Complications changing family tree
Hi! So I have a 7 sim family. I recently decided that I wanted to add parents to one of the already adult sims, so I enabled testingcheats and cas.fulleditmode to create the sims and the relationship...
Forum Discussion
@JonaO703
Exactly. If the father actually exists in the world, it won't let you re-assign it as long as they're there. Can't hurt to check and see if maybe they're there just not in that household. Then all you need to do is find them in the household manager and delete the "father". It should be fine to re-assign then.
That particular adult sim has children of her own, a husband and a sister, so I imagine that if I were to remake her I wouldn't be able to give her those relationships back, just like I can't seem to give her the parent relationship with her father.
I've checked her family tree and since I made the father two empty boxes/pictures have popped up where her parents should be. They weren't there before. So I'd assume if the father still existed he would be in one of the boxes, but he isn't. He's not in the "manage households" tab either.
When I made the father I never exited CAS with him. I made him, saved him to my gallery and exited without saving. It annoys me that all I should've done was remove the relationship before deleting him, haha.
I've really made some huge story-building sims, houses and events already that I'd hate to lose by loading another save. I'm thinking that if I can't somehow fix it she'll just have to be without parents.
@phoenixjklin This is a real head-scratcher. I'm wondering if we're missing some steps here. You said you saved the family so you wouldn't lose the father but I don't know how you were able to separate the father from the family without adding him to your game. I tried to replicate the issue by following the steps you mentioned. The only thing is, I was not able to save the father separately from the family without first removing him from the household. That meant I had to save the family in-game, then split the family so I could save the father by himself. This produced the non-existing father relationship so when I added the father from the library, I didn't have the "father" option for relationships. Here are the steps I took.
- Used the shift-click on my sim to modify in CAS. Played with genetics to create her father. Saved the family to library. Exited CAS without saving. Exited to menu and saved. Loaded the game. Loaded the household to modify in CAS again. Placed the saved family which included my original sim and her father which meant there was a double of my original sim. The option for "father" was available for both. Deleted one of the doubles. Family created.- To get the non-existing father / no option for "father" in CAS. Followed the same steps to create him. Saved the family to the game. Split him from the household. Deleted him. Loaded the household to modify in CAS. Added the saved father but didn't have the "father" relationship option. Genealogy showed one empty parent slot.
There's only one other thing I can think of that might work. If you did save the family in your library, along with the father, perhaps you could delete the existing family and replace them with the saved family from your library. If you save the family now, the genealogy with the blank space will also be saved. Once I managed to create that non-existent father relationship, I could not find a way to remove it even across saves. Anyway, I think this is what Psychotps suggested from the beginning. You replied that you had done that but I wondered if you saved and placed the family after removing the father and getting the empty genealogy for that adult sim. Otherwise, as you said, you might have to move on without those parents. :-(
Now my brain hurts, so thanks for that! ;-)
Edit: I thought I should also mention that if you want to keep inventory items, you could place all items somewhere in the house and save the game so they're in the house when you replace the family. That is, if you want to keep those inventory items.
@phoenixjklin
Ok, here's what I did...
I created two sisters and placed them in a house. I then modified them, created a father, split him out and deleted him.
The sisters both showed "missing" parents. I checked them and couldn't find where the "father" was set. It's nowhere in any hidden traits, relationships, relationship bits, or commodities. I was unable to change it.
I created a new household member with the intention of making him the father but was unable to set it.
I then copied both sisters to my library, deleted them from the world, and placed them back. I was then able to set the new man as the father. So, moving them to the library and back does in fact clear the missing father.
But, as you saw, it will delete all existing NPC relationships. They kept their jobs but lost their personal inventory. But that's easily kept by moving it to the household inventory.I was also then able to create a new mother just fine.
@phoenixjklin Wow! What a mess! :-/ It's too bad you had so much trouble with this. It is really frustrating when things go south in this game. Too often things can get really bad with no easy fix.
Wow, thank you both for putting so much time and effort into trying to solve this! I greatly appreciate it.
@JonaO703 I think I did save the whole family (with the father) and then later separated him in a different save to be able to put him back.
I think I deleted that specific family after I separated him from them, because I see no family close to him in my gallery.
@Psychotps I tried saving the family to my gallery, deleting them from the world and then putting them back. I added the father but unfortunately still couldn't create the "father" relationship. The only person I can add it to is the spouse of the sister for some reason, but of course I don't want him to have it, haha.
Maybe there's something else wrong with my saves, I have no clue!
At this point I'm pretty much ready to give up with this, so I don't blame you both if you are too! It's definitely a mystery.
