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. The first parent, the father, went well, but then I was reminded that I can only have 8 sims in a household, and I wanted to create two parents. So I saved the family in my gallery (so I didn't lose the already made father) and exited without saving the family (in CAS). However, I suspect my mistake was that I DID save before exiting the game. I closed the game to download a mod that allowed more sims to be in a household at a time, and when I rebooted the game, added the already made father again, I noticed that I couldn't change the relationship to say "Father" to the adult sim even though it had worked before. I realized I saved before exiting the game.I think the game still recognizes that I've already made a father, but since I didn't save my changes in CAS (aka his creation) I deleted him!Obviously I can't get him back. But is there a way to reset/delete only that relationship?This is not a problem caused by the mod I mentioned downloading, btw. I tried without it as well with no luck.

@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.

@phoenixjklinInteresting problem.I think if you just upload the entire family to your library, delete them from the world and place them again, it should remove their bad relationships.As for how to add both mother and father, you can try the more than 8 sims mod, but that's always been buggy. You can also try splitting up the household. Make it smaller. But I think anyone you move out won't show the proper relationship with the new parents.Edit:Lol. I have no idea if it would work... If my last suggestion results in some of the household not having the correct relations to the new parents, you could try it in stages... Move out 2 sims, set the remaining sims relationships to the parents, then move two more out and the previous 2 back in, and set those...

@Psychotps I made a test save and tried this, I deleted them from the world and added them again. All their (non player) sim relationships were gone, their inventories were empty and I still couldn't add the father relationship for that specific adult.I can add it to any other sim in the family, but not to the one I already did it for which definitely points to it being the game thinking it's a relationship that still exists. So it's only the one sim with the "pre existing" deleted father that I can't do this on.@JonaO703 Unfortunately I've made quite the progress since then, so it would be very tedious to have to do it all again. I remember even thinking after I realized I saved the game that "oh no, I hadn't saved in ages before this" right after I tried adding the father. I wish I hadn't been so lazy, haha.

@phoenixjklinUnfortunately, that's the down-side to moving them from the library. Any relationship to townies/npcs will be deleted using that method. That's what I was hoping would happen to the missing "father". Delete the relationship so it'd be free to re-assign. It must not work if the father doesn't exist. Sounds like a bug.Thing is, if the sim that is acting buggy, if whomever they are seeing as their "father" exists in the world, all you have to do is delete that relationship and it'll be fine to re-assign. But if they don't exist in the world, there is nothing to delete. Never had that happen to me myself so I'm not sure how to fix.Instead of fighting it, you may end up having to just recreate that one sim. That would certainly be easiest. You'd lose all their skills and career levels, but those can be cheated up back to what they were. You can move their inventory to another sim temporarily. I don't see using cheat commands a problem to fix a bug like this.Just don't try to use cheats to assign the family "bit" relationships yourself. It doesn't work properly and will have issues. You want to assign the relationship in CAS if at all possible.

@phoenixjklin Based on what @Psychotps said, I wonder if you could double check through manage households that the father in question is still around but "not in world". There have been a couple times I thought I deleted / removed a sim but they still showed up as an existing sim. A couple of times they still showed up in my active sims' relationship panel and I was able to "invite them to hang out at current lot". Just a thought.

Complications changing family tree

18 Replies

JonaO703
Hero
5 years ago
@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.
phoenixjklin
New Traveler
5 years ago
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.
JonaO703
Hero
5 years ago
@phoenixjklin Oh man, it's too bad you didn't keep a copy of the whole family with the dad! Like I said before ... what a mess! :-( I really wish I knew something else that might help. The more I think about it, the more this seems like a bug. I wonder if you'd consider starting a new topic on the bug reports board. Maybe give it a specific subject like "Deleted Sims Leave Empty Slots In Genealogy" and just include the part where you deleted the father and the steps you took to add a new one. The only reference I could find to this issue was in an old reddit article from a couple years ago. There are bug reports about sims disappearing from family trees but none about these empty relationships or the effect of not being able to add a relationship because of it. I guess I just assumed that, when a sim is deleted, all traces of their existence goes with them. We don't have empty slots in the relationship panel. The only thing I've noticed leftover from deleted sims is their personal inventory items added to the household inventory. Although, I've only played a couple "legacy" games and I never deleted a sim from those so the genealogy problem hasn't been an issue for me. Anyway, I definitely know that point of frustration when you wonder if it's worth the effort. It's totally up to you of course.
Psychotps
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
@phoenixjklin

Go ahead and save the entire family to the library and share it to the gallery and I'll take a look at it.
JonaO703
Hero
5 years ago
First I owe an apology. I got confused a bit about whose post was whose, sorry @Psychotps ! Still, when I took the steps you mentioned, those missing parent slots still showed up.
Today, I had an epiphany. In my previous testing, I was so focused on adding an outside sim and it dawned on me that I didn't try playing with genetics again. So I saved my sim family and deleted them from the game, then saved and exited to menu. I loaded the game again and clicked create new household. Once in CAS, I played with genetics to create a father AND a mother. Creating them from the youngest did not give me an option to set the parent relationship for the oldest. I had to select the oldest sibling and play with genetics based on her. I got the exclamation point triangle warning related to their relationships so I was worried it wasn't going to work. However, I checked the relationships three or four times to be sure the right father-mother-daughter combo was set. I saved and played the household finding the genealogy now displays properly.
Eureeka! @phoenixjklin I'm hoping this will work in your game as well. If you do decide to try this, remember to play with genetics from the oldest sibling then double check the relationships across the other household members.
Edit: Now that I think about it, I think the reason I couldn't set the parent relationship for the oldest is because they were all young adult. In CAS, you can't set a parental relationship for sims of the same age; i.e. a young adult's parent must be adult or older. Perhaps double check that in your game as well.
Psychotps
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
@JonaO703 Yea, that's always been a limitation. They need to be one age group higher (at least?). Not sure if that goes for teens as well. If the kids are teen and YA, and the parent is Adult, can the adult be parent to the teen?

Glad its working for you! It worked fine for me once I moved the sim to library and back.
JonaO703
Hero
5 years ago
@Psychotps Yes, in my test save, one of the siblings is a teen, which I think was part of the problem for me. When I added the parents for the teen, they generated as YA but I didn't realize that at first. Then it dawned on me that adding parents for the YA sibling created Adult parents both of whom were set as parents for the siblings. I felt rather dumb afterwards but that's why I added my "edit" response to check for the possible age conflict. :-/ I think you mentioned we learn through the process. It's one of the reasons I started trying to help players here. I enjoy helping, even if it's not perfect, but I'm' also learning a lot. I really appreciate you and others for helping too. :-)
Psychotps
Seasoned Ace
5 years ago
@JonaO703Just FYI... tested this quickly and Elder, Adult, and YA, can all be parents of anyone lower than their age group. So, Elder can be parents of anyone from Adult down to toddler. Adults can be parents of YA to toddler... and so on.