Emotional Inertia Classic for The Sims 4

Last updated: v1.13.1.0, 13th January 2021
Working for The Sims 4 v1.69.59, The Snowy Escape Patch, 14th December 2020
Also compatible with The Sims 4 Legacy Edition

What it does
Sims' moods will have inertia. Moods become more resistant to change, and can last beyond the original moodlets that caused them. It can now take a sustained effort and multiple points of another emotion to change their mood.

This is the old design of Emotional Inertia, kept updated for anyone who prefers it.
For the latest design, install the Meaningful Stories mod!

Why would you want this?
In the base game, sims' emotions typically flip about on four hour timers like little clockwork goldfish. Nothing affects their mood for long, and once you're familiar with the game, it's not difficult to get the few points needed to change their mood when you want to.

With this mod, once something happens to put a sim in a mood, that mood will likely last at least as long as the effects of the thing that caused the mood, and even after that it will take time and effort to put them in a different frame of mind. The aim is for this to make emotions feel a little more meaningful, to make your sims feel a little more human, and to make managing their mood take a little more planning and be a little more challenging.

Emotional Inertia in detail
When your sim enters a mood, they will be given a moodlet for that mood, the strength of which depends on their age and whether the mood is positive or negative. When that moodlet's timer runs out, it will be replaced by a weaker moodlet.

After your sim enters another mood, the inertia moodlet from the previous mood will be removed.

There are three levels of inertia moodlet:

• Strong: +3 - lasts 8 hours, followed by
• Medium: +2 - lasts 8 hours, followed by
• Fragile: +1

The +1 level has no visible duration but will rarely last long at all because of the way the game handles mood changes. Once a +1 inertia moodlet is the only thing left keeping a sim in a mood, it will be overcome by any more recent +1 moodlet for any other emotion.

Starting inertia levels:

• Toddlers: no inertia.
  The emotional balance for toddlers is pretty good, so I don't mess with it.
• Children: +1 for positive moods, +2 for negative moods.
  Children will find it easier to bounce back and change in mood than adults.
• Teens to Elders: +2 for positive moods, +3 for negative moods.
  These sims are more emotionally stable.

Exceptions:

• The happy and uncomfortable moods get no inertia.
  You won't get sims stuck as 'uncomfortable' hours after needing a shower.
• Entering the uncomfortable mood does not remove inertia moodlets from other negative moods.
  Your sim can go right back to feeling sad after they've dealt with their bladder emergency.
• Unflirty adult sims get only +1 flirty inertia.
  It should be easy to bring them out of the flirty mood after the moodlet that put them in it has expired.
• Non-currently-played sims: +1 for positive moods, +2 for negative moods.
  NPCs get weaker inertia so that party goals about changing guests' moods aren't totally impossible.

The amount of points needed to enter the higher intensity levels of an emotion has been raised to allow for the inertia moodlets.

Support and updates
To keep informed of updates to my mods, click the follow button on patreon for email alerts. You can also follow me on tumblr and twitter.

If you like this mod and would like to support my work on it and other mods like it, please consider supporting me through my patreon page.

Tips for playing
With this mod, managing your sims' moods can become challenging.

Falling into a negative mood is a meaningful problem. If it happens, your sim will likely only be able to be pulled out of it after the moodlet that caused the mood change expires. After that, you'll have to find multiple sources of +happy to overcome the strong inertia for a negative mood. A drink, a nice meal, a deep connection with another sim, or a good workout can be good places to start.

But you'll also need to think about what positive mood they'll end up in when they finally overcome their bad mood. Because if it's not one you wanted them to be in, you might have another problem.

With adults, even an undesired positive mood can take some planning to overcome. To beat a +2 positive inertia moodlet, you'll need either a +2 moodlet or three different +1 moodlets for the positive mood you want them to have. Learning the different ways your sim can gain moodlets for the emotions they want will be important if you want to have control over their mood. Start with viewing an emotional artwork, doing some research on the computer, or taking a particular kind of shower.

Or you can just let their moods flow where they will, and follow your sim's lead for their desires in life.

How this mod came about
I started this as a project to learn to use Zerbu's Mod Constructor tool. Zerbu's excellent old Lingering Emotions mod was no longer working for me, and I missed it, so I started out by trying to recreate its effects. The mod has developed a lot since then, and I feel it has enough differences now from Zerbu's original mod to be distinct and worth sharing.

Known issues

• Emotion reducing interactions only reduce moodlets that were present when the interaction started. This means if a strong emotional inertia moodlet transitions to a weaker one while your sim is performing an emotion reducing interaction, the new moodlet won't be reduced unless you start the interaction again.

Recommended mods to go with this

• Uncomfortable Overhaul
  Emotional Inertia was made assuming a mod like this will also be installed. With uncomfortable moodlets sometimes boosting other negative moods, negative emotions can be more of a threat, making emotional inertia more interesting.
• No Happy Environment Moodlets
  With permanent happy moodlets around, emotional inertia can make it too easy to stay in a positive mood. Disable happy moodlets from decorations for a better balance between positive and negative moods.
• Variable Emotional Traits
  Random strength moodlets from emotional traits can give another little push towards gloomy and hot-headed sims sometimes feeling sad or angry.

Thanks

• This mod was inspired by Zerbu's Lingering Emotions mod, which is no longer available
• This mod was made with Zerbu's Mod Constructor v2
• I am a bit of a fan of Zerbu's work, perhaps you can tell
• Thanks to Sjofn, Dan Lawrence, Apex Pecoris, and Loofofbread for testing and reporting bugs.

Conflicts
This mod overrides no files, and should not conflict with any other mod.