Sims starving to death

[vvhitney]

I'm sorry I'm not sure if this may or may not be related to the AM mod, but would I like some help to fix this please.

I have had a problem of having stupid sims who don't eat and starve themselves to death.
I have had one sim die during my whole playing time of a few months and after the new sim's patch (im now on 1.12.70.006002) and downloading the new AM mod I have had already about 8 deaths of sims who are not elderly.
I find that they mainly die on community lots, with or without an active playing family there.
When looking at other sims at the community lots some just stand around doing nothing too (don't know if that is normal).

I only have AM mod installed at the moment with no other mods and running sims 3 with no expansions.
I used to have the NRaas_WorkPusher.package mod on but after the new sims update, it no longer works.
I have also tried turning on "NoCommunityStalkerSwarm" and it does not help.
I have high autonomy on too.

Please help.

[J. M. Pescado]

I keep hearing this problem, but I have not witnessed any unusual starvation deaths in my game. If you notice any strange sims standing there starving, try RadarTagging them and seeing what their stats are like. The present belief is that starvation deaths are caused by the game being starved for CPU, so it skips processing things, causing them to stand there and starve.

[wizard_merlin]

Like Pescado, I keep reading about this issue, but have yet to see it happen.  System specs could be a problem, or maybe bad, corrupt or incompatible CC/mods are the problem.

[Anach]

The only starvation deaths I have experienced are from sims being stuck at the endless award ceremony due to me switching families before my last active sim had completed the ceremony. This caused most the town to remain in the ceremony until death. Only way I could fix it was to revert to an earlier save. The other starvation was from a sim stuck in terrain after getting off a park bench in my newly upgraded park. I reloaded reset the sim and fixed the terrain around the bench.

No other starving sims to report.

[vvhitney]

Thanks for your replies guys.
I just find it weird after this happening downloading the new sims update.
From the deaths I find my sims die from just standing there and not being trapped

I'll try using radar tagging and see what I can find.
Hopefull i'll find a fix, i'll keep you guys posted.

[vvhitney]

Ok I accidentally saved while someone was about to expire (die) so I have a starting point. I just resurrected a person from being a ghost that previously died and this guy(that is about to die) is in the same family. This guy that is gonna die is in the library and his moodlet says he has stir crazy (but his not at home!).

I have played sooo many diff sceanerios to try save him and finally I found out a way which didn't end up glitching or him dying randomly after. What I did with the person that was about to expire was to split him from the household and moved him into my active household and he now works perfectly fine.


Here are some examples of ways i tried to save him which failed:

1.I tried giving him a death flower while he was about to die, he is saved however the game glitches.

2.I tried placing the guy on sacred mode and radar tracking and he is saved, However when i go to his family and play him it glitches

3.I put guy on sacred mode he is saved, and i talk to him and invite him to my active sims house however randomly dies afterwards. (it says he has 0 social)  Pic:

4.I put the guy on sacred mode and his saved and I type maxmotives and he dies while on sacred mode.

What happens when it glitches:
-I only see his face on the (bottom middle) profile shot every time I click another person(even when switched household)
-His actions appear when clicked on other people and not theirs.
-The need bar is stuffed up as well as the moodlet bar.


So...theres something glitchy going on in my sims game >_<

Edit: Another sim has just died again.. within one day of saving this sim

[TheCatMeow]

I've had a sim die while on vaca in China. My computer specs are so beyond sims 3 high playability, I know it's not the problem with my game. I've even tried a completely new game and a sim would randomly die from starvation. At the time, I only had Am installed, so it seems like an EA bug.

After searching around on the Sims 3 forum, a lot of people have reported that sims and objects can randomly become stuck. The sims would just stand around and not do anything or would fall through the floor/ground and become stuck. I wonder if this is what is happening to the non-active sims. However, most of those issues did sound like processing problems . . .

[Hallie]

Just so you know I found this was just a problem with the new game. It was something I encountered alot in Twinbrook before the awesome mod was being updated. So I think that this was a general EA problem not an awesome problem.

[zanzertem]

I have also seen this. While running around China doing missions the camera was instantly ported to the location with all of the Kung Fu equipment.....and was showing someone dying! He wasn't an elder. In fact, I had aging and storymode off. Thought it was strange but didn't think too much of it at the time. If I see it again I'll send a save.

Sorry for the lack of information, just confirming the issue.

[dedust]

I've been having this same issue with Sunset Valley, Riverview has been working fine so far. Sims seem to just stand around at their yards, inside their houses or on community lots in swarms, doing nothing. They usually fail work and school, have the Stir Crazy moodlet (which happens even when they're not home), and all critical motives at -100. Then they expire and die. Which results in mass mourning, and other sims dropping all queued actions.

They can be saved from death with resetsim, though this results in other sims mourning like crazy whenever they see the 'saved' sim. Which is sort of annoying, as they have a habit of dying outside job related rabbitholes, which then leads to working sims dropping queues before, during and after work. So they have to be constantly watched over.

I believe it means the neighbourhood has become somehow corrupted, and Sims stand around for hours before taking any action.

[radiophonic]

I've only seen starvation with sims addicted to activities such as the Sim Fu dummy. Had three or four in a row die in China but no biggie really, they get replaced. It does however, seem like the more populated the hood, the more likely you'll have unemployment/death issues. My previous neighbourhood got way too big for itself and mass unemployment ensued. It seems likely that the mortality rate would/should increase in the case of a packed city but the consequences make fun factor of the game drop sharply. Nobody wants to have to babysit 5+ playable homes to make sure sims are going to work and not starving while staring at their gardens.

On the other hand, my legacy lot is on generation four and I'm wishing the population of old, crusty sims would die. I have maids from the first generation still hobbling around town and presumably still living in the NPC "house". Pretty annoying really. I'd love to kill them off by hand but would rather not increase the likelihood of my legacy game going BOOM.

TLDR right? Anyway, from what I can tell from playing a few different worlds so far is that the more packed it is with playable homes, the more likely it is for something to go wrong such as mass starvation.

[J. M. Pescado]

Sim death issues are caused by essentially overloading your game with more people than it can support, resulting in greater and greater lags between when they are processed. After a certain point, sims can go so long between action cycles that they can no longer do enough to keep themselves alive.

[The_Goddess]

Sim death issues are caused by essentially overloading your game with more people than it can support, resulting in greater and greater lags between when they are processed. After a certain point, sims can go so long between action cycles that they can no longer do enough to keep themselves alive.

Do you have a recommended population amount or is it more subjective to the type of computer you are running the game on? 

[dedust]

So, would the problem go away if the population shrinks? I noticed I had about 20 families of my own in the problem neighbourhood, and some townie families and npcs on top of that. 

[inktomi]

I've been running into this problem with NPC sims both in China and Egypt, sometimes in the middle of reporting to them for an adventure. I've been playing with a brand new Twinbrook, and only had one sim on vacation at the time, so if it's a matter of overpopulation, the cap is set exceedingly low.

[J. M. Pescado]

Do you have a recommended population amount or is it more subjective to the type of computer you are running the game on? 

Depends on your computer. My computer is Awesome, so I never see this.

[KingSaverio]

I have read the posts in this section, and I didnt notice this weird problem till i checked on one of my households and the wife was starving to death as well as other sims in the neighborhood, :/

[Motoki]

So then it looks this is an issue caused by Awesome Story Mode. The Twallan Story Mode (and I think EAxis?) have provisions to remove sims from town either by emigration or death should the neighborhood become too full to the point where it taxes the system too much.

I know the idea with population control in Awesome Story is that you do a bunch of manual fiddling and go in and delete a bunch of cribs from houses so they don't reproduce, but that still takes a long time to bring the population down. In the meantime, apparently, sims will starve under such conditions forcing a more immediate decrease in population.

[GnatGoSplat]

I had this problem in Riverview pre Ambitions, exactly as dedust described, with AM at the time.  It's very likely my Riverview was grossly overpopulated considering my save folder was >500MB.

However, after installing Ambitions and playing an un-awesome Twinbrook, as soon as the game is loaded with AM installed, at least 8-sims instantly dropped dead of starvation at the perpetual celebration party in front of Town Hall.  I pulled AM and reloaded the exact same save - not a single one of them croaked.  I don't know if my computer's un-awesomeness would cause such different behavior with and without AM installed.
This also occurred with Awesome Story disabled, so I don't think Awesome Story itself is the reason.

[Motoki]

Well I think the starvation from the cult-like mass swarm at City Hall and the starvation of random seems around the town are two different issues though.

For some reason, they get transfixed on that damned awards ceremony to the point where they won't do anything else, even eat or go to the bathroom.

[GnatGoSplat]

That's true, the situations are probably different.  However, it seems like AM might remove some kind of artificial protection from death that an un-awesome game seems to have.  With an un-awesome game, the mass swarm at City Hall seems completely immune to death when they should have died of starvation long ago.

[The_Goddess]

Do you have a recommended population amount or is it more subjective to the type of computer you are running the game on? 

Depends on your computer. My computer is Awesome, so I never see this.

This is good news, I've added 3 neighborhoods to my world and was worried after hearing all the complaints.  I will allow my little Sims to continue to spawn like mad and fill my town.

[J. M. Pescado]

So then it looks this is an issue caused by Awesome Story Mode. The Twallan Story Mode (and I think EAxis?) have provisions to remove sims from town either by emigration or death should the neighborhood become too full to the point where it taxes the system too much.

I know the idea with population control in Awesome Story is that you do a bunch of manual fiddling and go in and delete a bunch of cribs from houses so they don't reproduce, but that still takes a long time to bring the population down. In the meantime, apparently, sims will starve under such conditions forcing a more immediate decrease in population.

See? We have a system, too. Only you SEE it happen, as opposed to having sims that seem perfectly alive to me suddenly die.

[vorpal]

I don't think that overpopulation is the ONLY reason for Sims starving to death because in several past games (patch level 1.8 or 1.10, can't remember, and onwards) I had this happen already in week one, both in Riverview and in Sunset Valley, and neither China nor Egypt are overpopulated and these are the two vacation spots where I saw this most often. In China it was always at the Academy and caused by the training dummy and in Egypt at the Market and possibly related to the snake charming basket.
I tend to believe, however, that this issue is somehow triggered by using game altering mods. In all of the games that I mentioned twoftmama's autonomous teen woohoo mod was installed and after I had taken that out the death rate decreased rapidly. Since then I've had it only happen once. I still do have that increasing decay of motive sustenance the farther I advance in my game. I am currently on week 9 in Twinbrook and almost every Sim has to be pushed to go to work by AM, many of the children miss school and when I go downtown they stand around complaining about some motive need but doing naught against it. One of my neighbours is also constantly passing out because of tiredness (I can hear her hitting the floor). She, btw, is one of those constant romancers. When I switch to one of those Sims that has to be pushed to work twice or thrice I can see that its needs are in the deep reds - tired, hungry and unwashed. The current population is 77 residents with only 4 new pollinations and I had entered the neighbourhood with only one sim, not a whole family.
So, to cut a long story short, could it be that the reason for this are major changes in the autonomy system that causes weaker systems than the awesome ones to just buckle?

[J. M. Pescado]

Possibly. I am looking into this, but in some neighborhoods on the computers of the less awesome, I've noticed that sometimes sim-autonomy hasn't fired for hours.