More Awesome Than You!

I've just started playing with Freetime installed and there seems to be a lot more fighting than before. I've been trying out the new 'hood that came with it as it was already filled with a selection of random sims to torture. Wherever my test sim went there seemed to be other sims fighting and as soon as she started spawning her kids started fights as well. Has something changed? Or is it just a random clashing of sim personalities?

I was pretty sure that I'd cleaned out all my neighbourhood templates prior to play but still seem to have ended up with a selection of townies in addition to the resident sims. Did I do something wrong? Or does the game insist on spawning some for the supplied 'hoods upon first installing?

I also seem to have a number of stray townies that are clogging up my MATY hood.  Quite a number seem rather immune to being killed off as well.  I thought I had my clean templates up to date as well, but perhaps I missed something.

As to fighting, I always seem to have some townies fighting (more as things go along).  I thought it was just normal.  If you have "enemiesaccumulate" loaded, bad feelings will continue to increase, thus improving the likelihood of fights.

Maybe those stray townies are the hobby leaders? My hood has been townie-free for a long time (I always used clean templates), but since installing FT I apparently have to live with those 12 random strangers. Or however many they are. I think I heard that they respawn, so there's no use in throwing a satellite on them ..

Enemies Accumulate has no effect on townie fights because townies do not have relationship decay towards each other, since only relationships with sims you currently are playing decay. Townies, particularly Hobby Mavens, fight because unlike regular townies, Hobby Mavens do not have any preexisting friendships with each other, and thus their relationships are pretty much entirely decided by initial encounter, which is guided by "Lot Tone".

Hold on. That's the first time I've seen the phrase "Lot Tone", and seems to be the only use of the phrase (in relation to the Sims) on MATY or anywhere else. I understand what it means, but what are the technical details? What governs Lot Tone? Does placing specific Maxis items on a lot determine what kind of autonomous townie interactions occur? Or is it just something general, like Environment score, or is it randomly determined?

I *have* noticed that I tend to get autonomous fighting between townies or uncontrolled playables on community lots that aren't dance clubs or restaurants, but haven't seen any other pattern. If I had to guess, I'd say that if an object with strong advertisement is on the lot, it sets the lot tone, but if there are only low-advertising objects that meet the same needs, autonomous social interactions will dominate, and those frequently produce negative relationships between autonomous strangers. Is that correct?