Story progression and splitting households

[Romilly]

I am working on a story where the main household has four main characters. I have plans for a housemate or two, a child, and maybe some pets. This might make for a full house, especially if more children are born. Some of the characters may eventually want to marry or get a place of their own, yet still remain connected to the others. I have plans for a best friend, and it would be ideal if he could have his own place. Also, I don’t want the game to marry him off before I get a chance to.

I would like to play with EA’s story progression for a while before I resort to mods. It would be interesting to see what it does on its own. However, it would ruin my story if certain characters should disappear completely from the neighborhood. Is there any way around this without keeping everybody on the same lot? I don’t care what the rest of the town does (however, if I create some of my own townies for the game, it would be nice if they don’t all disappear). I know that story progression has been tweaked a little over the years, but I am not sure how it currently operates. Will playing a household for a while prevent those Sims from moving out of town while I go on to the main house I want to keep active? Will turning off story progression keep these Sims safe, and will they keep their relationships? It’s too bad that you can’t designate one additional lot with Sims connected to your active family not to be messed with.

It does sound like Nraas is the perfect solution to all this, but I would like to try playing the game unmodded first, and I already have a lot to deal with playing on a Mac. I am used to being able to visit other households in Sims 1, and then return to my main household. I would hate to carefully set up something in a nearby house, only to have the game negate it or delete an important Sim, or worse -- mess with my main household while I am gone. As I have big plans for these particular Sims, maybe it is best to keep them all on the same lot. I suppose people have this same problem with large families where children grow up and move out. Anyone else successfully dealing with something like this using EA’s story progression, or should I resign myself to only splitting off Sims from the household that I’m not too attached to? Any tricks I should know about?

This is my first post. I hope that it’s kosher to be this wordy. Also, I have all the expansion packs, if that affects anything.

[Lisa46]

EA story progression is completely broken. The only thing it does is move sims in and out of the town. 

If the members of your household stay best friends with the other sims, they have a much smaller chance of moving away. If the members of your household don't know the other sims at all, then they have a higher chance of moving away.

But since EA story progression is so broken, why not just disable it? For the story you want to do, that might be the best option.

[Steellace]

I agree with what Lisa said.  I have played with NRaas' story progression from the start, and it would allow you the flexibility to do what you want easily.  However, I also understand wanting to play un-modded for a while to see how things work.  If you let EA's SP control things, I'd be sure to keep relationships high with the played family to decrease chances of them disappearing.

The only alternative suggestion I can offer would be viable for a while, which might be long enough for you to decide where to go from there.  If you purchase an additional home(s), you can send some of your family members there to live.  Then you can jump back and forth between the houses, controlling everyone but not having them on the same physical lot.

The biggest drawback to this is that the game will see your primary lot as the home lot, so whenever you have someone go to work, school, etc., when they return home, it will be to the primary lot.  The way around this is to have sims living on the other lots that work from home, are retired, or for whatever reason rarely leave the lot.  The unfortunate part is that, despite the number of lots and where sims actually reside/sleep, you are limited to the maximum household limit (8 sims).  There are mods that can change that, too, if you decide to start using them.

I hope you find a good solution to play the way you want!  :-)

[Lisa46]

But you still can only have 8 members with Steelace's solution.

[Romilly]

Thank you for your replies, Lisa46 and Steellace. It’s interesting to know that friend levels affect things. Will the game still kick Sims out if story progression is turned off, and is there a way to get them back? I have heard that turning it off only goes so far, and I like to control a handful of households, but not necessarily all of them. I picked some story to start experimenting with because it is turning into quite a saga in my head with many possibilities. Maybe I shall just have to advance carefully and save backups.

I have played fairly CC free and have just managed to get the game to behave on my computer. This game can be a little overwhelming sometimes. However, I have recently gone a little crazy in the Store and there were also some CC clothes and hair that I just couldn’t resist. Hopefully the game won’t rebel. I have also noticed that weird things can threaten your save when your household has been going for a long time and there are a number of Sims coming and going, and recently just deleted my TestSims neighborhood. I may have to get some mods just to keep this kind of situation going. Mods like ErrorTrap may be particularly helpful, if I can get them going on my Mac. It might also help me to play in Isla Paradiso for more than a few Sim hours without everything freezing. In fact, I have managed to find out about a lot of things to try there. And certain NRaas SP settings will allow me to set some permanent townies and keep the town hermit from marrying.

After I posted this, I was wondering how that second residence thing worked and if it might be helpful to my household. I have not been able to find out much about it, but it sounds like it may be more trouble than it’s worth, aside from resort and vacationing uses. To bad you can’t actively rent out one of the houses; there are two or three Sims I would love to put in the second house. I was thinking of building a little carriage house and trying to juggle Sims that way until their numbers get too large.

I am still having a blast with this game and haven’t discovered half of what it does after a couple of years of playing. I’ve played around in CAS more than I’ve actually played. I’ll probably experiment with the unmodded game for a while in a neighborhood or two, and then start trying mods.

[Steellace]

I really haven't played with story progression off completely to know the behavior or how it really works, but I've also heard that it doesn't stop everything from happening.  I have only played with tweaking SP settings using NRaas' mod, so I'm not much help with telling you what to expect without it.  Advancing carefully with lots of saves is a great idea.  I do that whenever I'm doing something "delicate" or testing to see what things will do with different settings.

The residence thing is actually pretty simple, and I usually always have a second residence for my bigger families.  Basically, you just use the phone to buy a second lot.  Then in map view, it will have a different icon so you can tell it's one of your own.  You can click on it and tell the sims to visit like visiting any other lot, or you can zoom in on the lot and click something for them to do there, and they'll go over on their own.  The lot does not behave like a "public" one though--it behaves just like another part of your own lot, so you can edit it and do anything you want to it without editing the town.

As long as all of their needs are being met on the second residence lot, the sims won't go back to the "primary" lot.  The exception is, as I mentioned, going home from somewhere else.  They will go home to the primary lot, and if you want them living on the second lot, you just send them there again.  If you have leftovers in your fridge, they will eat them on the second lot as well (very nice for meeting their needs), and you can jump between lots very easily (usually I just double click on a sim's portrait, and it jumps to the whichever lot they are on).

I have two purposes I frequently use my second lots for.  My most common use is to make it a luxury-type lot and retire my elders there.  They love hanging out in the hot tub and pool, playing lots of games, and generally taking care of themselves.  However, they can't do anything too crazy and are readily available for me to bring home to babysit, clean up, or help out.  My second most common use for the second lot is to have it a place where sims can focus on skills with less distractions.  You can sell the second lot anytime you want, you just have to be sure you don't have something on it you want first (i.e., paintings, rewards, etc.).

[Romilly]

@Steellace, Thanks for the information. I'll have to experiment with this.

Thanks for the information, guys.