Steamed Vegetables - Autonomy

[DoofenshmirtzH]

Is there any chance someone knows of a way to stop my sim from making steamed vegetables? Every time I build a house with a sauna, my sims automatically go make steamed vegetables as soon as I don't have them doing something on the home lot. Like seriously, within 3 or 4 sim minutes of them ending some other task, they're on their way to the sauna to make steamed vegetables. It's really irritating.

I've shut off autonomy completely and it stops them from making steamed vegetables, but it also stops them from answering their phone as well which I don't want.

I've got the Nraas Master Controller, Overwatch, and Returner mods running. I'm not sure if there's a setting in one of those that can help with this. Master Controller has so may settings, I still don't know how to use them all.

Like I say, I want to maintain autonomy, I just want my sim to stop making steamed vegetables. It wouldn't be bad if they only did it once and then did something else, but they just keep making dish after dish, only stopping long enough to eat a plate or two before they head back to the sauna to make more. It's also only ever my starting sim that does it. If they get married, people move in, or their children grow up, nobody else makes steamed vegetables, just them. Everyone else acts normal.

The traits of the sim that's doing it right now are Charismatic, Party Animal, Night Owl, Schmoozer, and Brave, so I don't really know what logic is driving her love of an endless supply of steamed vegetables. If anything I'd think she'd be turning on the stereo and dancing every chance she got. She's got three stereos to choose from, all with improved speakers.

I suppose the only other option would be to never install a sauna again (and remove the ones I already have installed in my houses), which it just may come to that.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@DoofenshmirtzH  Sims are weird.  They do weird things.  They have habits that are understandable only to themselves and often seem to defy both common sense and the traits and skills that you yourself have assigned to them.

With that in mind, yes, you can probably use Retuner to make steaming vegetables, or at least using the sauna in general, less attractive to your sim.  Or, I think you can eliminate the option for your sims to autonomously use it entirely.  I've never tried this myself, but Retuner's Interactions page says you can both change the advertised output(s) for a specific object—meaning it appears to provide less fun or less hunger fulfillment or whatever, making it less likely your sims will choose to use it—or disallow its autonomous use.  Here's the page:

https://www.nraas.net/community/Retuner-Interactions

I believe you have to first enable object menus so that you can click directly on the offending objects, unless you want to search through the whole City Hall menu.  This setting should show up when you click on City Hall and select NRaas > Retuner.  When you've tuned the sauna to your liking, you can turn object menus off again.

By the way, this is the kind of subject that would normally belong at NRaas.  AHQ isn't really for mod help, even though I know just enough about NRaas mods to answer the more straigntforward questions.  But you can always ask at NRaas—the site still supports its mods, and a number of posters are active on the message boards.

P.S.  It's entirely up to you, but you might want to add ErrorTrap to your mod collection.  Overwatch is great, but the best game corruption cleanup comes from having both in place.  Be sure to get the version that matches your patch level and type of install; there are different versions for 1.69/Origin, 1.67/disc (or mac), and 1.67/Steam.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@DoofenshmirtzH  Sims are weird.  They do weird things.  They have habits that are understandable only to themselves and often seem to defy both common sense and the traits and skills that you yourself have assigned to them.

With that in mind, yes, you can probably use Retuner to make steaming vegetables, or at least using the sauna in general, less attractive to your sim.  Or, I think you can eliminate the option for your sims to autonomously use it entirely.  I've never tried this myself, but Retuner's Interactions page says you can both change the advertised output(s) for a specific object—meaning it appears to provide less fun or less hunger fulfillment or whatever, making it less likely your sims will choose to use it—or disallow its autonomous use.  Here's the page:

https://www.nraas.net/community/Retuner-Interactions

I believe you have to first enable object menus so that you can click directly on the offending objects, unless you want to search through the whole City Hall menu.  This setting should show up when you click on City Hall and select NRaas > Retuner.  When you've tuned the sauna to your liking, you can turn object menus off again.

By the way, this is the kind of subject that would normally belong at NRaas.  AHQ isn't really for mod help, even though I know just enough about NRaas mods to answer the more straigntforward questions.  But you can always ask at NRaas—the site still supports its mods, and a number of posters are active on the message boards.

P.S.  It's entirely up to you, but you might want to add ErrorTrap to your mod collection.  Overwatch is great, but the best game corruption cleanup comes from having both in place.  Be sure to get the version that matches your patch level and type of install; there are different versions for 1.69/Origin, 1.67/disc (or mac), and 1.67/Steam.

[DoofenshmirtzH]

Sounds good. I didn't intend for it to be a question about the mods specifically, I just thought I'd mention them just in case there wasn't a setting in the game I could change to help correct the behaviour. In all fairness though, I guess a part of me did actually expect the mods were my best chance at resolving this issue.

I actually do have Error Trap running as well, along with [redacted], Shooless, and [redacted]. Those ones I just figured wouldn't offer any settings that would help with my problem.

I will try playing Returner though to see if I can fix the problem. There are so many different settings with those mods, I still have a lot to learn. I just kind of used the functions I felt I understood and didn't take the time to bother playing around with or trying to understand the rest.  Thanks!

Edit: removed names of mods that raise the game's rating.  -puzzlezaddict

[puzzlezaddict]

@DoofenshmirtzH I guess I didn't realize you were wondering about an in-game solution, since most of the complaints I see about sims obsessing over a particular object end with some variation on, what do I have to download to make it stop?!  Anyway, Retuner is probably your only option here, unless you want to make your own tuning mod or there happens to be on at MTS that does precisely what you want and nothing else.

I know the feeling of installing a pile of mods and suddenly having too many options.  If you do have other simple questions about the ones you've added, I'm happy to answer, but the finer points of Retuner are probably left to the professionals, so to speak.

P.S.  We're not supposed to mention certain mods here, for the sake of keeping everything teen-rated, hence the edit.  But it's not a big deal, especially with the low traffic in this section.

[DoofenshmirtzH]

I will remember that.

Anyway, so far so good. I maneuvered my way through Returner and found the Sauna options. There was specifically an option to shut off the autonomy for making steamed vegetables. I was able to leave my sim alone for about 20 minutes (real life time) unsupervised while her roommate did the laundry and her daughter made some cookies and had a bake sale. She never once made the trip out to cook them up, so it would appear that it worked.

I was hoping it would be something simple like that, but I just had no idea where to start looking to find the right switches. Now I know where to look if she develops any other silly quirks. Thanks for your help.

Now that it's (hopefully) over, I can laugh about how she was struck down last night for her obsession with steamed veggies. I had assumed she loved her daughter more than broccoli and carrots. I had her throw a birthday party for her daughter which I thought would keep her occupied for a few minutes. While she was busy with that, I decided to check the score on the Eagles/Saints game. I was only gone for 5 minutes. When I came back, she had left the party and had been killed by a meteor in the backyard while she was sneaking her way out to the sauna in the pool house to make steamed veggies. Even the heavens and stars above were sick and tired of her incessant steaming of vegetables and tried to put a stop to it for me. 

[puzzlezaddict]

@DoofenshmirtzH  LOL That's a great story.  And I'd say that I hope your sims learned a valuable lesson from her, but they never seem to.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear that Retuner fixed the issue for you.