Hacks for preventing people from following your sims home?

[Persephone]

I looked around but didn't see one, so does anyone know of a hack that stops those ugly townies from following sims home from the school bus and carpool?

-Thanks....  fee free to throw things, point, and laugh at me.

[nectere]

There isnt one for the carpool that I am aware of but TJ has a school bus mod

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php?topic=1239.0

[BlueSoup]

There are two that I know of:

NPC & Visitor Zapper

and

School Bus and Bring Home Friend Dialog

both by Twojeffs.

[Persephone]

Thanks!   I think those will do.

[gali]

If you mean - following him from Downtown - you need the Phone hack.

When you are at Downtown, and want to go home alone - select a sim, click on the phone booth, and order him "go home".
Select thus all the chosen group, until your sim is left alone. Then call a taxi.

[katemonster]

Notownieregen is my favorite Of course, you do have to kill them all before it does any good, and that's a bit of work, but then they're gone! Once and for all! Of course, this will probably be of less use to you if you have any use whatsoever for townies, but I don't, so I like it.

[ZephyrZodiac]

I don't kill off the Downtownies, they aren't so bad!  But until I learned how to get rid of them with SimPE I used to kill them!  Especially on lots with a Knowledge sim desperate to see a ghost!

[Inge]

Can't you just "End casual group" or "End date" or whatever?

[gali]

No, you can't end the date, very annoying. You can end the group, but only after the outing.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, all you need to do is to clear all visitors with Inge's shrub - if you have them on your downtown lots, you can do it BEFORE they get into the cab or the car!

[Persephone]

If you mean - following him from Downtown - you need the Phone hack.

When you are at Downtown, and want to go home alone - select a sim, click on the phone booth, and order him "go home".
Select thus all the chosen group, until your sim is left alone. Then call a taxi.

I was talking about visitors that follow your sims home from school or work.  I usually have the sim who brought them home immediatly say goodbye, but I hoped for something that would keep them from every coming home.  I think the two hacks mentioned previously will work fine. Thanks!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Yes, unfortunately, although you can stop them coming home by various means, you can't stop your sim from getting to know them and then rolling the Be Friends With ant!

[C.S.]

Yes, unfortunately, although you can stop them coming home by various means, you can't stop your sim from getting to know them and then rolling the Be Friends With ant!

Tell me about it! I used to wish there was a 'Don't bring friends' mod or something, along the lines of TJ's 'Welcome Wagon Fixes'. I didn't want to delete the entire townie/downtownie population so I kept some. I used to do this little 'cops and robbers' thing, like shoo-ing them from helping themselves to my sims' hotdogs/hamburgers on community lots (because if they weren't sitting far enough, they could strike up a conversation from the next table and my sims will get a memory of meeting and knowing them) or sitting on the same bench to drink coffee etc etc, or use the mind control mirror to grab them and make them 'Watch Clouds' or 'Star gaze' so there's no chance of them meeting my sims. But with NL, it just seems too much work . And now that they'll get to meet and know the hosts and servers, might as well let my sims befriend these townies/downtownies as well, at least they'll have a number of friends needed for their next promotion when they are made into playable characters .

[ZephyrZodiac]

The Downtownies aren't actually too bad, most of them, and you could always try them in your game as playable characters.  Too me it makes a lot more sense than that they stay forever the same age, and your sim baby grows up and makes friends with them and eventually dies, but the townies etc. go on forever - wierd!  But I do use SimPE to edit their skills and careers, I mean, there's one female, you move her into your game and all she can afford is one of the cheapest houses, but she's a Chief of Staff!  So I give them a minimum of skill points just so they can cook a meal and don't start out too far behind (although they are still ahead of CAS sims) reroll their LTWs as they are usually in the wrong career path for their aspiration anyway, and then they have to get a job in the new career, or at least start out at the bottom of the ladder!  Then, if you use Inge's teleporter shrub, and the new moveinall from MTS2, you can move the kids and teens in with them.  I also built a retirees' apartment block for the elders.

[C.S.]

Well, yes, there are a handful who looks good, but because I usually plan in my head who's gonna marry who when they grow up (I even exited and re-entered a lot during labour if the babies born were not of the sex I planned ), those that survived the deletion are made into playable characters (that's why I kept them in the first place), sometimes earlier, 'cos there's no one left who aren't related by blood, when the kids grow up. It's just, you know, I wasn't quite ready to let my sims know them yet, what with the amount of time they'll have to spend to maintain these friendships with these many townie sims. I could make my sims ignore these townies, but then they wouldn't be much different than the neighbourhood scenery - immortal . It'll be great if I could unlink or disable them or something until I'm ready to make them into playable characters, but I'm not sure if that would fubar my game files, or if it's just as simple as changing one value in SimPE .

[ZephyrZodiac]

If you unlink them, they'll leave the Garth household and be in Unknown.  What you could do, though, is turn them into babies but beware, if they are on a lot in downtown when you do it, they could still be there lying on the sidewalk when you go back.  However, they will be unplayable and incommunicado until you return them to kids, teens, adults or whatever.  (But be sure to remember what they started out as.)  You could also send all the teens direct to the Uni bin, but they could still come home on the school bus unless you just move the lot into a dorm and then leave them there.  The kids you could do the same if you first turn them into teens in SimPE, move them to the Students bin, then into a dorm  - when they will grow up in one go into YAs.  I suppose you could do the same with the adults and elders too.  They would be around Uni, of course, and walk past lots, but you could use the visitor zapper to simply ban all uninvited guests.

[C.S.]

Turn them into babies! *slaps forehead* I was rather inspired by your ingenuity and wanted to try it for myself on characters I wasn't quite ready to put into play but didn't want to get rid of, but in my impatience in bringing my sims' lives up to speed in this latest gameplay (damn the hard disk crash that couldn't wait till I got new cd-roms, I was so sure something bad's gonna happen and wanted to burn a backup on disc, which I would have done but the crash happened 6hrs before I could get my hands on a pack of shiny new plastics ),  I completely forgot about that! Argh. Too late now, as most of the townies/downtownies my sims had inadvertently met while dining out.

So what would I need to do to put them back in the Garth household if I unlink then re-link them? Note down the family instance before unlinking, then enter the family instance to put them back in the household they were originally in? Or is that not necessary if they were going to be moved into their own lots or with my sims? I've never tried messing around with Family Instances in SimPE, might just try it one of these days with a backup to find out if unlinking and re-linking characters would fubar the game files, just not feeling up to spending time testing it out for now .

[ZephyrZodiac]

I don't think it would fubar anything, and if you want to eventually put them into their own houses, then you wouldn't need to put them back into the garth household when you relink them, just use Inge's teleporter shrub and get them out of Default or Unknown (I think they lurk in one of those).

As to turning them into babies, it works with townies, for some reason, but not for dormies, SS or Downtownies, and whatever you do don't try it with a nanny!  But it's great for Burglars!  You don't get any more burglaries, and the game doesn't seem to spawn a replacement!


And why is it, you go on playing happily for months, saving backups religiously, then when you start to get careless it's like the computer knows and deliberately goes on the blink!

[C.S.]

I used to make townies into playable characters by making them temporarily selectable with the mind control mirror then have them find their own place, but it doesn't seem to work with NL anymore. A message popped up saying something like "this is the only sim living on the lot, use the move family tool in the neighbourhood view!" Just as well, as these (down/)townies sometimes comes with goodies in their inventory so propose move-in might actually be more profitable .

Thanks, I'll be sure to remember turning dormies, SS, downtownies and nannies into babies doesn't work. I've been able to avoid hiring/spawning a nanny so far, none exists in my game. I actually don't mind burglars, but the only burglary I've ever had happen without shift-clicking on the mailbox was the one that was programmed to happen in the Caliente house.

[Brynne]

As to turning them into babies, it works with townies, for some reason, but not for dormies, SS or Downtownies, and whatever you do don't try it with a nanny! 

Okay, I gotta ask: what happens when you turn a nanny into a baby? 

[BlueSoup]

Big Fiery Ball Visible From Space?

[Brynne]

Or a baby nanny that refuses to change her own diaper...

[BlueSoup]

Insists on waking herself up to be held.  Then obsessively cleaning the toilet (at least they seem to in my game).

[C.S.]

As to turning them into babies, it works with townies, for some reason, but not for dormies, SS or Downtownies, and whatever you do don't try it with a nanny! 

Okay, I gotta ask: what happens when you turn a nanny into a baby? 

Probably new ones show up one after another and keep on spawning and spawning and spawning...

Insists on waking herself up to be held.  Then obsessively cleaning the toilet (at least they seem to in my game).

Mine swims in the pool a lot. Or put something in the oven to be cooked then wander off to do something else.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Curious, you're absolutely right - nannyspam!

If you move two downtownies into the lot, one of them can move out.  As long as two members of the Garth household are there, it works fine.  Just means you end up with one left minding the kids.  But, if you move the kids out with the new moveinall, then the last sim in garth can be moved out the same way.  (There's a version where you don't have to get them to be best friends or near it first. As long as they have a plus relationship, it seems to work fine.)