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Thank heavens for the MCCC Mod
Fairy_Happy
Posts: 8,903 Member
Honestly I honestly couldn't really get into this game because I felt like the Normal lifespan was too short, forcing me to rush through getting them married and having kids, never actually enjoying the dating and courting, and engagement period of the game or really enjoying things like the University pack all that much because on Normal mode, my Sims usually finished right before they aged up to adults, causing them to not really enjoy their young adult hood. But I found out that the MCCC lets me adjust the lifespans. And I just found that out today. XD
It's actually really awesome. I have my Young Adults sims set for 74 days before aging up which I think is plenty of time. Now I can actually enjoy this game without feeling like I'm racing the clock. It's a shame we have to use a Mod to adjust this (one thing in Sims 3 I like is freely adjusting the lifespan without mods).
It's actually really awesome. I have my Young Adults sims set for 74 days before aging up which I think is plenty of time. Now I can actually enjoy this game without feeling like I'm racing the clock. It's a shame we have to use a Mod to adjust this (one thing in Sims 3 I like is freely adjusting the lifespan without mods).
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I don't set them to nearly as long as you, but I did make YA stage longer by a little bit to account for how dam long Uni takes. I also have time advancement slowed down, so I think that means my sims can get more done in a day.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
It might be a bit long, but I want them to experience uni, meet other Sims before settling down, at least go on dates, have a engagement and not rushing into marriage or kids and actually be advanced in their careers before settling down. I love playing families but I don't want to rush into them. you know? LOL
According to the article, real life census life span is
babies: 4 days (to age 1)
toddlers: 16 days (to age 5)
children: 32 days (to age 13)
teens: 32 days (to age 21)
Young Adult: 76 days (to age 40)
Adult: 100 days (to age 65)
Elder: 56 days (to age 79)
source and credit: u/mabezard at reddit
MCCC is indeed an excellent tool to have. I use it for custom aging and also to slow down the passage of time, among other things. My game isn't really much like real life, but I do like some elements of a stylized kind of realism. I keep aging on for all sims except designated testers, godlike beings, and the like; I usually flag those as immortal.
I find that I tend to dislike playing some ages more than others, so those tend to have very short stage spans. Babies are at 1 day in all my saves, for example (if I could have less, I would). Toddlers have 3 days in most of my saves, 15 in others, Child stage is 45 days in almost all saves, and Teens have 50 days in all saves. My Young Adults get a whopping 360 days, but roughly half of that accounts for my personally designated "Middle adult" span, while Adults get 70 days (that includes my "older Adults" and "younger Elders"), and Elders (my "one-foot-in-the-grave" stage) get 20 days. I don't play all the sims I create through all of those ages, but I like to have plenty of time to play them if I do, and even if I don't, I don't want them aging up before I'm finished with something in that stage of their stories. In my game time is different for sims than it is for humans (real world people, that is), so I don't have to fuss about trying to make it all fit in that way.
Because I can't; I keep all sigs turned off.
That way I don't need mods or use the Long Lifespan and if I need a lot of days like long lifespan I just need to buy the potions
edit: thanks God for mods. It is really nice that mccc helps you to have fun and play in your way!
I get they do have a potion of life might do that one day on another save.
I actually played a lot longer than I usually do today which is promising. I actually don't feel pressure to rush through this family I'm currently playing. I have been taking my time with them. Played them for a little over a Sim week and it's a male and female. They started off as acquaintances, but since they are roommates it naturally blossomed into friendship. Still just friends, not even on good friend terms. They do have chemistry because when they gave each roses on Love Day and they got the green plus signs so they aren't repulsed by each other, so that's promising. Matthias, the guy, is about to be promoted in the athletic profession and Eliza, the girl, is in college majoring in the culinary arts. And they still have about 65 or so Sim days left in the YA stage. If I didn't extend their lifespan, they would be married or close to it by now with at least one child. And college? What college? They wouldn't have had time for that, or they would have had too much time. I love being able to play and enjoy the game now.
That's an interesting way to think about it, and if you're a more leisurely and less goal-oriented player it would go a long way toward getting rid of the race-the-clock sense. I just use the Potion of Youth myself, which has the added benefit of giving me an interesting decision to make every 24 in-game days or so. I'll age off sims that don't really serve a storyline purpose, but those whom I intend to give a few more kids to or who haven't been everywhere I want them to go (or both) get their aging delayed by potions.
As for a sim's childhood, my simspans play by different rules:
Babies: Until both parents reach Friends or better—thanks to the glitch that makes parents have to introduce themselves to their own toddlers, and the relationship boost that carries, I don't need to go any further unless parents want to grind their Parenting skill.
Toddlers: Until reaching Lv5 in all skills (Lv3 for Potty).
Children: Until they get all four childhood aspirations completed.
Teens: An A grade in high school and maxed-out character values in Manners, Responsibility, and Emotional Control. Scouting Aptitude if they didn't get it as children.
Aging is done just after midnight so the kid gets the maximum possible time in the new lifestage from day 1. The whole process, from birth to setting out in the world, usually takes about 12-15 in-game days and produces sims with the fastest possible learning rate (Top-Notch Toddler, the four childhood rewards, Scouting Aptitude, Savant, and Quick Learner) exclusive of lot traits. I like my sims to learn super-fast as adults so they can spend less time skilling for work or whatever and more time doing stuff.
Exceptions: A kid I'm planning to send through higher education gets the full 14 days each for childhood and teenagerhood, building lots of skills for scholarships and a few grown-up aspirations so they don't have to sleep or eat by the time they get to university.
And remember this above all. Our Roman gods are watching. Make sure they are not ashamed!
My NBA site, Pace and Space
I mostly dislike these settings mostly when playing legacies with normal life settings, because even if I rush my sims to have kids early in their young-adult life stage, they are going to turn elders when their kids are in their late teens or have just turned young adults and they are almost certain to die of old age more or less when their grandchildren are born. I find it very frustrating, because in practice I've never truly managed to play grandparents-grandchildren interactions, which for me would be a very important one...
Now I'm about to end a legacy which I all played without changing the lifespans setting with MCCC, for consistency I didn't want to change it mid-way through it when I noticed this issue, but for the next one I'm probably editing it by myself following a similar math to the one written above...
My sims are set to never die though.
I am so glad you found it. Better late than never.
http://www.getfreeebooks.com/star-trek-original-series-fan-fiction-trilogy/
I'm actually playing a long slightly edited age span and it's been over a month of off and on gameplay. My sims have three sons and the eldest is close to becoming a teenager! His brothers are almost a year or two younger than him. The only age I actually altered was the elder agespan from 10, normal(40, long) to 15, normal(60, long)
HillyPlays
P.A.C.E- Positive Attitude Changes Everything
Mods are FREAKING AWESOME!!!
And I actually have time to complete both of their aspirations. Eliza is a Master Chef, she is 3/4th done with it. Mattias has the Successful Lineage aspiration so his is going to take a bit longer to complete as Mattias and Eliza are still in the courting phase of their relationship. They are the first generation of this save so they are definitely on the right track for a successful lineage. And they are both making some good money. Matthias makes 86 an hour as a Starter and Eliza makes a whooping 121 an hour as Pastry Chef.
If I didn't have the lifespan increased, no telling what would have happened, but I do know they wouldn't be this successful that's for sure, and probably already have kids and rushed and everything. This is definitely a much more fun way to play, for me at least. No rush.
I remember using the Master Controller mod in TS3 and using the feature to extend the time of day.
That made the game so much more enjoyable. I don't know why the developers don't let us control how long a day last.
We are still using time like we only have the base game.
So many things have been added now and there is not enough time in the day to enjoy combining multiple features for a fun day out.
We need more time. Simmers play at different paces anyway, so it needs to be flexible.
TS3 was also flexible with how we allocate days to the age stages.
I have only recently started messing about with the game time option as it was a bit flaky when it was first introduced. But now, wow - complete gamechanger. Little glitchy on events when first switched on, but the game settles down and all is as it should be pretty quickly.
Then there is the outfit management...
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity....
The Ghost Song - Jim Morrison
I use 4 days = 1 year too, but to me YA is only until you're 30, then you're officially an adult in my book. As a result my adult stage is longer (I keep it from 30-70, then 70-80 as elder.
At one point I tried to make sure their birthdays fell on the same day of the year, so 1 year for babies and toddlers, two for children, teens and YA... but that ended up taking way, way too long and I was bored after a while.
My ratio is closer to 1 week = 4 years. I either play the pregnancy and age the baby up right away, or have the baby born while I'm playing other households and play the infancy instead, so they spend about two years between the two phases. I left toddler, teen and children alone. This I think makes my teens age to YA at 21. Then they are YA from 21-44, and Adults from 45-69, and then elders from 70 to... between 78 and 105 depending on how many potions of youth they can afford.
I realize that I'm starting to sound like an advertisement for this Mod, but it's a really helpful mod.
I am playing a challenge right now that requires Short lifespan, and that is really hard and leads to many sims dying unfulfilled, but that is part of the challenge...
Except that's not at all true. "Doing" things is no easier or harder regardless of your lifespan setting. All it does is reduce the overall quantity of different things your sim will be able to do, the actual doing itself is identical.
You may think the shorter lifespans make the game "harder", because you approach the game as being about "lets see how much I can accomplish with this sim before they die." What you have to understand is that your approach, and your view of the overall goal of the game, is very different from how many other people play it.
I play a generational game, for example, which means my overarching goal is to have a bloodline that goes on for many generations and to have good stories with each sim household in that legacy.
All a short lifespan does for my playstyle is hurry along the future generations (making that part of my goal easier) while also limiting the opportunities for interesting stories to develop (making that part just...more boring). So for me, short lifespan isn't more "challenging" it's just limiting. To be fair though, too long of a lifespan is also a problem because it takes FOREVER to get to each next generation.
So for me, lifespan around the medium setting is best. Still a little too short for my tastes though, so I tweak it with MCCC to be just a bit longer, but not nearly as much as the game's default long lifespan settings.
For someone else, a short lifespan may actually make the game "too easy". Take someone doing the 100 baby challenge, for example. I'd think a short lifespan would make it easier to accomplish, simply because having and raising children goes so much more quickly.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods