This is v1.0 of Better Autonomy, a mod that re-balances Sims' autonomous behavior to make it less grating. Sims will be more likely to clean, work, and socialize and less likely to waste time watching TV, playing Chess, and other things of that nature. 

This should be the final version if nothing else pops up (such as balancing issues!). Please let me know if you encounter any issues!

Overview

Better Autonomy does a number of things to Sims, autonomy, and interactions. Put simply, is drastically shifts how Sims prioritize activities and puts a much stronger emphasis on socialization and skill building. Sims are now far more likely to talk to others and far less likely to do mindless activities like watching TV. They also put a much stronger focus on useful skill building—that is, they'll be more drawn to practicing writing, handiness, cooking, and gardening, among other things.

The goal of this mod was to leave these interactions available for autonomy when Sims have nothing to do without them prioritizing doing them. No more finding a mod to disable every single action you find annoying.

How It Works

This mod operates with two mechanisms: the first is a global trait that is added to every Sim in the game. This trait is hidden and alters a Sim's autonomous behavior. Traits can be used for autonomy modifiers. For example, each age in the game has a "trait" and, for some reason, Maxis saw fit to make every Age Trait have an autonomy modifier to build fun. Better Autonomy's global Trait reduces Sims' draw to fun building actions by 50% and raises their draw to socialization by 400%.

The second is that it modifies StaticCommodities. These are incredibly complicated, but in short, these files list how much a Sim wants to do something, which is represented by ad_data. Better Autonomy lowers the ad_data for several interactions—watching TV, playing Chess, making coffee, dancing to the stereo, and more.

This also introduces time limits to the TV by adding code to prevent Sims from mindlessly watching it forever. If they break away from a conversation to watch something, they'll only do it between 30 minutes to an hour, at which point they'll turn it off and do something else.

It also disables "Watch Toddler" and "Check Toddler (Minor)" to prevent Sims from constantly watching and checking on toddlers for absolutely no reason. Can you tell it's a pet peeve?

Changes from Gamma:

Mostly small fixes.

• Lowered autonomous desire for watching TV
• Lowered autonomous desire for dancing to the stereo
• Added time-limit to watching TV for several stations

Installation

• Download the file
• Unzip it and place both files in your mods folder not more than one folder deep
• Have a great day!

Thanks for waiting!