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Lucky Palms: Schools were too crowded so I added a second one. Now kids can't advance above a "C"!
columbia93
Posts: 319 Member
Lucky Palms is a large world and, with all of the families on the "wrong side of the track", there was a lot of congestion at the school. I added another school, and so on and so forth, and eventually, half of the kids go to the one and half to the other.
But now I have another problem. My kids can't get above a "C" level grade! I have them faithfully do their homework every night. The go to school refreshed. They have many skills (it's a family I've played quite a while). Still, their mood for school never moves from just below the "normal" line. Never, never ever.
I don't seem to have this problem with other worlds.
I have Awesome, MC, SP (I think pretty much the basic stuff), Overwatch, Tagger, Debug, Error Trap .... Is there something else I need to make the schools work properly or is there something other people have experienced that might point me to where the problem may lie?
But now I have another problem. My kids can't get above a "C" level grade! I have them faithfully do their homework every night. The go to school refreshed. They have many skills (it's a family I've played quite a while). Still, their mood for school never moves from just below the "normal" line. Never, never ever.
I don't seem to have this problem with other worlds.
I have Awesome, MC, SP (I think pretty much the basic stuff), Overwatch, Tagger, Debug, Error Trap .... Is there something else I need to make the schools work properly or is there something other people have experienced that might point me to where the problem may lie?
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Comments
But I tried finding other reports on this when you posted about it before, playing in IP, and did look forward to your, then promised, reporting back; but did not find much, which makes me guess it could be an issue helped by exiting the game often and fully clearing cashes, and other game management. Good tips here:
https://www.nraas.net/community/TIPS-FOR-BETTER-GAME-PERFORMANCE
It also makes me wonder if the computer can manage the game, all EP, a big world with many lots and large progressed families, as well as lots of mods. Maybe a world other than IP and LP would ease the load; and perhaps one of the mods can be used to do a reset on the child, the home lot, the school and the world, exiting the game clearing cashes, then trying to get an A again.
I also do a clear cache, etc., before every time I play. I've reset, etc.
The further we get from the "end" of TS3, the harder it becomes to find solutions. I appreciate your efforts and will just keep trying.
https://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/skills/parenting/children.php
And the opportunities randomly popping up are also beneficial to school performance if fulfilled.
You could try to make them stay home from school for some time, until it says 'missing school' in their tab; and then make them go there again - as a reset.
This might be silly, but I wonder if you have looked at them arriving at school, making sure they are there at time, getting into the right building etc. The performance will drop I believe, if late to school. It might also help to reassign them a school, making sure the switch of school worked. I think you need your mods for this though, and I cannot help with that.
Another thing to try, a bit disruptive, is to replace the school rabbithole with another one, making sure the children go to it.
When troubleshooting it is best to create a new empty sims 3 folder to see if the problem persists in a brand new game save.
Thanks for all of these helpful ideas. You are going to keep me busy!
I only seem to have this issue in the large worlds where I've placed an additional school. I placed an additional school because there were times when the kids weren't actually entering the building (no new homework was the kicker). With this addition, they are attending.
Yeah, I know about the new game folder....it's why I have like 50 different saved games over the decade+ I've been playing. It may yet come to this! I might try to delete both of the schools and play a day to see what happens, then pop them back in. We'll see!
I'm a little confused by your post. I did pull up a "config" and it had the school disabled but I couldn't say if it was that way before because it didn't seem to have remembered my cookies. Anyway, you say to disable everything else and I'm not sure what you mean by that. I do have storydriver disabled because of Story Progression, but I only have the basic Story Progression in my game, no flavors. I do have a bunch of other stuff enabled but I don't think any of those should interfere. Let me know if you know of something that might or if you meant to disable stuff besides that storydriver.
I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens. If it still doesn't work, I'll try a fresh game.
I made sure it was nighttime and no one was at school. I went into Edit Town and deleted the school and added it back. I then put the 2nd school in the game....saved and went into play. The next day I had 32 kids at the one school and 0 kids at the 2nd school....sadly I watched children from the wrong side of the highway bike across town instead of attending the school right next door. I tried resetting the lots, etc., and nothing seemed to have an affect. I also had so spend all of my time watching the school to try and get them in before the end of the school day - my 2 simmy kids usually made it between 12:30 and 1:30! Aaack!
Honestly, I have no idea how to get my kids to go to the nearest school because everything I've read says that's what they do. I don't know how I had it set up right in the game before because, while the grades weren't going up, they at least were getting into school without my micro-managing! I don't know if I'm missing something - I set the 2nd school to "No Visitors" because that's what the setting was on the original school. The 2nd school isn't built on a foundation so the entries are clear - plus it's the same lot that I used before when both schools were open.
Anything else I can try?
https://steamcommunity.com/app/47890/discussions/0/1470840994958952153/
According to AM Manual the automatic school assignment is disabled by default:
Quote:
GAMEPLAY FEATURES: Careers, Jobs, & School
14. No Automatic School Assignment [Optional - Default: Disabled]
Active and Sacred sims will no longer be automatically assigned to a
school. You get to enroll them manually, so you can pick which school.
If you fail to do so in time, they grow up badly, and you suck.
So either you need to assign them a school by yourself..
..to which there is a command for efficiency:
Quote:
CONSOLE & DEBUG FEATURES:
"enrollall/expellall [<6|12|all>]": Enrolls or expels all specified sims
from the school on the actively edited lot.
.. or you could perhaps Enable the automatic school assignment in AM. I do not have the mod though, so cannot help with that.
Also see NRaas for info on how to add an extra school. Under: "My school is crowded"
https://www.nraas.net/community/Education-Schools
If the problem with the schools are that the children cannot enter it, there are solutions for that. Maybe watching the door at school start hour will reveal that.
If the problem only occurs in large worlds, one solution could be to relocate the family, and their friends, to a smaller world; or one with less routing errors than IP. I hear Sunset Valley and Riverview are well made compared.
There is also a fixed up version of IP:
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/811253/removing-ip-lag
I will read the posts you supplied - but I did bulldoze and reload those lots (in one session) but maybe there's more to it.
I had tried the "assign" schools for my sim family, which weirdly works like a career - problem is, the original school is a block away so, while I assigned them to that school, it's the rest of the families I'm not playing that are still going there and not the closest one.
I have AM and that's what I meant when I said I enabled (through aweconfig) that school assignment, per TadOlsen's post. I'm going to try disabling again because it seems that disabled is automatic and automatic is supposed to mean the kids pick the closest school.
There's also no problem with routing. 1) the original school is the one placed there by EA. 2) the second school is an EA shell placed on a large lot without a foundation. 3) the second school did function before I started messing with it per the above TadOlsen suggestions. As I said in my original post, about half the kids were going to the other school before I closed, bulldozed, enabled, etc. 4) the mod I was talking about that adds slots to schools suggest making certain there's a 4x4 open spot in front of each possible door so I'd already checked, and fixed, where there might be a problem. My lot was fine but I did extend the back exit on the EA LP school. As I said, I've not downloaded that mod yet (it's somewhat complicated) but I did do the preliminary.
I may well be wrong but it's my understanding that, if you download one of those fixed worlds, it doesn't replace your current world "base" so you have to move all of the sims/lots to a new world. I know NRaas has a mod for that but I don't think it's a simply move....I think you have to move each lot individually? I'll look into it again to see what the mechanics are but, if I'm right, that's why I've got those "fixed" worlds bookmarked and not actually downloaded - LOL! I don't have as many lots I'd move with the IP world but my LP world is one I've played extensively, with many families added, homes "fixed", etc. I'd hate to have to move each of those individually. If it becomes that dire, I might have to try it with the IP world.
And of course the problem is only with larger worlds because they have a bigger population, meaning 35 kids trying to get into school at once!
Thanks again for all you're doing to try and help me fix this. It's above and beyond and more appreciated than you know. I'll get to those suggestions soon and let you know.
This is just a guess since I do not have the mod, but one way to understand the AM manual is that if the default option of Disabled is kept as it is, then school children in Active/Sacred households (as every one else I assume) are in fact assigned a school automatically; but if the option is changed to Enabled, then they are not, and you can manually do so, choosing the school you want for them.
So one thing do to might be to temporarily make every household with school children Sacred; and then manually assign them a school, using the command for it.
6 = children; 12 = teen; 'all' I would assume is all school children.
But if you have NRaas Story Progression in place at the same time as AM, AM Story Drive will disable itself, and I am unclear whether the Sacred command is part of this.
Another guess is that you could choose each household in turn to make active, and assign them a school that way. You might have to experiment a little.
When all the schools are in place and all the school children are assigned equally to them, but there is still blockage when entering them, I think that can be solved. Maybe that is what that slot mod you mentioned is meant to do; perhaps you can link it here.
And yes, that is how I understand it as well; that the save with the routing fixes in Island Paradise will start everything anew; also that the/one mod at NRaas will move sims en masse. Porter is the one I think will do this:
https://www.nraas.net/community/Porter
I don't have that mod though and someone else will have to help you with that; or you could ask about that at NRaas, I'm sure it's not that complicated, and that you can get help if you decide to do it.
I still suspect though that your initial problem of children not gaining school experience might be from overloading the game with content and things to do, compared to what your hardware can manage, maybe you can think of ways to ease that load some. But I am not an expert at that.