More Awesome Than You!

Ok so I had to dump my whole game and reinstall everything and I'm wondering what is the optimal amount of sims/families to start with initially?  No more than x but at least y, as guidance is what I'm looking for.  I'm playing Pleasantview for now and am going to install Uni, NL, OFB, Pets.

Thanks!

I say start with whatever amount you want.  In my case i started with 1 man and spanned the family out to 9-10 generations through kids i now have about 5 main houses from the same family line which include white people, black people, aliens and a vampire.

Somebody recomended starting with 40 families, and that works quite well for me, keeps the gene pool diverse

I'm guessing that would be for neighbourhoods that have no townies?  Either way i think it'd be hell to keep 40 families in time sync.  I keep mine all in sync and i already find it a bit annoying that i can't just play 15+ days on a family.

Personally, I started out with only two Sims, and add Sims as needed, but if you want the smallest amount of families to start out with initially, I'd go with four, which is enough to keep things from getting incestuous.

I have done the no-townie hacks, but now I like Townie Roulette. Will the offspring end up startlingly attactive, or unspeakably hideous? Only the Gods of Sim-genetics can say.

Plus, I am unspeakably lazy when it comes to how I sim.

I love the split in attitudes among players. Some people are like, "Townies, meh," while others are all, "UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN!" It's like most of the game is populated with a leperous underclass.

Well, for good reason. Have you seen them? Besides, I don't particularly like how the townies seem to have no relatives and seemingly crawled out of the swamp. Actually, if you could point me in the nearest direction of said no-townie hacks, I'd be grateful.

Check the Armory.

Personally i like townies but i don't like UGLY townies, i carefully screen all my sims and any deemed too ugly get killed or don't get a chance to produce offspring.  I got a horde of ugly townies that i have no idea what i'm gonna do with, i'll probably marry em off to sims that won't have kids or kill them that's the only thing i can see that will end up happening.

All that offers is a fix for townie/npc move-in amnesia. I have a hack that keeps them from respawning, I believe, and may just kill them all off when I have enough playable Sims in my neighborhood. That and I still don't want freaky people who seemingly just converged in a swamp screwing up family trees.

My favorite hood ever I started emtpy to do the 10 kid challenge. I was just going to delete the whole hood afterwards. Instead it became the only hood I play. I just fell in love with each of those 10 kids and had to run them through college, get them married, etc. I named them alphabetically, and as other families have joined I've continued so I can keep them in sync. Currently I have A through K houses.

http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/ffs/pets/hacks (or the name of your last expansion pack instead of pets)

Also get Nailati's face templates as they come out.  No more ugly townies!

How many families you start with would depend on whether you want the neighborhood to be self-sufficient or dependent on townie DNA. I don't like breeding with townies/NPCs, so I always start with enough sims to make it possible to breed for at least 5 generations before any sim runs out of potential mates because everyone is related.

If you start with 3 couples, you will not get past the second generation before you need to add townie DNA to the mix. If you start with 4 couples, you can get up a third generation. This is a simple calculation:

Generation 1 - 3 couples
SimA+SimB=SimAB
SimC+SimD=SimCD
SimE+SimF=SimEF

Generation 2
SimAB+SimCD
SimAB+SimEF
SimCD+SimEF

Generation 3
NONE POSSIBLE

I'm probably between the two. I see them as an underclass, but the aversion to them stems more from the fact that the options are either to have them continue to spawn ad-infinitum, or eventually wipe out them out of existence, and neither option is entirely satisfactory.

When starting a new 'hood I tend to use Prosperity Challenge rules to determine how many families I have, and how many sims are in each of those families.

Basically its just rolling a die.  Roll it to see how many families you have.  Then roll the die again for each family to see how many sims in the family.  Then for each sim roll for their age, gender, aspiration, etc.

I don't play the hood as a Prosperity Challenge, I just use this at the set up stage.  I have no objection to my sims marrying townies/dormies/downtownies or most of the NPCs, as their existence means I have sufficient characters in the game for my sims to interact with.

I start with three families but as I have no objection to my sims pairing up with townies, it doesn't limit the gene pool. I've customised the townies to look how I want. My problem is I tend to lose interest once the families are well off, I prefer to play starter families, so I usually add one or two along the way. Then the second generation starts marrying out and before I know it I have ten families to play and sync.  ::)

I've got over starting offspring from babies though, I usually create the founder families with children or teens rather than babies or toddlers.

ETA: Rolling the die sounds like a good way to randomise, might try that.

Well I don't play without townies, but I dont let my playables breed with them.

I am not understanding - how can you choose to not play with townies?  Don't they just show up?

The last game that now I have to dump I started with 18 sims/families and it was a chore to have them all synced.  I never really got to play past two sim days because I wanted them all to be moved in, employed and the ones I wanted to be, knocked up (not with each other but with either NPCs or townies since I'm curious as to what would come out) before really starting.  Can you really not play with townies?

It's possible to make a neighbourhood without townies, including adding downtown, uni, etc without adding downtownies and dormies.  There's a thread over in Peasantry that gives more information on how to create a neighbourhood without getting the Pleasantview standard townies and another thread containing blank subhoods (i.e. downtown, bluewater, the unis all without non-playable characters).  If you add in Pescados no regen hacks, then you never have townies, downtownies or dormies in your game at all.

Personally I like townies (just not the Maxis default ones).  They're good for my sims' businesses.

I like some of the townies and other ones I don't even let my sims associate with. But lately I have been playing a neighborhood where all the townies were ejected before I moved anyone in. I like having all new townies to deal wtih, but I miss a few of my old favorites. It is a shame that the character files are not given character names & pictures so you could pick and choose which townies you dump and which you keep.

I'm sure I will have tomatoes thrown at me until I flee, but I would actually miss some of those dumbasses. Benjamin Long is a homewrecker (he only goes for men, though). Everyone brings Goopy home from work and then takes turns poking and jeering at him.

If it wasn't for townies, I wouldn't be able to let anything bad happen to my sims. I can't experiment on Sims I've created myself and have gotten attached to. Who would be my punching bag?

Waitaminit...*runs off to download Pescado*

Apart from the very first hood I had, (which I played for months, then it blew up), I have never managed to get a hood past 30 simdays. The second generation is usually about to have kids when it either blows up or I move to a new hood where I've been tinkering with something else.

I don't mind townies, and some of them do make decent looking kids.  The only thing that gets me after a while is the townies never growing up -- it gets silly when three generations have the same teen as their first kiss.  ::)  But our own Syberspunk has fixed that with his 'Grow up townies' hack (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4842.0.html), so now I have a way to age the ones I want to and eventually have new townies come up behind them.

Of the two hoods I actually play, one blew up in the 2nd generation, so I never really saw townie genetics. Although, I keep them there anyway.

I forgot about this! I should use this. It sounds fun.

I still play one that I started when Uni was released. Some of those families are 14 or 15 (maybe even 16 by now... haven't really kept track lately) generations. I play it at least three or four hours a week, and it's one of my favorites.

I haven't really had that many neighborhoods literally blow up on me. A couple have suffered the inexplicable "vanished from screen" glitch and couldn't be fixed. Another one blew up due to rampant overpopulation before I knew that too many sims was really bad and didn't yet know how to clean it up. Other than that, any neighborhood I've wanted to last, has lasted. I do regularly abandon neighborhoods though. I get bored and just delete them and start new ones. But that isn't the same as a neighborhood inexplicably blowing up soon after being started.

This sounds interesting.  Went to the thread but it doesn't say it works with pets.  Does anyone know if that's just an oversight, or does it still not work for pets?

It's awesome.  I have my kids ask their best Townie kid friend to Grow Up at their teen birthday party.  I figure they'll go to Uni together eventually...

I don't have any problem at all allowing my playables to breed with any townies, ugly or otherwise.

If playables get two or three bolts with an ugly townie (or playable sim for that matter) then so be it, I let them marry have kids, the whole thing.

The way I played my old hood was to only let the good looking sims breed and yeah, it became boring  having to hand pick who was going to marry who rather than let them 'pick' for themselves. A 'beautiful' hood was a a bit of a yawn.

Imo, having all types in the hood makes for a far more interesting and enjoyable game.

I don't mind townies existing in the neighborhood, especially since I spent hours creating my own facial templates replacements, but the more you breed with townies the larger the neighborhood gets. For me, they're there to be customers and friends and lovers. That's it. Of course, every once in a while the game manages to generate a particularly good combo of looks, skills, and personality, and then I will make an exception.

I only allow three bolt couples to marry, and so far they've all been townies. Not such a bad thing, I switch out template sets from time to time for variety, and the truly hideous are moved in as nannies with no breeding potential. Townies that are only moderately unattractive are fair game. Still, it's interesting how much better most of the original townies look if you take the time to make them over.

Yes, it works fine with pets.  According to this thread here, no update was needed: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5949.0.html

I keep wondering why none of the various modders/hackers have ever come up with a program that has a similar function to SimEnhancer when it comes to replacing townies. I really missed this program when it wasn't updated for such a long time.
I do like the townies in my game, I just don't like that some of them are such monstrosities. I usually try to keep the general style of any townie I want to replace, then I create  replacements in body shop and turn them into a family, which I keep in the family bin. Afterwards I clone whatever feature I want (usually, just the looks and the DNA) onto the existing townie with SimEnhancer and delete the family from the bin.
They keep all their relationships, their aspiration points, their job. They are just like before (unless I don't want that), only that they look much better than before and there will be no surprise when they have offspring.