Gameplay:
As far as the game is concerned, you could have all of your sims at the top level of the highest paying job in the game, and it wouldn’t matter one way or another. That isn’t very realistic though. And it's not very much fun.
Since I love to play schools and universities, and I love deciding what my young sims are going to grow up to do with their lives, it’s important to me to have realistic boundaries set on the choices they make. For a lot of young people in real life, where they choose to settle has a lot to do with what jobs are available in the area, as well as where their family and friends live.
As I have in previous versions of the game, I really love bringing out the individual character of each of the towns I’m writing about. What makes it different to live in Sierra Nova versus Fort Palmetto, or wherever else my Sims are eventually able to live? Fort Palmetto is a quiet, comfortable, colonial, military town on the coast of the Atlantic. Sierra Nova is a dusty, upstart, technology-rich town with a prestigious university and bustling nightlife for the young people. In another week, I’ll be starting a new neighborhood with the new terrain we’re getting, and that neighborhood will be inspired by Washington DC, which I know is markedly different than both South Carolina and Arizona! In time, I’d love it if we got the right world-building tools that I could recreate Lakeside Heights, too.
A lot of what gives a place character is what people do for a living there. If you’re a young sim who wants to get into a career in technology, you won’t be able to do that in Fort Palmetto, but if you want to be an astronaut, Fort Palmetto would be the perfect place for you to live! If you want to be a star in the culinary world, you won’t be able to do any fancy cooking in Sierra Nova, but you could be a hotshot mixologist there. Each of my towns has it’s own profile which helps me keep track of what jobs are available, or not, in each place.
Career rules:
This is something I started to do in my TS3 neighborhoods, but I did so little playing in those worlds that I never got anywhere with it.
No sim will just work for whatever generic nameless job and disappear into the void—their jobs must have real purpose and locations in my game. For example, Adam runs the Great Lakes Historical Preservation Society (a government sponsored non-profit located on several unowned community lots), and that agency opens up slots for one manager, and several other manual laborers (athletic career) and gallery managers (art career). A brief business profile and its employee details are always located on each individual town's overview page. Besides residential, retail, or restaurant lots, with the More Buyable Venues mod, my entrepreneurial sims can also own many other venues like nightclubs or museums to support these businesses and employees.
I liked having my TS3 sims go to a real workplace in the town, and though they don’t go anywhere in TS4 except to disappear, I want to make sure there is a physical career location for every job in each of my towns. If only for storytelling purposes. This is also inspired by the horror of my poor astronaut Sims having to work on their rocket ships in their suburban back yards. The zoning committee of Fort Palmetto (=me) is just not okay with that business! Just like my physical schools, this may not give them progress in their careers, but they will be able to skill there and meet like-minded sims in their industry. (With the upcoming addition of the Get Together EP, I could see career-focused groups meeting on these career lots to mingle and network with each other.)
Every career in the game has strict rules and caps in place, and the owner of the business (or department head, for government work) gets to decide what those rules are. Degrees are required for some careers (fake, of course, until we get a university EP). Skill levels are required for some careers, or perhaps even required traits. Most importantly, every single job that any sim has must be accounted for in money. If one sim earns money in the game, another sim has to pay for it. That means every paycheck given in my game is either paid for by a government department (tax money) or private enterprise (business). If a sim wants a job, they have to convince another sim to hire them and negotiate how much they'll be paid.
Each business has a record in my spreadsheets that details how many positions they've hired, the maximum they're willing to pay those employees (leaving room for promotions), and the actual amount they're currently paying. Contracted money is exchanged in live gameplay with inventory checks. Salaried money comes from in-game careers. Since career money comes from thin air, then employers must pay back that money (to thin air) every quarter.
For example, Stephanie goes to her job at Coolidge House and brings home $208—then, once per quarter, Sharon has that same amount deducted from her funds with money cheats. My business owners only have to pay once per quarter. If it so happens that one of their employees goes to work twice in that quarter, then it's a freebie. But with ~50-something households, it's hard enough to get one work day for every sim each quarter.
Money and objects that sims are paid as promotion rewards are also freebies. I'm not that nitpicky. ;)
Sometimes it makes sense for the business owner to enter a career and take a salary. Like Erin Close; being in the investment branch of the business career allows her to invest money on her computer, which brings more money back to her business. Yes, her business has to pay back her own salary, too, but she earns more money by having that job.
The "L", "P" or "A" note where the job is located. Lakes, Pacific, Atlantic. In most circumstances, my sims need to live nearby where their job is located.
I liked having my TS3 sims go to a real workplace in the town, and though they don’t go anywhere in TS4 except to disappear, I want to make sure there is a physical career location for every job in each of my towns. If only for storytelling purposes. This is also inspired by the horror of my poor astronaut Sims having to work on their rocket ships in their suburban back yards. The zoning committee of Fort Palmetto (=me) is just not okay with that business! Just like my physical schools, this may not give them progress in their careers, but they will be able to skill there and meet like-minded sims in their industry. (With the upcoming addition of the Get Together EP, I could see career-focused groups meeting on these career lots to mingle and network with each other.)
Every career in the game has strict rules and caps in place, and the owner of the business (or department head, for government work) gets to decide what those rules are. Degrees are required for some careers (fake, of course, until we get a university EP). Skill levels are required for some careers, or perhaps even required traits. Most importantly, every single job that any sim has must be accounted for in money. If one sim earns money in the game, another sim has to pay for it. That means every paycheck given in my game is either paid for by a government department (tax money) or private enterprise (business). If a sim wants a job, they have to convince another sim to hire them and negotiate how much they'll be paid.
Each business has a record in my spreadsheets that details how many positions they've hired, the maximum they're willing to pay those employees (leaving room for promotions), and the actual amount they're currently paying. Contracted money is exchanged in live gameplay with inventory checks. Salaried money comes from in-game careers. Since career money comes from thin air, then employers must pay back that money (to thin air) every quarter.
For example, Stephanie goes to her job at Coolidge House and brings home $208—then, once per quarter, Sharon has that same amount deducted from her funds with money cheats. My business owners only have to pay once per quarter. If it so happens that one of their employees goes to work twice in that quarter, then it's a freebie. But with ~50-something households, it's hard enough to get one work day for every sim each quarter.
Money and objects that sims are paid as promotion rewards are also freebies. I'm not that nitpicky. ;)
The "L", "P" or "A" note where the job is located. Lakes, Pacific, Atlantic. In most circumstances, my sims need to live nearby where their job is located.
Government work:
Some jobs are paid for by the public tax fund rather than private enterprise. Doctors, police officers, teachers, politicians, military... The spreadsheets look the same, except the quarterly wages for those jobs are deducted from the tax fund rather than anyone's business or personal funds.
What positions are paid for by the tax money and how much do they get paid? My sims' elected representatives get to decide that. So they better vote wisely!
Ha, the zoning committee! I know, I hate that rocket in the backyard thing. It is fine in my legacy but not in Simdale Valley. But a NASA-like workplace would be really fun! I just haven't gotten around to building it yet.
ReplyDeleteI think that they might have updated the rocket thing in a patch, so that they can be worked on at community lots, too. (In fact, duh, they must have, because SNU has a rocket project area for students to work on, and that lot is zoned as a community lot library!) But I love my Fort Palmetto base, so I'll keep doing it this way anyway. :)
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