Automatic filling of empty houses

MonaSolstraale

After Story progression became part of the game, I have found that all houses are filled with random townies. The worst is when Morgyn suddenly lives in Forgotten Hollow and L.Faba lives in Mt. Komorebi. It irritates me boundlessly

In my game, I discovered that Marcus Flex (who has a peripheral role in my story) had suddenly gotten married and lived with a strange guy in StrangerVille and had a child with Lana McKinnon (who by the way had moved to Henford-on-Bagley ).
I spent an entire day recreating my game in an old hidden game and deselected Story Progression as soon as I went into the game and before I went into a family. Still, all the houses are filled with townies.
I think you could opt out of the automatic filling of empty houses before, but I can not find the setting anywhere.

Does anyone know a solution?

DragonAge_300905

I miss the option to keep the houses empty until I'm ready to move in my sim too. The only solution I can think of is to make the houses rentals until you're ready to move in your sims.

It's like the earbuds now, instantly forced into your sim's inventory. At least before I could say no and the game didn't force them on my sim. In my vocabulary no means no, but in the sims no means force it on your sims no matter how much you don't want it.

Gamer_34567544

DragonAge_300905 wrote: »

I miss the option to keep the houses empty until I'm ready to move in my sim too. The only solution I can think of is to make the houses rentals until you're ready to move in your sims.

It's like the earbuds now, instantly forced into your sim's inventory. At least before I could say no and the game didn't force them on my sim. In my vocabulary no means no, but in the sims no means force it on your sims no matter how much you don't want it.

I have my Sim place those earbuds somewhere in the house so I can delete them- 200 simoleons for passing Go!

But yeah, it's annoying.

pj9871

You didn't mention if you are open to using mods. MCCC has a setting which can be used to stop anyone from moving into houses and another for apartments. I hate having townies in my homes so I use it all the time.

DaWaterRat

MonaSolstraale wrote: »

After Story progression became part of the game, I have found that all houses are filled with random townies. The worst is when Morgyn suddenly lives in Forgotten Hollow and L.Faba lives in Mt. Komorebi. It irritates me boundlessly

In my game, I discovered that Marcus Flex (who has a peripheral role in my story) had suddenly gotten married and lived with a strange guy in StrangerVille and had a child with Lana McKinnon (who by the way had moved to Henford-on-Bagley ).
I spent an entire day recreating my game in an old hidden game and deselected Story Progression as soon as I went into the game and before I went into a family. Still, all the houses are filled with townies.
I think you could opt out of the automatic filling of empty houses before, but I can not find the setting anywhere.

Does anyone know a solution?

Go to Neighborhood Stories on the Unplayed households tab.

Make sure that "Move in" and "Move out" are turned off.

I have Move out disabled globally, and Move in disabled for the Sages and Clement frost, and it works for me.

Brd709

I'm pretty sure MCCC moves sims around. Even though I have neighbourhood stories completely turned off, i'm still finding sims i've recently moved out moving to empty homes elsewhere.

Pamtastic72

Brd709 wrote: »

I'm pretty sure MCCC moves sims around. Even though I have neighbourhood stories completely turned off, i'm still finding sims i've recently moved out moving to empty homes elsewhere.

It does and you can turn it off there too. You can also list the house in build mode as 0 beds and sims won’t move in. You can also untick the fill empty houses box in gameplay settings, and as someone mentioned turn off move in/out on Neighborhood Stories. Also NS can be turned on and off on individual households. So like in most of my saves, I will turn it on for both my sims and other sims globally but then take time to turn it off for the sages from ROM and the premades from Vampires or any other household I want control over. In fact you could do this in a new game and then label it as a master save file and then it would be all set up how you like it. Then you could just save as and rename it for whatever story you like.

PenguinFoop

I personally like having the houses fill randomly. But in the case of Marcus, you said he's married, living with one person and has a baby with someone else. Is he married to either of those two? If so, which one? This is interesting story material, in my opinion.

mightysprite

What @DaWaterRat said. Now that you can disable moving into empty houses using Neighborhood Stories, the old checkbox in Gameplay Settings was redundant and that's why it doesn't exist anymore. Go into your Household Manager and disable "Move In" for everyone, both under My Households and Other Households, and empty houses should stay empty.
@DragonAge_300905 and @pj9871 hopefully this will help you too

GalacticGal

DragonAge_300905 wrote: »

I miss the option to keep the houses empty until I'm ready to move in my sim too. The only solution I can think of is to make the houses rentals until you're ready to move in your sims.

It's like the earbuds now, instantly forced into your sim's inventory. At least before I could say no and the game didn't force them on my sim. In my vocabulary no means no, but in the sims no means force it on your sims no matter how much you don't want it.

You could also make certain in your My Library that it doesn't have bedrooms and bathrooms listed. For extra certainty, I remove the steps from any entry way. I generally have my lots raised.

DragonAge_300905

Thank you @mightysprite and @GalacticGal I usually let the sims stay when they move in because their houses are broke. It's usually the Knoz family if I make 2 bedrooms and Calab in one bedroom. I get tired of every new game fixing their houses. I use the rental option when I build it for my sim to move in later. If only they would move into the empty pre-built houses but they like the ones I build instead.

Catzilla

I have to admit this is a pet peeve of mine. The neighborhood stories are defaulted to ON for the NPCs and townies, they should be defaulted to OFF, I enjoy them but *I* want to decide which ones I want to use and not after whoops, forgot to adjust that and now Zoe is dead and all my empty lots are filled with randos.

Which brings me to another part of the problem, the neighborhood stories toggle to keep randos from taking all the lots is inconvenient to get to, you have to go into manage worlds (slow load screens) and add/edit household to get access to the setting to change it. I liked it just fine in the game settings menu where it used to be located, easy to get to and could be applied universally, I wish more of the game settings and toggles were located there TBH.

Let me know if there's an easier way to get at the neighborhood stories controls so I can keep empty lots empty. This is probably not an issue for those playing single long time saves but it sure is for serial new game type players.

MonaSolstraale

Thanks for the many great suggestions
I will spend some time researching all the possibilities.

@pj9871 I installed MCCC a month ago and I therefore think that part of the problem is because I did not know that mccc has chosen to fill empty houses as a basic choice.

@Pamtastic72 I can no longer find an option to deselect fill empty houses in my game settings. Maybe it's because I've opted out of story progression because it's disrupting my current story.
I think Neighborhood Stories and Household Manager is an option that only exists when story progression is connected. I can not see them in the settings.

@PenguinFoop That Marcus has gotten married to a random sim and has had a child with another sim gives absolutely good story material if I did not have another plan with him

I think my ignorance about MCCC settings has made the worst mess in my game right now. All sages are e.g. replaced by new sages after moving into random houses. I therefore hope that in the future I can prevent similar errors by changing the settings in MCCC.
Luckily I have saved a lot of backups over time so there is an opportunity to start on a fresh start without losing my entire game

mightysprite

Hi @Catzilla you only need to go into manage worlds once and open the household manager.
Once in the household manager, you tick the box once for My Households and once for Other Households.
That's it.

You do not need to adjust families individually unless you want to.

Catzilla

mightysprite wrote: »

Hi @Catzilla you only need to go into manage worlds once and open the household manager.
Once in the household manager, you tick the box once for My Households and once for Other Households.
That's it.

You do not need to adjust families individually unless you want to.

Yes, thank goodness we don't have to do it individually. I only have to adjust Other households because they're ON but having to go through that loading screen to get at it is plus the location wasn't intuitive to find either. It's pretty much a pain now whereas it wasn't before.

GalacticGal

DragonAge_300905 wrote: »

Thank you @mightysprite and @GalacticGal I usually let the sims stay when they move in because their houses are broke. It's usually the Knoz family if I make 2 bedrooms and Calab in one bedroom. I get tired of every new game fixing their houses. I use the rental option when I build it for my sim to move in later. If only they would move into the empty pre-built houses but they like the ones I build instead.

Once you fix the houses, why don't you upload them to your My Library on the Gallery? Then all you have to do is place them again.

DragonAge_300905

GalacticGal wrote: »

DragonAge_300905 wrote: »

Thank you @mightysprite and @GalacticGal I usually let the sims stay when they move in because their houses are broke. It's usually the Knoz family if I make 2 bedrooms and Calab in one bedroom. I get tired of every new game fixing their houses. I use the rental option when I build it for my sim to move in later. If only they would move into the empty pre-built houses but they like the ones I build instead.

Once you fix the houses, why don't you upload them to your My Library on the Gallery? Then all you have to do is place them again.

I save them to my library but sometimes I place a build I made too early on a empty lot.

For example, I have a build that allows me to instantly complete the grow a cowplant and have 10 excellent plants for the naturalist trait. When my sim's in the last part of the aspiration, I'll place the lot and move my sim in, then re-buy the lot I moved my sim from, but sometimes sims move in before I can earn the money to move back. Then I have to save the sim and start new game to get the house back.

Eta, in the game I'm playing now, I'm making another lot like that. I'm waiting for the hsy pack to release, then I'll replace the furniture with the new furniture and make a new sim that needs the naturalist trait and use that sim to plant what is needed to make the lot, minus the cowplant which I'll place a fully grown one from my gallery. Because I'd like to have 2 different lots to use in my future games.

mightysprite

Catzilla wrote: »

mightysprite wrote: »

Hi @Catzilla you only need to go into manage worlds once and open the household manager.
Once in the household manager, you tick the box once for My Households and once for Other Households.
That's it.

You do not need to adjust families individually unless you want to.

Yes, thank goodness we don't have to do it individually. I only have to adjust Other households because they're ON but having to go through that loading screen to get at it is plus the location wasn't intuitive to find either. It's pretty much a pain now whereas it wasn't before.

@Catzilla That's true. At least you only have to do it once per saved game.