I Obviously Overlooked Some Settings

[crown_of_antlers]

Thanks to Tagger I was able to get Aeronwen to meet and make friends with the other Clever Prank wives and is now at a high enough friend level to be able to contact them by phone. With Sarasvati I was able to work it out that she and Aeronwen were going to the grocery store at the same time and was able to have them chat for a while. Unfortunately a few minutes later I got a reminder that I had not adjusted all of the NRaas settings that are needed to make sure the characters behave.





About three minutes after the conversation in front of the store, Neldor got a phone call from Sarasvati asking if he would like to go out on a date (yikes!). So, yes I missed something.

When in map view, one can click a household, select NRaas, then Story Progression, then finally Household Options. There you get a long list of everything the members of that household might do, including "Flirt" and "Romance". The couple in that household will not cheat on each other once Flirt and Romance is set to Disallow.

I really like this game and it's certainly been entertaining during this time when I'm more or less in limbo with my Elder Scrolls games, but I HATE the fact that the Sims will auto-cheat unless you go through all these steps to put a short leash on them.

Comments

[darth_eldritch]

That auto-cheating isn't cool. I guess it's set up like that for people who want their SIMS to be a soap opera.

[crown_of_antlers]

From what I understand, that is indeed the case. They want it to be possible for players to have their Sims seduce any one they want. Unfortunately they didn't include features to counter that, and I have read a LOT of complaints about it.

For example, in the selection of traits, you can assign the Flirty that makes a Sim (even more) prone to hit on other Sims, but there is no Faithful trait. The closest they have is the Unflirty trait, and that just makes them not responsive to affection (not even from their spouse).

If you want to have a neighborhood of swingers, the game can be that way straight out of the box, but you want your married Sims to be faithful you need to install NRaas mods and make sure to adjust all the right settings to restrain the Sims' behavior.

It's a very poor design, and considering how detailed this game is in every other way, there is no (good) excuse for it.

[darth_eldritch]

That's irritating, assuming everyone wants that kind of mess in the game.

It's too bad you don't have the option of specifically setting who a character is attracted to and not attracted to.

[crown_of_antlers]

I saw a little while ago that the reason I had overlooked some settings is because I didn't have access to them. I had forgotten to install a couple of NRaas sub-packages that work with the Story Progression mod: "Relationships" and "Lovers". Once those were installed at had access to the variables "Flirt: Affair Adultery Chance" and "Flirt: Affair Liaison Chance". I went to each of my households on the map and set those all to zero. I also set the "Romance: Allow" variable to False, so that stops them from getting into new relationships and keeps them with their spouse.

That's irritating, assuming everyone wants that kind of mess in the game.

Agreed, and I've seen far more posts from people who are unhappy with it than those who like it. So far everyone I've seen who has their settings available for download has all of the cheating/adultery crap turned off.

[darth_eldritch]

*Takes notes*

There's sub-module for meanies which includes a brat... might be fitting for Morgana, lol.

It seems to be a lot of work to make normal stable marriages in the game.

[crown_of_antlers]

I found that it doesn't take that long to set everything. It's just a matter of finding out what needs to be set. Once the settings are done you can make a preset file which can them be imported every time you start a new game.

But I agree, players shouldn't have to do all this to keep their Sims from forgetting that they're married.