What's The Point..... ?

I'm with you there.... but then I really don't filled up my save games because it's not my play style to do so. My rotational saves might have more sims but it rarely even hits 150 sims.

The few times I've had a really populated save.. One I downloaded and a celebrity save that I just kept adding on too... I would have problems with lag or odd glitches when I actually stopped messing with the families and decided to play. I've since deleted or thinned those saves out.

I do like the freedom of being able to drop in restaurants, businesses or anything I want and not be concerned that I won't have a lot to put them on.

I like to have different sims living in homes. Think I have enough lots that aren't residential, since often I get sims that call mine wanting me to come over to their place to hang out or be invited to a birthday party or otherwise.

I noticed if another sim has a party of sorts set up your active sim can actually attend if you arrive before the party starts. Same with venues.

Had my sims children go visit their grandparents to spend the weekend of sorts while their parents were at home.

Also decided to change up things with a challenge with a sim that spent time at her friends home for about two sim weeks til she was able to save up some money to move into an apartment.

I have more community lots than residential, but I do fill 90% of the houses. For immersion purposes purely.

"leave_blank77;c-16957493" wrote:
there's a few roles that require the sim to live in a house. I believe, could be wrong, restaurants work like this. It was like that in TS3 too. Why? Maxis logic.

That's definitely not correct

Anyway, there's lots of reasons why one might choose to house sims. For starters you can't visit them unless they have homes, which can make finding them difficult if you haven't met them yet. It allows me to easily edit the households that I'm not going to play (as in their jobs, funds, etc.) It's also supposed to prevent them from being used for certain roles (the opposite of what the statement above implies) but that doesn't apply to a modded game.

Well I think I am going to give it a go, just place a few families and leave the rest empty. If there's someone I later want to visit or meet, I can always plop them into a house at that point.

One big flaw in the plan though... finding enough interesting and nicely designed community Lots to add :D

I never have it fill empty homes - I only want the original characters and the sims I create living in the world. I use MCCC and set the percentage for having children high though, so the original townie sims / premades have many children usually, and I usually play with big families. So very soon I need the empty lots. I play this way because I'd rather the world be populated by the original residents and any sims I play, and new sims to be made generationally from these families over time, rather than all the original sims dying off with no legacies left behind, and the world just being filled up with randomly generated Maxis mess townies whose eyebrows do not match their hair color and who seem to have been given the ugliest mix of features that can be given. But that's just my preference.

"Cupid;c-16957517" wrote:

"leave_blank77;c-16957493" wrote:
there's a few roles that require the sim to live in a house. I believe, could be wrong, restaurants work like this. It was like that in TS3 too. Why? Maxis logic.

That's definitely not correct

Anyway, there's lots of reasons why one might choose to house sims. For starters you can't visit them unless they have homes, which can make finding them difficult if you haven't met them yet. It allows me to easily edit the households that I'm not going to play (as in their jobs, funds, etc.) It's also supposed to prevent them from being used for certain roles (the opposite of what the statement above implies) but that doesn't apply to a modded game.

I could be wrong as well, but I seem to remember Sims Not In World being able to work in restaurants. But sometimes they would get culled and not show up. If that was the only Chef, for instance, your restaurant wouldn't be functional. The work around for this was to put them in a house, but mark the household Unplayed before you went back out of Manage Households. That would keep them working, but really unlikely to be culled. Again, all from memory. Although I'm not sure if the culling of restaurant workers is even happening, anymore.

The prevention for Sim having certain job roles, tho, is making them Played. I see housed Sims working in NPC roles all the time if they are Unplayed. To mark them Played/Unplayed, go into Manage Households. In every household portrait, there will be a Plumbob icon in the upper left corner. If it's green they're Played. Clicking on it will turn it greyed out, for Unplayed, and vice versa.

I get what you are saying. The only reasons to house Sims that are not played are for immersion really. In my main saved game I do play rotationally with at last count 26 households so each household's houses and lots are meticulously furnished and decorated to suit their needs and asthetic pleasures. I also have all the premades present except a select few that have died.

But I do have saved games, yes plural, where I have either one household only or rotate between a small number of 3-4, usually part of the same family. In those saved games, where I don't delete the premades I don't really bother adding new households that I will not play or not part of the rotation. But if I delete all of the premades I prefer to add extra households into houses along with my played one even though I don't play them, so my household has someone to befriend and visit and even shop for potential spouces. I don't spend a lot of time decorating or furnishing their houses or lots as I either use the furnished houses already in game or download from the gallery.

"Livin in Sim;c-16958022" wrote:

The prevention for Sim having certain job roles, tho, is making them Played. I see housed Sims working in NPC roles all the time if they are Unplayed. To mark them Played/Unplayed, go into Manage Households. In every household portrait, there will be a Plumbob icon in the upper left corner. If it's green they're Played. Clicking on it will turn it greyed out, for Unplayed, and vice versa.

This is something that MCCC allows to happen as one of its sort of hidden features, in an attempt to reduce townie generation. But in an unmodded game, it's not supposed to happen and if you house any of your restaurant staff they would immediately lose their jobs.

I remember in TS3 all the homeless townies lived in the Apartments if you had Late Night. You couldn't visit them but you could use the phone in the lobby to call them down. Exception being they would move in next to your sim and you could visit those.