2dk2c.2 Posted October 2, 2020 Posted October 2, 2020 I've got enough wind turbines to fly to the moon, my sim is upgrading every-single-one, I've got aurora borealis contacting my lot, but I can't make heads or tails of my bill summary. It sure LOOKS like I'm consuming Tons, making nearly nothing. OK what gives, do I need telephone-wires to hook them up? That was "Simcity", I know, but...or maybe a control panel to rule them all, I'm done guessing. Every energy-conscious game I've owned has its own set of rules, What must I do to have enough power to power my Hamptons-house?? PS I used to be on auto-sell, but I never seemed to have enough to sell, and I changed the weather to "windy-warm" to help, maybe. My next attempt at electricity will be lightning-something, but I haven't gotten there yet (don't wanna get killed while upgrading) This paragraph should have been outside of my spoiler, but nevermind, it's an anti-judgmental paragraph anyway.
2dk2c.2 Posted October 4, 2020 Author Posted October 4, 2020 :Total: -225.00 Nobody says how many wind-turbines will suffice, or how many trees, or water spout things, and The game claims I'm "green" halfway up the scale. I think it's like those people pushing can-recycling to combat global-warming, it's a fart in the sahara, a candle in a hurricane, but maybe I *should* recycle or something...I was hoping to turn the mansion into a power-plant making my sim richer than Croesus, but that obviously isn't going to happen. Still, I am headed in the right direction. Advice still needed: I only need (x) turbines, I only need (y) water-spout things, and I should make (whatever) Also, if you wouldn't mind, please explain what "rate of Change" is.
Scorpio Posted October 4, 2020 Posted October 4, 2020 I read somewhere that one of the game patches later on actually reduced the production rates of these items. A mod was made to fix them again but I could never find the site or link later on when I looked. Rate of change is supposed to mean how much energy you produce per day but I'm not so sure they explained it right anyway. I just found out that 'energy consumption' numbers on appliances and plumbing are backwards from what I had thought. Higher numbers, more expensive, use less so it should have been called 'energy rating', (that's the standard nomenclature(Sticker) used nowadays anyway). I don't even know if the bills are weekly or monthly, lol. Made far more easy money by visiting the Romance Festival & Spice Festival and harvesting the rare plants and planting them at home. Have 4 Turbines and 2 Dew Collectors and a pretty small lot/house but really don't see why I even bother with them anymore. Some of the green N.A.P.'s will make a big difference in bills though, like rebates. I have NPC autonomous voting disabled in Game Settings/other because if I want to add/remove one I just shift+click on sims mailbox to use the cheat to enable only the one/s I want.
2dk2c.2 Posted October 6, 2020 Author Posted October 6, 2020 On 10/4/2020 at 8:30 AM, Scorpio said: I read somewhere that one of the game patches later on actually reduced the production rates of these items. A mod was made to fix them again but I could never find the site or link later on when I looked. Rate of change is supposed to mean how much energy you produce per day but I'm not so sure they explained it right anyway. I just found out that 'energy consumption' numbers on appliances and plumbing are backwards from what I had thought. Higher numbers, more expensive, use less so it should have been called 'energy rating', (that's the standard nomenclature(Sticker) used nowadays anyway). I don't even know if the bills are weekly or monthly, lol. Made far more easy money by visiting the Romance Festival & Spice Festival and harvesting the rare plants and planting them at home. Have 4 Turbines and 2 Dew Collectors and a pretty small lot/house but really don't see why I even bother with them anymore. Some of the green N.A.P.'s will make a big difference in bills though, like rebates. I have NPC autonomous voting disabled in Game Settings/other because if I want to add/remove one I just shift+click on sims mailbox to use the cheat to enable only the one/s I want. Thanks. 1. I still don't know what a N.A.P. is, but I will look right now. 2. I used to have their best oven (Schnapple) and coffee, and Microwave but I changed them for lower energy-consumption things. So that was wrong, huh? I'll change them back. 3. The energy-chart finally kicked in, after I saved up enough surplus. Water looks pretty hopeless (and I cheated the weather to a monsoon) but electricity looks good. Edit Neighborhood action plans: I have three but someone wrote a bug report saying all action plans from all neighborhoods worldwide are in effect. In any case, as you can see from my chart, "75" is all I get from tax-breaks-and-penalties, and 179+179+75-300 (for some undetermined span of time) is all I have to show for all the hard work. This would be fine except their prices are so high a person could go broke fast. But I cheat tons, have 9 million in the Sims wallet, 2 million in their vault, and 400,000 as a weekly stipend. I personally feel like the $20 I spent was a waste, but maybe it gets better.
Scorpio Posted October 6, 2020 Posted October 6, 2020 Forgot to mention the new lot traits. Geothermal Underground Well/Spring Oddly I never noticed any bill change when using them. But I don't have any NAP's enabled so... The other stupid things they did with the 'off the grid' lot trait... Turbines and Water Collectors are useless because now you don't have power for stoves, cooking, or other appliances, so what is the point of even bothering to add them to the game. Even with the gas/wood stove you only have a couple of menu choices. Guess all the young devs either eat at McDonalds or use Electric or Microwaves. And they never heard of Propane Gas being able to cook everything an Electric can. They never heard of Solar Water Heaters or Gas On Demand Water Heaters either. Plus a limited water supply even with 'dew collectors' in use, and/or a 'natural well' on the lot? Actual RL off the grid living doesn't have to be like tent camping anymore. Typical EA/Maxis doing things half-assed so nothing new here.
2dk2c.2 Posted October 6, 2020 Author Posted October 6, 2020 Everything's fine but you can go snow-blind trying to be too eco-friendly. My entire screen looks like this at rooftop level: Most games I've used have a brightness-adjustment, My "Sims" does not or I haven't found it, and I'm mentioning it in passing as a wish someone else noticed it and has a fix, not to derail my own thread. I think I've ruined my brightness for everything else but it did not help, And my poor video-card has the fans going at flank-speed to try and cool itself off reproducing those rays.
Scorpio Posted October 7, 2020 Posted October 7, 2020 13 hours ago, 2dk2c.2 said: Most games I've used have a brightness-adjustment, My "Sims" does not or I haven't found it, and I'm mentioning it in passing as a wish someone else noticed it and has a fix, not to derail my own thread. Never seen this before but perhaps someone else has. I suspect it didn't happen before adding the ECO EP to your game. Any Lighting or Environment mods? You can also disable both ECO switches in game settings for further testing.
Scorpio Posted October 7, 2020 Posted October 7, 2020 On 10/2/2020 at 2:05 PM, 2dk2c.2 said: I've got enough wind turbines to fly to the moon, my sim is upgrading every-single-one, I've got aurora borealis contacting my lot, Just stumbled onto these mods I couldn't find before. They've just been updated for the new patch so I don't know if they will work with other game versions. https://modthesims.info/d/645519/better-eco-power.html https://modthesims.info/d/645738/better-eco-water.html
2dk2c.2 Posted October 7, 2020 Author Posted October 7, 2020 7 hours ago, Scorpio said: Just stumbled onto these mods I couldn't find before. They've just been updated for the new patch so I don't know if they will work with other game versions. https://modthesims.info/d/645519/better-eco-power.html https://modthesims.info/d/645738/better-eco-water.html They're working but (and I'm absolutely terrible at math) Ever since the update, Taxes have skyrocketed and Billionaires would go broke at this rate eventually without cheats. I wanted to be polite and respond quickly, but I might not know for a sim-week if the mods are helping. I will edit this. As for the glow, I'm living with it, now that I know it's a thing, not something I added or messed up, but (uhm) someone somewhere has probably found a workaround(?)
Scorpio Posted October 8, 2020 Posted October 8, 2020 15 hours ago, 2dk2c.2 said: Ever since the update, Taxes have skyrocketed and Billionaires would go broke at this rate eventually without cheats. Wow kind of a large jump in taxes. They must have messed with more than just skin tones. I've been using MCCC bill reduction by 50% like forever, along with auto bill pay. Was rather hard paying bills when first starting out with a new game/sim. I like to play the 'rags to riches' theme when starting with 0 money. But I did read in a more recent thread that they reduced the power production even more with this new patch.
carnation77 Posted October 8, 2020 Posted October 8, 2020 On 10/7/2020 at 1:03 AM, 2dk2c.2 said: Everything's fine but you can go snow-blind trying to be too eco-friendly. My entire screen looks like this at rooftop level: Most games I've used have a brightness-adjustment, My "Sims" does not or I haven't found it, and I'm mentioning it in passing as a wish someone else noticed it and has a fix, not to derail my own thread. I think I've ruined my brightness for everything else but it did not help, And my poor video-card has the fans going at flank-speed to try and cool itself off reproducing those rays. I read this happens when more than one of your neighborhoods have the eco green footprint. If you go visit those neighborhoods and use this cheat Eco_Footprint.Set_Eco_Footprint_State 1 the eco footprint should go back to neutral and the blinding rays/auroras should go away. Here's more info on the problem.
2dk2c.2 Posted October 8, 2020 Author Posted October 8, 2020 1 hour ago, carnation77 said: I read this happens when more than one of your neighborhoods have the eco green footprint. If you go visit those neighborhoods and use this cheat Eco_Footprint.Set_Eco_Footprint_State 1 the eco footprint should go back to neutral and the blinding rays/auroras should go away. Here's more info on the problem. So yeah, I did your cheat (Thanks) and the rays are gone. The consequences of doing this, besides the box I'm showing getting preachy, are unknown. Have I nullified any eco-benefits? The only benefit I know of is, sims breathing in deeply and marveling at all the clean air, and I guess I could live without that. If it's a game, does the mayor give out an award like in older sims games, or something? Do snooty sims get to tell other sims what to do? or is the reward more subtle, like maybe reward points... In any case, other than the Rays, there are no obvious benefits.
carnation77 Posted October 9, 2020 Posted October 9, 2020 15 hours ago, 2dk2c.2 said: So yeah, I did your cheat (Thanks) and the rays are gone. The consequences of doing this, besides the box I'm showing getting preachy, are unknown. Have I nullified any eco-benefits? The only benefit I know of is, sims breathing in deeply and marveling at all the clean air, and I guess I could live without that. If it's a game, does the mayor give out an award like in older sims games, or something? Do snooty sims get to tell other sims what to do? or is the reward more subtle, like maybe reward points... In any case, other than the Rays, there are no obvious benefits. I have bought the expansion only recently, but from what I saw so far the benefits are only moodlets. If you want those in your neighborhoods you can keep the other neighborhoods neutral or worse and yours green. Using the cheat I gave you and changing the number at the end, you have the green footprint with number 0, neutral with number 1 and industrial with number 2.
2dk2c.2 Posted October 12, 2020 Author Posted October 12, 2020 So it's been a week or so, and I cannot go to someplace like crinricht or answers.ea.com and ask anything, although I do not seem to have as many problems as some of the people there. What I have discerned is, no one really understands this stuff, and mods nullify the effects. But: Property Taxes being as high as they are, it seems to me to be a worthwhile goal, to get enough credits to balance them out (lower them to zero.) This seems a quixotic goal ("tilting at windmills," Lol) As you can see, my "rate of change" is fantastic, higher than most posts I've read, but my reserves never change, the impact on my bill estimate never ever changes, Life is hopeless. It probably is moot, but do taxes get charged daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly, ?? If rate of change is all I have to go on, then I'm doing well. If the other figures take precedence, then nothing I do matters.
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