Hi,So I know in sims 3 you can switch the active household. I know a lot of the simmers I watch on youtube that do legacies do this, but I never have. I'm worried that because I have NRAAS Story Progression if I move my family's son out and have him get married and start a family that something bad will happen to his parents and other siblings.Those who switch households, is it worth doing it? Any reason why I shouldn't?

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. :)

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 = FalseHousehold: Allow Move as Family = FalseHousehold: Allow Move Solo = FalseMoney: Allow Inventory Management = FalsePersonality: Allow Occult Change = False (only relevant if you play with SP Personalities)Pregnancy: Allow Adoption = FalsePregnancy: Allow Can Be Pregnant = FalsePregnancy: 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 = FalseSkill: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.

Switching between households, is it worth it?

32 Replies

DonroaAkashu
Seasoned Ace
7 years ago
Wow, I just made the big faux pas of not reading the whole thread before posting, makes me feel like one of those minisims invited over from other worlds, totally corrupted by the write-only culture :tongue:

@TadOlson Thanks! So the important factors are that the sims not in active household at the moment does not get the wrong job, love or school?
I have not played sims 2.
EA_Lanna
Community Manager
7 years ago
"igazor;c-16882491" wrote:
Wow, this is an old thread. For those just now following along, the suggested Rotational Caste settings described here years ago partially as a result of this very conversation and others like it have been available on our site for NRaas StoryProgression users for quite some time now.
http://www.nraas.net/community/Story-Progression-Rotational-Caste-Settings

I would say that proper rotational play as most of us would have it in mind is very difficult if not entirely impossible without either NRaas StoryProgression or, for those so inclined, the AwesomeMod way of arranging things. It's the nature of the game. In TS3 the EA way, inactive residents exist strictly for the convenience and amusement of the actively being played household. We aren't meant to care about what happens to them all that much and there isn't any built-in way to designate that some of these sims are "ours" as opposed to the rest of the households in town that are not so that they therefore get more protection or are treated differently by the game.

This is also the nature of mod development, once we get past the things that fix total gameplay breakage or instability and begin adding new features like player-controlled towns and their progression. A need is identified and a programmer sets about finding a way to address the need. The alternative for those who will not use mods becomes a matter of playing around the shortcoming or altering one's playstyle to suit it. In this case, in other words, don't move any sims out of your active household if you demand any kind of control over what may happen to them.

Thank you @igazor :) I'll lock the thread here to limit further necroposting.

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Switching between households, is it worth it?

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