But that usually means one is carrying a mortgage, which is the equivalent of being in debt as far as TS3 and SP Money are concerned since the game doesn't have mortgages or other forms of loan collateral. There is the concept of property taxes, the twice weekly bills, so I guess a sim could be Rich temporarily if they own their expensive home and are carrying no debt, but simply cannot afford their astronomically high bill payments because they don't have tons of expendable cash or a positive enough cash flow to cover it all.

It's the value of their house. They have to be "house-rich". Cash doesn't factor in. Some Sims live on the very edge of wealth: they are rich as long as their car is parked outside and suddenly poor again when it's somewhere else.

Well, that does explain why I have a household that has a negative Net Worth due to loans and usually no cash but a §350,000 home but is picking up the Rich designation. I thought it was a glitch only affecting this one household because I've had them in play through so many patches and mod updates over the years, but guess this is what is supposed to happen after all -- I have the Rich threshold set to I think §200,000 in that world.

I goofed. I don't have much experience moving families around yet, and assumed it was like Sims 2. I evicted them from Edit Town, and all was good.

You pay them on time with a smile and the Repo Sim stays away. Oh...that's not what you meant?

The exact calculation remains a mystery (to me, anyway), but it's supposed to be a percentage of the current value, after depreciation, of your residential lot and its furnishings plus a different, lower percentage of other real estate holdings like second home lots and vacation homes. One can get a preview of the bill to expect by doing NRaas > MC > Status on the home lot or NRaas > MC > Household > Status on a sim. It's more than a bit flaky, as Don already noted if a car is in its parking space or in the garage when the amount is calculated, it may be different than if the car is in use or in a sim's personal inventory. SP Money's Unified Billing option subjects inactive resident households to the same tax rates that actives pay.

If you use SP Money to designate lots as rentals with resident sims being landlords, the calculations are even trickier because a portion of the rent goes to the landlord sim by way of automatic transfers and a portion to the town for property taxes on the lot's furnishings.

Also using SP Money, we can impact the rates used even if the exact calculation used is not clear, under Town (Household, Caste, Sim) Options. Many of us this leverage this feature to set up different levels of Property Tax rates for different ranges of Net Worth. The default value is "1," so we at least know that "2" and "4" for example will trigger much higher tax bills and can act as an equalizer for otherwise runaway town wealth.

There is also an Income Tax option, which is "0" by default so that means there is none, and can similarly be set on the different Town, Household, and Caste levels to again help equalize wealth. Income Tax is collected at the time a sim is paid for work done though, not through the mailbox billing system or later automatic debits. The formula used for Income Tax is even more unclear, but again we know that 1 will trigger some Income Tax due with each paycheck, 10 will trigger a lot, and 30+ will likely generate negative pay amounts, thus making sims pay for the honor of having worked (not usually what the player wants).

I always set up Net Worth based castes for the two tax rates in the worlds that I play, even vacation worlds. The ranges for the Net Worths and rates I use differ from world to world as they each have different economies and costs of living. Usually three segments with Property Tax rates of 1, 2, and 4 and Income Tax rates of 0, 5, and 10 or something around there. It takes some experimentation and watching over some inactives' household's finances as well as my own over time to get things to feel right. Households I play in rotation who do not generate much or any income while they are not being played by me, that would be those where no one in the household works in standard rabbit hole type careers, are Tax Exempt and don't have to pay any taxes while they are inactive, otherwise they will tend to go bankrupt on me when I'm not watching. For those households I use 0 and 0 for the two tax rates, by caste settings, except again when they are actively being played.

Can I turn a suburban world into a city world with S3PE or is this only possible in CAW?

You can do it with just S3Pe, just import UNKN 0x296A6258 from a city world to your world file.
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=424374

Excellent! Thanks a lot.

Do babies show the occult state in relationship panel (the colored ring around the portrait)?

Yes. Occult babies will have the respective colored rings around their picture in the relationship panel (red for vampire etc.)

The best part is when a dog (or cat? not sure if they do it too) walks past a very young occult and get the thought bubble of a vampire bat, fairy, etc. Even if the baby or toddler really doesn't look like an occult yet or have any powers, somehow the animals just know.

EA standard will pack the furniture but will also leave exact copies of every packed piece of furniture behind. So, if you moved back into that house you will find there everything the same as it was when you moved out. There are only a few objects that will not be left behind when you move out, career rewards like the reward fridge, for example.

The move out with the packing furniture option even duplicates most of the content of WA treasure chests. Quite handy if you used them to store things at home and place the chest outside. So you can open this while already living somewhere else and have access to things you may have used up in your current home (e.g. alchemy ingredients.)

Are environmental sound effects, like crickets or birds chirping, tied to objects?
I played in a custom world recently where a dive lot was styled like a sunken park, i.e. there were trees, benches and outside decorations, and I could swear that I heard birds singing while scuba diving there.

Some trees have bird sounds, and other objects such as effects and building shells can too.

And the environment sound effect (bar noise) of the Late Night bars? when you can hear glasses clinking and patrons chatting/murmuring/laughing in the background. It certainly is triggered by the lot assignment, but by what object? the professional bar furniture piece?

It might be tied to the lot assignment AND the bar, not just the bar alone. I have lots with that bar on it, and there's no ambient sounds. Would be a bit odd, too, because you might want to have one of them at home.

Ok, I have a really silly question.
This is a picture of Monte Vista festival lot from the exchange.

You see those potted palm like plants on the back by the horseshoes? Are those supposed to be there, or am I missing some CC and it got replaced with those potted plants?
I got a notification after reinstalling some CC that some objects could not be loaded, so I'm checking some lots to see how big the damage is.
This lot is set to spring right now and I have no idea if those potted plants are supposed to be there or if I'm missing CC. Could somebody with the lot please take a look at their own lot to help out?

Darn it, so my Ghost & Fairy really did have a plain non-occult baby

Ok so, i asked a sim from Oasis Landing to move in with me and now i'm stuck at "Processing"... Should i wait it out (it's been almost an hour) or restart the game?

Yeah, restarted the game, realized i could simply save the household to bin from Edit Town.

I'm playing multiple sims... I can't watch my fairy, Jennifer, all the time. She's a fairy. She keeps going out and trying the "bloom" spell on her garden. She's killed half the garden. How do I put a stop to Jennifer's reign of terror on all plant life?

Are you registered at Sims Asylum? (the site requires free registration to see the mods) Bluegenjutsu at Sims Asylum has a less Autonomous bloom mod to stop fairies from trying to "bloom" the plants all the time.

Stupid question of my own: Do NPCs "live" in the blacked out apartments in Bridgeport? My Sim lives in an apartment in Bridgeport (now I remember why I hate apartments in Sims 2 and now Sims 3) and I just saw a NPC fireman living one of the blacked out apartment next to my Sim's. A little bit later I saw a notice of a Pyromanic burn story from Nraas SP so I'm trying to figure out if the fireman lived in the apartment next to my Sim's and was going to put out the fire the Pyromanic set, or if he was putting out a fire in the apartment next to my Sim's. (Poor Morrigan Hemlock, all the Pyromaniacs in Bridgeport like to burn her stuff.)

NPC's live there in the sense that they are assigned to the space and can be called down to the lobby when they are "home" by using the call box. But they are really going into hibernation in those spaces, as a substitute for going off the map to hibernate when their services are not needed or they aren't called upon to do anything else.

How do I do the sim-fu tournament in Shang Sim-la?
I understand that what you do is go to your home or base camp, then use the phone to call the next available challenger. I do that, and he never shows up. I know my sim is utterly awesome, but I don't think I'm doing it right.

As far as I'm aware (I may be wrong), your Sim has to go to them. Every time I've done the World Adventure Opportunity that requires I win the tournament I've always had to go to the Sim I'm supposed spar after I call them. If they aren't assigned to a register I always end up having to go to their house, get the relationship up enough to spar, then ask them to a ranked sparing match.

My own question: I have only had Late Night for maybe a week, so I'm not sure how the whole celebrity thing works. My Sim is a celebrity, but since she works in the criminal career she recently went to jail. I got a message that there is bad talk going around that she has gone to jail and she has the publicly disgraced moodlet. I think I saw something about false rumors, but this isn't false (she is in the criminal career, and did get arrested while going to work.) Is there a way to get rid of the celebrity rumor and disgrace crap?