My congratulations to Rachel as well! I'm going to be yet another person saying "well, my strategy was similar to Rachel's, but"... and, uh,
but...
With the need to produce nine additional Pancakes, this was always going to be a challenge with a sizeable luck component involving the multiple births. I did some digging around and came across
this (surprisingly recent) code-dive into multiple births, and even if maths isn't your thing, the tl;dr at the top and the very last line are all you really need to know - specifically, for any given pregnancy, no matter what you do to affect the outcome, the chance of triplets can never exceed 9% (technically the limit's actually 1/11, so 9.0909...% - close enough). Clearly, three sets of triplets would be the best-case scenario, but that's incredibly unlikely, and the tl;dr explains how five sets of twins can almost be guaranteed, so the case you really want to work with is (at least) one set of triplets in four pregnancies. With the boosts from Fertile, On A Ley Line and a Fertility Massage, you're near as anything to the ideal case, and under these conditions the chances of acquiring all nine Pancakes in four pregnancies can be calculated as 31.55% - just under a third.
...so yeah, that was my slight issue with this challenge initially: it was basically eight hours of meticulous micro-managing followed by two weeks of kicking heels with fingers crossed. Had I realised that alien babies would count before I started my final file, the extra strategy required to get Bob abducted as often as possible would have made this a whole different ball game. But hey, despite not getting lucky with triplets, I managed to get lucky in an entirely unexpected way, so ho hum.
The first eight (actually nine) hours: the focus was on getting three Pancakes out asap (like Vesper I was overly paranoid) and earning Eliza the Fertile trait. The latter was fairly straightforward: Pique Hearth begins just two paintings away from being worth 1,250 satisfaction points for Mansion Baron, so everyone got to earn those points, and then I planned for Eliza to get 600 from Good & Master Vampire just for researching on the computer twice, 550 from the first two tiers of Joke Star (remarkably easy!), 350 from Leader Of The Pack's first tier and performing ten club activities for its second, 75 instantly from Fabulously Wealthy, 75 from having three friends (read: children), 50 from having a boyfriend (read: husband) and 50 from working out at a gym (for like five seconds). That's 3,000 exactly, not counting for whims because they're unpredictable, and completely forgetting the 300 points you can get for reaching level 3 Vampire Lore. Ah well - the trip out to the gym in particular was helpful because it meant folks could meet some townies to drag back for parties later on, though most of the Pancakes kids spent the visit taking photos with each other.
I used the same lot traits as Rachel but just used salads to skill up my Pancakes; Art, Beth and Ceri moved out to various copies of Crick Cabana one after the other at 2:45pm, but not after donating four Moodlet Solvers and an Instant Hygiene each courtesy the satisfaction points they had left over. I don't think my Pancakes ever got through all of these, though they were helpful at points. Eric Lewis was the massage therapist the game sent me first, fortunately, but unfortunately he wasn't super co-operative and left the table to try talking to Dot almost immediately. Regardless, I managed to get the Eating For Two notification at 5:23pm - over an hour later than in practice, but never mind.
The next two weeks: I only kept one of the original Pancakes in the household from beginning to end - after a day or so, Dot Pancakes was all set to host back-to-back incognito parties and milk everyone and anyone for large loans, based on the big moneymakers from the first challenge this year. Except I never actually needed to do either of those things (well, I did do some partying for Party Animal, but only two of them were incognito) because it turned out painting was more than lucrative enough. I had a present pile on the lot that folks kept dipping in to, and every time someone got an easel I'd throw it up around the house somewhere. Since painting was a club activity, whenever I wasn't focussing on a sim they'd tend to tour the easels, so long as I remembered to clear them off every now and then. Once Bob, Eliza and Dot all had Marketable and Creative Visionary I didn't look back - and this isn't counting all the times I had them use the sketchpad! I honestly had bags of leftover time - Bob took up yoga, Eliza tried her hand at vlogging, and Dot went and romanced (then married!) the guy I'd plopped in Daisy Hovel. Admittedly, all of these were things I'd planned to do anyway, but I legitimately didn't know if I'd have the time.
Speaking of the marriage... the ceremony was attended by all seventeen members of the Pancakes family (though four of them were still in utero) and so I figured I should try to get screenshots of them all together. They had other ideas, because of course they did. Still, I
nearly managed:
(back row: Art, Len (face obscured by confetti), Ken, Greg, Ed, Jackie, Hal)
(middle row: Eliza (plus Matt and Nell), Bob (plus Ola and (spare) Ozzy), Jackie, Beth, Fred)
(front row: Dot Pancakes and husband Kasey, who's technically the son of Skylar Bhattacharya, my sim from the skill challenge... it's a long story)
(Ceri completely refused to witness the ceremony and instead spent the time chatting up Caleb Vatore, who invited himself to the wedding and I didn't have the heart to make leave)Other than that, what else is there to say? I too used photography to age Pancakes up from baby straight to YA - "take picture of" is just as effective as "take picture with", so toddlers could be dealt with by having a grown-up Pancakes snap their pouting faces. For the nine born during the challenge, their good friends were Bob, Eliza, Dot and their twin... oh, and their bassinets were in the kitchen, where they were locked-in until they'd made their pancakes - on top of the lot traits, being added to the family club, with its Cooking skill boost and inspired vibe, meant they generally only needed a single salad to reach pancaking level. Thus I'll just finish up with the full record of who my Pancakes were and how they did, lifted straight from my spreadsheet:
Art Pancakes (Hot-Headed, Unflirty, Neat) - Beth, Ceri, Dot, Ed - Crick Cabana, 2:45pm Sun. Week 1
Beth Pancakes (Mean, Geek, Slob) - Art, Dot, Ed, Eliza - Bargain Bend, 2:45pm Sun. Week 1
Ceri Pancakes (Clumsy, Hates Children, Lazy) - Art, Dot, Ed, Fred - Potter's Splay, 2:45pm Sun. Week 1
Dot Pancakes (Self-Assured, Good, Cheerful) - Art, Beth, Ceri, Ed - Daisy Hovel, 7:20am Sun. Week 3
Ed Pancakes (Outgoing, Bro, Ambitious) - Art, Ceri, Fred, Bob - Garden Essence, 2:22pm Wed. Week 1
Fred Pancakes (Creative, Vegetarian, Child Of The Islands) - Ceri, Ed, Bob, Eliza - Cypress Terrace, 4:01pm Wed. Week 1
Greg Pancakes (Dog Lover, Glutton, Child Of The Islands) - Dot, Hal, Bob, Eliza - Streamlet Single, 7:01pm Sat. Week 1
Hal Pancakes (Creative, Loner, Childish) - Dot, Greg, Bob, Eliza - Hallow Slough, 7:01pm Sat. Week 1
Izzy Pancakes (Music Lover, Childish, Romantic) - Dot, Jackie, Bob, Eliza - Rindle Rose, 4:49pm Tue. Week 2
Jackie Pancakes (Geek, Gloomy, Mean) - Dot, Izzy, Bob, Eliza - Ophelia Villa, 5:27pm Tue. Week 2
Ken Pancakes (Hot-Headed, Slob, Active) - Dot, Len, Bob, Eliza - Riverside Roost, 3:18pm Wed. Week 2
Len Pancakes (Vegetarian, Perfectionist, Dance Machine) - Dot, Ken, Bob, Eliza - Brook Bungalow, 3:18pm Wed. Week 2
Matt Pancakes (Geek, Music Lover, Cat Lover) - Dot, Nell, Bob, Eliza - Umbrage Manor, 7:20am Sun. Week 3
Nell Pancakes (Kleptomaniac, Goofball, Insider) - Dot, Matt, Bob, Eliza - Parkshore, 4:59pm Sat. Week 2
Ola Pancakes (Cat Lover, Loner, Loves The Outdoors, Alien) - Dot, Matt, Bob, Eliza - Oakenstead, 7:20am Sun. Week 3
Ozzy Pancakes (Alien) - forever stuck as a baby in the kitchen of Pique Hearth
