Safeguards?

"Rainydayz179;c-16232774" wrote:
Which brings me to wonder what is a good number for inactives? You mention 200. I'm not sure if that's just an offhand number or if it's closer to what you have. My original thought was that the more the better so I have a selection for my heir but I've got this whole obsession with knowing what everyone is doing all the time. Seriously, I even have it set to prompt me to name the babies and once I get the notification they are born I go to see them! So, I was thinking a small number of sims would be good. But at the same time when one of my played sims goes into a venue it would be nice if it isn't the exact same sims each time showing up. I'm just wondering what is a good balance?

It totally depends on the size and usable space of the worlds in question, player preferences, and the strength of their system. To clarify, I'm talking about actual resident sims, as can be measured on City Hall/in-game computer with NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter. Service and other homeless NPCs don't count.

I like having more sims in each world than my actives can possibly ever know real well and there always being strangers to meet. Or even more than I can know and keep track of. I would never try to watch over what all of the sims in town are doing individually unless I had a population of smaller than 35 or so, but I use Tagger to sort of get an overview of world activity from Map View and periodically zoom in on or MC Open lots of those I am curious about -- typically while my own sims are sleeping, at work, or engaging in some time-consuming activity where they don't need my involvement like reading books or practicing on skill objects.

Most of the worlds I play can accommodate well over 200 residents as long as I provide more housing. Riverview is the central world to my game and there's over 250 there now. Somewhere around 300, for me, performance begins to degrade or RAM usage gets dangerously high especially with NRaas StoryProgression running (on any progression speed). Others with stronger systems can take things a bit further. I have just over 160 crammed into Twinbrook, but it's a mess because I hate building houses on swampland so the average residence has something like 6 or 7 sims in it now. But the demographics also went top-heavy on elders in that world, I've got to sort that all out the next time I switch into it. For the WA worlds and any that are really only ever going to be vacation destinations and not homeworlds, I'm happy enough with smaller local populations. My sims only tend to stay around 3-10 sim days at a time and it's not always necessary to lose myself and them in the crowds like they can do back home. Unless, of course, they are vacationing in a dense urban setting like Bridgeport but that's a world I'm already playing actively anyway.

And some players just don't want all the overhead and will be much happier with 50-100 residents in each world they play. Or even fewer. But you can't really expect to have wide varieties of sims to date and breed with (at home, anyway) if your high school graduating class is your own sim plus one or two others. :)