Tip: Rotational Play

[oshizu]

MarianT
I'll be sure to let you know how my summer-season plants fare during Week 4. that is, during the last week of spring that has been changed instead to summer.

Today, I have a few more about how rotational play affects seasonal gardens.
In my casual rotation, I am on Day 20 (3 households, one week each; 28 day-seasons) so I'll soon be returning to Household 1 and using the weather control machine to switch to summer.
I have two questions about seasonal gardens & rotational play:

Q1: Generally speaking, what happens to the gardens of my non-active played households when the seasons change?
       (If my households' non-summer plants are left outdoors (unsheltered) when we shift to summer, will I later rotate to Househols 2 and 3 to find their unsheltered spring gardens wilted and shrunken?)

Q2:  My three households each have an outdoor (unsheltered) fenced-in seasonal garden; out-of-season plants are grown in a basement garden.
       My question is, do you always shelter each outdoor garden before rotating to a different household? Or do you grow all plants in greenhouses?
       I'm not using greenhouses this time around, so I thought I'd just add 4 pillars and a roofed ceiling...

@mousef
Thank you for the link to the 21-day season mod! If the weather control device doesn't work, I might look into that, or just use MCCC.
Will let you know what happens, though.

[Shewolf13]

@oshizu

Hey! Welcome back ^^ I can't speak to everything, since I haven't done a lot of gardening, but I use the season cheat from MCCC (but it functions just as the changing seasons cheat) and reset my seasons. It does reset them, though. I haven't messed around with the weather machine in a rotational play style yet though. But thought I'd mention the cheat case it might help.

[MarianT]

@oshizu, sorry for not getting to your questions sooner.

With regard to Q1, your unsheltered spring plants will be patches of brown dirt when you switch back to them in summer. You don't need to replant or anything; they'll come back when it's spring. At least that's been my experience, but I'm playing with longer seasons and more families means that I'm away for a season or two.

Q2. Willow and Vlad have a greenhouse; the others just have outdoor gardens. Money trees grow in all seasons, if you're interested.

[oshizu]

@oshizu

Hey! Welcome back ^^ I can't speak to everything, since I haven't done a lot of gardening, but I use the season cheat from MCCC (but it functions just as the changing seasons cheat) and reset my seasons. It does reset them, though. I haven't messed around with the weather machine in a rotational play style yet though. But thought I'd mention the cheat case it might help.

Hi Wolfie! *waves

Every sim household I've ever played is heavy into gardening, lol.
I'm aware I can advance seasons with MCCC, but I'm looking for rotational strategies that don't involve MCCC or other mods.

[oshizu]

Hello!
I'm reporting back on the use of Dr. June's Weather Machine that has been upgraded with the Temporal Modifier Unit (which requires Handiness Level 8 ).

Again, I was playing 3 households in rotation using a 28-day seasonal cycle, starting with spring.
After playing all 3 households for a week each, a Household 1 sim used the Weather Machine to advance the season to summer at the very start of their second week (Day 22).
The sim who advances the season doesn't need Handiness 8 (in game, a sim from Household 3 performed the Temporal Modifier upgrade).

I've only played 5 in-game days into their first week of summer, but everything seems fine.
Household 1's summer plants register as "in season" while growing outdoors (unsheltered).
Household 1 also visited Granite Falls which has also entered the summer season. In the campground area, elderberry/noxious elderberry and chamomile/toxic chamomile have sprouted.
Other areas of Granite Falls haven't been visited yet, but the two chamomile species only grow in summer so I think the seasonal change is "world-wide."

So I will certainly make use of the upgraded Weather Machine for any rotational game that either (1) would benefit from 21-day seasons or (2) involve 4+ households that I wish to keep within the same season.
That's all.

[MaxCube]

Thank you for all the work that you put in helping us enjoy the game

I have a question regarding rotational play. When I'm playing one of my households the members of other households that I play will show up at locations as NPCs. For example Household 1 Sim is at the Bar and a Sim from Household 2 will arrive and act independently. Is there any way to prevent this?

Thanks for for your time!

[MarianT]

Thank you for all the work that you put in helping us enjoy the game

I have a question regarding rotational play. When I'm playing one of my households the members of other households that I play will show up at locations as NPCs. For example Household 1 Sim is at the Bar and a Sim from Household 2 will arrive and act independently. Is there any way to prevent this?

Thanks for for your time!

Sorry, there's no way to prevent that. There are a couple of ways to take advantage of it. If you send a Sim from household 1 to the gym, Sims from household 2 and 3 will also show up and gain fitness. If you send Sim 1 to the park, some of your other Sims might show up and gain logic from playing chess. And they will all make friends on their own. They used to get involved romantically, too, but I think the devs altered the mechanics somewhat to diminish the probabilities.

I actually enjoy seeing Sims from my households out and about, but if you don't like that, then the only solution is not to send your Sim to places where you don't want to see your other Sims.

[MaxCube]

Thank you for the info - much appreciated!

[oshizu]

It's been a while since I've played a rotational game but today I have a question about non-active sims and their personal inventory.

Let's say Sim A's household is the active household.
If she invites Sim B from a different household to go fishing, does Sim B keep any fish he catches in his inventory? What about looking for frogs?
I vaguely recall someone saying that if, using the same two sims, Sim A is running a clothing store and Sim B comes to shop, any purchased items stay in Sim B's inventory (wardrobe).

In my current game, I also accidentally discovered that Sim A could both fertilize and evolve plants in Sim B's garden.
And it might just be my imagination, but the garden of a non-active household seems to grow a bit while visited by a sim from the active household.
I don't plan turning the evolve-each-other's-gardens into a habitual routine, but thought I'd share.

Mostly I'm interested in the personal inventory.  I know a non-active sim can gain skills, just not sure if there's any reason to invia sim with Fishing 10 to go fishing, haha.

[MarianT]

I haven't looked into this much, but my impression is that fish caught might not show up in Sim B's inventory. However, if Sim A gives Sim B a fish that would show up. I didn't know that about gardens.

[nomo]

If items show up in the personal inventory of inactive sims, just by autonomous behaviour in the world, I think you should report it as a bug; it seems that could lead to performance issues, and so not be a design choice. Given that you don't have mods of course. I also play rotational, but I have a lot of households, and have not returned to many of them often enough to see anything of the sort. You could easily check it though, by just loading the household in question, afterwards. I'd be interested to know.

Plants grow/develop while the lot or the neighbourhood they're planted on/in is active/loaded.

Clothing is not separate items in inventory. In my clothing stores (retail) sims buy clothes and walk out in them, and I've loaded a household like that to look at them in CAS, and they did have the clothing piece available.

[oshizu]

I haven't looked into this much, but my impression is that fish caught might not show up in Sim B's inventory. However, if Sim A gives Sim B a fish that would show up. I didn't know that about gardens.

Thank you for your response. Yes, I know that gifting works . Since not all of the game's tweaks make it into the patch notes, I was wondering about fish and frogs.
As for gardens, I only noticed that yesterday. When Sim A visited Sim B's lot, she saw that some of the plants were sparkling. Clicking on those plants showed the Evolve and Fertilize options.

[oshizu]

If your sim is visiting another household and get the message that the household's egg is ready to hatch, don't let your visiting sim hatch the egg.

My farmer is unable to rename, put in inventory, or trade the chick a visiting sim hatched, because the game claims the farmer doesn't "own the item."
I guess he has to continue feeding the chick until we rotate to the other sim, so she can make another visit and take "her" chicken home.
Not a game-breaker but still rather annoying logic: his hatchable egg and chicken coop, so I didn't expect him to lose ownership of the chick.

Edited to add: I had the sim who originally hatched the farmer's egg make another visit.
                     The game says she doesn't "own the item" either. I guess that chick is glitched.  I'll just delete it.