A high IQ bug (from milk)

[Babahara]

I heard about this bug, and now I actually have it in the game. Checking the IQ with the batbox confirmed that it's 300 instead of the regular 100.

The child learns at mad speed, in 6 days he learnt 3 full skills. It's ok for him because he happens to be an alien who're smarter than sims in my game story. However, now I am afraid that it may happen to somebody else. Is there a way to fix this bug?

[Simsica]

It will fix itself once the Sim grows up. But there's an option on the batbox in debug mode to give it or remove it, as you like.

[Katya Stevens]

It has the possibility of fixing itself when a sim grows up; in my game my sims don't lose their 300 IQ until they move out of the house (and if it's something like a Build A City challenge with no uni and the sim is the house heir, they keep it until they die).

As Simsica said, there's an option on the batbox: "Make Me" -> "Stupid" (if your sim has an IQ of 300; on sims with IQs of 100, it'll show "Smart" instead).

[lauratje86]

As Simsica said, there's an option on the batbox: "Make Me" -> "Stupid" (if your sim has an IQ of 300; on sims with IQs of 100, it'll show "Smart" instead).

Yup, the bat box is handy :-) Like katya said, it works the other way round too. None of my sims are allowed smartmilk (or any of the other aspiration rewards, most of the time) but I use the batbox to make my over-achieving toddlers smart, then set them back to "stupid" (ie normal!) when they become children.

I use this to signify how sims would know if a toddler was an overachiever - they learn their toddler skills much quicker. I allow them to learn all three main skills and the nursery rhyme if they have overachieving parents or siblings to teach them to them. Averagely motivated toddlers only get potty trained. Average motivation teens, adults and elders may potty train toddlers but not teach them other skills. Underachieving teen, adults and elders can't teach toddlers anything. Underachieving toddlers don't learn any of the skills - and I have a mod that means that if they're not potty trained as toddlers they may wet the bed as children, so it actually has an effect on their lives....

[Darby]

Laura, how do you decide, initially (as in the absence of overachieving parents), whether or not a sim is destined to be an overachiever? Die roll? And do ALL children of overachieving parents become overachievers as well, or just some?

Do you tend to make your overachievers knowledge sims, or is that too cliche?

What determines an underachiever (laziness?), and how is that trait expressed in the later ages, beyond them not learning toddlers skills?

[lauratje86]

Laura, how do you decide, initially (as in the absence of overachieving parents), whether or not a sim is destined to be an overachiever? Die roll? And do ALL children of overachieving parents become overachievers as well, or just some?

Do you tend to make your overachievers knowledge sims, or is that too cliche?

What determines an underachiever (laziness?), and how is that trait expressed in the later ages, beyond them not learning toddlers skills?

I got the idea from katya_stevens (http://www.modthesims.info/member.php?u=1387064), who got the idea from the Revised Boomtown Challenge (http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=6154.0) (login required to view thread).

I use a calculation based on the sim's neatness, activeness and playfulness points to decide their motivation. I based the idea on katya's way of doing it, which you can see here (http://eien-herrison.dreamwidth.org/110074.html). She uses activeness and playfulness, I added neatness myself.

You can see her formula on the page I linked above. Mine is:

(Active + 1/2Neat) – Playful = Motivation

Range = -10 – 15

Under-Achieving = -10 – -2
Average = -1 – 8
Over-Achieving = 9 – 15

Activeness = ambition
Neatness = attention to detail
Playfulness = (lack of) studiousness

So over-achieving parents won't necessarily end up with over-achieving kids - it depends on the personalities the children are born with. I allow over-achieving parents and other relatives to Encourage children to increase their activeness or neatness and/or decrease their playfulness to make them into over-achievers (or average achievers), but they can only change their personalities by up to 3 points total. And of course that doesn't effect their toddler yeardays!

The things that sims with the different motivation levels can do in my 'hoods is very similar to katya's - have a look here (http://eien-herrison.dreamwidth.org/110074.html) for details - but I don't limit the career levels based on motivation. I limit the career levels based on qualifications instead, so there are still comparatively few sims who make it to the top of their career, even if it's their LTW. I also don't allow under-achieving sims to teach or learn and toddler skills; average sims may only teach/learn potty training and over-achieving sims may teach and learn all four skills. Only over-achievers can teach or learn how to do homework.

I base aspirations on the wants that that sim rolled as a child, as well as on their parents' aspirations, the aspirations of relatives and friends that they are BFF's with and on my own interpretation of their character (and ocassionally I select for story-based reasons!). So no, not all over-achievers are Knowledge sims, though more than 1/6 of them are :-) Across all motivation levels I tend to end up with a high percentage of Knowledge, Family and Popularity sims. Any child who rolls a want to buy a lemonade stand becomes a Fortune sim. If they didn't roll the want to buy it but did want to sell lemonade when it had been bought they often get a Fortune secondary.

I do end up with quite a lot of under- and over-achievers, in some 'hoods. In the 'hood that I'm currently starting, Devon Island, which is a mini-megahood (Pleasantview & Strangetown & family bin sims with lots of sims killed off!) I already have 3 under-achievers (Dina Caliente, Ginger Newson & Isaiah Gavigan) and an over-achiever (Pascal Curious). I haven't calculated motivations for some of the starting sims yet, but there are only 15 of them so having at least 4 non-average sims does seem fairly high. But that's just caused by the random dice rolling to choose my starter sims :-)

[Katya Stevens]

lauratje86 explained most things very nicely, but I'd like to add in some things from my own rules:

Under my motivation system (active minus playful), approximately 50% of the population is average motivation, 25% underachievers, and 25% overachievers. (When I was building the rules, I did look at extending the average motivation range both sides, but that meant so few sims fell in to under or overachiver bands, and only in born-in-game sims that had more than 25 personality points, that I reverted to the ones in my blog.) Game-generated Taurus and Capricorn sims are automatically low motivation; Gemini and Scorpio are automatically high motivation; all the rest are average. This doesn't account for variation in born-in-game sims: I have one child who is an overachieving Pisces and another who is an overachieving Aries, for example, and I wouldn't be surprised if I had some average motivation sims from the typically high or low motivation signs. For me, using the star signs allows for a quick glance when a sim becomes a toddler, although some times I have accidentally read a -4 Average sim as a -5 Low Motivation sim. Taking quickly from my own rules, high motivation toddlers are the only ones allowed smart milk, and I make sure they're geniuses throughout their life (for my smart milk stick stays until teens leave for uni, at which point I use the batbox's "make me smart" option when they arrive at uni and that sets them as genius until they die).

I've also had the case where a high motivation and an average motivation parent have ended up with a low motivation child. I thought this was possible, but rare -- I'd expect two average motivation sims (one low active/playful, the other high active/playful) to give me a mix of motivations, but not on one of my founding families. Aaron (Curtis) Lyndhurst (high motivation, Scorpio) met and married Aimee Lyndhurst (average, Pisces), and had twins Harmony (low motivation, Capricorn) and Melody (high motivation, Aries). The family also adopted a toddler, Chelsey, who turned out to be a Gemini and thus high motivation. Melody and Chelsey will do brilliantly in their lives with no outside intervention, whereas for Harmony it'll all depend on her wants and what aspiration she rolls -- as a child and teen, she'll be pushed along by her parents and being in private school she also has the chance of getting skill points through the random pop-ups; as a young adult she'll go to university and likely be encouraged by her twin; as an adult...who knows? She has a better chance for uni if she rolls Kno/For as either of her aspirations, but a really hard time if she rolls Ple/Rom -- her career prospects are best as a Fortune sim (Architecture or Gamer) or Pleasure (Culinary or Gamer) and worst as a Knowledge sim (none of the default careers, only low-paying NPC careers would be available to her). If she rolls Fam/Pop/Rom her only non-NPC job option is the Culinary career. This doesn't take in to account a potential LTW job, although if she gets Knowledge and rolls Max 7 Skills, she'd better hope she can find someone to live with who has a decent job!

My aspirations are all completely randomised. Yes, I have ended up with high motivation Pleasure sims (Albert Leighton, lived a life of luxury being at the top of the Gamer career) and low motivation Fortune sims (Dyllan Leighton, just turned eighteen, won't see for a couple more rotations just how he deals with not being able to go to uni). It adds a bit of uncertainty in to the game: I don't know how, say, Harmony Lyndhurst will cope if she happens to roll Knowledge, or what Melody (her twin) will do if she rolls Pleasure.

[DoReMiFaSoLaTiDo]

Sims have IQs?

[lauratje86]

Sims have IQs?

Kind of, yes, though as far as I'm aware there are only two different ones :-)

100 is the normal level that most sims have. 300 is the level that toddlers have right after they've drunk smart milk. Sometimes that 300 gets stuck and you can end up with a sim that stays at 300 permanently, which means that they learn much faster than other sims. But, if you want to, you can fix it using Pescado's batbox :-)

[AlexandraSpears]

I dunno, I kind of like the random genius every now and again. Variety.

[DoReMiFaSoLaTiDo]

I dunno, I kind of like the random genius every now and again. Variety.

Yes, I had that recently. She was learning so quickly.

[Darby]

Thank you both for all that info, Laura and Katya. I like this concept a lot, and will definitely be using it in my game now! :beer:

A note on intelligence: The Thinking Cap works by temporarily increasing a sim's intelligence while it's being worn, but it's not quite as high as 300, iirc. Something like 250. Pescado did an analysis on all that stuff once. There's a thread somewhere at MATY outlining it all, and telling which objects are the best, most efficient skilling objects.

I don't think the batbox shows all this, though. Just the normal 100IQ and the Smart Milk 300IQ.

It's late right now, and I'm running on fumes, but I'll see if I can find and link that
MATY thread tomorrow.

[Babahara]

Thanks for help. I didn't notice an option on the batbox to make a sim stupid before, but I'll look for it now. It's nice that a high IQ can be fixed, in this case it really can be used for a storyline and for variety.

My sim didn't outgrow it upon turning teen, btw, but he's going to move to university soon, so I guess that's when he's going to lose the high IQ autonomosly. Haha, it's so funny, actually his family had no money for uni and he was allowed to enter it as an exception, being so smart and all. Now he's going to surprise everybody by arriving their as stupid as all other sims!

Btw I don't know the values for thinking cap or the knowledge eurika perk, but they're nowhere near the smart milk IQ! It's really impressive.

[Katya Stevens]

A note on intelligence: The Thinking Cap works by temporarily increasing a sim's intelligence while it's being worn, but it's not quite as high as 300, iirc. Something like 250.

According to readouts I've had on IQs:

Regular sims: 100
Regular sims + thinking cap: 200
Smart Milk Toddlers/smart milk stick sims: 300
Smart milk stick sims + thinking cap: 400

I vaguely recall that normally putting the thinking cap on causes a reset and sets a sim's IQ back to 100, but I've had nostupidonreset (MATY hack directory, under the test subfolder) for ages and my genius sims get an even higher IQ when using the thinking cap. (Alex and Brandon Fowler, twin boys who're both high motivation, have been abusing the thinking caps and with 4 rotations to go until they hit uni, they've already racked up $5250 and $5000 in scholarships respectively.) I don't let low motivation sims use the thinking cap, so I unofficially end up with three IQ levels: 100 (for low motivation), 200 (average motivation), and 300-400 (high motivation).

[sushigal007]

I wonder now, do all these IQ perks affect the learning of hidden skills, like dancing and pool?

[Darby]

Found the thread I was thinking of. It doesn't actually speak to intelligence, but many may find the info interesting and useful, nonetheless.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4.0.html

I don't have any particular desire to make sims gain skill quickly in general, but this info is fantastic to have for the Apocalypse Challenge, where the speed at which sims gain skill really matters.

I wonder now, do all these IQ perks affect the learning of hidden skills, like dancing and pool?
I don't know, but I imagine it would be easy to test with the help of this:
http://www.modthesims.info/d/208176

Question: Do any personality traits affect how quickly a sim might gain hidden skills?

I'd like to know more about the hidden skills in general. About all I know now, and I'm not even sure this is correct, is that it takes about 50 sim hours of Meditation to gain the Teleport skill.

[SimMegaptera]

That's a thing?? Interesting. I know that a lot of children, when they age up from toddlers, seem to do everything crazy fast -- they gain energy fast when they sleep, they eat fast, they run everywhere -- but my little girl Iris also just gobbles up skill points like they're going out of style. I didn't realize IQ was a thing. I'll use the batbox and check what hers is. She's not an alien, she's the daughter of a housewife and a security guard.

[Darby]

I've never heard of Smart Milk making sims do things like eat, sleep, or run fast. There's something else going on there with that.

Energy gain while sleeping has to do with the energy rating of the bed.
Running everywhere is something highly active sims do, and I never see some running faster than others.
I've never noticed some sims eating faster than others.

Aliens aren't born more with more intelligence than other sims. Any perception that aliens are inherently smarter is player bias.

[MOOKIEBLAYLOCK]

Sloppy , hungry sims are world class trenchermen. You can almost literally see the sparks fly (and of course you can see the crumbs). I'd put my self sim against Takeru Kobayashi any day. My boy would win in a cakewalk, pun intended.

[Darby]

Ah, now that you mention it, I do remember hearing that sloppy sims eat faster. Some consider that to be a useful trait for sims in Apocalypse Challenges.