How do I stop the game from generating townies?

viola-illyria · June 2022

I have more than enough townies in my game to full every role and then some. I've got townies from the gallery who have the special NPC traits so they should be first picked for any job.

I have masses of YA sims, many of whom have the special roommate trait and all of whom are unemployed sitting in my unplayed households. And yet the game ignores those and generates and endless amount of sims for university roommates, for university mascots.

I have MCCC. What can I do to stop the game from generating townies and use mine instead? I don't want it to draw from the gallery since I have a lot of sims in there I don't want to use, including backups of all the premades.

EIisabetta · June 2022

So with MCCC, you can tell it to pull townies from your tray file. Unfortunately, there is no way to stop townie generation completely. You can slow it down but stopping it probably won't ever happen. What I do is put a bunch of sims in my tray file so when it needs a new townie, MCCC will pull from those sims instead of randomly generating one. You can create a second tray file to use for this. I have probably five different tray files I rotate through depending on what I'm doing. I have one JUST for MCCC that I make the main tray file when I am playing.

EIisabetta · June 2022

oh! One more thing, are you using Bienchen's Townie Overhaul Less Fame mod? It works well with MCCC and can help with generation as well although, again, there's no way to stop it 100%.

https://bienchen.sems-own-world.de/

viola-illyria · June 2022

I'm using Zero's walkby overhaul.

My problem isn't that the game is generating (ugly) townies but that I have the townies in my game, in unplayed households and the game just isn't picking them for the jobs.

But the recommendation about a second tray file is really helpful, thank you.

I'm going to try removing walkby overhaul since that may be stopping the sims from being picked for the roles.

Pamtastic72 · June 2022

When you put those townies in your game did you add them to a lot from the map screen and then immediately evict them without playing them or loading the lot? Because as I understand it that’s what you have to do in order for the game to use them in the roles you assigned. If you play them or open the lot they lose their job role traits and become unemployed played sims.

viola-illyria · June 2022

Pamtastic72 wrote: »

When you put those townies in your game did you add them to a lot from the map screen and then immediately evict them without playing them or loading the lot? Because as I understand it that’s what you have to do in order for the game to use them in the roles you assigned. If you play them or open the lot they lose their job role traits and become unemployed played sims.

Yeah, put them straight in without playing them.

I've also not had an issue in the past if the lot has loaded and I've quickly exited and marked them as unplayed.

Most of the NPC sims are working - the mailcarriers, nannies, vendors etc are all filling their roles correctly. The main issue is university roommates. I have so many unemployed, student YA sims who are flagged as roommate who are refusing to actually act as roommates, causing the game to generate its usual lot of eccentic sims. Same with the university mascot. The game does recognise my mascot as the mascot but she doesn't have the 'university mascot' flag above her head and the game keeps generating one for walkbys.

Simmingal · June 2022

yeah no way to stop the randomized townie takeover in vanilla game the game will just keep spawning more constantly

to reduce the endless spawnage you'd pretty much have to stay on home lot and never interact with anything but game still spawns them even as random walkbys no matter how many sims you got

makes me so angry really

I don't think theres mod but also i play vanilla so wouldn't know

i just wish they'd update the game with toggles to turn it off because its literally the one thing that ruins my fun every dang time

also its not even about how those townies look i just want them gone completely cause they drown out all the sims i would want to see around

viola-illyria · June 2022

@Simmingal two things the game needs are a toggle to prevent random spawnnig and to use homeless instead (I have over 100 homeless sims, EA! Use them!) and a toggle to stop the situational outfits. I don't spend my time selecting outfits to make sure they match the character of the sim to have them overwritten by whatever mix of clothing+eyeball ring that EA thinks they should wear. Just because Bella Goth is a witch doesn't mean she loses all sense of fashion.

Simmingal · June 2022

viola-illyria wrote: »

@Simmingal two things the game needs are a toggle to prevent random spawnnig and to use homeless instead (I have over 100 homeless sims, EA! Use them!) and a toggle to stop the situational outfits. I don't spend my time selecting outfits to make sure they match the character of the sim to have them overwritten by whatever mix of clothing+eyeball ring that EA thinks they should wear. Just because Bella Goth is a witch doesn't mean she loses all sense of fashion.

yeah or just like give the random townies off and let us assign all needed roles ourselves and walkbys are sims living in the world

agree about the situational outfits too i don't understand why id ever want my sims to wear things ive not assigned them

aaand the work outfits are constantly broken so itd be nice to set those too

logion · June 2022

I dislike the way the game spawns and randomizes townies so much. If only Maxis could improve how they look and how often they spawn. I hate that it feels like they have given up so all townies look like clowns.

I have used plenty of townie control mods in the past, I don't use them much now. Now I just settle for having the amount of sims generated to 0 in MCCC.

"Population_OpenHouses": 50,
"Population_PercentAdult": 0,
"Population_PercentBaby": 0,
"Population_PercentChild": 0,
"Population_PercentElder": 0,
"Population_PercentMale": 50,
"Population_PercentToddler": 0,

That reduces townie generation, but not to completely 0.

The best mod I used back in the day was NPC Control, I know the creator didn't want to release that one for free for a while but I think he keeps the recent one free now. I have tried townieoverhaul by Bienchen and also zero's mods sometimes, they work pretty well too.

I still use one module from Bienchen townieoverhaul_nobarflys because the game spawns an insane amount of random townies when you visit the bar.

Finvola · June 2022

Yes the barflys are crazy. I think a new one spawned every 15 sim minutes when I was out for Night On The Town. Also, if I go to Selvadorada, instead of using the same locals, it spawns a new set every time I visit. I use Bienchen's mods and MCCC to keep that nonsense down as much as possible. I just replaced my old PC and I really had to keep the population down on it because my game would start to lag if the population got beyond a certain amount (about 180 sims). That's not the case now as I have a new PC, but I just don't need that many ugly townies roaming my towns, so I prefer to keep them down to a minimum. The game never seems to use the same ones twice and just generates more and more of them.

Vanilicious · June 2022

I use npc control (the last update is working fine, and u can get it on patreon for free now) but u need configure ur own sims and give them a job. anyway, i hope a update of this mod. i can't play without it

GirafHuntr · June 2022

viola-illyria wrote: »

Pamtastic72 wrote: »

When you put those townies in your game did you add them to a lot from the map screen and then immediately evict them without playing them or loading the lot? Because as I understand it that’s what you have to do in order for the game to use them in the roles you assigned. If you play them or open the lot they lose their job role traits and become unemployed played sims.

Yeah, put them straight in without playing them.

I've also not had an issue in the past if the lot has loaded and I've quickly exited and marked them as unplayed.

Most of the NPC sims are working - the mailcarriers, nannies, vendors etc are all filling their roles correctly. The main issue is university roommates. I have so many unemployed, student YA sims who are flagged as roommate who are refusing to actually act as roommates, causing the game to generate its usual lot of eccentic sims. Same with the university mascot. The game does recognise my mascot as the mascot but she doesn't have the 'university mascot' flag above her head and the game keeps generating one for walkbys.

If it's specifically University roommates you want, I use this mod by LittleMsSam and it totally fixes the issues. She gives very clear instructions to follow if you want to try it, and it works perfectly for me:

https://littlemssam.tumblr.com/post/189154109868/choose-your-roommate-discover-university-finally

viola-illyria · June 2022

GirafHuntr wrote: »

viola-illyria wrote: »

Pamtastic72 wrote: »

When you put those townies in your game did you add them to a lot from the map screen and then immediately evict them without playing them or loading the lot? Because as I understand it that’s what you have to do in order for the game to use them in the roles you assigned. If you play them or open the lot they lose their job role traits and become unemployed played sims.

Yeah, put them straight in without playing them.

I've also not had an issue in the past if the lot has loaded and I've quickly exited and marked them as unplayed.

Most of the NPC sims are working - the mailcarriers, nannies, vendors etc are all filling their roles correctly. The main issue is university roommates. I have so many unemployed, student YA sims who are flagged as roommate who are refusing to actually act as roommates, causing the game to generate its usual lot of eccentic sims. Same with the university mascot. The game does recognise my mascot as the mascot but she doesn't have the 'university mascot' flag above her head and the game keeps generating one for walkbys.

If it's specifically University roommates you want, I use this mod by LittleMsSam and it totally fixes the issues. She gives very clear instructions to follow if you want to try it, and it works perfectly for me:

https://littlemssam.tumblr.com/post/189154109868/choose-your-roommate-discover-university-finally

I'll check that out. I use a lot of her mods already so I know she makes good quaility ones.

Vanilicious wrote: »

I use npc control (the last update is working fine, and u can get it on patreon for free now) but u need configure ur own sims and give them a job. anyway, i hope a update of this mod. i can't play without it

NPCControl tends not to play well with some of the mods I use, and the author locking it behind a paywall is seriously annoying. I know he eventually releases it to the public but it takes far too long for what is a fairly essessntial tool for many players.

RedShoe7 · June 2022

I use Zero's No Random NPCs and Assign Jobs mods.

manicobsessive · June 2022

If you didn't like a certain roommate that spawns, you could use CAS full edit mode and change them into a totally different sim. That's what I do if I don't like an NPC lol.

viola-illyria · June 2022

RedShoe7 wrote: »

I use Zero's No Random NPCs and Assign Jobs mods.

Yeah, that's what I use, too. But it's not got as many options as NPCC.

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How do I stop the game from generating townies?

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