That‘s a point I have been wondering about too, because I would assume that if „fill empty homes“ is not selected, homeless sims shouldn‘t be moved in, but as soon as you enable moving in the neighborhood stories, they still do. Which is a bad thing for places as Henford, Tartosa or the Magic Realm where specific townies are required to be homeless to keep their npc jobs. Kim needs to be homeless to run the grocery store for example.
Also I have to add: Townies get cheated on by the game when moving, as their lots aren‘t properly sold when moving and households which got moved out by the stories seem to be left with what suspiciously looks like starter-finances.
The sims that have the NPC jobs like the ROM sages and the CotL sims like the Mayor, Bar owner and Grocery Stall owner can live on lots with no problem. With them, the key thing is you can never make them playable. They have to remain unplayed. You can't enter their household in live mode, only visit them with other sims you are playing. It is playing them that causes them to lose their jobs, not living on a lot. So the game moving them onto a lot doesn't really matter so long as you don't enter that lot in live mode like you do with the sims you play.
But I have noticed that the Neighborhood Stories settings either over ride or ignore the Gameplay Options settings for moving sims in. I have the Gameplay option unchecked and was a little surprised when Not In World sims in my Other Households were moved onto lots. I also noticed that they only moved into lots where I have the number of beds is set to greater than zero.
A lot of my lots have the beds set to zero because I had been using MCCC's story progression and had set the lots that I didn't want to have NPCs move into to zero beds since that is what MCCC uses to determine if NPCs can live there and how many. From what I can tell, it appears that the Neighborhood Stories does it the same way. So if you have lots that you don't want NPCs moved into, change the number of beds to zero and that should stop it.
Hope this helps.
@CGrant56Not really. There are some, barkeepers for example, that you are just not allowed to play but others will loose their special jobs (or roles, I am not sure) the moment you move them into a lot. In my main save I moved Kim into a house in Finchwick and then had to move her out again and cheat her her job back, because having a house somehow made her loose her npc-trait and job. The same goes for djs and a couple of others.
I have had just about all the service NPCs in a house at one time or the other when I allowed NPC move ins in my game. Moving them in didn't cause them to lose their jobs. As long as the household is never played and the gets the dark green plumbob in the upper right corner of their Manage Households portrait, they keep the jobs the game gives them. If fact, what I have seen is that if you have NPCs in houses and they don't have a job, if the game needs a sim for an NPC role, it has selected one of them at times rather than make a new one. I've seen it mostly with stall venders and bartenders but also with other jobs.
And now with neighborhood stories, I had the elder butler for the lot I am currently playing moved into a vacant lot. She adopted 3 pets, a baby and 3 toddlers. She still remained the butler for the family I was playing until she died (I should have shut off accidental deaths for that household - butlers do not age but they are not immortal). Another thing that happened in my game is with the Scotts that came as CotL premades and were the bar owners in Finchwick. I didn't realize that as I routinely open all the premade lots when I get a new pack and take a look at the sims and the house. Doing that changes the sims from unplayed to played. That caused Sara to lose her job as the bar owner. And as a result, my game made a new couple to own and operate the bar, the Mayfields. So it is making a sim playable that causes the job loss, not living on a lot. So long as the sims remain unplayed with the lighter green plumbob, they will keep their jobs until they die or the game otherwise decides to replace them with another NPC.
Hope this helps.
