So, a discussion I was having on another thread made me think about adoption, and now I'm burning with curiosity as to how it works in other people's games.

Do your sims ever adopt, and if so when and why? Do you use the regular game option, or use mods to have your sims choose who to adopt? Which mods do you use?

Now that I've thought about it, I kind of want my sims to be able to adopt child and younger sims from the orphanage I have (at the moment it's just the Newsons and some of the Tricou offspring downtownies, but other sim babies will likely be heading there soon). I know I've seen adoption options on the SimBlender, I've just never messed with them. My issue is that I want the adopted child to both retain family ties with their parents and gain their adoptive parents as relatives. I just don't want adopted children losing their original family ties and ending up in relationships with their half-siblings or cousins later in life. Is there any way I can do this? I know I can set relatives with SimPE, but I probably can't set more than two parents. Does anyone have any advice on this? I would not mind if it entailed not using any formal adoption process at all (and having no adoption memory), as long as the kid views the adoptive parents as relatives.

My sims adopt sometimes, usually male-male couples. (I haven't had any female-female couples who wanted children, so I'm not sure what I'd do in that case.) Generally, I use the normal game mechanic for adoption. I had one family adopt a townie child via SimBlender, which seemed to work nicely, and with the same memories as a regular adoption. I also had an adoption that needed to happen for reasons of Plot, and that also for reasons of Plot required the family ties to stay intact. I accomplished that by moving the adoptive parents in briefly and then moving them back out with the adopted. Of course, now some of my teens' relationships are messed up, but I am currently handling that with a combination of incompatible gender preferences and keeping certain sims well away from each other. When I have them all settled, I expect that they won't try romantic actions anymore, since that's the way my sims tend to work. I also use the SimBlender to set sims to cousins when that's what they should be but aren't because of my latest rebuild. I'm counting on the adoptive parents aging up and dying before the adopted can potentially develop romantic feelings for them. If that fails, I'll move the adopted out and micromanage any relationships.

I don't have ACR -- wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole -- but if you do, that increases the risk of romantic actions when you're distracted. Fortunately, you can also friendzone sims using ACR, which should take care of the problem nicely.

I don't know if you can give a sim more than two parents. You could always back up and try...

In my old large integrated hood I did have an orphanage which adopted out babies/tots/children. I would invite the family over and have them talk or play or interact with the children. Then using the sim blender I would put the child up for adoption and have the family call up and adopt. The child just put up is at the top of the list. To set family relationships you will need to use the simblender, SimPE or some other mod. I'm not sure about cousins as I didn't bother, but you should be able to do that in simpe.

You can do cousins on the Blender too. Something I forgot to say earlier is if you use the Blender, you have to change the family relationships on both sims. So if I want Fantine and Saigon to be cousins, I have to have Fantine click on the Blender and set Saigon to her cousin. Then I have to have Saigon click on the Blender and set Fantine to her cousin. (I believe the Sim Manipulator also has that capability.) Both sims have to be on the same lot, IIRC.

My sims never adopt
unless I'm playing a same-sex couple.

I have 2 types of adoption - family tree and non family tree.

Family tree adoptions are adopted the regular way, where the adopted Sim comes from the adoption pool and becomes part of the family tree. The adoption pool is made up of sims who I haven't used the genetics of (e.g. the Oldies, as I said in a previous thread) as well as sims whose faces I really like (Ty Bubbler is cute as hell, I just had to clone him) and also repeat sims (because I forgot to use clean templates when installing my megahood. So I ended up with doubles of the Newson, Gavigan etc (though not Ottomas for some reason) so I aged them down, gave new personalities and interests and then put them in the adoption pool)

Then there's non-family tree adoptions, these are from my orphanage. It takes longer to adopt these sims because the orphanage has a limited amount. These sims age rotationally just like everyone else and are the offspring of families who can't or don't want to have children, such as Adande O'Feefe is from an abusive relationship and born while his mother was in college, so she decided to give him up for adoption. When these Sims are adopted (or fostered I guess?) I move them in, keep their family trees in fact but then using Sim blender set it so that they see their adoptive relatives as parents, siblings, etc.

These are all some good ideas! I do have ACR, which is why I was worried about the eventual romantic relationships I know would end up happening.



Ohh, so this works?? I've never tried before, which is why I wasn't sure. And it doesn't change their family tree?

@Bigsimsfan12 I too would also be interested in your experiences with giving sims more than two parents with the SimBlender, and also siblings that do not have parents in common. Does it break or corrupt anything?

@ JoJo & esme:
Yes it works fine. From my experience if they have no/1 parent,and you add a parent,it shows up on the family tree, but if you add another parent while your Sim already has 2 parents, they don't show up on the family tree.
I have no reason the believe it corrupts anything, though I guess extensive research would have to be done. It seems to work like a normal parent/child relationship would, e.g. When a Sim gets an A+ they run to the adoptive parents, and the adoptive parents gets memories of the adoptee getting an A+ report card just like any other parent.

In addition to same-sex couples and elders who realize that they have room in their homes and hearts for children, I sometimes have single Romance Sims adopt. They may have fears about marriage and having babies, but they are often terrific parents once the children arrive. For example, I noticed that whenever Ricky Cormier visited households with little ones he spent a lot of time playing with them. So after graduating from college and moving into a duplex with vampire Brandi LeTourneau and her husband, Ricky adopted a child. He's a great dad, and little Andrew adds elements to the household that would have been missing had I waited for Ricky to commit to monogamy. Which may be never.

To date only 2 sims have been adopted in my game. One of the parents called the adoption agency and they brought random kiddo over the next day.

Unless I'm playing a same-sex couple, I don't really adopt.

There were two exceptions though- The Smiths where they adopted a dude they hated for some reason, and Strangetown Bella and Kennedy Fox or Goopy Gilscarbo- I forgot.

Yay, thank you for the info! That would be just perfect for my purposes! If I ever want my sims to adopt I'll teleport them in to visit the orphanage, and let them adopt the baby/toddler/child that they gravitate towards the most.

I tend to have single female Sims adopt, couples who already have at least one biological child and couples who have had trouble getting pregnant (tend to toy around with ACR2's pregnancy odds and ideal family size for certain Sims) add to their family this way too.

No mods are used to determine what type of child is added to the family (just the Maxis system)...as I like being surprised and am open to whatever the game dishes out.

Also, I normally keep my neighborhood population pretty low, and this is a great way to mix in Sims with different genetics...without having to create additional Sims or move in townies.

I have an orphanage, and all adoptions go through there. Sims must befriend the child they want to adopt, and it costs 5000 simoleons. When the actual adoption happens, I teleport the orphanage-manager and the child to the lot and use the simblender to move in the child. The reason I do this, rather than put the child up for adoption and using the phone to adopt, is that they lose their memories when adopted with the in-game mechanism. If they lived at the orphanage for a while and has memories from it, I want those memories to remain.

Because my way does not give memories, and I think memories are very important, I use two memory-mods to assign the correct memories. One is the memory manipulator, which lets you add any maxis memory. I use that one to give the parents the adoption memory that comes with the game. The other is DiLights Tattered Diary, that has a memory for the adopted party to remember that they got adopted.

I use SimPE to change the last name (if I want to change it), and set family relations and family tree.

EDIT: Realized I didn't say when Sims adopt. I let Sims adopt if they have trouble conceiving (I have miscarriages in my game), if it's a same-gender couple, if they don't want a relationship but want children, or if I think that Sim/couple are more prone to want to help out a parentless child than have a biological one. It's not quite as common as having a biological child, because I do love pregnancies, but it's not uncommon. Id say it's maybe 30% adoptions.

As to how Sims get to the orphanage, I usually create an adult in CAS and after moving it into the orphanage, age it down. But if social services take a child, it will be put in the orphanage. And Sims can give up their babies if they don't want them and they didn't want to abort.

Where can I find this memory manipulator? I've never heard of it and can't seem to find it.

I have an adoption house where any unwanted kids end up. Any sim that gets pregnant via risky woohoo has an aspiration and personality based roll to decide if they're going to have an abortion, give their baby up for adoption, or raise them on their own. They need to fail the first (abortion roll) and succeed on the second (adoption roll) to put their baby up for adoption. Even if a sim rolls to put their baby up for adoption it's not guaranteed -- rolling the want to have a baby during the pregnancy means they've changed their mind (like Scarlett did -- of her four children, she wanted to put all but one up for adoption but changed her mind as the pregnancies progressed). Once a baby's been born and is going to be put up for adoption I use a sim teleporter to move the baby into the adoption house (so family ties are all retained). They then stay there until they either become teens (at which point they're moved to a halfway house) or adopted.

Adoption: same-sex couples have the option of adoption, as does infertile couples (either from birth or after giving birth, if female). They roll to decide what age they're adopting (baby, toddler, child), with a second roll if their initial preference isn't available. If they fail the second roll, they have the option of adopting the third age group or waiting a set amount of time to see if their wanted age group turns up -- e.g. a couple rolls to adopt a toddler. No toddlers in the adoption pool. They roll again, this time to adopt a baby. No babies in the adoption pool. They either adopt a child, or wait a few rotations for a baby or toddler to turn up in the adoption pool. If not, they're asked again if they want to adopt a child.

If there's more than one of an age group available, the prospective parents get teleported over to interact with the potential adoptees. The one they have the higher relationship at the end of the day is the one they adopt, paying $3k to the adoption agency. The baby/toddler/child gets put up for adoption and the new parents adopt through the game system (to allow for the proper adoption memories and family ties to their new family). Originally I had their bio family noted down and added as cousins, but if adding parents/siblings works with no problems, I'd do that.

I have a few adoption successes -- Jonas and Felix adopted Daniella, Aaron and Aimee adopted Chelsey (after Aimee birthing Harmony & Melody made her infertile), and there was an unofficial within-family adoption of Kevin and Elise for Andrew and Caitlynn (who were twins born of Chelsey by Kevin and Elise's son Heath). A number of sims I initially seeded the adoption pool with grew up and started their own families. In terms of adoption, I'm just waiting for my sims to start rolling for adoptions for their risky pregnancies -- so far, most seem to either roll for an abortion or change their minds during the pregnancy.

Katya I've finally had a baby put into adoption, right now shes at the 'orphanage' When my sim decides to adopt and I go into the orphanage and put the baby into the game's adoption service, I'll for sure get the same baby again correct?

My gay and lesbian couples – the few that exist in my game – use adoption.
I don't really 'play' an orphanage or anything, I don't pay for adoption either.

@esmeiolanthe - I wouldn't touch ACR with a 10-foot pole either I don't see how people can play with it: I mean, it ruins relationships? I want to be in control of who's cheating who, who's being true and who doesn't even care anymore.

That's the way I see it, for sure. *nodnod* But there are other people who put it on their list of Top Three Hacks You MUST Have In Your Game. If it makes them happy, I'm totally cool with that, but it is definitely not for me.

http://simmanipulator.forumotion.co...ory-manipulator
Googled it because I wanted it for myself, too. Eventually I found a link in a link to that link. :p

Yup, TS2's adoption system works on a "last in, first out" system -- the devs (or whoever) thought that if a player lost some kids to social services, they'd want to get them back at the earliest opportunity.



Where does this belief that ACR just leads to a cheating mess come from? I love it because it allows me to autonomise romance (as it says in the name), allows me to be hands-off on directing when a sim will have children, randomising gender preference, check on a sim's One sim, check their fertility and risky woohoo percentage, and everything is customisable. Want a bunch of sims loyal to their spouses? That can be set. Want a bunch of sims who don't care that their SO is sleeping with half the town? That can be set. The only households that have had ruined relationships have been romance sims, and that's because I've let them.

I use a foster care system - there are foster carers in my hood (the Goodies in my megahood) and any children taken away are first placed with them until a suitable adoptive family are found.

In another hood I have an orphanage, which is also fun to play, but I think that foster care is better in real life, so I wanted to reflect that in my hoods, too When I play an orphanage lot, I also add children randomly to the household, to keep it populated. In the hoods with foster care, it's not always possible to adopt because there aren't always children available to adopt.

Sorry, I should have linked to the memory manipulator in my post. I thought it was from MTS and figured it'd be easy to find, but now that I see the link I remember it was something I stumbled upon via a link somewhere