Making Money - Cats vs. Dogs

[callycat]

After watching my Sims become millionaires pretty quickly with a dog hunting for them, and with a note in the guide currently saying dogs are not a primary moneymaking method, I thought I'd try an experiment in the vein of the painting / sculpting / inventing comparison on the guide.

Cat:
Traits - Genius, neat, playful, Independent, non-destructive, hunter, adventurous
Rewards - Alpha pet, best behaviour, never nauseous, steel bladder
Skills - Hunting (max)
Challenges completed = all

Dog:
Traits - Genius, Hunter, Non-destructive, playful, loyal
Rewards - Alpha pet (+ others I'd have to check and edit in as I didn't note them down, but I don't think they will make any difference)
Skills - Hunting (max)
Challenges completed = Metal collector, gem collector

One cat and one dog took part.
As with the sim skill ones, needs were static and the length of the test was 100 sim hours.
The owner sim had all the basic cuts opened up for gems and had the metal collector challenge completed.
Cat prey was sold as it was caught and the amount recorded.
Items collected by the dog were cut/smelted but not transfigured. The cost of cutting and smelting has been deducted from the total given below. Any gnomes returned in the mail were added at 1000 each and any completed special items that were assembled also counted for 1000 on the total. Gems were cut to maximise return using the info in the guide. The single tiberium collected (much less than in my normal gameplay so far, mood seems to have to be high for these to be collected regularly) was cut and allowed to grow before its price was recorded.
All actions were the basic Sniff for Collectable/Stalk for Prey and all were performed on the home lot.

Results of hunting for 100 hours:

The cat earned a total of 21,656.
The dog (with a sim as posting slave, of course) earned a total of: 376,506.

[Schipperke]

The cat earned a total of 21,656.
The dog (with a sim as posting slave, of course) earned a total of: 376,506.

Very interesting results, callycat.  Thank you for posting this information.  Dogs rule!  (apologies to all the cat lovers, my bias is clearly showing there  )

[callycat]

Dogs rule!  (apologies to all the cat lovers, my bias is clearly showing there  )

I may have a slight bias too But the cat can catch death fish, so I still have a good use for her.

I used my own dog as the model for the sim, so I should probably give her a treat now!

[Sportsfan]

I'd like to point out a problem that I have with your results. There seems to be a bias throughout giving favor to the dogs, and how you played this showed that. The main problem is that it is a cat vs a dog and a sim. It is not going off of only what the dog retrieves, it is also multiplying that amount when the cat's total is not multiplied. So quite a bit of the money that the dog made actually had no influence from the dog.

I am not arguing that the dog makes more, I believe that it does, I am saying that the difference between the two would be much smaller if the experiment was performed more equally.

[callycat]

I'd like to point out a problem that I have with your results. There seems to be a bias throughout giving favor to the dogs, and how you played this showed that. The main problem is that it is a cat vs a dog and a sim. It is not going off of only what the dog retrieves, it is also multiplying that amount when the cat's total is not multiplied. So quite a bit of the money that the dog made actually had no influence from the dog.

I am not arguing that the dog makes more, I believe that it does, I am saying that the difference between the two would be much smaller if the experiment was performed more equally.

I counted the cut/smelted version because that's what you would do with them in game immediately - you can't play pets without a sim in the household, after all, and there is nothing you can do with the creatures the cat catches to increase their value. I do take your point though, and if I had a saved game with the raw metals and gems I would go back and total the values, but I don't unfortunately.

I added the cat in for a bit of fun, really, and it wasn't intended to be any real slight against cats. I wanted to show that hunting (at least for the dog - I wasn't sure how the cat would perform in the test though I didn't expect it to be close) was more than a viable money making method.

[Ricalynn]

I'm a little confused by your experiment as well.   In this test did you have the Sim doing anything?  You said you wanted to show that it was viable but you didn't do any of the ways you were trying to compare it to.   What I mean is yeah, you had a dog go collect for 100 hrs and it made some money.  The same money that can be made by a sim doing the same thing, basically, collecting.  I understand the dog was able to pick up items you wouldn't normally see around town but a Sim with a miner or with martial arts can get tiberium and some of the other ones quite regularly. 

What I wanted to know was did you have your Sim do inventing or painting to see how much money it would have made in the same time frame?  You want to show it's viable against doing stuff with a Sim but you didn't have the Sim do anything.   I get that this is possibly an in addition to research already done but I would have liked to see what a Sim would do against the dog and cat in one of the mentioned avenues.

[callycat]

I'm a little confused by your experiment as well.   In this test did you have the Sim doing anything?  You said you wanted to show that it was viable but you didn't do any of the ways you were trying to compare it to.   What I mean is yeah, you had a dog go collect for 100 hrs and it made some money.  The same money that can be made by a sim doing the same thing, basically, collecting.  I understand the dog was able to pick up items you wouldn't normally see around town but a Sim with a miner or with martial arts can get tiberium and some of the other ones quite regularly. 

What I wanted to know was did you have your Sim do inventing or painting to see how much money it would have made in the same time frame?  You want to show it's viable against doing stuff with a Sim but you didn't have the Sim do anything.   I get that this is possibly an in addition to research already done but I would have liked to see what a Sim would do against the dog and cat in one of the mentioned avenues.

I didn't do any of those because it had already been done, as I mentioned briefly above. I used the same time frame, the static needs,  and the same level of expertise in skills/completed challenges as far as possible. You can find the results at the end of the Descendant of DaVinci LTW Guide here: http://www.carls-sims-3-guide.com/lifetimewishes/ambitions/descendantofdavinci.php

In short though:
Painting Profit over 100 hours = 82019.
Inventing Profit over 100 hours = 58887.
Sculpting Profit over 100 hours = 89439.

The dog collected lots of supernovium, woohooium, compendium, pink diamonds, soulpeace, plutonium and rainbow gems and only a tiny handful of low value items. Collecting around town would only get you a fraction of the value, but the sim dog's owner is a martial artist so my next plan is to add in the results for breaking space blocks to compare with the dog's hunting if it hasn't been done - I haven't seen the results if it has.

[Ricalynn]

Out of curiousity when you go to do it with the martial artist, don't cut or smelt anything.  Just do the uncut/unsmelted metal and gems. The reason I ask this is because it's random when you're going to get the gnomes and doing this will remove them from the equation of profit. 

Also, about how often do the dogs catch gigantic space rocks versus normal rocks?

[Lasnien]

My dog with the hunter trait brought home 2 gigantic space rocks over the course of her life. The other dog in the household (without hunter trait) only brought home large space rocks.

I'll admit, it's anecdotal evidence at best, considering I wasn't actually testing.

[Hosfac]

The main problem is that it is a cat vs a dog and a sim. It is not going off of only what the dog retrieves, it is also multiplying that amount when the cat's total is not multiplied.

How is it multiplied?  There is still only one item retrieved per attempt.  Plus, I've never had a dog who was capable of hunting on his own...so is that even possible?

[Ricalynn]

The multiplier comes from actually cutting and smelting as when you cut or smelt something the original value is multiplied by a specific number.

[MarianT]

The dog can hunt on its own with the instruction "sniff out collectable." I had one get woohooium, supernovium, 2 tiberium gems, and a soulpeace gem.

[danefaith]

relevant calculations can be made to produce more applicable data.  

By appending a value of 89439 to each group's score at baseline, the net income the "human slave" would be able to produce if uninterrupted is taken into consideration.  To this, the yields of each pet are added.

yield of 100 human working hours and 100 cat working hours: 111,095

yield of 100 human working hours and 100 dog working hours: 465,945

However, as it is observed, the total yield of a dog's work relies on the intervention of the human.  Therefore, a percentage of their work hours overlap.  Assuming that it would take, say, 20 hours overall, to ship and receive all metals, gems and ores, this means 20 hours of work overlap.

Therefore, raw yield of each group can be multiplied by an intervention factor, to produce data which appropriately takes into consideration human intervention.

Equation: (human yield + pet yield) * (1 - [hours of intervention/100])

cat + human:
111,095 * (1 - 0) = net income
111,095 * 1 = net income
111,095 = net income

dog + human

(465,945) * (1 - [20/100]) = net income
(465,945) * (1 - 0.2) = net income
(465,945) * 0.8 = net income
372,756 = net income

CONCLUSION:

Overall a human with a dog companion will earn more than a human with a cat companion.  However, the significance of this differences decreases as the human's earning power increases.

POSSIBLE ERROR:

Has the cost of cutting and smelting been subtracted from the dog's yield?

[Pam]

POSSIBLE ERROR:

Has the cost of cutting and smelting been subtracted from the dog's yield?

According to the original post, yes.

I think Carl might enjoy looking at this thread. 

[callycat]

I'd like to point out a problem that I have with your results. There seems to be a bias throughout giving favor to the dogs, and how you played this showed that. The main problem is that it is a cat vs a dog and a sim. It is not going off of only what the dog retrieves, it is also multiplying that amount when the cat's total is not multiplied. So quite a bit of the money that the dog made actually had no influence from the dog.

I am not arguing that the dog makes more, I believe that it does, I am saying that the difference between the two would be much smaller if the experiment was performed more equally.

I just thought I'd reply to this again separately first-- I just repeated the dog hunting alongside a human doing martial arts, and the dog's total raw value of finds was 98,668.  That's no special objects, just raw metals, gems and un-analysed rocks. The total when I calculate it the same way as the previous set of results comes out very similar, so that's probably a good guide to compare to the cat's hunting total of 21,656.