Comminity Lot's facts and tips

[kutto]

Depends on a lot of things. In a vanilla game, I have no idea. With Awesomemod, if you have a lot of people set to Task: Work and School, most people will be at the Library. Without No Crowd Swarm on, the most crowded place will be wherever you are presently.

[J. M. Pescado]

If you don't turn nostalkers on, you can watch them creepily stalk you like a band of Mossad agents everywhere you go, which is simultaneously aggravating and creepy, especially when you try to go someplace else to escape them, only to have them stalk you to a formerly empty lot.

[blackcat]

Big park is the best. Without nostalkers you will get 15 sims there from 10 to 18 with active sim present. The next one is a pool with 12 people at 14:00, but I don't think they are accessible while swimming. Library will get you 10 from 12 to 14, and at the beach venue there will be 10 sims from 14 to 15. All these numbers are will the active sim present and with nostalkers off.

You can also adjust these numbers for your suiting if you know XML editing. All the necessary files are attached to the original post.

[cwurts]

What about rabbitholes?  What effect to they have on community lot traffic?  My sims are driving me crazy with going to Central Park, which has 6-8 rabbitholes and about 20-40 sims at a time; the police station with a cafe, internet cafe, gym, and hotel, has about 6-7 at a time; and my eating place/gym/pool/library only ever gets two people, and always for the gym.  I am adding a diner right now to the eating area, just to see if that improves traffic to the lot.

[blackcat]

I think that each rabbithole has a certain radius which specifies the area around them that belongs to that building, like a lot within a lot. Within that area they attract the number of sims that they are supposed to attract based on their properties in the attached XML file. Thus by placing several rabbit holes on one lot you will see many sims there at once that are actually divided into groups, and each group belongs to a specific rabbithole. For example: RH A attracts 5 sims during afternoon hours, and RH B 7. By having these two building on the same lot you will have 12 sims on it in afternoon ( i think that this will be true even if the radius's will overlap). So it might not be such a good idea to cram a lot of buildings on the same lot as the traffic will be pretty severe. All this is with nostalkers off. I don't know how the game will behave with it on.

[cwurts]

Does this include your playable sims?  I'm still not sure how this works.  Does the rabbithole actually pull sims to it's lot every day, or does it just supply a score that increases the chance that sims will choose to go there.  I use awesomeMod, and was under the impression that they controlled their own lives, and also, I have no NPCs in my neighborhood (at least very few).

[J. M. Pescado]

Rabbitholes advertise "meta-autonomy" actions which will cause sims to visit them independently of anything else on the lot, so merely sticking a rabbithole on a lot attracts visitors to use it at random.

[cwurts]

I downloaded the venue.rar attached to this thread and altered the XML tuning.  My intent was to stop my sims from going to the graveyard and other community lots by changing all the values to zero.  I put the new XML file in the mods/packages folder, but there have been no changes in-game.  Is there something I am doing wrong with the file, or is there something else I should be changing to get the desired results?

[blackcat]

If your game is patched you should have community lot type "no visitors". Otherwise, dunno.

[cwurts]

changing lot type to "no visitors" required me to delete the mausoleum first.  The strange part is every community lot on that street was also listed as a graveyard, but those did not require me to delete anything.  I am fine with deleting the mausoleum, but I am not fine with deleting the stadium, gym, theater, or whatever other things have to be deleted to stop this from happening at other times of day.  I was hoping for an XML solution.

[blackcat]

Did you check what happens if you change lot type to "no visitors", but leave the mausoleum? I think that maybe this leads to only those that work there still come onto the lot.

[cwurts]

I changed all my lots to "no visitors".  I haven't received visitors to the graveyard since, but they do still go to the hospital.  Apparently I can't stop visitors to workplace lots without deleting the workplace building.  Is the .rar on this thread intended to be a mod?  If so, I cannot get it to work, and I wonder if I am doing it correctly.

[blackcat]

No, those are XML files. To make a mod you need to package them, after you made the changes. s3pe is used, generally.

[cwurts]

Yes, I figured it out.  I think there is something new with the latest patch that lets you edit them right in s3pe.  I was able to make changes right in the gameplaydata file and save them.  I changed values in the visitrabbithole and visitrabbitholewith tunings and they took.  I just wonder if it now works that way in-game.

[blackcat]

That is the future of s3pe and has nothing to do with EP. I don't think, that changing the gameplaydata file and then saving was such a good idea. It will be better to save just those xml files you changed in a seperate package file. I also change values in Venues xml and this worked for me before,. Didn't check it since then. I'll see if it is still true.

I changed all my lots to "no visitors".  I haven't received visitors to the graveyard since, but they do still go to the hospital.  Apparently I can't stop visitors to workplace lots without deleting the workplace building.  Is the .rar on this thread intended to be a mod?  If so, I cannot get it to work, and I wonder if I am doing it correctly.

The mausoleum is also a workplace, was it still on the graveyard when visiting stoped?

[cwurts]

I haven't confirmed that it's stopped - it just hasn't happened in the amount of time I've played since changing it.  Yes I left the mausoleum in.

[Claeric]

Changing and saving the gameplaydata file is a HORRIBLE idea. Because, well, next patch? Sorry, you're screwed.

Anyway, I had no idea there were definitions for the number of sims on each type of lot. Does it always pull the number set, or is that just a maximum? It'd be nice if the game tried to get a set number of sims on any given lot. I don't like going to the library and being alone, 3 or 4 sims sounds reasonable. Likewise 50 sims showing up at the diner is ridiculous.

[cwurts]

For each type of lot, there is number of sims wanted for each hour of the day.  I don't know if it actually pulls all that is needed every time.