I have so many questions about OFB.

1. Say a playable sim comes to my real estate office and purchases a house. When I next play that family, will I get a pop-up like I do when they purchase a pet (it lets you choose whether you want them to have the pet or not, and if they don't, the business revenue isn't affected), or is that just it: they have a vacation home now?

2. I know that you build customer loyalty by making sure customers enjoy themselves and get what they want (right?). But what about the buttholes who already have negative customer loyalty? It seems to me like they just don't want to enjoy themselves in the store, and they keep on bringing my rank down.

3. What is this sales->manipulate thing, and how do you use it? My sim uses all the other sales interactions (basic sell, hard sell, dazzle) but manipulate has a 100% failure rate, even when the customers are in a good mood.

4. How do the business perks work when you have multiple businesses? Are they divided up between them all? Specifically, the cash bonuses. Do they just go to family funds, or increase revenue?

Finally... This one isn't really OFB, but HOW DO I GET VAMPIRES TO STOP BITING ME? It's driving me insane. Three of my sim's loyal customers are vampires and they won't stop biting her. I know I can cure it, but can I avoid it altogether?

-Edited below to add MORE questions, sorry -

5. I buy a business and work it the ranks. When I come to sell that business, do I get what I bought it for (what the lot is worth) or what the actual business is worth?

6. Does anyone know of a hack where I can buy residential homes for the purpose of selling them on? I'd like to have my sim buy run-down old houses, renovate them and sell them on. The trouble with doing this with a vacation home is she'd need to go on vacation every time to renovate them, ugh.

#2 -- any time I have a grouchy sim appear who seems to be completely uninterested in shopping, I kick them out (MATY's Business Runs You offers the option). I believe this is because customers come with random needs and if it's low enough to impact their mood (hunger or bladder) they do not seem to accept sales pitches. One solution I have is to get customer selector from MATY -- it allows you to sort customers by various variables (age, single/in a relationship, supernatural type etc.) but also allows you to choose a business type from a small selection.

#4 -- The cash bonus perk can only be used once per sim, and is added to family funds (although it does also register as increased revenue for that day for that business). It can be regained if you have a new sim gain ownership of the business(es).

I like your questions and am hoping to hear more about what people do on all of these.
As for #1: you can have a real estate co. where people purchase houses--that one is new for me. Wow!
For #2, I just just say goodbye, ask to leave, etc--then they go. If they do not, there's always the teleporter to clear them off lot (just make sure that they aren't using any objects or browsing, or you'll have a token left behind, and you may have to delete the object they were using.)
#3: I have NEVER seen Manipulate work. Seems worthless to me. Anyone else have success with this?
#4: It goes to family funds if the business is a home business and to the lot funds if it is a comm. lot business--you only get to work up through the perks once, not for each business owned. However, each business still has to reach the top level independently, if that makes sense.

I KNOW! I just discovered that a few days ago on this site. My sim has made $200,000 in two days! Admittedly I've been cheating: I use the boolprop cheat to keep her in her business round the clock, and then drag her needs up, but still...

I thought of another question:
5. How do I, or can I, run a 'real' bar? I have a bar set up in the basement of my sim's home, with tvs and fun things to do and a ticket machine outside, but it won't let me actually sell drinks. My sim can tend the bar, but drinks are free so she doesn't make any money.

You earn money from the ticket machine, not from the bar. But you need to register your bar as a home business first.

1. Playable Sims purchasing real estate via a deed at a real estate office own that property as soon as they buy the deed. If you're playing this as a playable real estate agent selling to playable Sims, you'll get a message pop-up that PlayableSimA is about to buy LotX for §simoleons. You can allow or deny the transaction at that point. If you deny it, you don't make the sale. If you allow it, the playable Sim buys and owns the property.

(When NPCs purchase property via an OFB real estate office, it immediately goes back to the community.)

However, I caution against selling vacation lots this way, since this creates a bug in the vacation lot. Your owner Sims can take a vacation on the lot, but the game now treats the vacation lot as a home business.



As far as I know, only grand vamps will bite autonomously. You have three active grand vampires in your game?

2. I just ask them to leave when they feel like being ornery.

3. Manipulate can fail? I've never had it fail myself, granted I don't use it often. Just when I want to make my sim a real big quick buck. I think the sim she used it on was her friend, and it hurt the relationship score though.

Edit: If you don't have MATTY's anti redundancy, and a clean template for downtown, there will always be three grand vamps.

Also, have you tried MATTY's creature fix? I know it keeps the vampires from biting Mrs. Crumplebottom. It might make them less ravenous in other ways as well.

1. mangaroo has explained. Although you might want to buy vacation lots this way, it can be a feature rather a bug

I personally think of it as some of my sims coming to a distant land and selling their own home-town trinkets there. After all, locals should be interested in foreign cultures, too If you buy their trinkets, why shouldn't they buy yours?

2. You can ask them to leave, however, you can just leave them alone. If you already have many other customers, negative hits won't really affect the business, and it's better to concentrate on earning more stars from others.

3. I've seen Manipulate fail only once, when the customer was already in a very bad mood. Did you try using it enough times? Maybe you weren't lucky so far, but it works well. And it depletes the energy bar a lot.

4. Perks can't be earned twice by the same sim.

As for the vampire problem, there are anti-biting hacks:
http://forum.jfade.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16

Funny, I just found an anti-biting hack and came here to post it in case anyone else is having the same problem! http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=98446
I don't know if they are 'grand' vampires because personally I hate the vampire element to the game so I never play them. Now I think about it, I think she's only been bitten by two of her vamp customers, so that would make sense.

Expanding further on the 'playable sim purchasing a vacation home' thing.. Let's throw in names to make it easier. Cassie owns the real estate business; Jake is a playable sim (although not in her household) who buys a house from her. I'm not actually playing Jake at the time, I'm playing Cassie. Had it been a pet Jake bought, the next time I played Jake's family I would get a popup saying "a member of this household has purchased a pet, would you like to welcome it into this home?". If I say no, they don't get the pet, but Cassie's business still gets the revenue because he made the transaction on Cassie's lot and I saved it. If I say yes, they're deducted the cost of the pet and the pet is there. I'm wondering whether the same thing happens with the vacation homes, or whether if Jake buys a house when I'm not actually playing him, he'll then own that house no matter what.

If Jake buys a deed from Cassie, he will own the property. The dialog to confirm the transaction appears there, at the point of sale. There will be no pet-type dialog when you next play Jake's lot.

Wonderful; thank you! I guess I can always have him sell the property back to the community and re-buy it if there's a bug.

Wow--that is very, very cool. I don't mean to be obtuse here, but how does one go about setting up a real estate business? If I were to hazard a guess, I would imagine that the seller would need to own the lot(s) up for sale, right? And what sort of lots can be sold--only vacation homes, or also community lots? and is it possible to sell residential lots this way? (Sorry for all the questions!--my mind is just spinning here ...)

It IS very cool, M3g7e. The real estate office was one of the founding businesses in Prosperity (all other business owners had to buy their lots from the real estate agent).

Your Sims can sell community lots and vacation homes (note the vacation lot = home business glitch). The game does not make it possible to sell residential lots this way. Your estate agent Sim must first purchase the lot themselves via phone or computer, then they can put the deed on display and mark it for purchase. I run this as a community lot business, but it can be done as a home business as well.

One pitfall to be wary of is that real estate is expensive. If you're relying on the business for your Sim's sole source of income, you may want to place other suitably themed, lower-priced catalog objects for sale while you build up customer loyalty.

OK--Awesome! This is definitely going to come in handy in my medieval hood. Thanks for the info
--Heloise.