Better Autonomy Gamma  

Autonomy is a nightmare in Sims—for me, at least. During my first (successful) legacy challenge, I turned off autonomy for over 400 interactions using MC Tuner because the whole thing drove me nuts. Stop playing games. Stop watching TV. Stop mixing drinks. 

I was content with that for a while, but I noticed that when playing University, the dorm felt kind of... lifeless. My roommates talked to each other all day, which is what I wanted, but I also wanted it to feel like people actually lived there. I began work on a mod that would allow me to enable autonomy for certain actions without Sims obsessing over them. That became this mod: Better Autonomy.

The Bullet Point List

Short for time? Here's what this mod does:

• Alters Sims' autonomous behavior, making them more likely to socialize and build skills rather than mindless actions that build fun
• Less Chess, video game playing, and TV watching without having to disable autonomy for them entirely
• Time limits on TV; Sims cannot endlessly watch TV and will be forced to exit out after an hour
• More useful skill building; gardening, handiness, and cooking are prioritized

Overview

Better Autonomy does a number of things to Sims, autonomy, and interactions. Put simply, is drastically shifts how Sims prioritize activities and puts a much stronger emphasis on socialization and skill building. Sims are now far more likely to talk to others and far less likely to do mindless activities like watching TV. They also put a much stronger focus on useful skill building—that is, they'll be more drawn to practicing writing, handiness, cooking, and gardening, among other things. 

The goal of this mod was to leave these interactions available for autonomy when Sims have nothing to do without them prioritizing doing them. No more finding a mod to disable every single action you find annoying.

How It Works

This mod operates with two mechanisms: the first is a global trait that is added to every Sim in the game. This trait is hidden and alters a Sim's autonomous behavior. Traits can be used for autonomy modifiers. For example, each age in the game has a "trait" and, for some reason, Maxis saw fit to make every Age Trait have an autonomy modifier to build fun. Better Autonomy's global Trait reduces Sims' draw to fun building actions by 50% and raises their draw to socialization by 400%. 

The second is that it modifies StaticCommodities. These are incredibly complicated, but in short, these files list how much a Sim wants to do something, which is represented by ad_data. Better Autonomy lowers the ad_data for several interactions—watching TV, playing Chess, making coffee, dancing to the stereo, and more. 

This beta version also, as stated, introduces time limits to the TV by adding code to prevent Sims from mindlessly watching it forever. If they break away from a conversation to watch something, they'll only do it between 30 minutes to an hour, at which point they'll turn it off and do something else.

It also disables "Watch Toddler" and "Check Toddler (Minor)" to prevent Sims from constantly watching and checking on toddlers for absolutely no reason. Can you tell it's a pet peeve?

More is planned for the future.