DESCRIPTION: Significantly slows and balances the gain of Lifetime Aspiration (LTA) points.

Updated with a second version that may fix the "frozen vacation clock" bug.

Under this system hourly LTA point awards follow some new rules.

• Hourly gain will be the same throughout life rather than being INSANELY fast as toddler and child. There are two exceptions:
  • Babies don't get LTA points because they don't have aspiration levels.
  • Young Adults don't get LTA points because college is WAY to long compared to the rest of the sim lifetime and it was too hard to balance both
• LTA points scale with age duration. So if you are using a mod that changes age length, like 8-Day Teens, the hourly LTA rate will adjust so sims will receive roughly the same number of LTA points over a lifetime as a sim using the default age lengths.
• Sims gain no LTA if in the lower half of green aspiration. They gain more slowly than under the original system if above that, and lose more quickly if in red aspiration.
• If you max out your LTA bar, platinum aspiration is given immediately so you won't need LTA Platinum Fix.

Under this system it is effectively impossible to max out LTA before becoming an adult, or even early in the adult phase. When LTA platinum is reached, it will usually be by elders.

This mod addresses only the hourly LTA point award, not the LTA points given for events such as learning to walk or maxing out a career. I don't consider the event awards to be unbalanced, but this mod should be compatible with mods that slow those down, such as the one by Doc Doofus.

As a frame of reference, platinum sims gain only 15% of the hourly LTA points over the toddler lifespan as compared to the original system. A sim who stays platinum during an entire lifetime from the first day of toddler to the first day of elder would gain less than half the hourly LTA points as the original system would give him. Again, this doesn't count event-based LTA awards. Maxing out Lifetime Aspiration is certainly still possible, but now it actually takes a lifetime.

The rate under this mod is probably a little too slow as I preferred to err on the side of too little over too much. However a change like this can't be effectively evaluated in an hour or so. I need to run at least a full generation before deciding if I want to tweak on the rate.

WHICH VERSION?: Try "CJ-SlowerLTAGain.zip" first. If you get the frozen vacation clock bug then remove that version and download "CJ-SlowerLTAGain-Unscaled.zip" instead. This was developed with the help of Peni Griffin and may or may not fix the bug (it's hard for me to test since I don't have the problem). This version does not scale if you are using mods that change the length of the various life stages. This means sims will gain more or less LTA over their lifetimes than expected, but this is a minor problem.

LAST UPDATE: November 6, 2011 (main version) / May 6, 2014 (unscaled version)

REQUIRED EPs: FreeTime

COMPATIBLE EPs: All configurations from FreeTime through Apartment Life.