Stay-at-Home Parent

[Nandarelle]

Lorelai Gilmore worked hard and earned § 159 946.
Her daughter Rory gained 19 toddler and 40 child skill points.

159 946 * 1.99 = 318 292.

[mariposa1127]

Enjoyed playing this one! I learned things that I wish I had started from the beginning.

Household Income: 47,180

15 toddler points X .01 = .15
17 child points X .02 = .34

Total multiplier = 1.49

Final score: 47,180 x 1.49 = 70,298

[CynKuy]

I was really clueless about freelancing and it shows.  Right at the end I finally learned something that would have helped me a great deal.  Of course, I did learn a lot and played the game in a different way than I normally would so it's okay.

Toddler points: 12 x .01 = .12
Child points: 11 x .02 = .22

Multiplier: 1 + .12 + .22 = 1.34

HI: 21,664 x 1.34 = 29029

Thank you to the team for another imaginative challenge.

[SoulGal7]

This is the first time I have ever done freelancing.
Samantha Freelancer and her daughter Blanca earned the following:
Toddler Skills: Communication-4;Imagination-3;Movement-2;Potty-3;Thinking-2 = 14 x 0.01 = 0.14
Child Skills: Social-6; Motor-8; Mental-7; Creativity-10 = 31 x 0.02 = 0.62

0.14 + 0.62 + 1 = 1.76
Funds: $50,113 simoleons x 1.76 = 88,198.88

Done 

[LenaLJ]

Freelancing is not my favorite thing, but now I have tried it

Toddler skills = 18 = 18 * 0,01 = 0,18
Child skills = 40 = 40 * 0,02 = 0,80
Household income = $176.889

Total score = 191.889 * (1,00 + 0,18 + 0,80) = 379.940

[Deveroux]

Well, that was child neglect. Lucrative child neglect, but still child neglect.

I think I do better on micromanaging when it's just focusing on one thing, so I did far better than I did on the past few challenges  Also gave myself the time to do a couple of practice rounds where my toddler got taken away and determined the exact level of neglect I could get away with  I hadn't bothered with the freelancing career before and didn't realize it had gigs, so it was kinda fun to explore.

4 3 2 2 2 = 13 -> .13 toddler bonus
40 -> .80 child bonus
328,326 HI

.80 + .13 + 1 = 1.93 multiplier

328326 * 1.93 = 633,669 total

[BallerinaHippo]

Like many others, I had never tried the Freelance career.  I can see how it would be useful in certain situations.

Toddler skill points = 17
Child skill points = 40
Household income = $172,418

Total multiplier 1.00+.17+.80 = 1.97

172418 x 1.97 = 339663

[SIMantics101]

For this challenge, the Rory Gilmore earned 3 levels of each of the 5 skills as a toddler and 5 creative, 5 mental, 4 social, and 4 movement as a child.  Her mother Lorelai earned a total of $12,864 for the household income.

3 x 5 = 15, 15 x .01 = .15
(5 x 2) + (4 x 2) = 18, 18 x .02 = .36
.15 + .36 = .51
$12,864 x 1.51 = 110,024.64 final score

Thank you all for organizing another fun challenge, and congrats to the top scorers!

[Syrcen]

Did I actually finish in time to be scored?

Toddler skill points = 19 x .01  =.19
Child skill points = 32 x .02 = .66
Household income = $104,079

Total multiplier 1.00+.19+.66 = 1.85

1.85 x  $104,079 = 192,546.15

Really?  I was sure it would be lower.

If....5+4+4+3+3 is 19.....
And...10+10+8+4 is 32....
I think my math is right.

[Rainbow Dash]

Posted by: Syrcen« on: Today at 01:33:40 AM » Did I actually finish in time to be scored?

If it's before midnight in your time zone then yes. (Personally, I have no idea as my time zone is different to most other people in these challenges). 

Child skill points = 32 x .02 = .66

Maybe I'm not the best one to point this out, not being great at maths and all but shouldn't this be .64? 

Good luck to those still finishing up.

[Metropolis Man]

This event is now closed.
Grats to Deveroux with a fantastic score proving why she is currently at the top of the world ranking. SIMantics101 -- I adjusted your score total as 19,424. Syrcen -- your multiplier should have been 1.64. Anyways, everyone is now free to discuss strategy. Great job, guys! Wow...a really great turnout for this event. Nice long leaderboard for a change.

[Metropolis Man]

$12,864 x 1.51 = 110,024.64 final score

Ah...I think I know what you accidentally did. Let me know if I am right, SIMantics101 -- you posted $12,864, and it's supposed to be 72,864. Because that HI does come out to your total. I'll go ahead and correct the leaderboard assuming that's the case.

[Rainbow Dash]

What, I'm actually online when a challenge closes for once?! I'm used to this happening later, well now that I'm here.

If it wasn't already obvious, Angel Child spent her entire toddlerhood being trained by her father, she had the Clingy trait so learned faster with him. Whenever the Sunny Aspect lot trait made his daughter energized (Which happened about three times) Damien would play with her which maxed the Movement skill quickly. He read her to sleep every night, books in the daytime, showed her Flash Cards and played Dolls and Blocks with her, pretty much all day. Angel end up with Communication 5, Imagination 5, Movement 5, Thinking 4 and Potty 3 so she got the Happy Toddler trait. 

All this time with his daughter made Damien gain the Parenting skill quickly and was often used to give Angel a Second Wind for a quick energy boost to skill for longer or to influence her to eat, which gave her a positive moodlet. They had a Laser Light Show so Angel was always happy, she never threw a single tantrum and rarely got upset from all the training, I think this was because of the Clingy trait, not sure.

While Angel was a Toddler, Damien only did Freelance gigs at night, when she was asleep, once she aged to a child he had a few games of chess with her to max her Mental skill then just influenced her to do everything else.

During her toddler years Damien had a club constantly running, later kicking out the members when Angel became a child so it was just him and his daughter in the club. He got Rally The Troops, Networked, Painting, Inspired, Focused and all Child Skill boosts. Thanks to those perks he was able to work all night, then all day once Angel was a child.

Because Damien was a Freelance Artist, I made his traits Creative, Gloomy and Ambitious with the Painter Extraordinaire aspiration for the Muser boost. Lot Traits were Home Studio, Natural Light and Sunny Aspect which not only maxed his painting skill quicker to get better paying gigs sooner but it meant his painting were always excellent quality or higher. Rewards purchased were Entrepreneurial, Morning Sim, Night Owl, Creative Visionary and Antiseptic, with points mostly earned from the Family, Fortune and Creative aspirations. I kept him very inspired through Cloud gazing, browsing art, listening to music, inspired vibe (Club) and later from the inspiring decor he got as a work reward.

I simply had Damien take the highest paying gigs whenever he could but I forgot to buy the Networked Club Perk right away, if I had remembered I could have gotten it a couple of days earlier. I also realized way too late the gigs requiring you to Meet Client were not worth it for the six hours they took. Damien could have done at least 3-4 gigs in the time it took to do one of those darn things, sadly I didn't notice this until the final days. 

While my household income could have been higher, I rather enjoyed this challenge, looking after one toddler was fun and even though the career got repetitive after a while, it was still interesting because I hadn't done it before.

Enough of this post, it's too long already and I need to get my racing shoes on for the next challenge. (Just as soon as I get some sleep, I just realized it's nearly midnight here, lol).

[Nikitachi]

As usual, sorry for the inaccurate descriptions - my game's not in English, so I just have to guess how some things are called in English.

Before playing the score file, I tested the income of different freelancer branches, as well as different task types, for quite a while. Judging by the results, I chose the programmer branch because, although writer and artist seemed to give more per task, they often got declined, making the sim amend their work, sometimes even more than once, which resulted in a much lower 'simoleons per hour' rate. When you're programming, the only time when you may have to redo your effort is when you encrypt files, but this type of task is very inefficient in terms of time/payment, so I never took it (actually, only as the very first task because you can't do much more with Programming Level 1, but when I finished it, I was about level 5 and could take much better tasks from that time on). The very best task type was the 'DELETED' one, so I always took it when available. The next best was hacking Simstagram Servers and Landgraab company - quite quick and well-paid too. And the third best ones were the ones where you have to make 3 web pages - along with the good payment, you get you Fame level rising. When I could not choose any of the above mentioned tasks, I usually took making viruses. I never took making videogames/applications - they take insanely long to complete, so, despite the fact that the payment itself is the highest, the payment per hour rate is nowhere near that good.

Regarding the child - I took the Clingy trait so he could gain skills faster when helped by adult. I figured that it's not worth spending the time trying to maximize the toddler skills - this time is better to be spent on freelancing itself. So I ended up gaining only the quick ones. I maxed Imagination by reading a book to a toddler, maxed Movement by playing with a toddler on the adult's back, maxed Potty to lvl 3, and the rest of two skills (Communication and Thinking) only got me 3 points together (sorry, I don't remember exactly how much eash one was, and I can't open the game right now, but I don't think it's that significant). As for the toddler care - I didn't buy the high chair this time at all. Instead, I bought some vegetable seeds, opened them and then fed my toddler a couple of veggies every time he got hungry (not only is this fast, but also gives a +1 happiness). The rest of the needs aren't that important for the fear of get taken away by the social service, so I mostly ignored them and focused on my work instead.

Also, as usual, after the very start of the game, my adult joined The Good Timers club and made himself a leader so he could utilize the Rally The Troops feature and choose what activities the club members can do in order to earn club points and then spend them on speeding up the skill gains. And also, I tried to earn 3,000 satisfaction points as quick as possible to buy Careless so my sim never got the Tense moodlet from overusing programming and thus never had to make unnecessary breaks.

When the toddler grew up and became a child, I added him to the club and removed everyone else, so that there only were the parent and the child. I added the club activities in accordance to which the child must do to level up his skills. Then, I just used Parenting skill to tell the child what to do - eventually he did things by his own, but not much (which surprised me, because in my test run, the child did everything absolutely by his own will - I still don't know what was different in these two games). Anyway, it was very easy this time to get all skills to level 10 - thanks to the fact that you could indirectly control the child by the parent's commands, and the club skill boosts. So all I had to do left was to finish the challenge by freelancing all the way to the end.

I'd really like to know whether I missed something, or I just wasn't lucky enough with tasks/micromanagement.

[BallerinaHippo]

Congrats to Deveroux and Nikitachi!  Those are some great scores.

I just have a few things to add to Nikitachi's excellent comments.  I also stumbled into the programming branch, kind of by accident.  I didn't have time for test runs so I just picked programming because the start up cost seemed low (didn't have to buy the sketchpad).  The best gig by far was the [REDACTED] one, which I believe is what Nikitachi guessed was called [DELETED]. Very close guess on the English!  The other good ones were Social Network, Product Landing Pages, and Custom Merch Website.  As already stated, anything that required making a game was the worst.  The payout looks higher, but it takes forever for your sim to finish.  I did one of those and wasted about 2 days.

Another good thing about the programming branch is that after you fill the performance bar once, you get the ability to overclock your computer.  According to the game, this lets you complete programming tasks faster, and it did seem to help.

For my kid, I concentrated on skills while she was a toddler.  Once she was a child, the 'influence to...' command worked pretty well.  My sim played chess with her for mental skill, but later it occurred to me that I could make fishing a club activity and just go to the park. She got her last few mental points that way.  My sim was able to work at the park on the laptop, but be careful not to leave your laptop unattended because other sims will use it if you walk away for even a second.  And you can't get it back in your inventory until they are done.