Controlling Your Population - Questions on Deleting Sims

[Orikes]

My original neighborhood died in a BFBVFS because I did two Very Bad Things. The first was unwittingly porting in a house that actually had a family in it. So, they had memories of sims that no longer existed. The second was deleting the duplicates and then eventually deleting the unwanted sims. Not long after that, my sims faces started disappearing and things just got ugly.

Now, my question is, is there any safe way to deal with unwanted sims to keep the population down. I've heard you can't have more than 900 character files in the neighborhood.

Can you delete sims from the simbin if they were created but never actually placed in the neighborhood?
Can you delete the character file if the sim is dead?
What happens if you reach the population limit of a neighborhood?

[SaraMK]

You can have more than 900 sims without necessarily having problems, but it is not recommended. Too many sims can cause problems such as the jump bug and general slowdown, although hacks can help control those problems even after they start. Extra large numbers of sims are also associated with a bug where infants vanish from the game and this is generally a BFBVFS with no cure.

No, do not delete sims from the sims bin. This does not fully delete the sim, junk is left over. Plus, sims in the bin wander the neighborhood. They show up as walk-bys on home lots and as visitors on community lots. And we all know what happens when you delete sims that know other sims.

No, you can't delete the character file if the sim is dead. This would result in a BFBVFS, since all the sims who have any memories (including gossip, which may still be passed around several generations after the sim's death) of the dead sim would be left with corrupted memories. Plus, you would be left with junk in the form of dangling SWAFs. SWAFs are Wants and Fears. When a new sim is spawned (such as a new baby being born), they get the deleted sim's SWAFs and you get a BFBVFS.



This question has been asked a million times, so you might want to search for more details.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4066.0.html

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,45.0.html



To keep your sim population down, it helps to download all the anti-spawning hacks JM has conveniently made. You need notownieregen, nossrespawn, and the new anti-NPC hack, which is new and found here: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5314.0.html

[jsalemi]

You can have more than 900 sims without necessarily having problems, but it is not recommended. Too many sims can cause problems such as the jump bug and general slowdown, although hacks can help control those problems even after they start. Extra large numbers of sims are also associated with a bug where infants vanish from the game and this is generally a BFBVFS with no cure.

I'm pretty sure, from older discussions here, that the greater-than-900 problem pretty much went way with the release of NL (and beyond), and that the new limit is unknown but very very high, and probably unreachable for most of us.  My Pleasantview is in its 4th generation and already over 700 character files, even with the various 'noregen' hacks in. No jump bugs or slowdowns in sight. And there are others here whose hoods are way beyond that in generations and number of character files with no problems.

Otherwise yes, deleting sims from the bin, or deleting character files of dead sims is a BFBVFS waiting to happen.

[Theo]

joe, I'm just curious: can you open your neighborhood file, and tell how many 3IDR resources are listed?

My neighborhood has 496 total characters (~200 playables), and the 3IDR resources never stop inflating in numbers, even when no new sims are born (a seldom occurring event, I concede). Just now it reached over 10000 3IDR files.

[Orikes]

Well, since I have all the expansions, I guess it's not something I need to worry about, provided I install the no-townie-regen hacks, which I hadn't put in yet.

I also know to never delete a sim, and knowing is half the battle.





Yo Joe!

[Theo]

I also know to never delete a sim, and knowing is half the battle.

Before I knew it, I had "inadvertently" deleted all the Bluewater characters...
Before that it was the freakey dead family in Downtown...
And before that were all the Flamencos Caliente, Newbies, et al...

Now my sims lost all their recessive genes, and occasionally lose some of their want slots
At least they have a good reason to go on outings.

[jsalemi]

joe, I'm just curious: can you open your neighborhood file, and tell how many 3IDR resources are listed?

My neighborhood has 496 total characters (~200 playables), and the 3IDR resources never stop inflating in numbers, even when no new sims are born (a seldom occurring event, I concede). Just now it reached over 10000 3IDR files.

My Pleasantview has 741 sim descriptions (about 150 playables, last I checked, 4th generation), and 5050 3IDRs. Strangetown has 454 sim descriptions (2nd generation well along) and 3201 3IDRs.  I have no idea what the relationship between the two is, but they do seem out of proportion.  Maybe a new 3IDR is created everytime a sim's thumbnail changes?

[Theo]

I think the proportion may be in the amount of clothing the sims own, as most of the 3IDR's are references to clothing packages.

If I remember correctly, in the first version of the Sims 2 if you moved a family, their wardrobe would be emptied; that was fixed afterwards, and I think these resources represent no more than the wardrobes of all the families in a neighborhood.

[jsalemi]

Yea, that makes sense. And with fortune sims always wanting to buy new clothes, it would go up faster than the # of sims.

[Theo]

Erm, I make them buy new clothes for no particular reason

But the main point is that there is the need for something that would cleanup all unwanted clothes from the sims wardrobes, now that the first patches disabled the only cleanup procedure available.

I also noticed that after deleting some clothing packages that were in use by sims, the 3IDR resource count lowers, so I'll try disabling all clothing packages and see if that helps 

[J. M. Pescado]

The 3IDR count is largely harmless. Although it would be nice to have a Salvation Army Dumpster.

[moonluck]

Does any one know the sim count becfor your neighborhood dies? Pesscado said a long time ago that it was 900 or something. I hearf it changed after OfB. What is the new number?

[jsalemi]

Does any one know the sim count becfor your neighborhood dies? Pesscado said a long time ago that it was 900 or something. I hearf it changed after OfB. What is the new number?

I think it actually changed with NL -- the new number is undetermined, but probably very high as I recall from discussions here.  I remember numbers in the 5 - 10k range being bandied about. 

[J. M. Pescado]

Now my sims lost all their recessive genes, and occasionally lose some of their want slots
At least they have a good reason to go on outings.

Missing recessives is a problem I've run into a few times, although I'm uncertain what exactly triggers it. It's possible to "fix" the lost recessive if you know exactly when it happened and have a backup by reimporting the old SimDNAs from the backup hood, overwriting the broken ones. It's uncertain what causes them to become corrupted in the first place, though. What did you do that apparently triggered this?

[Theo]

Empirical knowledge may lead to the wrong conclusions, but I think the recessive genes are lost when you delete a SDNA resource from the neighborhood file.

I have enumerated the deletion steps here.

The effect is not immediate: only when you load a lot do the sims in there lose their recessive data, which is confirmed afterwards by inspecting the neighborhood file. Sims that have not been loaded still have their genes intact.

There were occasions where I didn't delete the SDNA resource of the target sim, and none of this happened.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's the interesting conclusion I came up with also. I would theorize that deleting the SDNA is probably bad, and leaving it there seems harmless if you intend to reclaim the slot, since it will be overwritten.