The Alien Adoption Challenge

Introduction:

Greetings citizen and welcome to government program H9110. As you can see, this summons of “Extended Jury Duty” is a false one, but it needed to maintain secrecy. Everything you do or see from this point on is highly classified.

1 week ago an alien mothership crash landed in the desert of Strangetown. And when I say “Alien Mother Ship” I mean that extremely literally. The craft was piloted by a single alien mother and had over 100 alien infant passengers. Some sort of strange fertility or breeder ship, we’re not sure. What we DO know is that the mother did not survive the crash…but all of the infants did. While we work to figure out what caused this crash…these offspring are going to need care…and study. This is where you, citizen, come in.

We have provided you a plot of land or house on which to found your new home, and you will be provided with one of the orphaned alien children for which to care. You might think you are experienced in parenting human children…but these aliens are extremely difficult to understand, I don’t just mean speech…they don’t know how to talk yet. Figuring out their body language is a mystery too. And getting them to do what you want them to do is even harder than it is with human children. You will be placed in a housing complex with others in your situation, though we ask that you not co-habitate with them. We wish you luck!

Getting Started:

Required Packs:

Create a new family. First create an adult or young adult sim. They may be of either gender, may have any traits, have any aspiration, and otherwise may be designed to your specifications. They must be a normal human sim, and may not be any of the special sim types (alien, vampire, etc).

Next, you must create a new toddler. An *alien* toddler. They may be either gender, and may be customized to your liking with one exception: Their toddler trait must be random. You can use our Toddler Random Trait Generator to do this.

Assign the alien toddler as the child of your first sim.

Want to see how to get started in this challenge? Check out Pinstar’s Introduction video!

Starting home:

You may move into any neighborhood you want, onto any lot you can afford. You may NOT move into an apartment, it must be a normal lot. If you wish you may use pre-made homes as long as the family can afford it. The government assigned housing that your sim has been placed in will have the following traits: Fast Internet, Science Lair, Mean Vibe. Set these as soon as your family moves in.

Rules:

The rules for this challenge are simple: The alien sim may never be the active sim. You may not click on them to see their motives or current skill levels or current desires. Nor may you ever issue them any direct commands. The only way you may guide them is with your parent. Your parent sim may use any and all socials to direct the actions of the alien child. You may, of course, provide your alien child with any and all objects you can afford. Any sort of money or motive cheats are not allowed.

Your parent sim may NOT take a job, nor may they hire a babysitter. They may go to community lots but must bring their child with them. They may make money in any other way to sustain the household and pay bills. The parent sim is free to build up relationships with others but may not move in any other sims into the household. If your parent sim becomes pregnant and gives birth, you may keep the child. If the new child is human, you may even directly command them, but if alien, the same ‘never the active sim’ rule applies to them.

There is ONE exception to the “Never the active sim” rule for the alien child. Right before they age up, you may look at them once while paused to check their skill levels, spend any accumulated aspiration points on perks and issue them a single command to blow out their candles or age up. After that, you must return control to your parent sim.

Growing Up

When your alien child reaches the “Child” or “Teenager” Stage, you still cannot control them, and thus cannot control their traits or aspirations.
When reaching the “Child” Stage you must roll a random childhood aspiration and may not switch to a different one. The one permanent child trait must also be chosen at random.
Once entering teenagehood, the adult aspiration must be chosen at random, as must your 2nd primary trait.
Because the challenge ends up aging up to young adulthood, you may select any trait you want for their 3rd primary trait.
You can find the random trait and aspiration generator here.

End of Challenge and Scoring:

The challenge ends when the alien toddler makes it all the way to young adulthood.

As for scoring? This an experiment with an open ended challenge. Your goals are twofold. First is to simply raise the best alien child you can…and the second is to see if you can visit Sixam in a rocket before your alien grows up to a young adult…

How well can you raise your alien child when you don’t have direct control? Play it and see! And upload your young adult alien to the gallery with the hashtag “#MothershipOrphan” to see others who have completed the challenge. Good luck and enjoy!

43 comments

Having an absolute blast with this challenge! I have just finished the toddler stage. I rolled the clingy trait for little Tamika and have had her adopted mother working with her every waking moment! Mom has only made it to level 6 painting, normally I’d have had her maxed out on painting a long time ago. Only painting when her little girl is sleeping or eating is really slowing her down. Her parenting skill is at level 8.
It took me until 12:55 am after the birthday announcement, but for the first time I’ve maxed out the toddler skills! I really had to make sure that I was making sure to try to fill all of the toddler’s needs as soon as she woke up and before putting her to bed. I also tried to keep track of the skill announcements as they popped up so I knew what to work with her on.
Next up: childhood. I’ve rolled bookworm and artistic prodigy.
My questions so far:
– Can we work out multiple aspirations with the parent? I’ve been working on the family aspirations and painting with the mom.
– I assume we input the parents traits into the trait generator? It won’t work without at least one parent.
– Can we update the aliens wardrobe before returning to only controlling the parent? Or do they have to stay in alien clothing?

Thank you so much for making all of these really fun challenges!

ImaginingMystic

From Pinstar:

Yes, you can play with the parent’s aspirations however you want and don’t need to roll for them.

Yes, use the parent in the generator

Yes. Since wardobe has no impact on the challenge, go ahead and dress your alien however you want after each age up.

[…] guess the agency found me through the ECE degree. They sent that letter to all University of MP ECE grads from the past four […]

Can you direct your alien child to “study hard” etc when they’re gone at school? Also I thought Pinstar said in his video that they had to stay in their alien clothes the whole challenge or did he mean just the toddler stage?

What do you do if the child gets sick? Mine is sneezing and uncomfortable. I can’t influence her to take medicine or drink juice, so I just put her to bed. In my regular game I always have them take medicine, but since I can’t control her …….

ImaginingMystic

From Pinstar:

It looks like bed rest is the way to go. The bed rest should help them knock out the illness, if maybe not as efficiently as medicine.

[…]  You can check out the official challenge rules here. […]

[…] Alien Adoption Challenge created by Pinstar and […]

I have started this challenge. It sounds so great! Here is my first chapter!

https://wordpress.com/post/soulgal7.wordpress.com/528

ImaginingMystic

Hiya! I’m trying to check this out, but it’s asking me to sign in. Not sure if it needs a different URL.

[…] so… i sure did start pinstar’s alien adoption challenge. 😛 i said i wouldn’t, then did a remarkably bad job of not doing it! originally it was […]

Chapter 2 is up in Leia and Oriana’s story.
https://soulgal7.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/chapter-1-2-a-new-home

[img]https://s22.postimg.org/82ofjxggh/lets_see_your_room.png[/img]

EuphorialQueen

Great idea for a challenge and is fun to play. Except a few little points I need to ask about.
Question: Some aspiration goals require tasks that need to be initiated by the Sim themselves.
Examples: Using the Art table to draw while inspired, practice typing for 4 hours, creating 3 emotion potions.
School projects (Parenthood Pack) must be initiated by the child/teen. Is it okay to get the project started then have the parent help?
My Teen rolled the Nerd Brain Aspiration and must read 3 books to move forward to the next step. I have enough trouble getting my controlled Sims to sit down and finish 3 books. LOL
The “Wash Dishes” bug is running rampant right now. Sims are cancelling all sorts of actions to walk to a sink – empty handed – to wash non-existent dishes. This is the latest known bug and repairing the game does not fix it :'(
My Parent Sim has reached Level 10 Parenting at this point and is only two steps from completing that aspiration (Yea!) There are lots of “Influence to” options at this point but I am not seeing ways around for a Child/Teen to complete aspiration goals without a few nudges along the way.

ImaginingMystic

From Pinstar:

You can break whatever rules you need to get around bugs or glitches. This is pretty much true for any of my challenges.

You raise a good point regarding the sim-initiated goals, however the main thrust of the challenge is the fact that you can’t control the alien. That is the reason why there isn’t a point system that encourages you to finish the alien’s aspirations (unlike the Wonder Child Challenge, which is all about checking off every item off every list you possibly can).

I would rule that if your child/teen alien gets assigned a school project, you may have them initiate the project but otherwise the rule about not controlling them stands. If you find yourself with an aspiration that can’t progress due to lack of initiative, find other was to better the alien child (encouraging skill building, good behavior, friendships etc.)

EuphorialQueen

Phew… I feel better now. Mac (Dad) and Cheddah (Alien Son) had some touch and go moments but survived the Toddler stage. Cheddah had some horrendous character values as a toddler. They were able to turn some of those around during the childhood stage. Cheddah is now a teenager and Rod Hall at least one school project. I had him start the project and then Dad came over to help. At this point about halfway through the teen years and couldn’t really tell you what I am skills-wise at this point. But at least you’re moving forward LOL

[…] started this challenge from Pinstar and I couldn’t resist! Also there’s a […]

[…] those doing the Alien Adoption Challenge, Charlimaii created a website for participant sims to post letters to each other to discuss issues […]

[…] Ghost, and Drifters are still in the works. But well, timing is everything and right now it’s Alien Adoption Challenge. This is Pinstar’s newest challenge and I love his challenges. There’s a bunch of us on […]

[…] this collaboration! First, Pinstar created a really fun challenge to play when he developed the Alien Adoption Challenge. The challenge lends itself to storytelling. Now that we’ve begun integrating our stories, […]

[…] you’d like the full rules and background details, you can find them here. This will probably end up in the same universe as the other AAC stories on this forum, so if you […]

[…] Note: Hi! This is a story based on the Alien Adoption Challenge (for those who don’t want to click on the link, it’s a challenge where you have to make […]

[…] can read more about the challenge here and more about the collaboration on the forums […]

[…] story told from an adoptive father’s perspective to his alien son. The story is based on the Alien Adoption Challenge and Cathy is involved in a wonderful collaboration with other writers undergoing the same […]

[…] CathyTea’s Septemus and RipuAncestor’s Taimi. They are both precious and a part of Pinstar’s Alien Adoption Challenge. I’ve been terribly lousy with credits! World, pray refrain from suing […]

I am in

No comments since October? Is it too late to join?

You can play this challenge whenever you like! There is no time limit 🙂

Btw love your username. I take it you are a Dragonriders of Pern fan? It’s one of my all time favorite book series!

Can the alien be disguised? I think if they are disguised, they stay disguised in age up, so it would be a one time change or so. I find the human sims much cuter than the aliens, and I feel they don’t fit with pretty clothes as much when in alien form.

[…] My first SimLit includes frail attempts at creating a dystopian setting, poetry and campfires. Loosely follows the rules of Pinstar’s Alien Adoption Challenge. […]

i am having a blast with this challenge!
for the first time i experienced the bed monster as an adult. it was funny not being able to see the monster under the bed ( as it actually appears only when the kid is selected) my poor sim got woke up in the middle of the night, for absolutely no reason ( from his point of view XD ) and when he was spraying the bed i sympathized with him a lot xDDDD

[…] is my take on the Alien Adoption Challenge (https://simslegacychallenge.com/sims-challenges/the-alien-adoption-challenge/). I will be mostly following the rules- not controlling the alien child, not choosing the traits, […]

[…] her decisions and the people around her, while the former is more or less based on Pinstar’s Alien Adoption Challenge. The complete chapter indexes for both stories can be found in the Contents […]

[…] Bruno and Rose will attempt to bring up Magneta well.  The story will be following the Alien Adoption Challenge  […]

Just out of interest, what The reason for the lot traits?
I’ve just started this challenge and I’m having loads of fun so far. I’ve used newcrest and turned it into a whole community of alien adoptions. All of my adoption lots have fences around them and are only allowed to be accessed by the other alien adoptees. I’ve made a club of all the alien adoptees and they go and visit the lots together, I’ve made a little alien school and park for them all. I haven’t started actual gameplay yet but when I do I’m not going to allow any of the alien adoptees or my own played family to communicate with anyone outside of the programme.

[…] Kids ChallengeAchievement ChallengeAlice In Wonderland 7 Generation Legacy ChallengeAlien Adoption ChallengeAll Packs Extended Not-So-Berry ChallengeAll That Weather Legacy ChallengeAlphabet Baby […]

[…] Click here for The Alien Adoption […]

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