In the sims 2, gender preference was assigned by who your sims flirted with. When I played using acr, I would randomize it and play the hand given me, usually as soon as they became teens. Im not entirely certain how it works in the sims 3, though. My current sim, tori was never directed to flirt with anyone, yet had attractive company moodlets around guys right away. I know the atraction system is based on traits, interest, and im assuming astral signs. My question is, do attractive company moodlets fire off when a new sim is in the precence of any first time stranger regardless of gender who shares similar traits or are their preferences randomly assigned after creation? Or are all sims predesposed to heterosexuality and have to be steered towards homosexuality?

When ever I get those pop up saying some sim find my sim attractive it is usually the opposite gender. I find that the signs play more active role whether the sims are attracted to each other than traits. I have some homosexual couples in my towns that the game itself created. Michael Bachelor and Parker Langerak usually end up together in my games, but have no problem dating females later in they lives, my sims mostly. If both sims have the Mean Spirited trait changes are they don't really get along.

Does the master controller have a randomize option at all? I would really prefer not having to choose their gender preferences. I like playing out the cards dealt in any situation. Like who they fall in love with, wants, heck I would randomize traits if that were an option.

I haven't verified this, but I think sims you aren't playing can develop a sexual preference just by who flirts with them. So sims you aren't playing will eventually develop a sexual preference on their own if they're flirted with frequently on community lots by other sims that have a high enough relationship with them.

Thanks, I'll try that.

If you have MasterController too, you can click on town hall and go to Town/Randomize undecided gender preference, and put in a number for the ratio of straight to gay Sims. Only undecided Sims will be assigned, and it only does straight/gay.

I only play female Sims, and new Sims I create get the "attractive person" moodlet around other women even before I have them do any flirty actions!

When you start a fresh game almost none of the other Sims will have a set gender preference and neither will your Sim. So every undecided or heterosexual male and every undecided or homosexual female will be attracted to a fresh female active Sim.
If you take that Sim and have her ask a male whether he is single, attraction notices from other females should stop immediately, even from the homosexual ones, because you have shifted your formerly undecided Sim's gender preference towards males.
If you go to another female afterwards, though, and ask her whether she is single, too, your Sim's gender preference will be shifted towards undecided again and the attraction notices from other undecided or homosexual females will come back.
Every romantic interaction will shift an active Sim's gender preference towards the sex they interact with by 2 points and lower the preference towards the opposite sex by 1.

So, a so far undecided female that asks a male Sim whether he is single will end up with a gender preference of 2/-1 for male/female.
If she asks another female the same afterwards her gender preference will then be 1/1 for male/female (2-1/-1+2)
The attraction system will start from there and take your own Sims gender preference into consideration when determining whether other Sims are attracted to them or not.

NB: When you use Woohooer by NRaas these numbers will be doubled for user-directed interactions (+4/-2) and remain the same for autonomous interactions (+2/-1)

Are you positive that that's how it works? From messing around with Master Controller, I got the impression that rather than one gay vs. straight spectrum, the game had two spectra, one for degree of attraction to each sex.

That's what I tried to describe. Every Sim starts with 0/0 where the first number is attraction towards males and the second attraction towards females (that's the order you find in MasterController). Every romantic interaction performed by an active Sim will shift its gender preference by 2 towards the sex of the Sim you interact with and by -1 towards the opposite sex. So, when a female asks another female whether she is single, and then asks her sign afterwards she will end up with -2 (towards males)/+4 (towards females); now when she approaches a male after that and asks him whether he is single, her gender preference will be shifted to 0/+3 meaning she still prefers females over males; if she asks him his sign in addition she will end up with 2/2 and be undecided or bisexual again.
And yes, I am positive about this, as soon as one gender preference has a negative value, attraction notices from that sex will stop. If you want a Sim to get attraction notices from both sexes you will have to balance out their romantic interactions in order to keep both in positive numbers and make sure that inactive Sims of the same sex of your active Sim have a positive same sex value, too.

So that must be why it said on Nraas (I think) to set the gender preference(s) as a really high number - so it would have no possibility of becoming zero?

If you want a rigid gender preference. But it doesn't need to be a huge number. If you assign a gender preference of say 50 for females, the likelihood of them autonomously pursuing males would be zero. However, even a sim with a such a high gender preference can still be directed to flirt and chase a different gender. They will do so, although unless you do this frequently, and their initial preference was high, it will be a bit more difficult, but not impossible, to have them change preference. And of course, positive values for males and females provides a bisexual sim, doubling their available dating pool. Which can be done by direction provided to the sim, or, if you're just lazy about it, typing it in using MasterController (plus the cheats module, I think).

As to the gender preference of the "target" sim, while under autonomous rules they will follow the "program", if your active sim has a very high relationship level with them, their preference can be swayed with a little extra wooing.

Yes, if you want fully straight or fully gay characters it's best to set their gender preference to something like +1000/-1000 or -1000/+1000, respectively and if you want to have them bisexual without any risk for this to change you should set it to 1000/1000 or higher. I think when NRaas StoryProgression determines gender preference it sets the numbers even higher.

If the numbers are already very high it is impossible to sway them, however. You will need romantic interactions to succeed, because every failure in wooing them will have no effect on their gender preference, only your own Sim's.

True, but honestly, I've rarely met a resident sim (or service or role sim, for that matter) all that entrenched yet. Even the married ones don't seem impossible to change. Which makes me think inactive sims, even in relationships, have lousy sex lives, and it's the duty of your active sim to show them what a good time really is.

:I always set both male and female preference to 20,000.