Decades ago, the Dread Cow of Simtopia attacked the Grand Llama of Simvania, and the war ravaged both lands for years. At last, Simtopia bombed the Grand Llama's summer home in the island province of Simbia. The dirty bomb destroyed all buildings on Simbia, and poisoned the land for many years to come. The nearby island of Simber was not hit directly, but was close enough to be destroyed in the blast radius, and was also poisoned, but to a lesser degree.
Now, the Grand Llama and his Councill of Ellders want their summer homes back. The Corps of Engineers have been sending robotic worker drones to clean up all the rubble on the islands and testing the environment for poison, and they are now 68% certain that Simbia could support sim life. This level of certainty is NOT good enough for the leaders of Simvania, but they need some sims to test it out. So, they have decided to form a penal colony in Simbia. Since Simbia was hit the worst, once it is safe (read: Once Simbia reaches 50,000 population, according to BACC rules), they'll know for sure that Simber is just fine for them to rebuild for the use of actual Simvanian citizens.
In Simvania, anyone who commits a crime, such as theft, embezzlement or playing their music too loud, is summarily executed by CowPlant (thus keeping the Grand Llama, the Councill of Ellders, and their families alive and youthful), so clearly, criminals are the ideal candidates to test the lethality of the island province, since they are "dead," anyway, and have lost their citizenship. The Councill, therefore, chooses eight adult sims, young, healthy, and fertile, and places them in a processing center on Simbia.
Build a Penal Colony is a challenge created by my dear friend MichelleCYoung at Boolprop Forums. It adds a certain flavor to your otherwise typical Build a City Challenge. I'll be using this ruleset (the original by clintcasey85 with revisions by pnkpnthr334), but I'll probably be drawing inspiration from other people's versions along the way.
I won't be going over all of the rules here, but I want to point out some of the key differences to the standard BaCC ruleset:
- You start off with 8 founding sims instead of 1. These sims spend the first week of the challenge in a processing center/prison with only two commands allowed per day.
Processing is a time for them to autonomously build skills and relationships. The week starts on Monday, and on Sunday is the wedding day. The Grand Llama is old-fashioned (read: reactionary and despotic), and insists that all male prisoners be married to a woman. Mind you, he doesn't care if they are straight, gay or bi; they just have to be married to a woman. [...] So, on Sunday, sometime during the day, the marriages are announced. The Grand Llama, in is infinite mercy, will allow the men to choose their brides, IF they have at least two bolts and best friend status with the woman. However, if they have not achieved that, or if more than one man has achieved that level with the same woman (somebody has to lose), then a bride will be chosen for them, from among the female prisoners. The pairings are arranged and performed.For this I use the hacked wedding arch by Marhis and Inge Jones. I also use Inge's prison set for the processing center, as well as her color keys together with twojeffs' visitor controller to keep the security guard servos from visiting the prisoners once they are released (never mind that I haven't gotten them to show up for work either *grumble grumble* The prison's automated anyway, we'll just say that the electrified doors are what's keeping them from escaping)
- Each of the four households starts off on a 3x3 lot and may only buy and sell things twice a week.
The processing center is the last remaining ruin on the island. The worker drones have demolished all the other ruined buildings, and gathered all the scraps together in four piles around the island (place four 3x3 lots with a bonfire on each), from which the prisoners will be able to use the salvage to build their own homes, after processing. [...] After the weddings, each man takes his wife and claims one of the 3x3 plots of land, with scrap heap, and builds his family shelter. Every Wednesday and Saturday, the prisoners and their descendants will have the opportunity to trade with the regularly scheduled trading ships. They can sell artifacts that they dig up (a lot of stuff got buried by erosion and explosion, after all), or anything that they create/catch/harvest/find or otherwise earn, and they can buy things from the Build/Buy catalog. Each man is issued the following: One tent, one fully-stocked food cooler (junky fridge), one counter, one grill, one table, two chairs, one bookcase, one toilet, one bathtub, one sink (free-standing) one mirror (cheap), one floor lamp, one wall lamp (candles or oil lamps would be fitting here - low-tech), one cheap telescope, one easel, two side-tables, one cheap stereo (the $99 boombox), and one desk phone (or one side table and one wall phone - your choice). These are the ONLY items you can buy from the Buy Catalog. You may choose anything from the Build Catalog that is within your price range and looks appropriately trashy, because everything you build comes from your "scrap heap." Burn the bonfire at the end of the day, or delete it.I've taken the liberty of adding a campfire to each of these lots in addition to the specified items, as well as moving around the mailbox and trash can to better suit my aesthetic/storytelling needs.
- Your sims may start businesses (they are the bread and butter of BaCCs after all), but each household may only buy one community lot a week and only sell one per week (they may do both during the same week). Doing the "Downtown Time Warp" (i.e. spending lots of time on community lots only to return home without having aged a bit) is limited to one week's time per sim and week.
- No new sims may be created after the initial founders: your population will stem only through birth and moving in/marrying townies/NPCs - which brings us to:
Breeding Program: Every man is required by law to have an heir and a spare. This does not mean two children. This means two sons. He may have as many or as few daughters as he likes, but he MUST have two (or more) sons. These may be born from his wife, adopted (either via the adoption menu or by using the Tombstone of Life and Death to add a baby, toddler, child or teen to the family - ideal if you want to keep the family small or just hate children, because you can choose to have two boys quickly, and even jump straight to teen this way), or alien babies. Adoption and alien babies are considered legitimate and part of the "bloodline," which is excellent for those sims who can't stand their mates, or whose sexuality does not align. Any children fathered on a woman (or man, if you have same-sex or male pregnancy mods installed) who is not his wife are considered illegitimate and do not count toward his legally mandated heir and spare, although they are considered "bloodline" for any such purposes you may decide to play. All legitimate children count for the legally mandated breeding requirements, but illegitimate children do not. However, illegitimate children DO add to the population, and so are smiled upon by the Grand Llama.- After the first two weeks, you'll be having sims die each week. So much for population growth.
Simbia Sickness: The land is, indeed, still poisonous. Remember the engineers being 68% certain that the land was safe for sim-life? Each sim who comes to live permanently in Simbia, whether as an initial prisoner, born into the game, or moved/married into a Simbia family, will have to face the disease. Every inhabitant of Simbia gets two weeks of incubation, where they will certainly not die of Simbia Sickness. For this purpose, go by calendar weeks. If a Sim moves in or is born on a Saturday, their first week of incubation will be very short. Basically, the incubation timer resets every Monday morning. Any sim who is permanently platinum, via Lifetime Want, Lifetime Happiness, or Peace of Mind, has become immune to Simbia Sickness. All other sims (those past their incubation period and NOT permanently platinum), will be entered into whatever randomizing system you choose, and names will be drawn each week, at a rate of 32% of the eligible sim population. So, if you have 100 eligible sims (not Sim Multiplier, but actual playable sims!), you will pick 32 of them to kill off! These sims will then be killed (use Boolprop TestingCheatsEnabled true, and spawn the Death Creator, kill the sim with Death By Disease, and then delete the Death Creator). When your penal colony reaches 5,000 sims, you will reduce the sickness lottery to 25%. At 10,000 sims, the rate will be 20%. At 20,000 sims, the rate will be 15%. At 30,000 sims, the rate will be 10%. At 40,000 sims, the rate will be 5%. By the time you reach 50,000, the Simbia Sickness will end. Always round death numbers DOWN. So, if 32% of eligible sims equals 2.8 sims, then you'll kill off two sims. The .8 sim has enough health (.2) to pull through.There is some more to the rules, but I'll save those parts for later.
Note: This is why a spare is required in the breeding program. Children can die of Simbia Sickness, and the parents are NOT required to breed more children to replace them. If a family should lose all its sons, then that family line is dead (daughters marry into other families, after all). Too bad, so sad. If the parents are still around, and able to produce more children, they MAY revive the family line, but it is not required. Only the initial breeding of an heir and a spare is legally mandated.
As for the founders, I used Hook's RandomStuff and my own textlist to generate their stats. I usually use katrisims' Sim Randomizer, but I like the flexibility of RandomStuff. I'll post the text list for anyone who's interested, but it's mostly copy-paste from Hook's (with the exception of aspirations: I added "Grilled Cheese" and "Empty" to the standard ones and make it roll two each time, which gives some variation to whether a sim will have a secondary aspiration or not).
Now, go on and read the actual chapters!
