Unwanted Dogs and Puppies!

nickibitsward

I populate my towns with my own families and play them all but I cannot seem to prevent the game from giving my played families dogs and three or four or more puppies when I am not playing. This morning I left one family (one sim plus a cat) for two minutes to go to another household and when I got back my sim had one female dog and four puppies. This is ridiculous. I don't use mods but is a mod the only solution? I have Story Progression turned off.

LaBlue0314

I know that the Register Mod will prevent animals, and also the OverWatch Mod will stop pets from being spawned for pet adoptions. http://nraas.wikispaces.com/

It almost sounds like those babies animals are being spawned for the Pet Adoptions, so OverWatch will be the one that will put a stop to your problem. I use to have this very same problem as well, until I used this. If you do use this mod, you will need to change the settings for it to take place.

◦Stop Pet Adoption ◾ Whether to disable EA's Neighborhood Pet Adoption system
◾Default: False ~~~~ You will need to change this to True.

igazor

Overwatch will help, but the only way I know to address this entirely, besides never switching active households, is to use a modded version of story progression. With the NRaas version, you can leverage its settings to prevent specified households you designate from doing certain things you don't want them to in your absence, such as adopt pets/kids, make babies, move houses, change jobs, form new romantic couplings, split up, sell all your sims' possessions for no apparent reason, etc.

Without mods, and even with the built-in progression switched off, the game will still do certain things as it feels like it such as dragoon those sims into different careers to settle a perceived imbalance of co-workers. And adopt pets, among other things, even if you've switched in and out only for a moment with the game clock paused. The way TS3 is designed, all inactive sims around town exist solely for the convenience and amusement of the sims you have active at the moment and there is little regard for the ones you wish to play rotationally.

See also: http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/12998941

nickibitsward

Thank you both, I guess I am going to have to look into mods, unless I populate my households to the max which I don't want to do.

TadOlson

You'll need to load up on NRaas Mods including story progression if you want to stop this disaster from happening because EA's bug-fest isn't even off when it's turned off because that control dosen't really work anymore.The only solution is to use loads of NRaas Mods and have custom settings for them like I did in story progression so I can play Sims 2 style and have TS2's story progression or at least something very close to it though mine still manages school and job performance and skills.It won't cause inactive families to adopt pets or children or even have babies on their own because the households each have their own caste and are denied permission to adopt on their own and can have a baby if I told them to do that.

igazor

You know, I didn't notice this so much before but the subject line of this entire thread is really sad...

nickibitsward

It's sad when the social worker(?) comes to take them but the game shouldn't put them in my households! And why all females, who manage to have three or four puppies in two minutes? (I am not a dog person, I'm cat people which makes it worse but the game only adds dogs!)

Mrknowitall526

nickibitsward wrote: »

It's sad when the social worker(?) comes to take them but the game shouldn't put them in my households! And why all females, who manage to have three or four puppies in two minutes? (I am not a dog person, I'm cat people which makes it worse but the game only adds dogs!)

I had a sim who just got pregnant, I switched households to do something else for about 12 sim hours, came back to find the baby had been born AND the mother had been given a degree! She never even went to University. #StoryProgressionProblems

igazor

Mrknowitall526 wrote: »

I had a sim who just got pregnant, I switched households to do something else for about 12 sim hours, came back to find the baby had been born AND the mother had been given a degree! She never even went to University. #StoryProgressionProblems

Such things are "features" of EA's story progression. The NRaas version doesn't do that. You are still playing without the modded version, correct?

Mrknowitall526

igazor wrote: »

Mrknowitall526 wrote: »

I had a sim who just got pregnant, I switched households to do something else for about 12 sim hours, came back to find the baby had been born AND the mother had been given a degree! She never even went to University. #StoryProgressionProblems

Such things are "features" of EA's story progression. The NRaas version doesn't do that. You are still playing without the modded version, correct?

Yeah... I keep reading over all it does and seems simultaneously awesome and overwhelming!

igazor

Mrknowitall526 wrote: »

Yeah... I keep reading over all it does and seems simultaneously awesome and overwhelming!

If you want to give it a try when you're ready, make an extra copy of your saved game just in case, toss in the base mod only and keep it on default settings (or change just the overall progression speed down to Slow from SP > General Options if it does too many things all at once for your taste). It's not a permanent decision. You can always remove SP if you don't like it and play the same game save forward without it.
http://nraas.wikispaces.com/StoryProgression+FAQ

TadOlson

I backed up my Sims 3 folder before I started installing any Mods in case something went wrong so I could just go back and at least have a working folder.I ended up sticking with the Mods and currently have 88 NRaas Mod files with my custom settings to keep the game from doing anything unwanted to inactive families while I'm not playing them.The only things to happen is inactive cooking meals and leaving serving plates of food gone bad on the counters and fridges full of spoiled leftovers when I return to that family.

nickibitsward

I looked into mods for my game because of the problem with Pets (I don't currently use any) and decided against them. The final straw - when the game started placing horses at three or four a time, like the dogs, into families I play when I'm not playing them. My one family has a small house on a small lot, the horses were all inside the house. I have uninstalled Pets. This is ridiculous, I thought the game was not supposed to touch families you play? (Thanks again to everyone who helped me, anyway).

igazor

The game is not supposed to emigrate (have them move out of town and out of your game permanently) families you have played, although sometimes that happens anyway. It touches, uses, and abuses them all it wants because unmodded TS3 was not designed for rotational play.

nickibitsward

Okay, I think I got it now, even though I play them regularly that doesn't mean the game won't give them pets just not - supposedly - get rid of them. I don't have Story Progression on, does that make a difference? Hopefully it will not make them vampires or werewolves or something.

igazor

Not having EA's story progression on will prevent inactives from progressing generally, but no it does not stop the game from tampering with them and their households in other, slightly non-progressive (is that a word?) ways.

nickibitsward

igazor wrote: »

Not having EA's story progression on will prevent inactives from progressing generally, but no it does not stop the game from tampering with them and their households in other, slightly non-progressive (is that a word?) ways.

Thanks, I will play without Pets for a while and see what happens.

TadOlson

I used to be against using NRaas Mods at first until I started having the glitches you were having and EA's "story progression" is a major bug-fest and turns games into horribly corrupted unplayable nightmares to the point that the game is destroyed while the NRaas Mods keep the games from getting ruined.I've been playing rotationally for a long time now and haven't had pets get stuffed into households or families get moved out unless I did it myself.I also have story progression turned on and it only does what I want it to do which is make sure my sims gain skills and gain job performance while inactive.

Ava_Chartreuse

There is only one way to stop this without mods. And it sucks, because i had this happen too. I tried finding other solutions, but basically if you only have male pets in the household then it will stop. I had one household adopt a female cat I love, and im just going to adopt out all of the litters until only one or two males are left. But if there is only male pets they won't give birth. I think it's so stupid that you can't spay or neuter the pets btw. For how modern the sims try to stay that was an atrocious mistake.

igazor

@Ava_Chartreuse - Not sure I would characterize TS3 as being all that modern in several ways. I mean, we are talking about a world where sims may all have smartphones, but the concepts of car seats/restraints for babies and toddlers and bicycle/motorcycle helmets for purposes of safety, not style, do not really exist. And players get information about what is going on in the world by having their sims read an actual paper-based newspaper. Heavens forbid a sim has a child out of wedlock, then the entire world starts buzzing with rumors and gossip. I see it as more of an eclectic (but fun) mix of modern and 1950s or older sensibilities.

GraceyManor

I had switched households to my sims sister's house, and found out my sim had a niece, and didn't even know about it XD and no father to be found LOL

SuzyCue72

igazor wrote: »

@Ava_Chartreuse - Not sure I would characterize TS3 as being all that modern in several ways. I mean, we are talking about a world where sims may all have smartphones, but the concepts of car seats/restraints for babies and toddlers and bicycle/motorcycle helmets for purposes of safety, not style, do not really exist. And players get information about what is going on in the world by having their sims read an actual paper-based newspaper. Heavens forbid a sim has a child out of wedlock, then the entire world starts buzzing with rumors and gossip. I see it as more of an eclectic (but fun) mix of modern and 1950s or older sensibilities.

Yes, they do exist. Maybe they're not the latest model, but certainly better than no helmets at all.

GraceyManor wrote: »

I had switched households to my sims sister's house, and found out my sim had a niece, and didn't even know about it XD and no father to be found LOL

@GraceyManor - Do you play with Story progression turned off? If so that sort of thing shouldn't happen.

GraceyManor

SuzyCue72 wrote: »

igazor wrote: »

@Ava_Chartreuse - Not sure I would characterize TS3 as being all that modern in several ways. I mean, we are talking about a world where sims may all have smartphones, but the concepts of car seats/restraints for babies and toddlers and bicycle/motorcycle helmets for purposes of safety, not style, do not really exist. And players get information about what is going on in the world by having their sims read an actual paper-based newspaper. Heavens forbid a sim has a child out of wedlock, then the entire world starts buzzing with rumors and gossip. I see it as more of an eclectic (but fun) mix of modern and 1950s or older sensibilities.

Yes, they do exist. Maybe they're not the latest model, but certainly better than no helmets at all.

GraceyManor wrote: »

I had switched households to my sims sister's house, and found out my sim had a niece, and didn't even know about it XD and no father to be found LOL

@GraceyManor - Do you play with Story progression turned off? If so that sort of thing shouldn't happen.

I play with Ea's story progression off, I use Nraas SP.

EA_Joz

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