TUTORIAL - Commodities

This is going to be a bit more advanced and a break from the Mod Constructor tutorials, we'll just be looking at Maxis tuning to understand what a commodity is, I think already did something similar but let's look at them in deep. Because they're used in many ways, and along with traits, buffs and loots, they're the very basic of the game. 

There are commodities that are hidden, like buffs and traits, and work in background, and commodities that are always under your nose, like for example, the Sims basic needs:

The Social, Hunger, Hygiene, Fun etc... are technically commodities. Sadly, they're also the most complicated ones, just because they're visible, and have a lot of options enabled.

Not all the commodities are complicated like this:

This one is a commodity, too... and this one is waaay easier than the social need. What we're usually interested into is:

Default convergence value: this commodity decays to 0. This is not always the case, they can also go up. This one specifically starts from a given number and goes down to 0 in the time set in another option we'll see later.

Decay rate: how much the commodity goes down over time. This is calculated in sims minutes, 1 means that this commodity goes down (or up) 1 point per sims minute.

Max Value Tuning: the max number this commodity can get. This is in sims minutes too.

So, let's say this commodity here can only count to 10. If it starts from 10, and goes down by 1 every minute, it will take 10 sims minutes to go to 0.

Let's look to another, pretty easy, commodity:

If you play with vampires you know this one, and you know this one because you see this one... this is the 3 days timer from being bitten to becoming a vampire.

This one goes up to 2160

One point per minute

To a maximum of 2160

It also start from 0

So, the moment the sims gets this commodity (when being bitten, an action runs that gives the sim this commodity), it starts from zero and starts going up to 2160 one point per minute, once it reaches 2160 something happens:

The sim becomes a vampire. 

Other things happen at other intervals:

Immediately, they get the Appetite Lost buff.

From 1441 to 721 they get the Disgusted by Food buff

From 721 to 1 they get the Strangely Hungry buff.

You all see them.

There are other options enabled like this one:

This says that if the player leaves the family and plays another, the commodity needs to still  go on at the same rate.

You can look at the TDESC to better understand the various options. This is one of the ways a commodity is used.

Here is when the sim get the commodity:

And how:

Other things that are controlled by commodities:

Roommates Autonomy

Civic Policies Autonomy

Comfortable Buffs

Food Freshness

Also: gardening, upgrades, fit and fat values... and everything increases or decreases over time or with specific actions...

Like workout:

Buffs can affect the decay rate of a commodity:

Actively decrease or increase them:

Because commodities are also what makes it so that after some time under the sun, for example, a vampire burns:

Or a sim dies of hunger:

So, when we talk about commodities we're talking about a fundamental thing in how The Sims 4 works.