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[ancienthighway]

Each bill will include a tuition charge of 1000 simoleans for each playable YA on the lot.

Dorm dwellers will be charged a flat rate of 500 200 simoleans per playable each bill.  This includes the cost of any maid, gardener, and repairman services used. 

EDIT:  The M&G version of this mod has been removed.  It seems that when I enabled the energy savings, I managed to completely bypass the higher bills aspect.  If you want the higher bills, the AL version still works, just no energy savings.  Be watching for an update.

[BoilingOil]

If you want the higher bills, the AL version still works, just no energy savings.  Be watching for an update.

Could it be that this issue also appears with the other higher-bills mod (without the tuition part)?? Because then, *that's* where the energy savings went... Straight to crap! Bugger

I hope you'll find a way to make an M&G update work, some day.

[Chaavik]

What I have been noticing a lot lately is the total amount showing up on the bill when Tuesday and Thursday rolls around after the mail is delivered. I thought the amount was too low for a lot containing fairly expensive items and for a lot of a large size. I wasn't able to determine the cause of the problem because for:

1. I checked HCDU and found no conflicts with zah_ALcd_higher_bills_tuition (dated 11-2-08 8:18 AM)
2. No other mods installed that affect bills
3. I tried different load orders with the mod loaded last with no luck and moved it to AH's folder to be loaded first with no luck still.

I reclassified the lot from Low to High after I built my custom home before I moved my family in. The items shown in the screenshot were fairly moderately expensive to highly expensive. There is a pool and a basketball court in the back that should've increased the value of the lot after I added them.

The lot originally cost roughly 60k to buy as furnished with the basic amnesties.

But I have not been able to get the bills to go up and become more expensive in the long run on the regular home lot in the regular hood. The tuition is fine, but the home bills on the Uni residential lot is affected. College is supposed to be expensive, but it isn't.

The calculations seemed off. Is the mod taking lot classes into consideration? I understand that the energy savings hasn't been implemented because I thought that feature came with AL. So, I am not sure what is causing the issue.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Included is the screenshot:


The total amount shown is $58. Lot Classification is High.

[ancienthighway]

I haven't come across any lot in my main hood that have low bills as you are finding.  My 5x6 (or is it 6x5) lot has bills in excess of 1,000 each time.  A 2x3 lot is bringing in bills around 250.  Are you having the problem in the main hood or a university one?

Lot classification isn't considered.  The lot classes came into being with AL and I haven't gotten around to including AL into the bill mix yet.

[Chaavik]

Right now, I'm having that problem in the main 'hood. I thought I said already that this was an issue I came across with the lots I play in the main 'hood. I haven't played an Uni lot lately so I haven't checked that part.

I noticed that my family kept getting low bills. I didn't use the wand to make the lot cheaper and tried changing the lot classification in hopes of bumping up the lot to an expensive type to force the bills to become expensive.

I'm out of options trying to think off the top of my head what is affecting the bills or total calculation of the lot my family lives on. I don't know what other mods can conflict with this one because I did make sure that there wasn't a conflict, and HCDU hasn't reported any between other mods and this one.

*Edited*

Actually, while I was looking through my Downloads folder to see if I could find something that might conflict with this mod, something dawned on me when I was going through Inge's folder. I downloaded and installed the mortgage shrub from her site and only noticed the cheap bills not long after. I am wondering if you have Inge's mortgage shrub installed because you said you didn't have problems with bills being expensive.

I recalled that the mortgage shrub recalculates the total lot value. I wonder if that mod is overriding your mod.

[ancienthighway]

I wasn't sure if it was the main hood or a uni hood because of the tuition comment you added.  Yes, I know you use MCP, but that doesn't mean you don't still have a Uni hood.

I'm curious to know if you play a hood without MCP if you still have the low bills.  While MCP and this mod don't have any conflicting behaviors, the way I check for hood and lot type may not be handling MCP hoods correctly.

[Chaavik]

I edited the post after you posted.

No, MCP doesn't have anything to do with bills or lot values, or he would have said something about it when he updated MCP to FT/AL.

I'm just thinking that it might be Inge's mortgage shrub, but I want to know if you use it or not for your game.

*Edited*

I took Inge's mortgage shrub out and played the lot until the mail carrier arrived with the bill. The bill was still cheap: $76. Something else is interfering. I can't see what mod it is.

I remembered you listing a DOS command that would generate a list of mods from the Downloads folder. Can you tell me what it is so I can generate a list of mods and maybe you can look it over to see if you can spot something that I might have missed?

[ancienthighway]

It could be the shrub.  Once a household gets the warehouse discount, the shrub goes a little wonky.  Rather than selling it back and costing the house 1,000 or 10,000, it costs the house -1.  That started with AL and the reputation fiasco.

While a large lavishly decorated home may cost 100,000 simoleans, if the money came from the shrub, the lot value (click the icon in the upper left while in Buy or Build) may be 0.  This is more likely the cause of the low bills.  Perhaps putting the shrub in a sim's inventory will bring the bills back to where they should be, but I don't know how that would effect the interest function.  And then there's the forgetting they are their and the sim dies and the debt wiped clean...

[Chaavik]

Always seemed to cross-post-edit with you. Ha ha..

I looked at the lot value of the affected lot, and it said $37,493. No mortgage shrub(s) were placed on this lot. Originally, the lot was about $62,000. Somewhere along the time line, the lot depreciated to $37,000. That's almost 30k in 14 days. I added a pool, a handful of expensive items and a couple of bedroom set for their babies and child. The lot's value should have gone up a bit with new stuff. I don't think they have the warehouse discount. Neither parent networked their friends to get that one.

The lot was played for 14 days, just going on Day 15 (according to Pescado's Lot Time Sync mod).

[ancienthighway]

I don't remember ever mentioning a DOS command the would list mods.  Jase had a program on the old Inteen site that would list all the mods and CC installed.  That's the closest I can think of.

Using Clean Installer you can sort on Type and come up with most of the mods.  They won't have a type.  But then meshes don't have a type either.  DDO can be filtered so just mods show up, but I haven't used it enough to say if it shows everything or not.

Cloned custom mailboxes may conflict.  The routine for determining the bills is in the mailbox.

[Chaavik]

Hmm, I do have two cloned mailboxes, one for the apartment lot and one for the residential lot. Those haven't been used yet. That could be it. I'll take those out and see if that will resolve the issue.

I also have Windkeeper's mailbox shelf installed too, but I haven't used it on that lot because it posed a problem with Dizzy's work-deliver-40-20 mod when a Sim comes home from work, the Sim put the groceries or the pizza on that particular mailbox shelf.

*Edited*

I finally located the issue. A group of cloned mailboxes (one for the apartment lot and one for the residential lot), made by SEDD, was causing the bills to be calculated incorrectly.

On the 17th day, my family got their bill, and it was higher than they normally got. That's resolved.

Note:

No cloned mailboxes. It would appear that any cloned mailbox will screw with your higher bills mod.

[ancienthighway]

I haven't heard back on this issue for a while now.  Are you still having problems, or was the mailbox overrides causing the problem for you?

[Chaavik]

It was the cloned mailboxes. I thought I already stated that it was the cloned mailboxes previously, but I guess I wasn't clear enough.

I got the mailboxes from SEDD at his site that had the extracted mailboxes for both normal and residential lots, trashcans and community phone booths. They did override the Higher Bills and Tuition mod as well the other one without the tuition.

I'm getting higher bills now, but the lot depreciated so much that it's not expensive anymore. 62k down to about 36k in 1 to 2 Sim weeks. That's a lot of depreciation there. The lot was not wanded with Pescado's wand. I wish I knew what values are there to slow down the depreciation so the bills will be consistently expensive.

I'm now figuring out if $1200 on the Uni lot is what my college Sim is supposed to get billed for. I thought initially the description stated that the college Sim will be billed $1000 for tuition and that $500 is included as a flat rate. So, shouldn't my college Sim be billed $1500 instead of $1200? I saw only $1200 being charged to my college student. He's in his first semester at a remodeled Maxis dorm.

I wonder if my remodeled Maxis dorm could be the reason for the lowered bills my college Sim got? But it should be a bit more expensive since I used better furniture, objects, lights and walls/floors.

[ancienthighway]

Room and board is $200.  Let me check the OP to be sure I stated that correctly.

[Chaavik]

Thank you for the clarification. So I don't have to tear out my salt-and-pepper hair figuring out why my college Sim was charged $1200 instead of $1500. I do think that $1500 is expensive enough as it is today in the real world. Tuition tripled once over since I last went to college.

Thanks again for the help and patience figuring it out. So I do believe that there is no way to have cloned mailboxes with this mod installed. It's not a big deal since I don't have issues with them going missing when I build my apartment lots.