Resolved. XD; Deleted 'hood. I'll know better next time.

[Jackathyn]

I know I might well be hit for this, but being the knob I am, I thought I'd be clever and put all of Veronaville and Strangetown into occupied Lot Bin lots to move them to Pleasantview. My inability to think ahead didn't recognise that this could backfire on me, and so far it hasn't but it seems to be threatening to.

The duplicated Sims don't show up in the Sim Browser of SimPE, but they do in my Sim Description listing. The debuggers I've seen won't be of much help as most of the copies are premades that are dead before you get the game, and thus unselectable; or unlinked defaults. I have some 1500 sim files apparently, which can't be right. Vidcund Curious is the worst, I have six of him for some blasted reason... Only one of these have the different hair and clothes I set on him so I'm assuming that ones' the real one, but is there a safe way to delete borked sim files?

... Is the fireball preventable at this stage?...

[mommytotwo]

You'd probably be better of scratching the hood, and downloading the already merged hood from the peasantry.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4274.0.html

[Jackathyn]

I'm willing to do my best to save the 'hood though... I don't really want to lose it...

[Ellatrue]

You really are screwed though. As screwed as it is possible to be. You could try following the tutorial here in the war room (Deleted 2- Electric Boogaloo!) for deleting extra characters. But I expect you'll have so many duplicates it isn't feasible. The hood might play alright for a while, so you could always just enjoy it while it lasts and see how long it takes for the bugginess to take over and ignore it until then. But it's essentially doomed.

Basically, when you move a lotbinned family from one hood to another, you aren't just moving the character files of the sims in that family--the game also makes a copy of every sim they have ever known, so they won't lose all those memories of their friends and enemies, etc. So in the new hood, they will not be friends with the now relocated Curious brothers--the friendship will be with the shadow character files of the Curious brothers associated with that household, and every household that knew the Curious brothers will remember different shadow characters.

This is why lotbinning a house, even though it seems incredibly convenient for moving sims between neighborhoods, is something you should never, ever do. Maxis just implemented it horribly. But if you play with debug mode off so you miss the error messages, have a lot of ram, and whichever expansion increased the max number of character files for the neighborhood (NL, OFB?), it might be playable for a while. But the amount of work required to save the hood just doesn't seem worth it.

[Zazazu]

...plus you'll be more invested at that point. I'd clone the sims you have in SimPE, make notes about their personalities and skill points/jobs, then recreate. Bin all your lots (after they've been vacated, of course) and rebuild the 'hood. It'll take a couple of nights, but you won't have to worry that it's going to blow in an hour.

Yes, you'll lose your memories. You'll have to rebuild or edit in SimPE for relationships. The relationships are easy to fix, and memories aren't good for anything.

[Jackathyn]

Eh, okay. Bit the bullet and sent my poor Sims to the beyond. I'd only been playing a few months anyhow, nothing that's impossible to regain. Thanks! X3