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Culling, Relationship Culling & Decay: Current Status

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  • egwarhammeregwarhammer Posts: 5,752 Member
    dizzydee_k wrote: »
    Thank you @luthienrising and @Neia. This information eases my mind a bit. I've been doing my own culling for fear I would lose my fat Grim - with whom several of my Sims have formed friendships. I'd be heartbroken if he were to be suddenly replace by a new skinny one.

    Probably off-topic for this thread (I'll keep it short).

    @dizzydee if you'd like to keep a copy of that Grim for "just in case"... you could roll a copy of your save, add him to a household, evict him to his own household, and save him to your library. Then you'd have him available to put back if something were to happen in your real game.

    (It would take some cheating to make him "work right" again, but we can cross that bridge when we need to.) ;)

    In case somebody might not know, to mark a Played House as Unplayed, you just click the plumbob in the lower left corner of a household's window in Manage Households. ;)

    (Slight nod toward on-topic ^^ there.) :)
  • simgirl1010simgirl1010 Posts: 35,708 Member
    I hope you don't mind me adding a couple of pics to explain what I'm trying to figure out.

    Played%20Not%20In%20World_zpswip9coim.png

    Unplayed_zpsbwamismo.png

    I don't know how the 3 Played Not In World households ended up there. I have added lots of Unplayed, Not In World households in the hopes that some of them will show up as NPC restaurant staff, spa staff, etc and so far it seems to be working. I also wanted to cut down on the number of sims generated by the game. Also, which group is less likely to be culled?

    For my Unplayed, Not In World households I first moved them onto a lot then evicted them.

    If you loaded those played households at any time while they were housed (and therefore loadable), they will have stayed marked played. If you had one of those Sims marked played then added others to its household in Manage Households, the whole household would be marked played.

    Only households that are both unplayed and unhoused get culled. The higher/more relationships your played Sims have with an unplayed+unhoused household, the less likely it is to be culled. I've not seen any suggestion that the NPC roles the Sims play make a difference.

    So I should play the unplayed not in the world households to ensure they are not culled. And then evict them?
  • luthienrisingluthienrising Posts: 37,617 Member
    edited April 2017
    I hope you don't mind me adding a couple of pics to explain what I'm trying to figure out.

    Played%20Not%20In%20World_zpswip9coim.png

    Unplayed_zpsbwamismo.png

    I don't know how the 3 Played Not In World households ended up there. I have added lots of Unplayed, Not In World households in the hopes that some of them will show up as NPC restaurant staff, spa staff, etc and so far it seems to be working. I also wanted to cut down on the number of sims generated by the game. Also, which group is less likely to be culled?

    For my Unplayed, Not In World households I first moved them onto a lot then evicted them.

    If you loaded those played households at any time while they were housed (and therefore loadable), they will have stayed marked played. If you had one of those Sims marked played then added others to its household in Manage Households, the whole household would be marked played.

    Only households that are both unplayed and unhoused get culled. The higher/more relationships your played Sims have with an unplayed+unhoused household, the less likely it is to be culled. I've not seen any suggestion that the NPC roles the Sims play make a difference.

    So I should play the unplayed not in the world households to ensure they are not culled. And then evict them?

    That would do it :) It will, however, kick them out of NPC roles, so if you want them to have those roles (bartenders, yoga instructors, mail carriers, etc.), you're stuck with leaving them unplayed. Another way to leave them unculled is to house them from Manage Worlds/Households but not load the household in live play; this will kill fewer NPC roles off (but will do in some, like mail carrier).
    EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
  • simgirl1010simgirl1010 Posts: 35,708 Member
    Okay, last question, promise, :p If the game limit for sims is 305 and I have 305 sims, which includes my played households that I can load, and my played sims not in world, will the game still generate NPCs to fulfill NPC roles?
  • dizzydee_kdizzydee_k Posts: 475 Member
    Thanks for the OT info @egwarhammer ;)
  • luthienrisingluthienrising Posts: 37,617 Member
    Okay, last question, promise, :p If the game limit for sims is 305 and I have 305 sims, which includes my played households that I can load, and my played sims not in world, will the game still generate NPCs to fulfill NPC roles?

    The game will try to use the existing Sims for roles. There are some that played households can take — festival-goers, for example, or people hanging out at the gym or reading in the library. There are some that it unplayed housed Sims can take — bartenders, food-cart sellers, protesters (quite a lot of this category). There are some that will only take unplayed unhoused Sims — butlers, fishers, active-career coworkers, suspects, etc. And the Sims have to be available when the role is needed, not at work or school. The more your 305 Sims are played households, especially if they're employed, the more the game will need to make new Sims for roles. If you're above that 305 already, it will just cull those Sims more often.
    EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
  • simgirl1010simgirl1010 Posts: 35,708 Member
    Okay, last question, promise, :p If the game limit for sims is 305 and I have 305 sims, which includes my played households that I can load, and my played sims not in world, will the game still generate NPCs to fulfill NPC roles?

    The game will try to use the existing Sims for roles. There are some that played households can take — festival-goers, for example, or people hanging out at the gym or reading in the library. There are some that it unplayed housed Sims can take — bartenders, food-cart sellers, protesters (quite a lot of this category). There are some that will only take unplayed unhoused Sims — butlers, fishers, active-career coworkers, suspects, etc. And the Sims have to be available when the role is needed, not at work or school. The more your 305 Sims are played households, especially if they're employed, the more the game will need to make new Sims for roles. If you're above that 305 already, it will just cull those Sims more often.

    OK that helps a lot. I don't really play them, none have jobs. I only actively play one family.
  • ChampandGirlieChampandGirlie Posts: 2,482 Member
    I'm just adding that in GTW rotations, you can play several sims in the same career and the workplace will basically stay the same. I sent a sim in my rotation into the GTW detective career. I later added one of her coworkers into my rotation in a new household. (He doesn't live with her). When I made him playable, he kept his position at work and when he goes to work, the same sims are there including my other sim.

    Culling does happen and it happened a bit in that office but there are still a lot of the same coworkers.

    Slightly connected to this, I'd like them to fix the cas.fulleditmode glitch that came with the most recent patch because it is very annoying. I have found out that there are some sims who are in my world who don't show up in Manage Worlds for editing. I've searched the whole list and I can't find some of them. The connection to culling is that this means that I haven't been able to edit some of the newly-generated townies in my game which is very annoying.

    At this point, I don't mind some culling of total randoms but I do want to be able to edit any of the new townies. I hope this gets fixed soon.
    Champ and Girlie are dogs.
  • simmerillesimmerille Posts: 8 New Member
    Hello! I have a query about ghost culling.

    I don't like having ghosts in my game, but I do like preserving family trees since I play a generational legacy save with story progression (MC Command) enabled.

    In order to "clean" ghosts while preserving genealogies, I will "unhide hidden households" from the MC Cheats module accessed through the mailbox. I will then collect the ghosts that show up in Manage Households into a single household, turn them back into living sims (using the remove death trait cheats), then kill them again with MCC to get their tombstones. Then, I have a living sim release the spirits of these tombstones into the netherworld.

    The next time I select "unhide hidden households", the ghosts that were released into the netherworld appear again in Manage Households. They are not playable, and if I try playing them, they don't appear in live mode. However, it doesn't seem like the game is cleaning them from the Manage Households UI and they linger there indefinitely. They do affect the population count too, as I have verified.

    If I delete these inactive ghosts, sadly they disappear from the genealogy as well.

    Are these inactive ghosts impacting the game in terms of performance? Why do they count against the total population when they cannot be played?
    In addition, about 100 dead relatives stay visible in genealogy

    Could you elaborate a little bit more on this @luthienrising? Would the "inactive ghosts" I mentioned above count against the 100 dead relatives? Or is this cap only relative to the families of played sims?

    I appreciate any information anyone can share regarding this matter, I'm still on generation 4 so I still have a long way to go and my population (due to the inactive ghosts) is already above 250 despite frequent manual culling of unwanted townies.

  • luthienrisingluthienrising Posts: 37,617 Member
    edited April 2017
    @simmerille I'm afraid this is something I don't know details on at all. @Neia might. But it sounds like you're also dealing with an MC Command Center issue. You might want to ask about those hidden but released-to-the-Netherworld ghosts in the MCCC Support Discord. There's a link to it from deaderpool.tumblr.com > Help.
    EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
  • simmerillesimmerille Posts: 8 New Member
    @simmerille I'm afraid this is something I don't know details on at all. @Neia might. But it sounds like you're also dealing with an MC Command Center issue. You might want to ask about those hidden but released-to-the-Netherworld ghosts in the MCCC Support Discord. There's a link to it from deaderpool.tumblr.com > Help.

    Thanks @luthienrising, I just asked my question in the MCCC support discord.
  • NeiaNeia Posts: 4,190 Member
    Indeed, that's quite a complicated situation, so I'm not sure what's the exact status of your ghosts. Assuming they are still tagged as "played" which they should be if they were played when they died, they are immune, but since you killed them a second time with MCCC, I'm not sure if they are still tagged as played or not. :/

    The 100 is for Sims who are neither played nor housed, but are related to one of your played Sims.
  • simmerillesimmerille Posts: 8 New Member
    Neia wrote: »
    Indeed, that's quite a complicated situation, so I'm not sure what's the exact status of your ghosts. Assuming they are still tagged as "played" which they should be if they were played when they died, they are immune, but since you killed them a second time with MCCC, I'm not sure if they are still tagged as played or not. :/

    The 100 is for Sims who are neither played nor housed, but are related to one of your played Sims.

    Thanks @Neia, I did a bit more research and came to a conclusion about these ghosts.

    In MCCC if you go to Neighborhood Cleaner > Clean Ghosts, it says "If a ghost is released into the netherworld, delete them from the game" and the default setting is Disabled.

    I deduced that basically, the way the game retains dead sims in genealogy once they've been released to netherworld is by keeping an imprint of these ghosts around. That's why they show up in Household Management once you "Unhide Hidden Households" and affect the population count, despite not being playable. The game will start culling these ghosts (if culling is not disabled) once the population max. is reached.

    Consequently, since I love to micro manage my world, I will keep culling and ghost cleaning disabled, and will manually cull sims I don't want and "clean" ghosts (using the method I wrote about with MCCC and recovering tombstones). This enables me to keep the ghosts I want in genealogy, while preventing them from actually showing up in live mode and being annoying.

    I'll just keep an eye on the population # and delete non-family ghosts that aren't significant genealogy-wise. I did a bit of tidying last night and got my population down to 230 :)
  • ArtaiosArtaios Posts: 7 New Member
    Hi, thanks for the thread. Really useful. One thing is not quite clear to me. I have read somewhere that the population maximum (of 305 currently) also includes dead people. It this still the case? Why would they do that? Won't it make the game unplayable after 1-2 generations? I am planning on using Neia's mod to circumvent culling.
  • ArtaiosArtaios Posts: 7 New Member
    There does not seem to be a way to edit posts. In reference to my previous post: Does the game absolutely need ghosts of dead people around (even outside of the playable game) to just store genealogy information? Why does it not just store an image of the dead and delete them?
  • NeiaNeia Posts: 4,190 Member
    edited April 2017
    @Artaios
    Dead played Sims are counted in the 305, they are considered more important to keep than unplayed Sims by the game. Dead unplayed Sims are kept in a minimal state (that's the 100 dead relatives, which aren't counted in the 305).

    Keep in mind that the 305 is just a soft cap. You can have more than 305 Sims in your save game (for example with played Sims or housed Sims), though you'll have a higher turnover of townies.
  • SparklePlumleySparklePlumley Posts: 1,061 Member
    Artaios wrote: »
    There does not seem to be a way to edit posts.

    Just to let know, you are a new member. You can't edit posts, or post pics until you are a full member. You have to have a certain number of posts to be a full member. I believe it is 50 posts. If you have any questions you can read everything you will need to know in the forum rules
  • superkyle221superkyle221 Posts: 1,119 Member
    This is really helpful. I've heard of culling but wasn't really sure what it was. A few quick questions/clarifications (if this is outside the scope of the threat, I apologize)

    1. If a sim was played, but then I mark them unplayed, will they still be culled? This is usually for relatives of my main family who I probably won't play again, but I'd like to see them show up in various careers if possible.
    2. How do you delete ghosts? I'm not talking about relatives, but ghosts of, like, townies who have aged up and died and who were likely homeless (but not necessarily?)
    3. Played households won't ever show up with a career type job (eg somebody won't randomly become a fitness instructor/yoga teacher/whatever)? How can you make somebody who will show up as one of those (this is the question that may be outside the scope of the thread)

    Thanks both for doing all of this work!
    I don't remember how to change my signature.
  • SparklePlumleySparklePlumley Posts: 1,061 Member
    edited May 2017
    @superkyle221

    @luthienrising will be the best to answer your questions but as far as deleting ghosts there are only two ways I know of. If there is a better way or another one Luthienrising can tell ya. If you have their tombstone/urn click on it then select release to netherworld. That will delete them permanently from the game. Or go into manage households and delete from there. I'm not sure on the rest but I hope I helped
  • NeiaNeia Posts: 4,190 Member
    @superkyle221

    If your Sims is played, and you marked them unplayed, it then depends on if they are housed on not. If they are housed, they won't be culled. If they aren't housed, they may at some point, though if they are relatives of your played Sims, they will be rather low on the list. Your best bet if you want to be sure they aren't culled is to put them in a house, that will make them immune.

    If you want Sims to be picked as fitness instructor, etc, they need to be unplayed. Other than that there are various constraints on traits for example, so your Sims need to fit the criteria to be picked. The criteria depend on the job, so it's a bit hard to predict if they will be picked or not.
  • luthienrisingluthienrising Posts: 37,617 Member
    @superkyle221 For ghost deletion, if they weren't played, I believe that they'll be fairly quick targets for culling. Otherwise, you could try MC Command Center's controls. I'm not sure how to target particular ghost groups with them, though. One thing I do is use MCCC to remove those dead Sims from my played Sims' relationship panels when I see them - it might nudge them farther up the culling queue as there will be fewer relationships with them.

    Some Simmers have found that if they have a gardener etc. they like in one save, save that Sim to their Library, then in another save they can add them in via CAS but not house them (not even temporarily) and that Sim will keep that role. I find it easiest just to edit the role NPC in CAS into what I want them to be.
    EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.
  • superkyle221superkyle221 Posts: 1,119 Member
    Thanks to all three of you (@luthienrising @Neia @SparklePlumley) for the information!
    I don't remember how to change my signature.
  • fullspiralfullspiral Posts: 14,717 Member
    @Neia I've been thinking about removing both no more relationship culling and reduced relationship decay. I'm wondering how this will affect my sims. Because I have a very big rotational game, I've noticed that some relationship panels are getting quite big and I want to have them shortened up with some culling by the game. What I am wanting to know is this:

    1. Will my sims forget each other or not know each other after a day or two?
    2. Will familial or high friendship bars decay quickly like they did?

    I'm not overly concerned if they forget those they only met once and have no relationship with at all. But I am concerned of those I've directed to meet out in public, but haven't had a chance to get the friendship up yet. At what point does the game decide to cull a sim from the panel?
  • LenaDieters11LenaDieters11 Posts: 1,346 Member
    Is it just me or did culling get less/decreased?
  • luthienrisingluthienrising Posts: 37,617 Member
    Is it just me or did culling get less/decreased?

    You'd have to check with @Neia. Our most recent info is what's in the OPs here.

    @fullspiral Check the details in the top posts here - we've got it explained how long it takes (number of relationships) for relationship culling to kick in, decay, etc. It's a YMMV whether it meets your needs or not, of course. I've got decay turned off for now because I rotate through households pretty slowly.
    EA CREATOR NETWORK MEMBER — Want to be notified of patches, new Broken Mods threads, and urgent Sims 4 news? Follow me at https://www.patreon.com/luthienrising.

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