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The Neighborhood Rotation Thread
Julyvee94
Posts: 6,694 Member
Hey there 
since many of you out there seem to enjoy Neighbourhood Rotations right now, me and @CathyTea figured it would be nice to have a thread where you could engage in information exchange with other rotaters. If you are new to Rotations you will find valuable tips and information here It doesn't matter if your rotation is in TS4 or any earlier version, everyone is welcome to discuss here! You don't even need to have a rotation. If you are interested in friendly discussion, just join in! *brings cake*
First of all: What is a Neighborhood Rotation?
In a Neighbourhood Rotation you play different households in a world one at a time. Often you would play every household for a certain amount of ingame time. There are many variations on aging settings, rules, worlds to use etc. That's what we want to discuss here.
Are there any official "rules"?
No. Rotational style has been around since The Sims 1 and every player has developed their own style of rotation. However, there are two threads (if you know more, please share) that give some general guidelines to a rotation. You can use these, but you don't have to:
A Sims Social Study
Neighbourhood Wishes Challenge
What questions do we want to discuss in this thread?
You can discuss anything you want concerning neighbourhood rotations! Feel free to ask any question you have.
However, these here are questions that are possibly of interest to any rotational player. Feel free to answer one or more of them for your rotation if you like.
- Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long?
- If you don't have a fixed time, how do you determine when to switch households?
- Do you play with aging on or off and why?
- Do you play the EA premades?
- How many household do you rotate with?
- Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with?
- Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses?
- Do you use cheats? Which ones?
(Add your own style variations on the rotational gameplay as you please)
Your Rotation Stories
If you have a neighbourhood rotation story, share it here and I will add your story to this index:
Vee is for Vortex by @Julyvee94
SimTropolis by @OJenn
Switch! A Neighbourhood Rotation by @eXokamikaze
Gather Ye Rosebuds (While Ye May) by @RachelRosebud
since many of you out there seem to enjoy Neighbourhood Rotations right now, me and @CathyTea figured it would be nice to have a thread where you could engage in information exchange with other rotaters. If you are new to Rotations you will find valuable tips and information here It doesn't matter if your rotation is in TS4 or any earlier version, everyone is welcome to discuss here! You don't even need to have a rotation. If you are interested in friendly discussion, just join in! *brings cake*First of all: What is a Neighborhood Rotation?
In a Neighbourhood Rotation you play different households in a world one at a time. Often you would play every household for a certain amount of ingame time. There are many variations on aging settings, rules, worlds to use etc. That's what we want to discuss here.
Are there any official "rules"?
No. Rotational style has been around since The Sims 1 and every player has developed their own style of rotation. However, there are two threads (if you know more, please share) that give some general guidelines to a rotation. You can use these, but you don't have to:
A Sims Social Study
Neighbourhood Wishes Challenge
What questions do we want to discuss in this thread?
You can discuss anything you want concerning neighbourhood rotations! Feel free to ask any question you have.
However, these here are questions that are possibly of interest to any rotational player. Feel free to answer one or more of them for your rotation if you like.
- Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long?
- If you don't have a fixed time, how do you determine when to switch households?
- Do you play with aging on or off and why?
- Do you play the EA premades?
- How many household do you rotate with?
- Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with?
- Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses?
- Do you use cheats? Which ones?
(Add your own style variations on the rotational gameplay as you please)
Your Rotation Stories
If you have a neighbourhood rotation story, share it here and I will add your story to this index:
Vee is for Vortex by @Julyvee94
SimTropolis by @OJenn
Switch! A Neighbourhood Rotation by @eXokamikaze
Gather Ye Rosebuds (While Ye May) by @RachelRosebud
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Origin ID: Julyvee94
Post edited by Julyvee94 on
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Comments
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- Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long?
Yes, it's one ingame week. However I might extend to two weeks if I find it's not enough time to complete aspiration goals etc.
- Do you play with aging on or off and why?
I play with aging on only for the active household and off for unplayed sims. I want to play out the story progression myself and use many households
- Do you play the EA premades?
Yes! I haven't played the premades ever before so now I'm excited to give them my story spin.
- Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with?
I will add households as I go, just see who interests me ^^
- Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses?
I'm using both, but I will probably re-furnish some of the EA houses ^^
My own style: I pay a lot of attention to sims speech and thought bubbles and create stories from there ^^ I don't have any planned plots I just follow my sims around kind of autonomy/whimacy style and I can tell you it's so fun to interprete everything! I make the plots up from my sims actions and that's so awesome and fun to do
Penpals would be a great idea!
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Origin ID: Julyvee94
Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long? No, not really.
If you don't have a fixed time, how do you determine when to switch households? I am actually in the process of switching now. For now I am just going with a RL week which equates to maybe 5 updates/chapters on that character.
Do you play with aging on or off and why? Right now I play with aging on long, I feel like it gives me more time when I rotate to play with the sims at the same life state.
Do you play the EA premades? Kind of? Well not really at the moment since my story is set up after a lot of the townies have dissappeared or married off into a different family. I think there are some Goths floating around still.
How many household do you rotate with? Right now I am going to rotate with just three that live in the city. (Which I am currently working on getting the other apartment buildings set up for)
Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with? I add as I go and usually I create my own to throw into the mix with their own little backstories.
Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses? My own and builds from other builders.
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Origin ID: JoieWilder94 | Twitter: JoieWilder94
The Thoreau Legacy | The More the Wilder | Crazy Town | Taken by Storme | My Short Stories
Build Showcase
The Orphan Challenge - Testers welcome!
It makes lots of sense
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Yay!
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
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House: Hufflepuff | Wand: Ebony wood w/a unicorn hair core, 9 ¾"
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Origin ID: Julyvee94
Yeah, that will be my approach to game-play, too. I am planning the parameters--like how long I'll stay with each household, what lifespan to use, aging on/off, when to age up, and so on. I want to get to at least gen 6 or 7, so I need to have a little bit of forward momentum. Then, all the Sim-directed stuff will happen within the game-play, rotation parameters I establish.
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
Discord: #5153
Oh! No I don't have automatic aging off at all. But then again my sims only seem to take forever to age since I have other saves I play on.
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I use MC command Center it has an Option to prevent culling. Also I think if you Pop sims into houses they wont get culled - at least it never happened to me then, only to homeless sims
Until It Breaks (Complete!) | Tribe Arayeo | Discovery (Complete!) | Vee is for Vortex
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Origin ID: Julyvee94
In my rotation, I'm going to be developing/testing a method of game-play that reduces and may even stop culling entirely. (Still need to test it, but I'll share the results of the experiment, as I work with it.)
In the legacy, I haven't had any issues with culling of families living in homes. If I want to protect a "Currently Not in World" family from culling, I'll move them into a home. Even families I haven't played have been protected in this way. Ghosts still get culled though, even when their tombstones are on played lots.
Do you also play The Elder Scrolls Online? You can find me there as CathyTea, too!
@Julyvee94 Okay...I'll try that idea of putting unplayed sims in homes. I've thought about that mod but don't like to have too many that I use if I don't have to.
I've always played rotationally, but never done challenges or stories (well, stories in my head, of course, but not "stories"). I played rotationally through all the sims games. In fact, my most recent legacy challenge is the first time I've ever *not* played rotationally! It's really hard for me!
I still play my main game for fun, but they're in a holding pattern right now as I move them all into a fresh save. I have to move everything to the library and then move everything to a new game, and it's A LOT since all the neighborhoods were done and I'd hand-touched each sim living in houses! (my save game file bloated and went from 30 mb to 60 mb in one save)
Since this is my first foray into challenges and written stories, or games played with the intent to write stories, I'm not sure if all of you have "fun" or "real" games on the side or not.
On my rotational game (not my uglacy town rotational, but my real game!) I have a few main houses I switch between playing, but I'll jump in to other houses to check out who they have flirted with, and who they might like to be set up with in the future. I use the MC Command mod, so it'll marry people off, but sometimes I want it to marry certain people! So if I go in and see who they've struck up relationships with on their own, I'll then make them boyfriend/girlfriend (or girlfriend/girlfriend, boyfriend/boyfriend... it's an equal opportunity game!). Once they're "together" the mod will take care of the rest on its own!
As for aging -- I play with only the active household aging for some of the time, and then I'll change it to active & neighborhood aging for some of the time. I like to toggle back and forth so everyone ages up together. At the beginning of my game I had it turned off all the way. They were all young adults with no kids, and it took me a long, long time to decide who my main people were going to end up with. Once I got them matched up and the kids started, I turned aging back on (I still have it on long, though!)
Since I don't know if i qualify, I wasn't going to answer the questions. But the post is already long and rambley, might as well add to it!
Do you have a fixed ingame time you play each household for? If yes, how long? Not a fixed time, just something that gets me antsy and says, time to see how the others are doing! Or, if I'm in the middle of a detective case, I might switch to another house on the weekend, when my detective is off work. I probably end up spending a few days to a week at each house, but it might be less sometimes. I rotate around a lot.
If you don't have a fixed time, how do you determine when to switch households? Kinda answered this earlier, but it's more a feeling than anything else. Now that they are having kids, I might switch because I feel it's time for a baby to become a kid or a young adult is about to turn into an adult, or it could be I've finished a goal in the house I'm in and feel a need to go to another house and finish a goal there.
Do you play with aging on or off and why? I pretty much answered this in my ramble above. I do a combo, so everyone ages together.
Do you play the EA premades? No, I actually got rid of all of them except for the Goths. I like the Goths a lot. I made them have an ancestral household with the MC Command mod, so there will always be Goths in my town! (though I probably will never play them)
How many household do you rotate with? Right now I have 3. But each of those three has nearly 8 people. As for families -- I started with three pairs of brothers & sisters, a single guy & a single gal. As they all got married and had kids, things have been expanding. It's just about time for some of them to move out, and then my play will jump from 3 houses to 6 houses.
Do you add households as you go or do you have pre-determined households to rotate with? I add a little. Like, I might add a love interest or two for my main people. Sometimes that doesn't work out, because they don't end up clicking, but since I love the character, it's a new played house! A note on townies: I also get rid of nearly all the game NPC's, or I re-make them using cas.fulleditmode. All of my townies have either been created, edited or downloaded. I sometimes download sims from the gallery that I find particularly appealing. Or sometimes celebrities! Because it tickles me no end to have the Avengers walking around in my game. Thor just married Katniss! (side note: you have to have some game npcs: maid, gardener, mailman, etc. So I do have those!)
Are you using your own builds or do you keep EA's houses? I either build my own, download awesome builds from the gallery, or do a combo of downloading and then modifying to my own needs. That last one is my most common set-up.
And if anyone read that whole thing, kudos to you! You should get some gold stars!
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PS: I read your post xD so cool that Thor married Katniss
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Origin ID: Julyvee94
I use MC Command Center for this also. Never had any culled. I wouldn't be able to play without that mod, it does so many things to improve gameplay!
Me too! I just figured out how to blacklist clothing items so townies wouldn't wear my Amazon challenge cc xD
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Origin ID: Julyvee94
So right now I have a household of two females which will get added to from various sims I create (i.e) tenants to the apartment where they all live. I restrict myself from "rotating" or switching to a different sim until about 5 days or so. Now as the SimTropolis story progresses I will be adding another household of sims that will live in the same city/neighborhood as the others.
It's been fun so far but boy its interesting to manage, especially for me since I am not used to having large households. Hope that explained some of how I am working my rotation
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@OJenn Great minds think alike! I'm playing TS2 and maybe TS3 for my rotation, and one of the reasons I picked those games is because I was hoping I could write actual postcards to everyone's TS4 Sims who get postcards from their penpals! So you can actually read the contents for once. I hope this idea takes off and we can write to each other! Even from TS4 players to other TS4 players would be great (let's just say the neighbourhoods in TS4 are larger than they really are)!
Highlights in bold if you don't want to read it all.
Nope. When I played TS2, I sorta did: around 3-5 days, but with TS4, I feel like there’s more flexibility (mainly due to the ability to age up Sims whenever we want with the birthday cake). So I basically play a Sim more based on "specialization" - I try out different parts of the game, even parts that are outside my "comfort zone" with different households/Sims. I try to make each household a little unique. For example, Scarlet Firecracker being a serial romantic, or starting a bakery with Nancy Morse (ex-Landgraab), testing out divorce (Nancy/Geoffery), or finishing the comedian branch with Eliza, or trying out the Detective Career with Dina Caliente, and the doctor with Jamie Jolina, and the Evil/Mischief stuff with Malcolm Landgraab and Zachary Fogel. I don't really "overlap" unless it's a skill like cooking.
Theoretically (lol) I play with Aging Off Except for Active Household (which to me is Sims 2 Style), but again with the Birthday Cake in Sims 4, I can basically Age Up a Sim whenever I desire so I've actually transitioned into just playing with Aging Off and I just transition a Sim into the next stage of life when I feel they are ready, or if I’m just not that interested in playing them thru their whatever-years.
This presents a problem, however, for Elders since I can’t use a Birthday Cake to age them up to death (lol, “death cake?”), but I actually don’t have any Sims yet who are close to dying (I’ve been playing in that Gen 1, Gen 2 stage FOREVER). I think I’ll solve that problem by a) “accidental” deaths (poor Sims, lol), or b) the more humane method of turning lifespans to SHORT and then having my Elders die off faster. Not that I want them to die off faster, I just need to keep things moving along at some point!!! Over all, I like to keep my Sims in the “right” generation, so I try to age everyone up around the same time. I also rarely allow Sims to cross generational lines to marry, unless they are a townie (in which case they have no generation, in my mind).
On a side note, I really, really don't want my townies to ever age up (unless they become part of my rotation thru marriage or babymaking). On that note, I do my own "culling". Before a play session, I religiously click into Manage Households and look at any new townies the game generated the last time I played. I usually delete all the elders or weird looking Sims, or Sims that look too identical to ones I already know (I have townies that were back from September 2014!)
Yes! I love premades. I play with quite a few households. They are all listed here:
http://rosebudsims.blogspot.com/p/sims_19.html
I add households as I go, but I prefer to focus on born-in-game Sims the most. One night I made the Dreamer family from TS2 in CAS (they're on the Gallery), but I haven't yet added them officially. I also tend to make a lot of single young adult females (Jodie Workaholic, Jessa Butler, Selena Rubio). Sometimes it's less stressful then having a big family with kids, etc. And sometimes it's just because I like playing in CAS, lol.
Mainly my own, but I might remodel an EA home (like the Pancakes). I also like using homes from the Gallery - but I like to remodel them as I play them since I find I like them a lot more if I feel I've added some personal touch to it.
On a side note, I LOVE visiting other Sims' homes. Sometimes I forget I can do that (stuck in that TS2 mindset that I can only travel to community lots). It's fun to see how long you can stay at a friend's house, or "crash at a boyfriend's house". Same idea with retail lots. I've had Nancy live at the Belltower Bakery for DAYS while her family stayed home. I just played her - making bakery items and selling them with her employee Digi Wolff. So fun!
I'm going to forever gush over Manage Households, sorry. It's so convenient, especially for weddings!!! That's right. You don't have to worry about your distant relative not showing up. You can temporarily place them in your household (if you have room) and switch things around. I sometimes use Townies as placeholders if I need Sims all in one place for some reason. I never could do this with TS2, so I'm very excited over this flexibility!!!
On a less happy note, what I don't like that would be helpful for neighborhood rotation players is some sort of Saved Game Profile that is more organized (kind of like the "front pages" we got with TS2). With trying to juggle my main game with the Detective Dina saves (I have her story separately saved since I have to "set up" scenes) it's all becoming CRAZY!
OK, that's it for now. Wow this was long! LOL.