How does the "manage households" screen work?
I noticed an interesting feature in Sims 4 called the "manage households". It appears to be some bin of people that show up in my game, but are not affiliated with a home. Perhaps like a townie. Am...
Forum Discussion
I love Manage Households section. Here's some information about it:
(Warning: The long wall of text ahead)
What can you do in Manage Households:
Here you can do many things that you couldn't in previous games. Every sim not in the world is a townie (you can create townies). You can heart sims (add to my households) to prevent the game from culling them (aka protecting). You can also unprotect them, allowing them to be culled and turning played households into unplayed (Culling is deleting sims to make room for newly generated sims). You have a protected sim limit, but you can change it from options menu or in Manage Household screen. If you pick Unlimited, you can protect unlimited amount of sims while unprotected sims still get culled. You can also filter the households by the location and played state. There are also plumbobs in the right corner in every household. Here what the colors mean:
You cannot protect ghosts. They have different system. They will be culled in 90 days, but you can reset the timer by strenghtening the connection. If you spot households with no name, they are likely pets taken away. They can be adopted.
What you can do by clicking on one of the households:
By clicking on one of the households, you open an extra window. In there, you can edit their description, make played households unplayed, protect/unprotect them, move and split the household and delete the household. When you split the household, you can either put the sims into another household or by clicking on Create a New Household button, put together a new household. You also have Edit in CAS button (pencil icon).
Is there anything special when entering in CAS in Manage Households?
Yes, there is. By entering the CAS in Manage Households, you can create new sims or pets to the household and delete the individual sims (they'll stay in the family tree). When creating a new sim or pet, you can change the relationships with existing members, so you can create your sim's children, siblings or parents. If you want, create as many ancestors or desendants as you like. Other than that, the CAS is same as when you choose Change Sim interaction by clicking on the mirror or closet: with outfits and hairstyles you can also change sim's body and face shape, voice and even gender etc. When creating a new sim, you can change everything.
Other ways to access manage households:
Sometimes, loading the household thumbnails, the game may crash. There are other ways to access individual households' Manage Household window without opening Manage Households. By clicking on the lot sims are living in and click on three dots, you'll get three options: Move household (All the furniture will be taken with them or sold, so the house will be empty), Evict household (All the furniture will stay behind) and Open Manage Households.
What is the difference between played and unplayed households?
There are many differences between played and unplayed households:
Other interesting facts:
(Warning: The long wall of text ahead)
What can you do in Manage Households:
Here you can do many things that you couldn't in previous games. Every sim not in the world is a townie (you can create townies). You can heart sims (add to my households) to prevent the game from culling them (aka protecting). You can also unprotect them, allowing them to be culled and turning played households into unplayed (Culling is deleting sims to make room for newly generated sims). You have a protected sim limit, but you can change it from options menu or in Manage Household screen. If you pick Unlimited, you can protect unlimited amount of sims while unprotected sims still get culled. You can also filter the households by the location and played state. There are also plumbobs in the right corner in every household. Here what the colors mean:
- Dark green plumbob: Played sims (Always protected).
- Light green plumbob: Unplayed protected sims.
- Gray plumbob: Unplayed unprotected sims (simply unprotected).
You cannot protect ghosts. They have different system. They will be culled in 90 days, but you can reset the timer by strenghtening the connection. If you spot households with no name, they are likely pets taken away. They can be adopted.
What you can do by clicking on one of the households:
By clicking on one of the households, you open an extra window. In there, you can edit their description, make played households unplayed, protect/unprotect them, move and split the household and delete the household. When you split the household, you can either put the sims into another household or by clicking on Create a New Household button, put together a new household. You also have Edit in CAS button (pencil icon).
Is there anything special when entering in CAS in Manage Households?
Yes, there is. By entering the CAS in Manage Households, you can create new sims or pets to the household and delete the individual sims (they'll stay in the family tree). When creating a new sim or pet, you can change the relationships with existing members, so you can create your sim's children, siblings or parents. If you want, create as many ancestors or desendants as you like. Other than that, the CAS is same as when you choose Change Sim interaction by clicking on the mirror or closet: with outfits and hairstyles you can also change sim's body and face shape, voice and even gender etc. When creating a new sim, you can change everything.
Other ways to access manage households:
Sometimes, loading the household thumbnails, the game may crash. There are other ways to access individual households' Manage Household window without opening Manage Households. By clicking on the lot sims are living in and click on three dots, you'll get three options: Move household (All the furniture will be taken with them or sold, so the house will be empty), Evict household (All the furniture will stay behind) and Open Manage Households.
What is the difference between played and unplayed households?
There are many differences between played and unplayed households:
- The game will never change played sim's jobs. Unplayed sims may either get high levels in the joinable jobs or become a service sim. Unplayed sims will more likely change their jobs.
- Unplayed toddlers', children's and teens' character values are always on neutral.
- Unplayed sims will always have default phone cases, even when you change it.
- If you edit unplayed sims' houses, you'll enter the free build. This means that you have unlimited amount of money. They don't have everything unlocked, so it's not like when building a community lot.
- There are different aging settings for unplayed and played households. While they share the same lifespan, you can turn unplayed sims' aging on and off while played sims have three options: On, Off and Active household only.
- Relationship culling: For played sims, only important relationship are saved. For unplayed households, only the relationship with the sims in the same household will be saved. The only exception is with the played households.
- Get Together expansion pack feature: If club count falls below 10, the game will generate a new club with unplayed sims.
Other interesting facts:
- If household has got some babies, the baby bottle icon with a number of babies will show up. This is also seen in Gallery.
- After the game was launched, every sim could get culled. After some updates, only played and housed sims were protected.
- The current culling system came in with Cats and Dogs expansion pack's patch.
- Before the patch, the dead sims who were unplayed were more likely to be culled than played sims.
- Babies, toddlers and children who get taken away won't appear in Manage Households.
- Unplayed vampires are said to have random powers and weaknesses. Making them played will show that they have none. If you make vampire household unplayed and then played again, they will keep the powers.
- If sim is about to get culled, they will send the message telling your sim that they are going to live deep in the forest off grid.
- As the game doesn't have story progression, some players use Manage Households to create and remove sims to simulate birth and death. Rarely, the game will generate babies or pregnant sims. If you want to increase chances of the game generating a pregnant sim, have your sim become a doctor.
- By asking about the career, you may find interesting responses such as Bar Regular. Also, some roles like Weirdo are hidden traits, meaning you can't find it out simply by asking about their career.
