Re: The best MODS for Sims 3?

@SuperNTG  Some community lots are rabbitholes, meaning sims walk in and disappear until they come out again.  These include City Hall, the grocery store, the default restaurants, etc.  For some of these, you can make your own replacements that sims will use for work; look up "Zerbu ultimate careers" if you're interested.  The idea here is to create workspaces that sims use and that you can see rather than them disappearing from the map.

Community lots that are not rabbitholes—the library, the gym, clubs, etc.—can be viewed easily enough.  Just zoom in on the lot and go down a couple of floors until you get the view you're looking for.

By default, all inactive sims' residences are "closed," meaning you can see the houses on the map but not what's inside.  There is an NRaas mod called HomeOpener that makes all houses open by default, so they'd work like non-rabbithole community lots.  However, using this mod in a medium or large world would be a significant drag on performance, so I'd only even suggest it if you were playing in a small world with a very limited number of households.

The alternative is to use NRaas MasterController to "open" whichever houses you want to view, then "close" them when you're done.  The option is under the main NRaas MC menu when you click on the house itself or its map tag.  I don't know how powerful your computer is, but I'd suggest not having more than about six households open at a time, and fewer if you notice performance issues.  You could leave the same households open or rotate; it's up to you.

One note: if you do install HomeOpener and remove it later, you'll need to manually "close" each household.

Please also keep in mind that when sims are home, they're mostly not doing anything at all.  The game will start to simulate them if you focus on them or "open" their house though.  That's why having all houses open is such a drag: it takes more resources for the game engine to simulate every single resident at the same time.  It might seem attractive, but you can't watch all of them at once, so there's no real benefit.  StoryProgression will simulate their progression whether they're performing the actions on-screen or not.

Finally, a bit off-topic, I would suggest disabling memories, which is in the third or fourth Options page.  Since you're not going to view them yourself, there's no point in having them, and they're a significant drag on performance and a major cause of save bloat, especially as time goes on.  In case you'd rather have a few memories, there's a mod called "no (or fewer) automatic memories" by velocitygrass that works well, but like I said, you're not going to see the memories if you're not actively playing these sims.

Any MODS to make my Sims smarter?

@SuperNTG  If by smarter you mean making better decisions, not really.  You can block individual actions through NRaas Retuner, and there are some mods that replace specific poorly-done in-game mechanics with something better, i.e. the scolding replacement from icarusallsorts.  But there's no overall fix; sims are dumb in Sims 3 and Sims 4 and were dumb in Sims 1 from what I remember as well.

I am back and now that I have decided to install mods, I need a step by step instructions.  You and I talked for a while about mods and I was not sure then.  But I am sure now.  If you could help me that would be great.  i also have heard of a new mod that I wanted to ask you about.  I have already downloaded the nraas SP mod and installed sims 3 on steam.  Just need to learn how to put mod in Sims 3.

Thank you for your time and patience

Nathan

@SuperNTG  Here are two guides for installing mods:

https://www.nraas.net/community/How-To-Install#Blunote00s-Check-List

https://modthesims.info/wiki.php?title=Game_Help:Installing_Sims_3_Package_Files/Setup_and_Files

Pick whichever one feels easier to you.

Feel free to ask about the new mod as well, as long as it doesn't contain adult content, the discussion of which is not allowed on EA forums.

@SuperNTG  I hadn't heard of it until now, nor had I heard anything about whether it works as intended or breaks saves.  What I would suggest, if you'd like to try it, is running it alongside the usual cleanup-related NRaas mods (but NOT StoryProgression), on a spare copy of your save, to see whether you like it AND whether it makes the game use more RAM than you can accept.

The fact is that Sims 3's memory limit of about 3.7 GB (4 minus some overhead) gets in the way already, not always but often enough that we all have to be aware of the potential problems.  A mod like this would almost certainly increase memory use; the question is by how much, and then whether your save can afford it, so to speak.  I don't know the answer—it'll depend on how the mod is programmed and how much RAM your save can spare.

Then there's the question of whether this mod causes other problems.  It may or may not; I'm not trying to criticize it, just saying it's complicated enough that it really does need to be done exactly right.  This is why I'd suggest testing on a spare copy of a save, or a new save, so you're not doing damage to anything you'd like to preserve.  if you're happy with the results, you can add it to your main save.

Please do keep an eye on RAM use though, in case this amount of overhead is not sustainable.  You wouldn't want to start a save that already uses > 3 GB RAM with this mod present, then need to abandon it a few sim-weeks in because it's crashing or throwing out of memory errors.  But again, it might be fine.  And the less memory your save uses without this mod, the more room you have to accommodate the extra workload.

@SuperNTG  There's a download link here, a bit subtle; ctrl-F and search for Download if you're not seeing it:

https://boringbones.blogspot.com/2024/05/supreme-ia-sims-autoconscientes.html?m=1

That takes you to a Google Drive upload, where you'll need to click the Download button in the upper-right corner (not on the file name).  Right-click and Extract the .zip you've downloaded, discard the other mod if you don't want it, and install the mod the same way you would any other.

And as noted (in case someone else only reads this post of mine), I can't say for sure whether this mod works as intended or might harm your saves.  It's just a .package file though, so it won't affect anything other than Sims 3 itself.

@SuperNTG  The files should have a .package extension.  And you don't open them or modify them in any way.  (If you have tried to open them, delete them and download fresh copies.)  The only thing you need to do is place them in the Packages folder for the game to read.

The Windows Media Player part is irrelevant.  That's Windows telling you what app it would use to open the files by default, and I guess you set that association with .package files at some point.  But it doesn't affect how Sims 3 reads the files at all.

@SuperNTG  Is OneDrive running on your computer?  Even if you never use it, OneDrive can interfere with saving and with mods or other manually added user content.

If OneDrive isn't present, or it's unlinked (i.e. you're not signed in), what antivirus do you use?  An AV could also interfere with user data.

@SuperNTG  OneDrive is the more likely culprit here.  The question is whether you want it gone permanently or just want to keep it from interfering with your Sims 3 data.  I wrote this guide with Sims 4 in mind, but the options are the same for any folder in Documents:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/PC/CURRENT-ISSUE-Sims-4-saves-user-content-disappearing-PC/m-p/12475370

If you need more help with the process, let me know which option you'd like to use.

Separately, make sure you're adding the mods to the folder Sims 3 is actually reading.  You can usually tell which one that is by the time stamp on DeviceConfig, which should always match the last time you launched the game.  If it doesn't, that's not the right folder.