Barnacle Bay: Toddlers and Infants Starving?

[KrispyNickyB]

I have searched the forums and cannot find an answer to this problem. I'm in my legacy game Barnacle Bay. Everyday I have one of my huge household read the paper. Well everyday there are alerts of infants and toddlers in town dying of starvation. I've always thought this was impossible. I didn't notice anything weird until I went looking for young people in town. I'm seeing a huge lack here! Is this a known glitch? Does anyone know a fix or did my Mac just barf up sim weirdness again?

[Hosfac]

There's no fix, because there's probably not anything broken.  If a town gets an excessive amount of sims, it will kill off townies to help maintain performance.  As cruel as it may seem, it tends to start with the younger sims.  I assume that this is done so that it reduces the likelihood of removing a sim involved in a relationship with a sim in the active household. 

[TheChronicR]

Oh my, that's awful.
But, as Hosfac stated, there is no workaround for this, since it's not a mistake, just simple game mechanics. Story Progression is cruel when it comes to killing townies.

[Lilygirl]

My first ever Twinbrook game (when I first got Amb), all the nooboos born during the first couple weeks died by starvation or lightning, according to the paper. I was ready to completely give up on Twinbrook. My idea was to have my Sim's spouse go and get the nooboos as they were born and they raised them to childhood before sending them back home (with the help of Edit Town). After a couple weeks of this the glitch stopped and now the toddlers of that game file no longer die. It was horrific but I'm glad my little trick seemed to work (not sure what actually fixed it though).

[KrispyNickyB]

Well it makes no sense though. There is no trace of them and it only actually kills off infants from the extended Millham clan. i.e. Dianne or Wesley's children. It also adds all the hidden traits to their traits lists. That's what triggered me as something was wrong.

[Hosfac]

A question:  just how many members are there in this "extended Millham clan?"

One of our more famous members, Esther1981, has mentioned similar instances in one of her games.  Like yours, almost all of the victims of this infanticide were members of her sim's family that have moved out of the house.  And when she posted a screen shot of the family tree, it literally spanned the entire screen lol.  Now that's a big family! 

Likewise, Twinbrook is infamous for it's initial baby boom, so it's entirely possible that the game simply decided at that point that your computer couldn't handle the excess population.  Then once the population evened itself out, this terrible effect stopped.

There are two cold and hard facts of life in the Sims 3:  infants and toddlers cannot live on their own, and they do not often form relationships with anyone but their parents.  It is likely due to these two factors that the game is programmed to target "extra" infants first.  It can't kill of their parents as it would leave them living on their own, and it's far more likely that their parents have (or could develop) relationships with active sims. 

I can't totally rule out the possibility of a glitch in either case.  Since this is an actual game mechanic, it's entirely possible that it was glitched in either or both cases.  But if the population of the town is exceptionally large, it's most likely working the way it's supposed to work.

[TheChronicR]

Hosfac, the Millhams are NickyDuvyrda's legacy family, running for 3 generations already.

[KrispyNickyB]

Thanks for Clarifying ChronicR The Millhams are the family in my feeble attempt at writing a Sim story. Two infants have died already in this clan along with Jonah the founders husband. Jonah I know was a glitch. Right now I'm seeing if Dianne's upcoming nooboo will suffer the same fate. On each of the infants that have perished the traits were as listed

burglar, can apprehend burglar, can't make messes, pyro, fireproof.

The game has been moving families out of town at very regular rate. I noticed when the infants died two families moved away and the infant died.

A question:  just how many members are there in this "extended Millham clan?"

Seventeen. The founding two have died.

[Hosfac]

Seventeen. The founding two have died.

Knowing this, in addition to the fact that two townie families moved out at the same time, I'd have to say that it's highly probable that these deaths were the result of this "culling the herd" process.  However, I can't explain the the traits.  To be honest, I've never actually seen this happen to this extent in one of my games because I heard about this early on.  As a result I tend to keep my families somewhat small and don't often move them out in an effort to keep story progression flowing...less tragically, I guess you could say.  But sims still die, and occasionally they're babies.

[KrispyNickyB]

I have got a feeling you're right. It's probably going to happen again. Here's a screencap of the full tree with a program I'm using to keep up with everyone.

[Hosfac]

I wouldn't expect it to happen soon, but it's possible that it could happen again.  I would think that when story progression cleans house like that, it would give your game a bit of leeway.

Just out of curiosity:  were you in control of all of the second generation sims when they reproduced, or are some of those babies a result of story progression?

[KrispyNickyB]

Dianne was understory progression when her baby Keegan was born. Wesley and Rosie have always been under story progression since they've gotten married. The odd part is Wesely's Antony and Dianne's Keenan died within one sim day of each other.

[Hosfac]

Wow, it seem odd that story progression would continue to bring babies into a single house when the town's population is obviously approaching "critical mass."  You would think that at some point, it would simply slow things down.  Perhaps this was the bug (there is obviously a bug somewhere).  Or maybe I'm just giving story progression credit for being smarter than it actually is lol. 

Do you remember if the infants with the extra traits were all born under story progression?

[KrispyNickyB]

Yes both infants with the extra/hidden traits were both under story progression. Keenan died first as an infant. Antony (Wesley's ) actually starved as a toddler. I went and checked the in game tree last night.

I've fully told my game aloud that they are done this generation having kids. I lectured them and everything. Sheesh only I would find that minuscule chance that a woohoo would end in a pregnancy and Raquelle wind up with twins again! Sheesh I never had such interesting things happen when I had ze forbidden things I won't mention installed.

[Hosfac]

My theory is that the bug was not the actual deaths of the babies, but the mass births in the third generation.  The bug simply triggered that vicious part of story progression, making it more of a symptom.  And I'm now even more certain that this was a bug than I was before, because I don't think I've ever seen 4 children brought into one household by way of story progression exclusively.  I'm sure it's possible that it could happen, but it would have to be somewhat uncommon at the very least.

However, bugs can simply go away, too.  Since story progression will move sims out of the town and kill them off when it's over-populated, I'm relatively sure that it would curb the birth rate for a while if it has to do so.  Otherwise, it would have to do this more often.  It's possible that if it does restrict the birth rate, that it could have eliminated the original cause of the bug by doing so.  This is, of course, just another theory.