Hi, guys

I'm currently working on creating different social classes for my 'hood by separating sections of the hood into classes: (low "poor", medium "middle class", high "rich"). For example, Socialite sims live in high rise modern apartments located in the trendy uptown area of the hood whereas Gearheads sims live in the seedy downtown area in converted factory apartments.
Sims Fandom: Social Class

I'm trying to figure out a way so that the "correct" neighbors move into the right apartments. I'm aware there are cheats which can determine the social class that moves into apartments but from reading a couple threads on the topic: Apartment Life - The "right" kind of neighbors?, there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer on the best way to do it.

According to Mootilda's (bless her soul) post on this thread: AL: changelotclassification cheat help, it seems like the cheats don't actually work or "stick" once entered into the cheats menu. Mootilda went on to mention in her post that there are ways to set the class value by using SimPE or LotAdjuster however her explanation on how to do it was not very clear to me.

Can someone please explain how it works and provide step by step instructions on how to correctly set the lot class properly? Any help would be much appreciated!


Here are the following cheats I was referring to:

• changeLotClassification [low | middle | high]
  This changes the lot classification of the lot. The lot will remain this classification until the clearLotClassValue cheat is used.

• clearLotClassValue
  This clears any "changeLotClassification" cheat used on the lot and sets the lot class to the correct calculated value.

• printLotClass
  This prints the lot's class (low, middle, or high) as well as the corresponding numerical lot class value. The lot class on an apartment lot will determine which social class townies move into it.

I think I may have found the one topic that TS2 community has no answer to lol

As someone so unskilled I can't figure out how to make SimPE work, this is what I do.

When the first family moves into an otherwise empty apartment building, I pause as soon as it's loaded and use the Changelotclassification cheat so you have the correct lot class when others move in.

I also use this cheat before checking the newspaper/computer for roommates, and if I remember any Saturday so the apartment party will also be the appropriate type.

It's a pain but it does work.

For roommates, if you forget, you can change the lot classification and look again. But you must do it before anyone moves in to the empty units or else you are stuck.

Thanks for your input!

I really want to find out if there is a more permanent method whether it involves using a mod, tool, cheat or combination of all three perhaps.

This is the only topic I've noticed where no one is able to provide detailed information for. Aside from Mootilda's explanation, there are no other threads on this topic anywhere I've found online so it's good to get a discussion going as this could be useful for many simmers. Maybe more "advanced" players would be intrigued to look into solving this.

What I love about this game is that there's always something new to discover even after years of playing the game, like this CAS feature Marticore found out about for example: The Sims 2: You NEED to know about this CAS feature!

Have you tried changing it using Lot Adjuster? Open an occupied lot, click Advanced, and see Force class value.

eta:  ha, I just added the exact same picture.

The best way of solving this is to use a Mod that actually disables the rendom NPC neighbor generation and just make CAS townies to move in that match the class you want that apartment building to be like moving lower income households into a cheaply built low rent subsidized rental if it's in a low income district and making it a very nicely finished and decorated high end rental if you want it to rent to higher income households.I'd also look at building my own apartment buildings as most built by EA tend to have serious routing issues built right into their designs like one spiral staircase for apartments on four levels which can cause a traffic jam and fights to break out.I also tend to put lower class community lots like vocational workshops,low end parks,dive bars and other low class lots near cheaply finished apartment buildings.I'd put high class resteraunts and high end night clubs near high end apartment buildings.I've not had NPC's generated for neighbors in years because of that Mod I put in to disable that and I can still get nieghbors just by moving playable townies into empty apartments.

Hi, HL

Can you provide a guide specifically on how to set the class value using Lot Adjuster?

What numerical values classifies as “low, medium, high“? Are there any other steps involved to ensure it “sticks”?

I have never had a need to use it before so I wouldn’t know what I’m doing but this is the only thing I want to use Lot Adjuster for at this point lol

I’m interested to know if any other players have experimented with this and figured out a method, seems like very few people have discussed this topic anywhere. Great responses so far!

In SimPe, in the Lot Description Editor the values for this are in U5: (Unknown 5).
The value of U5 is only valid if the Version is Apartment (11). In any other version it is not read or written to by SimPE but a default set of zeros is displayed.

If you aren't familiar with using Hex, in a DWORD (four Hex Bytes) the least significant digit pairs are placed first so the order of the pairs have to be reversed to be usable.

U5: of Tech Centre Flats
04 AE 08 00 00 AE 07 00 00 3F 58 00 00 00

04 = 4 (Number of Apartments)
AE 08 00 00 reversed becomes 00 00 08 AE = 0x000008AE = 2,222 (Highest Rent)
AE 07 00 00 reversed becomes 00 00 07 AE = 0x000007AE = 1,966 (Lowest Rent)
3F 58 00 00 reversed becomes 00 00 58 3F = 0x0000583F = 22,591 (Lot Class Value)
00 (Override Flag)

Quote from Post by Mootilda
"If Version2 is 11:
BYTE Number of Apartments 0 if this is not an apartment building
DWORD Apartment Rental Price Range: High
DWORD Apartment Rental Price Range: Low
DWORD Lot Class Value displayed by the "printLotClass" cheat This value is only displayed if the override flag below is 1
BYTE Lot Class Override Flag 0: recalculate: determine the current lot class value, and ignore the Lot Class Value above 1: override: use the Lot Class Value above, no matter what the actual lot value is"