Hello,

So, I'm looking for a mod that can completely disable toddlers and children from the ability to gain skills and limit teens according to the careers available to them.

The reason for this is I'd like to make college and the jobs they get afterwards more challenging. If my Sims have already picked up a bunch of skills when they were younger, I find it sort of makes college redundant and makes their careers way too easy to advance in when they're adults.

I've gone through all the teen careers and looked at each maximum job level and the maximum required skills for them:

-Athletic: 2
-Charisma: 2
-Cleaning: 2
-Cooking: 1
-Creativity: 2
-Logic: 2
-Mechanical: 1

I feel like I'm probably going to end up making this mod myself but even if you know of a mod similar to this, let me know. I think it might be helpful to build off of.

Thanks!

The sim blender download that here: http://www.simbology.com/smf/index.php?topic=20.0 then go over here for the skill add on http://www.simbology.com/smf/index....4k40&topic=7186 scroll down about halfway.

It is a bit of a pain to set as each skill has to be done individually.

There are other mods to make college more challenging such as term paper required and shorter uni.

The Sim Blender with the plugin jo mentions is definitely the most flexible option available---it's both its blessing and curse that you can/must set it individually for each skill, for each sim.

Doing what you describe would require manually changing the skill limits on the Blender per sim, every time they age up. Since this is indeed tedious, my compromise is that I just set their teen skill limits when they are toddlers. (That's the first lifestage at which you can use the Blender to limit skills, because you have to be controlling the sim in question.) But, I also have an old slower-skilling hack (which seems to no longer be available, sadly), so in my case, giving them their entire pre-uni lives to skill to their limits (usually around what you describe) still means that most get to uni with very few skills---and you're right, that makes uni much more challenging, especially if you mod for shorter semesters.

The only other skill-limiting alternative I know of is that Ancient Highway had some mods for specific objects, in post 19 of this thread. I have never used any of those, because the Sim Blender option just seems far more useful than limiting it per object.

For after uni, Pescado has the harderjobs mod, which forces everyone to start from level 1 (basically giving no advantage in job level to whether you graduated uni or not). It also makes some promotions impossible as long as higher job levels are already filled (whether by playables or by townies). Or you could do some of those things manually, like adjusting new grads' job levels with the Sim Blender's Career menu.

In my game, I also use a ruleset that gives me lots of reasons for why many sims can't get or can't stay in certain careers and also imposes mandatory military service for many sims post-college. So many of mine start late at jobs and then eventually get frozen at a higher but not maxed career level for life, when they finally get there. Often they transfer without maxing their career, to go into "teaching," either temporarily or permanently. It's helped me put a lot of thought into how sims might change between careers throughout life---which again makes their work lives helpfully less linear.

My hood's just started the second half of its third sim-year. From among 20-some households, 3 uni students have graduated with honors; many more than that have flunked out. Maybe 7 adults have reached an LTW, and four of those were Earn $100,000 wants achieved by being allowed to own a retail business. I do play with longer lifespans (approximately double the usual), but it's really satisfying that their progress is gradual. Their milestones feel real!

So good luck with finding the way to do that which works for you. Although some of the hacks involved can be a pain to keep re-setting and such, I feel I can tell you it's well worth it. Or maybe you'll up and write a better mod altogether!

In an unmodded game, toddler can only get charisma from the rabbit toy, creativity from the xylophone and drawing, logic from the blocks, and the occasionally mechanical point from the activity table blocks. If you minimize their time playing with these toys, they won't skill that much. Kids have more skilling opportunities, but there are a few skills you can avoid entirely except for school points, like charisma, lmechanical and athletic. By having them play with non-skilling items, or by having them work occasionally on only one or two skills, you can avoid having them skill up too much.

Personally i like my little sims to work up some skills while they are young. Makes them feel a lot more useful than they are in TS3 or TS4, where they even with full bars in all skills only get 2 points in the complementary skills when growing up. Kids have to skill beyond level 10 in the kid skills to get more than 2 adult skill points.

And another point-if the kids go to college they should have a minimum of skills in order to get through the first semester. Usually 2 or 3 points in every skill is acceptable.

I'd call it the SAT of college for them. (but using the skill limiter does work, although it is a big fat pain in the butt to use it.)

Not exactly. With Pescado's harderjobs, University graduates can get a slight boost to starting job level with harderjobs, just not to the extremes you'd see in an unmodded game. The highest level I've seen as a starting job in my game is (I think) level 3 or 4. This is only the case for jobs gotten from the computer. Jobs gotten from the newspaper will always start at level 1.

I also use two of Cyjon's job mods in my game and find them very helpful in making jobs and promotions more difficult.


http://www.cyjon.net/node/309


http://www.cyjon.net/node/327

Ah, thank you! You're right---that is indeed how the mod works normally.

I had forgotten that I had redone all the degree requirements for careers in my game (using this mod)...and in the process, deliberately disabled all uni grads from getting any kind of head start at all.

Since you reminded me I have it, maybe that's a good opportunity to recommend that mod too---it makes it easy to choose which careers require which degrees (including any degree at all), which can make things even harder for your sims, since they'll have to choose particular majors to get into certain LTW jobs, which might not always be the major they want. (Important because the major they want is usually one that fits with the skills they already have.)

Even customizing the mod isn't bad if you follow the mod author's instructions. Plus, because it's just a mod, you can make such edits without worry about messing up your game's core files; just delete and try your edits on a new copy of the mod.

Also, Job Stopinator FTW...considering it does just one thing, it's amazing how many uses it can have.