each

Good luck... my face would be doing something like this lol.

Has anyone ever let a house in their neighbourhood die off? I'm a serial legacy player and when it comes to BACCs I feel like a house is for life but right now my rotation is so long and repetitive that I want to get rid of the houses not earning enough money. If I let the house die off (as in not create a new generation) is that okay? I don't know if I've ever seen it done before, at least deliberalty. The house would still count, even after it's empty right?

I've never done this, but I'm pretty sure the house no longer counts if no one is living there anymore. It doesn't count as a household, because a household is about the Sims, not the lot they live on. And in the rules for the Architecture career it says that "the residential lots must be occupied" for them to count for the total number of lots.

cynicalbadger wrote:Has anyone ever let a house in their neighbourhood die off? I'm a serial legacy player and when it comes to BACCs I feel like a house is for life but right now my rotation is so long and repetitive that I want to get rid of the houses not earning enough money. If I let the house die off (as in not create a new generation) is that okay? I don't know if I've ever seen it done before, at least deliberalty. The house would still count, even after it's empty right?

I don't think it would count, but to be honest, once I reached a certain point (probably earning a university or the first business district) I was planning to turn boring sims into townies and say that they "moved to a nearby town." Of course, with the ruleset I'm playing University is doable within one generation with my slightly extended aging mod and judicious use of businesses, but townies aren't allowed until I have at least 10 businesses. (Because otherwise who would bother taking a boat over to my neighborhood to shop?)

In my non-BACC neighborhoods I have families that I play for 1-2 days per season rotation and cheat to their correct ages, randomly assign new skills. (I roll a dice and they get 1-6 skill points per season. I also delete all the junk that they've bought from their inventories so they can have some money.) Were I to do this in a BACC playstyle neighborhood I would not count them as a playable household, so they wouldn't own businesses, lift restrictions, or count towards the SM, but the advantage to me would be keeping relatives of a playable household aging at the same rate, and available to be employed in businesses or marry back into the major households. In a BACC I'd probably balance it by saying that once a household becomes pseudo-townies, I can't randomly pick back up and play them for real again. (I also probably wouldn't do it until I had a large enough population that it wouldn't feel as much like cheating, so once I was pretty much done with the challenge anyway.)

That said, my BACC is an enormous frankenstein of different rulesets and my own modifications, where I want to keep the challenge but cut the grind. I don't have infinite time to devote to the sims, unfortunately. (Perils of being an employed adult with a commute...) So overall, my advice would be to do what makes you happy with your game, because as seriously as we all take our pixel people, it's supposed to be fun, too.

Other alternatives to shorten your rotation might be things like randomly splitting the family up and sending them to different households (works best if you don't have kids) or reducing the number of days in your rotation overall. I've always played 3 day rotations in previous neighborhoods (because it matches so well with sim blender cheating of aging unplayed houses) but right now I'm doing a strict 24 hour rotation in my BACC. This is largely because I've just started week 2 and so many people's promotions are tied to each other's achievements that the game progresses faster if I do it that way. But also because it helps me avoid boredom, because in a short playsession I can finish with one house, and in a long one I can zip through the whole rotation. (As long as I only have five families, that is...)

Thanks guys! I thought since it was me deliberately taking the household away it wouldn't count but to be honest every time I get back to the household I want to cut I remember how much I like them so it's one of those easier said than done sort of things I only have one empty house which I count because the founder literally died in a fire in the second week (it was so unfortunate) and my plan is to revive her asap anyway to bring her house and business back - the whole town is named after her so I gotta!

Also, scribal goddess that sounds so complicated, but so fun to manage haha! I have 17 houses and it takes me up to an hour to play them sometimes so I sometimes only do one house a play session and forget what I was doing with them, I should probably keep better notes tbh

I include dead Sims in my population count, though I wouldn't use it as a quicker way to build up the score. Not sure how I would handle the lot count though, I probably would move the graves to the cemetery and not count the lot anymore.

Yeah I still count graves, but yeah when a Last sim dies he House just kind of stops doesn't it so there would be no point counting it would there? I was looking for shortcuts I think I'm just going to not add as many new houses for a while

Yesterday was so fulfilling, in terms of my BACC rotation.

I recently added two new CAS sims at the end of the first week, and I threw them into the first two houses in the rotation. The man, Toby Torrell, turned out to be a good match for my single family sim Casilda Lane, who owns an orchard. The woman, Elanor Green, got thrown into the same house as Casilda and Sura Kyo, because she wants to go into business, and since I'm playing a frankenstein of Darkest Dawn and Nepheris rules, she needs to open three businesses, one of them may as well be the farmer's market. Sura Kyo is unexpectedly pregnant with a child from her fiancee Tesla Krakow.

Politician Whitney Du Vall gave birth to twins Taylor and Austin Du Vall, left them with their Aunt, musician Ashleigh Du Vall, for the day, and came home with a promotion.

Medic Brynne Mawar married her fiancee Mikael Ultra, but I'm starting to think that I may need to bulldoze the community lot that I use for weddings, because it has a jump glitch. (Which I *think* is due to the visitor controller's force outfit option conflicting with another hack.)

Town firstborn Phoebe Ultra grew into a toddler. She's a Pisces. Weirdly, her father Jasen Ultra (nee Oryx) can't seem to teach her any skills. I didn't move him into the lot until after she was born, but he registers as her father properly in every other way that I can check without cracking SimPE. Anyone have pointers on that?

I am sorry if this doesn't go here but, In a BACC you take A LOT of pictures how do you guys keep it organized so they aren't out of order? I want to start a BACC but my pictures are always out of order and it is very frustrating .

I think you can right-click anywhere inside the Storytelling folder, which will give you a option to Sort by "Date Modified" that will list them in the order they were taken.

Then you can batch rename them by selecting them all and choosing a file name with a number, which will automatically assign sequential numbers to the picture file names in that order.

At that point, I would relocate them out of the Storytelling folder.

At one point just opening my storytelling folder took ages to load, so I started taking the pictures that I already used in previous chapters and deleted them, including the thumbs. It freed up a lot of space. If you don't want to delete them you could just relocate them, just so you have them if you need them again. I liked zip files for that. ^ ^

Hollywood3015 wrote:I am sorry if this doesn't go here but, In a BACC you take A LOT of pictures how do you guys keep it organized so they aren't out of order? I want to start a BACC but my pictures are always out of order and it is very frustrating .

Couple tips: Every time midnight comes, I tab out, open the storytelling folder, delete all thumbnails and drop all the snapshots into a folder. (Labeled With "Lastname-Rotation1-Day3" or somesuch.) You don't need the thumbnails, and this keeps me on track as to what happened when. For special events where I take a ton of pictures, like major parties, I try to remember to tab out when the party starts, dump the previous pictures in the right folder, and then, when the party's over, make those their own subfolder under that day.

Tabbing out is totally doable if you remove securom. My load times for everything are a fraction of what they once were...

Also, if anyone else had a problem with toddlers not being able to be taught skills by a father who doesn't live on lot - you have to invite him over, make him selectable, and remove and then reset family ties in the sim blender. The game has to think that he lives with the kid at the time it assigns them as family, so if he moves in after the birth it's not set right.

I decided to start this challenge and get back to TS2 after a while. I'm having a blast, and I don't remember when was the last time I was soaked up into game like this.

That's so cool! I hope you keep us informed on how it's going

I'm a bit short on time, so I made my founder pregnant. I have just a little bit more than a half of sum which is needed for Museum.

I have some questions, though. I don't know what are the rules for NPCs moving in and born babies? It's clear to me that you are allowed, after you lift some restrictions, to make families in CAS, but I'm unsure about the former.

I think NPCs are unrestricted the same as regular townies, so they, along with born babies, are simply added to the playable Sims count and can be added to the rotation if/when they move out.

Quick update: I just finished day 9, and with all the promotions that sims got, I can now open the town clinic and the newspaper office. (Which is going to double as a bookstore because I can.)

Phoebe Ultra also has 2/4 toddler skills learned, and has earned 2 logic points. There are three new babies due in the next three days, and Meredith Mawar becomes a toddler next round. And for the first time since the end of last season my next single day round doesn't have a wedding scheduled for it.

Hollywood3015 wrote:I am sorry if this doesn't go here but, In a BACC you take A LOT of pictures how do you guys keep it organized so they aren't out of order? I want to start a BACC but my pictures are always out of order and it is very frustrating .

I play windowed and have Wordpress open so I can write and upload pictures as I play - even if it's a short note and bulk uploading at the end of the playweek. I also organise the screenshot folder by date and I can't remember if it's ascending or descending but the newer photographs are all at the top! It's much easier, I used to have to search which took up so much time


Also, any tips on increasing the population faster? I'm further than ever before but every time I open a business district it doesn't boost the population by much (or it doesn't feel like it anyway) should I make more babies in the neighbourhood?