Active Careers, Promotions, and the Performance Bar

[oshizu]

Thank you, everyone, for your feedback.  I've read the other thread about the efficacy of staying late and subsequent posts, but I guess I wanted more specific information because I'm frantically trying to salvage my dynasty.  Like, is what I'm trying to achieve even possible or should I switch the mother's aspiration (Successful Lineage) right now?

@dodi90, in a dynasty, the founder and each heir need to complete two unique aspirations.  This time around, Computer Whiz is not one of my dynasty's shared aspirations so this Scientist sim cannot use Make Connections.  Several of my household spares have completed Computer Whiz to buy more potions of youth. Maybe I'm approaching Computer Whiz wrong, but its completion takes too long to make it a shared dynasty aspiration (because I'm doing it wrong?), even though it seems really useful for all the active careers.

@ClayMask, thank you for letting me know that Negotiate a Bonus can fail and that it has a 48-hour cooldown.  Very good to know.

@Carl, I was sad to hear that the performance bar increasingly drops.  My founder's spouse actually completed the Scientist career already but I didn't notice how loooong it took because she had all of her YA, Adult, and Elder stages to complete it. Plus she was a spare, so it ultimately didn't matter whether she completed it or not. 

@Playalot, thank you for sharing your timing with Negotiate a Bonus.  What is the ideal mood to negotiate a bonus? I used Very Confident (the house has a Confident room), but should I have used Very Focused instead?

What I've learned from all this is if you give a dynasty heir the Successful Lineage aspiration, life is easier if the next heir doesn't choose an active career.

[officialghosts]

@oshizu Maybe you're doing Computer Whiz wrong, but I'm going to assume you're not. Completing the aspiration requires at least 100 in game hours on the computer combined with time at work to reach level 5 of Tech Guru (Which still might take a few days even with Connections). If it's not your sim's sole focus and you're not shoving moodlet solvers down their throat every few hours, it's definitely one of the longer aspirations. While the Make Connections bonus is nice, I don't think it's worth having every heir complete it and making it a shared aspiration when options are fairly limited.

[Playalot]

I always use the emotion that is ideal to that particular sims career. So for my scientist founder I always had him very focused. I usually stack as many focused moodlets as possible, at least 12+ but usually 16+ or so before phoning for negotiate a bonus.  Just remember though, it can fail! I've always been lucky with it but that's all it is...luck! (Well...maybe the stacked moodlets help too, who can tell.)

The active careers certainly do add another level of complexity to a dynasty challenge, that's for sure. 

[dodi90]

I'm actually certain that the mood during Active Work didn't affect much of job performance because as far as i'm concerned, the work performance is calculated solely based whether you achieve "gold" during your work. Some may argue that having the ideal mood might help achieving the "gold" faster but in the end the performance it give you is flat nonetheless.

By the way, having 3 surgeries is not daily task but more of promotion requirement. As far as I know, the promotion requirement shouldn't affect job performance but I might be wrong on this. It should only affect the ability whether you could be promoted or not.

Bottom Line:
- If you are allowed to skill programming *not completing com whiz* do it to hack your job performance but this could fail and hurt your performance
- Do not again waste points for Entrepreneurial. The in-game explanation currently didn't reflect what this trait actually do which is sometimes give random boost at the end of work day where a little push is what you need to get promoted

[ClayMask]

@dodi90 According to a study that Carl did, having the ideal mood for an active career affects job performance a little bit.  He said it may be that each action you your Sim does while at work and having the ideal mood may make a tiny impact on job performance.  It's at the very bottom of the page.  http://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,23409.0.html

[dodi90]

I know about that but as carl said, the performance kick is barely noticeable anyway to make a difference. What make worse is whenever you complete a daily task, there is no indication in the game that it actually give impact to the work performance. Note: the doctor career is different since if i am not mistaken, if you cure a patient, you should get a tiny boost. However, neglecting and bad diagnosis always make performance hit on the career.

I conduct a test on this matter to make people sure that being Focused while going actively serves no impact whatsoever on Job Performance. To test it I use the same Sim, I cheat so the stay up all the time, and in the first sim is always happy (due to high mood). The second one, I place the focused painting all over the place so that she literally stay focused on let say most of the work time. I save before I can do anything when she arrive.

This is my result from first condition (only happy no focused at all)

and this is when she came home


and this is the second  almost always focused sim do

[Carl]

@dodi90 you had the same result I did. It's almost like in active careers, the ideal mood is to emulate how they will do on the job. When you're in control, you can knock out a dozen objectives and clearly work your butt off so mood might not matter as much. It probably does 5-10% better when you're in the ideal mood and send them on their own. This is probably also avoiding a penalty for being in a bad mood.

[Caterina]

I was hovering over the promotion requirements for either the comedian or business careers and I read something about having a good relationship with your coworkers.  I wonder how much that affects things.

[Playalot]

I think the trick is to let everything work together. So using negotiate for bonus and the Entrepreneurial Reward Trait and being in the 'very' ideal mood, my sim was able to max level 9 of the doctor career in one work day when I joined her at work. She was friends or good friends with all her co-workers and of course, completed all requirements for the next promotion and the daily objectives.

[Carl]

Playalot, thank you that's something I will look into for the Careers page. To remind people of that ability and boosting performance

Caterina I saw that too, but I did not get a boost when I made my Sim friends with about 4 coworkers. Best friends even. So I'm not sure how it works. It could possibly be like the focused mood and mainly help when your Sim is going to work alone. I haven't tested it on a regular career...

[Playalot]

@Carl , yeah, it's hard to know how all the bonuses work. At times I have seen the progress bar actually move to the right as I was doing a task (the bar at the bottom right) and other times, doing exactly the same task in the same mood... it doesn't move at all. So definitely a chance element involved. It can be pretty powerful when it all comes together as this sim has completed a few levels of her career in one day through all these bonuses working together.

*edited, just another thought... I've had entrepreneurial trait fill as much as a bar and a half and the end of the day, snagging the next promotion for my sim.

[oshizu]

And to report back on the initial reason I started this thread, my Gen 4 scientist sim succeeded in maxing his career when his Gen3 mother was several days away from the end of her elder bar.
The scientist had Entrepreneurial (hey, even an unreliable random boost is better than none) and focus-boosting drawings/prints all over the lab. While having introduced himself to all his co-workers, he was only friends with one (they retire or die along the way).

On his last day as Level 9 Scientist, he made $2,156 which is more than average, I think.  He did complete a lot of the tasks, but not all (some were impossible to complete). I'm inclined to believe Playalot's suggestion that higher focus results in higher success rates.  Negotiate for Bonus 3x weekly really helps.
About co-workers, the sim had trouble getting DNA samples and giving away serums when the relationship bar was too low.  So the friendships didn't prevent his promotions per se, but hindered his ability to ocmplete lab tasks.  This is for the Scientist career.  I don't know about the non-active careers, like Comedian or Business.

By the way, on his way to maxing the Scientist career, he only had positive boosts from Negotiate a Bonus. When he recently failed a Negotiation, I was surprised that the negative drop is much bigger than the positive boost.  Or was that just my imagination.
This dynasty will no doubt fail for other reasons along the line but a big thank you to everyone for your advice and suggestions.  I really learned a lot!

[ClayMask]

To me it seemed like the negative drop from failing a negotiation is about the same as a positive boost from succeeding at one, but that both vary some in exactly how much they do.

[oshizu]

To me it seemed like the negative drop from failing a negotiation is about the same as a positive boost from succeeding at one, but that both vary some in exactly how much they do.

Thank you for sharing that, ClayMask.  It makes me less fearful of using Negotiate a Bonus again.

[Playalot]

@oshizu. that's great news! Good luck with the rest of your dynasty!