Switching between households, is it worth it?

I switch households in all of my legacy games though I've changed settings a great deal in story progression so it won't do much for inactive households and I've made major changes to other settings in the other Mods.I've currently got 68 NRaas Mod files and over 20 smaller Mods from MTS just so my game will be playable and it makes it very easy to switch households.
You can adjust the settings by creating custom castes for each household you want to protect and make sure the Mod can only give them promotions on the jobs and improve school performance for the schoolkids and increase the household funds.That's how I protect the families in my towns though I've done it to the entire population in each town I play in.I wouldn't even consider trying to play using EA's bug-fest for a "story progression" because it will totally destroy your game and I've had that happen to my games before I knew about NRaas Mods.

NRaas SP is what can prevent "something bad" happening to the household you switch away from, not what will cause it. You just have to leverage its settings to protect the parents' household against what you don't want them doing while you are playing the son's household. And then switch the settings around when you play the parents again.

The inactives I play in rotation have SP settings that prevent the following when they are inactive - no aging, no romantic breakups or new relationships, no new pregnancies forming, no job progression or job switching, no moving to a new house as a household or individually, and no inventory management so they don't try to sell everything they own the moment your back is turned. You can do these settings manually on the households if we are really only talking about two in rotation or you can set up a caste to handle them -- one caste will do -- and switch the households in and out of that caste as you take turns playing them. I play anywhere from 1 to 6 households in usually two sim week rotations in each of the interconnected (via Traveler) system of worlds in my game and it has been working well for years (real, not sim years).

Alternatively, you can use SP to set the inactive household to be in stasis. That maxes out their motives to 100 for everything all the time. They will still go to work/school and can be seen around town, but more like movie extras than anything else. Since sims in stasis have all of their needs already fulfilled all the time, they aren't very interesting to play around or have over as dinner guests, for example, since they tend to just stand there and drool much of the time when the game or their work schedule has nothing else for them to do. :)

I tried applying a caste to the parent's household but then when I moved the son out like right away I got a popup that his sister had gotten a new job so I did something wrong.

How exactly do I do this?

You may have already followed these or most of these steps, but here they are anyway. Before you change active households:

1. Create a new manual caste.
On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > SP > Caste Options > New Caste (let's call it "Rotations")

2. Open to the new caste in Caste Settings and make sure it is set to Manual -- that is, Caste:Automatic = False, and change Caste:Apply to Household to True.

3. Adjust the settings that you want for the household you are about to leave behind. Here are some settings that I use, but your preferences may vary.

Career: Allow Progression = False (sims will still go to work, but this should take care of and hide most of the other career settings, including Find New Job)
Caste Priority = 5 (just in case your household's sims are in a different caste already, this one will take priority over 0 through 4)
Death: Allow Aging = False
Household: Allow Move as Family = False
Household: Allow Move Solo = False
Money: Allow Inventory Management = False
Personality: Allow Occult Change = False (only relevant if you play with SP Personalities)
Pregnancy: Allow Adoption = False
Pregnancy: Allow Can Be Pregnant = False
Pregnancy: Allow Participation = False (note that if one of your sims to become inactive is already pregnant, you will need to set an exception for them on the Sim level or else SP will terminate the pregnancy)
Push: Allow Skills = False (this is my personal preference, you may not care if these sims pursue skills in your absence)
Romance:Allow = False (they can still have "fun" with their partner, but no new romantic relationships or breakups please)
Skill:Allow = False
Skill:Allow Harvest = True (while not pursuing skills generally, their gardens should not totally fall apart either)

And hit the checkmark twice to accept.

4. Put the household you are rotating out of into the new caste.
Click on the map tag of the household in Map View or anywhere on the ground of the lot, NRaas > SP > Household Options > Caste Manual, and select the new caste you just created.

Checkmark twice to accept. The settings will flow down to all household members, for as long as they remain members of that household.


When you are ready to leave the son's household and return to play the parent's, just before switching take the parent's household out of this caste and put the son's household in. I like to think of it as returning a library book and checking out a new one when I do this.


And finally, about those unwanted career switches. I've never had an inactive dragooned out of their existing job this way, but the game sees unemployed sims as safe to use to fill empty co-worker slots no matter what and SP can be powerless to prevent the game from doing so. If you really want an inactive sim to remain unemployed, you can use MC to change their status to Retired or, if you have the NRaas Careers mod, give them the special "Unemployed" career placeholder (no work hours, no pay, no advancement) and the game should leave them alone.

This all might seem like a lot of work at first, but it's really a one-time setup than can be tweaked/adjusted as you go as well as exported and imported into other worlds/games you might play. It's not totally flawless. But my married, totally committed since they first laid eyes on each other sims have never once strayed away from each other or moved out, etc. with these settings in place. Nor have my fear of commitment totally playing the field sims ever gotten married and settled down when I wasn't looking either -- they can try but SP shuts those actions right down. :)

So do I put the parents into the Caste while they're still the active family or while the son is the active?

You put the entire parents' household into the caste while they are still active. I even usually let the clock run for a few sim minutes after doing so though that shouldn't be necessary. Then switch households.

If you do it the other way around, even while the game is paused, unintended things can happen.

What I usually like to do in my game is buy "ownable" lots. That way Grandma can stay in the active household, where I can control her, yet have her own space! :lol: Granted, this is with my farm family and I intend for the family to live there for many more generations.

While I use SP, I have gone into it blindfolded. I learned from some YouTube videos what some of the options are/mean. I learned on my own through trial and error some of the others. Thank you so much for the step-by-step, igazor! I am usually a bit afraid to mess with castes. I never really understood what they were. I like that with SP I can essentially "pause" the family. Would be great for my multi-generational farm family I have started... Kids can leave for a while but then come back and the farm's still there! :smiley:

@roboticromantics - You are welcome; was hoping that would be useful to others, in addition to the OP.

A caste is simply a group of sims. Manual castes are those into which you arbitrarily place your sims by name, one sim or household at a time, such as in the above example. Automatic castes are those into which all sims fall who meet certain defined criteria. Such as YAs. Or Male YAs. Or Male YAs with zodiac sign Libra and high guitar skills whose favorite color is purple. SP puts them into the correct automatic castes as soon as it notices their existence.

You don't have to use castes to accomplish the above, but switching 9 to 12 settings around every time you switch active households even for a moment gets way too complicated and prone to user error very quickly.

As for your farm family strategy, that's of course great for Grandma. For my second (of five now) generation sims who had 12 kids, not as much -- some say I'm playing rotational legacy or whatever they call it, but in reality I just have severe, deep-rooted issues with "letting go." I should probably seek professional help one of these days, but for now I'll just keep on playing. :D

I've used custom castes for each household in each game with settings adjusted to protect the households even while I'm not playing them and stuck on another household.I switch them all of the time in my games and I never get more than increases in household funds,skill or salary in my absence and I even play custom worlds so I can start in an unpopulated world and grow the population myself.
I play my legacies rotationally with the households in each town being played and I switch to play other households to help them find jobs or to move house when they need a bigger house.

Okay, phew, I kind of sort of figured that's what castes might be. Thank you for explaining! :smiley:

I have only dabbled with automatic caste settings for one particular reason -- to disable certain careers. I have Island Paradise but I'm not usually in that world. (I love using the Traveler mod for that!) However, my Sims in Riverview with SP (and possibly because of the Career module?) seem to always want to be Lifeguards or Scuba Divers... well, that ain't gonna work out. Hopefully that's what I'm supposed to be doing because, well, it seems to be working.

I understand having trouble letting go. The struggle is real. For now, Grandma living across the street is working out. But once more generations are born, most likely way after Grandma's time, some of the kids will want to go out, get an apartment, do fun stuff... at least before one is called back to the farm at risk of it being taken away... or some grand, save-the-farm story like that, haha.

I never really liked rotational play. (Probably the reason I love SP so much, and The Sims 3 in general.) However, within the family, as it grows, I have trouble parting. :frowning:

I will sometimes start with a custom world. (Not my own; I can't make custom stuff worth a grilled cheese sandwich.) My favorite is St. Claire, I use it all the time. I plop down some bin pre-mades, some fams I made myself that I like to see around town, the fam I wanna play, and go with it. Let SP handle the rest!

I used to be afraid of mods. Glad I got over that... can't imagine playing Sims 3 without them now. Alas, I am still intimidated by MasterController... :neutral_face: