It really was like that, write a bit TV thought bubble, write a bit more, TV thought bubble.



I use a TV, but I don't pay licensing fees because it's wired directly into my RPi4, and I don't use / have a 'live signal'. So I only watch content that was aired previously.


In real life? Sure. In TS2? Burglars literally never happen, really not a risk at all, whether you have an alarm or not. The only time I've seen them is after using the genie, but even then most times it doesn't happen.

Oh, you are just asking to get a burglar!

Burglars are random. Many people are absolutely plagued by them. I've never gotten one after using the genie (but I seldom make wealth wishes). I can go quite a few rotations without one, and then suddenly every other household is burglarized. The person Charity was responding to was responding to someone talking about a stolen TV. In a "normal" hood (one in which the rulesets and aesthetic I'm using don't restrict electronics) just about every household gets one. In game configurations set up for restricting electronics, I add the "Everyone Fights Burglars" mod.

Interesting. The last time I was plagued by burgers was TS1, in that game - well you had a good chance to get one!

I am looking at this mod though:
https://modthesims.info/d/646974/burglar-mod.html

But recent comments on the mod suggest it's broken (causing game crashes).

I had a vampire once. Since I don't really like to play supernaturals, he was cured quickly - but not before he has beaten a burglar up properly

That's one thing about vampires that is underestimated..their ability to fight. Since they're immortal and (if they've been well fed..ahem..) they can outlast anyone.

Even in fiction their ability to outlast their opponents is never underestimated. So it is with the Sim vampires.

I agree with Justpetro. It all sounds like my worst nightmare. My Sims go to St Simeon's Church, to pray that these things never come to pass.

It wasn't today or yesterday, but I learned a couple of things the last time I was awake enough to play, a couple of days ago:

1) There seems to be a test of how much money you have before you're allowed to adopt a child. Liana Connell was told she didn't have sufficient financial resources to adopt a child. True, she only had §740 cash on hand, but she also had a job paying §900 a day. I think she's actually in a very good position to take on another family member. Her idea was to adopt a teen (I have a mod that allows that) who would be in the house when her existing daughter Jennifer gets home from school at 3 p.m. But, since she wasn't allowed to adopt, she saw no alternative, but to engage a nanny to look after Jennifer till she gets home from work at five. She's the first Sim in my entire game to leave her child in the care of a nanny. My Sims have heard so many horror stories about incompetent and downright malevolent nannies! Actually the nanny she got, Laura Purdie by name, though new to the childcare profession, proved perfectly competent, even serving a healthy meal of salad when Jennifer was hungry. Jennifer said she could perfectly well survive on snacks out of the fridge till mum gets home!

I'm not sure whether this financial test is vanilla behaviour, or something that came with Pecado's sshack which I installed recently.

2) I've discovered what happens if you don't give your money trees the tender loving care they need and deserve. They end up like this --

The only option is "Dispose".

The money test for adoption is vanilla. I ran into it early in my simming career. One of my experimental families was a gay couple who wanted to adopt, and I believe they weren't allowed to till they had $3K in the family fu,nds. I've never since tried to adopt with less than that so I could be wrong.

Okay, as an American, I have to ask: what even is a TV licence fee?

To make it short and simple:
In the UK, If you access any live internet streaming services (such as live content on Youtube), watch any live TV (such as the BBC or ITV), or watch any on-demand BBC content then you must pay the license fee once per year. It's one license per household. You can however mod that feature out by either not owning a TV or not watching live content on the internet.

The downside is, even if you claim to not do those things the game will still attempt to extract the license fee. So you must continually monitor your mod to ensure it continues to work after updates.

You can find more about that household feature here:
https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/tv-licence

You should equate their license fee as something like a cable TV bill which has internet access too.

I have cable/with internet. It's quite a license to steal, too.

Yes and no.

We still have various providers who offer more channels and the likes similar to US cable, which we have to pay for. But, even if we pay for a separate services like that, we must also still pay the basic TV license on top.

It's not the same as a cable bill, because it's on top of that, more like a tax (if you own a TV or have access to the broadcaster's streaming services).

Several European countries currently have or at some point had some sort of TV licence fee. It's sometimes partly tied to a broadcaster (BBC in the UK, for instance), so they're meant to be funded by the income from the fee. If so, that broadcaster often has mostly ad-free content. Other broadcasters tend to use ads for funding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

A TV license is necessary to buy a television set, and it is renewed once a year. The money is used for national broadcasting TV and radio stations. You pay that whether you watch other TV broadcasting (eg. Netflix, Amazon, etc.) or not.

At least that is how it works in South Africa, probably inherited from the UK.

Edit
Parents cannot adopt without a certain amount of money is definitely vanilla. I played vanilla long enough to be 100% sure.

It's not quite the same in the UK, legally speaking you can purchase and own a TV without a TV license. What you cannot do however is use that TV to watch live TV. See the link above I posted, which was to the official UK government website regarding the matter. :-).

I believe that - the rule about having the license before buying a TV has been a later addition here. However, SA only became independent from Brittain in 1961 and many things established in the UK before and after that date have taken hold here.

As a Brit, I consider the BBC to be a gem and a very valuable resource. The license fee is worth every penny just for the website- some of the resources there I use often are: BBC Bitesize (learning and revision resources, I'm working my way through learning Welsh!); BBC Ideas (short educational and informative videos); BBC Reel (educational videos to introduce the viewer to new concepts); The Hitch Hiker's Guide game (based on the Douglas Adams series); and BBC Archive where you can view historic footage. Plus, you have recipes, radio, streaming TV, news, opinion etc., on there. Brilliant!

My sims just get simsample TV and inaccurate weather on their TVs, I wonder if they have their own educational websites that they browse when reading about their hobbies?

I enjoy listening to the World Service and Radio 4. They are available in excellent quality on the internet at ~280 kbit/s and on the ocean on long wave 198 kHz. They can be listened to without the website in Foobar2000 along with a couple dozen regional and national minority stations.

https://pastebin.com/mnV6SDSi

I actually don't have a burglar alarm in real life, but most of my sims have one. XD You must have sacrificed to the random number god if you haven't had any sims burglaries. XD



Well you are a very benevolent sim god, so I don't think that your sims have anything to worry about!

Nice that you got a good nanny. I've had good nannies too. The only really annoying thing is the bottle bollocks and you don't need to worry about that with a child. Better than adopting a poor teen just to look after your kid too lol.

So, are those money trees the very first things to ever die in your game? XD



Game? Mod? I'm confused. Are you talking about Sims or RL? XD

He's talking about the Game of Real Life™, there are lots of mods for this such as Motherlode (rob a bank) and Debug Mode (take some potent drugs). We won't talk about how you exit the game...

Tell me, are you alive? Are you a simulation. Consider your answer, can you be 100% certain either way? If you believe the world is real, and everything around you is not game based, that would be the game code doing its job.

But I mean, it would be unrealistic to think we're all in one big simulation.. right?

However, do remember, if something greater than you, say, a simulations developer has the ability to literally shape the world around you, set your personality, configure your motives, alter your relationships, configure your senses of sight, smell, touch and I forgot the other one, etc. Then, everything you perceive to be true can be manipulated and configured to the finest detail and you would never be aware of it, after all, they create your thoughts.

So let me ask you again, are you alive? are you in a simulation?

*simsample smashes Q for 'quit'*

It doesn't matter if we're in a simulation. Living as if we and those around us are real is the only worthwhile way to live, regardless.

Let me answer that with a question of my own: At the end of the day, does it really matter?

Re: TV licence fees, okay, TIL more than I expected about how that works!

I've been playin and buildin in Sims 2 almost since it first came out .. so 20ish years .. and I love that we are STILL learnin new things.

I just, and I literally mean just, found out that you can use the deck (lattice or posts only) foundation and build it ON a foundation from the 2nd floor! *mind blown*

I was remodlin 330 Main, one of the pre-made stores in PV and when I deleted what I thought was the foundation the lattice stayed .. so I broke out the trusty hammer and that's when I realized it was a secondary foundation .. the lattice deck foundation