NPCs Behaving Unusually

@danielr02  Personally, my first move here would be to demolish the movie theater where the sims are all gathering.  If you place a theater somewhere else in town, all the sims that work at the first one will transfer their jobs to the second when you delete the first.  It would also be interesting to see whether sims continued to gather outside the empty lot where the first theater was, or they all headed to the second one, or something else.

When you run this experiment, please use "Save as" and rename the save, so your original remains intact under its own name, then quit to desktop and delete the five cache files in your Sims 3 user folder before reloading the save.  These are the cache files:

• CASPartCache.package
• compositorCache.package
• scriptCache.package
• simCompositorCache.package
• socialCache.package

I'm also curious whether the sims are on the movie theater lot or outside it, and if you can tell what they're focused on as they arrive.  If you reset them and watch them come back, it might be useful to see what they all do when they first show up.  It almost sounds like there's something stuck that's attracting all their attention; the important question is what that is, or at least where it is so you can delete it.

If you use NRaas Tagger or are willing to add it, you could enable tags for all sims in the world, which would by default include their current interaction.

@puzzlezaddictThanks - will definitely give that a shot! The Sims all stand on the movie theatre lot, but outside of the rabbithole building. They all just stand there: some of them build snowmen, some converse, some just stand idle. Resetting makes them go back.
Tried switching to an NPC household and the Sim I reset (before the active household switch) had an action queue full of "visit [movie theatre name]".

EDIT: Just tried this: the Sims still congregate on the empty lot. Also tried changing the lot to "no visitors allowed" and a residential lot, but they still remained. Switched active households and they had "visit lot" filled in their queue.

I have a Sim who is in the film career - I've read that there's an issue surrounding this? But that was a thread from 2010...

@danielr02  Do you use mods, or are you willing to try a few?  I'd suggest adding NRaas ErrorTrap and Overwatch, if you haven't already, and perhaps Register as well, and definitely MasterController.  MC has a town reset option (NRaas > MC > Town Options > Reset Everything) that might help here.

@danielr02  The other mods can simply be installed and left alone.  They all work on their own without any need for user input.

Do you use any other mods, and if so, which ones?

@puzzlezaddictThis is the first time I've used mods with the game on this computer (the nraas one I just downloaded). Never used CC neither.
Interestingly, I had my Sim visit Egypt and the NPCs act normally there. Still were broken in Bridgeport when I returned, though.

Also tried running a job with the film career at the theatre, then resetting the lot. And quitting my Sim's job and resetting the lot. Nope.

@danielr02  With the lot that sims are attracted to totally bulldozed, please click on the ground and select NRaas > MC > Object Stats, then let me know if MC finds any objects, I mean other than possibly a few sims who've come back.  If you do see a few, you can try deleting them by selecting them for flushing; just don't delete any sims or plumbobs.  And be prepared to quit without saving.  This is just an experiment though; don't worry about any negative results.

@danielr02OK, so on my regular save, I accidentally clicked “repair all” with nraas, then reset the cinema lot, then had my Sim do the “research competitor film” job when the game naturally generated it. Seems like one of those things worked (think it worked before the job) because now there isn’t a million sims at the cinema and a lot more at home. Will test and see if bartenders, bouncers, parties etc. still work once I get the chance.

EDIT: Switched to an NPC household I know was affected by the bug and their queues are normal now!

EDIT2: Yep, all fixed now! Thanks for the mod!

@danielr02  That's kind of fascinating, and thanks for the update.  I have no idea why it worked, or rather what could have been broken that MC fixed, but the important thing is that it did work.

As a side note, I'd recommend keeping these mods in your game just for the overall health of your save.  However, they're all removable whenever you want, so if you do want to play without them, it won't immediately damage your save.