Upgrading to OFB - questions

I'm thinking about buying OFB, but reading all the posts here I'm not sure
I'd really be that into the business aspects of it. I do have a couple of
questions, though, about the game content. First, if I upgrade to OFB, what
happens to my Sims from Uni/NL that have existing careers? Can they
continue in their current career paths as I would have expected with Uni/NL,
or are there new careers in OFB that they could move into? (I assume OFB is
like all other expansion packs, in that it adds content to the existing
games.) Also, if my Sims have maxed out their skills, does that make it any
more likely that they will succeed in a particular type of business in OFB?
For example, I have a bunch of college grads with maxed-out mechanical and
logic skills. Would they be likely to excel at bot-making, or is there a
brand-new skill path associated with that in OFB? Any input welcome.

Natty_D, hard-headedly resisting change


********
Basic human psychology is one of my subroutines.

"Natty Dread" <noway RemoveThis @hatespam.com> wrote in message
news:XEFPf.22823$Gh4.5534@fe07.news.easynews.com...
> I'm thinking about buying OFB, but reading all the posts here I'm not sure
> I'd really be that into the business aspects of it. I do have a couple of
> questions, though, about the game content. First, if I upgrade to OFB,
what
> happens to my Sims from Uni/NL that have existing careers? Can they
> continue in their current career paths as I would have expected with
Uni/NL,
> or are there new careers in OFB that they could move into? (I assume OFB
is
> like all other expansion packs, in that it adds content to the existing
> games.) Also, if my Sims have maxed out their skills, does that make it
any
> more likely that they will succeed in a particular type of business in
OFB?
> For example, I have a bunch of college grads with maxed-out mechanical and
> logic skills. Would they be likely to excel at bot-making, or is there a
> brand-new skill path associated with that in OFB? Any input welcome.

Sims can still use all the existings jobs, they can just now also own
businesses. There are no new careers per se, but they can work for other
sims, which is sort of a new career.

Maxis kind of got cute and instead of having new skills, there are 7 new
"badges" sims can earn. Robotics, Flowermaking, Cosmetology, Sales, Cash
Registering, Restocking, and Toymaking. Each has 3 levels, gold, silver, or
bronze.

Basically sims gain badges by doing the activity in question, just like
skills, but the time they need to learn a badge can be helped if they have a
related skill. For instance, a sim with maxed mechanical will learn
robotics badges twice as fast as a sims w/o any mechanical. And charisma
helps sales, etc.

And in some cases, the personality helps, like outgoing sims are better at
sales.

Also in some cases, skills are useful in businesses. For instance, if you
run a restaurant, you need to have a sim that has a high cooking skill to
cook all the dishes.