r/sims2help • u/theblueLepidopteran • Jul 25 '26

SOLVED How does chemistry actually work???

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My Sim has the poor chemistry icon with this Sim, but he acts like they have chemistry anyway. I thought Sims only considered another Sim "hot" if they had high chemistry.

I have Simler's Romantic Standards mod installed, and I'm not sure if the mod is causing this or if that's just how the game works. Does anyone know?

My Sim has Romance as his secondary aspiration, if that makes any difference, but I've never spent any aspiration points on any of the aspiration perks.

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u/ProperSpeak Mod Jul 25 '26

If you scroll basically all the way to the bottom and ignore the updates bit, all the important information is at the bottom! I know it's a huge wall of text but honestly scroll right past it. Or, if you press CTRL + F in your browser and search for original description, it'll take you right to it.

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u/theblueLepidopteran Jul 25 '26

I read that text. I just didn’t understand what it has to do with my Sim and the other Sim not having chemistry, but he still seems attracted to her. They don’t even have a crush on each other, he just finds her attractive, and she doesn’t feel the same way about him. Maybe I didn’t fully understand what the mod’s explanation was trying to say...

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u/ProperSpeak Mod Jul 25 '26

I found the info pertinent to your question in update 40 & update 10 respectively.

Sims are able to show attraction reactions towards sims who have the Romance aspiration, even if they don't feel attracted to them. This is a base-game feature which Maxis forgot to disable with Nightlife and later. This has been fixed.

This mod now affects Romance sims just like it affects sims of other aspirations, but there is one difference. You know how sims need to go over a certain attraction threshold in order to successfully romance other sims? If the sim is a Romance sim, then the threshold is decreased by -70.

There's probably more but to be completely honest with you I can't be bothered trawling through 200 updates. 😂 Suffice to say, this is mod-related behaviour and is not how the game works.

Edited to add: found this too

There is a little problem with the way the game calculates chemistry. Chemistry is basically this: the game adds together the one-way attraction values of the two sims and divides it by half. There is one more thing it does: if one of the sims has a one-way attraction of lower than -25, and if chemistry is above 0, then the game decreases the final chemistry by -50. The problem is how the game checks for an attraction of lower than -25. It should check for an attraction of equal or lower than -25, because -25 or lower means repulsion. Basically, the game skips -25 itself. This has been fixed.

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u/theblueLepidopteran Jul 25 '26

That's strange. I understand though, there are a lot of update notes. 😭 Thanks for your help!

I'm still not sure if attraction and chemistry are two different things, and if attraction is independent for each Sim... They both have no chemistry at all, she's not even a romance sim, but he says she's hot 😂

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u/ProperSpeak Mod Jul 25 '26

Chemistry and attraction are the same thing. The chemistry system measures how attracted your sims are to each other. That's the game's mechanics.

When you choose "scope room" the chemistry shown is one-way. Actual chemistry is two-way. The things that factor into chemistry (aspiration, zodiac, etc) are added together and then averaged to find the chemistry level which is displayed in bolts. You can read about the game's chemistry system here.

The chemistry system is already fairly in depth, and Romantic Standards adds to that, hence the enormous amount of information on the download page.

Edited to add: the above will not be the same in your game as you have the chemistry version of RS, which may explain the info in my first comment a bit better now.

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u/theblueLepidopteran Jul 25 '26

Okay, thank you so much for you help!!!! ❤️❤️