"No action is available" On Visiting Sim... What Tha?

[SimsDiva]

Background story of how this problem came to be (complete with extraneous information LOL):

I moved a CAS Sim. Mitch Jenkins, into his house, and part of the welcome wagon was a townie named Amber Hiatt.  They got aquainted, then I got rid of everyone so I could summon Brandi Broke.  (Got tired of a potential mate to walk by, so I made Mitch especially for her.)  I used the Quick Relations thing from Insimenator to build their relationship up to mutual crush, sent her home.  After two (?) days of him going to work in his medical career, I wanted him to get another promotion.  He needed one more friend, so I used Quick Relations again, this time to be mutual friends with Amber.  She was not on the lot at the time, and Mitch was just about to enter the car to go to work.  (I paused the game so I could get it done before he left.)  But there was no increase in relationship status.  Tried again, and again nothing happened.  So I figured maybe it was just a lag, and let the game run.  She never changed to a friend, and naturally, Mitch didn't get the promotion that day.

So I decided to try it again, but this time I wasn't able to select any options.  I figured I must need to bring her to the lot in order for it to work, so I invited her over.  On the upside, I *was* able to get her status changed to a friend once she got there, but that's all I could do.  I wasn't able to greet her.  Every time I tried to click on her, I got the "no action is available" message.  Since I didn't greet her, she wouldn't talk to me, and finally left.

I brought her back the next Sim day, still determined to figure it out, and again I wasn't able to interact with her.  Not good, considering 3 of his wants involved interactions with Amber!  So I pulled out Insimenator, made her selectable, and had her talk to him, etc. to fulfill his wants.  Switched to Mitch, hoping I'd be able to click on Amber now that she had talked to him... no dice.  I finally got disgusted with the whole thing and made them mutual strangers and discarded the thumbnails.

Did I inadvertently cause this crap to happen by trying to make them mutual friends while she wasn't there, and/or because he was in the process of going to work?     I got rid of the issue by deleting the friendship, but it's bugs the hell out of me that I couldn't figure it out.  Anyone know why this happened?

[Tigerlilley]

No but ive had the same thing happen, but i dont use insim.  I invited sim over, couldn't click on them it was like they weren't there.  After a few sim days it kinda fixed itself... but yes it is a pain.

I may have forced a error on the sim to get her to work again... have you tried that?

[SimsDiva]

I may have forced a error on the sim to get her to work again... have you tried that?

No... I don't know how to do that.  How do you force an error?

[kuronue]

I may have forced a error on the sim to get her to work again... have you tried that?

No... I don't know how to do that.  How do you force an error?

You turn on testingcheats (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true) and shift-click the sim, it should have the option to Force Error (might be on a "more..." screen)

[LFox]

I had a similiar problem but not exactly the same.  Every action i queued to do with a certain sim immediately dropped from the queue.  The bugged sim could interact with everyone as per normal but any action from another sim to her dropped out of queue.  I fixed it by saving my game deleting her and saving then reentering the lot.  As Tigerlilley said force error may work, you need to turn on the testing cheats to get the option then shift click the sim.

[SimsDiva]

Got it!  I hope it never happens again, but if it does, hopefully that will fix it.

[V]

The only time I have seen "No action available" when I clicked on a sim was when David Thompson (the school bus driver, as it turns out) came around as a walk-by. I made the mistake of grabbing him with InSim's "Family Tree" and making him part of the family. He was then stuck in Brandi's family as someone who could interact with anybody, but nobody could interact with him.

Is Amber, by chance, the car pool girl or some other rarely seen NPC?

[LFox]

The only time I have seen "No action available" when I clicked on a sim was when David Thompson (the school bus driver, as it turns out) came around as a walk-by. I made the mistake of grabbing him with InSim's "Family Tree" and making him part of the family. He was then stuck in Brandi's family as someone who could interact with anybody, but nobody could interact with him.

Is Amber, by chance, the car pool girl or some other rarely seen NPC?

Now that i didn't think of with the OFB perk you can call even the carpool drivers but you can't interact with them at all when they arrive still i somehow doubt it was a carpool person.

I've never seen the carpool people do a walk by though.

[jrd]

All Sims with character data can do a walkby, including the uninteractable drivers, social workers, repomen. Excluding the special NPCs, the only Sims I've never seen walk by are the social bunnies.

[C.S.]

Did I inadvertently cause this crap to happen by trying to make them mutual friends while she wasn't there, and/or because he was in the process of going to work?

The first 3 carpool drivers spawned are always Amber Hiatt, Celeste Rossi and David Thompson. Same names, same faces every time I re-install or re-start a neighbourhood. Your game is messed up because carpool drivers can't be interacted with in the first place and making your playable sims acquainted with them is a bad thing AFAIK.

I've never come across carpool drivers doing a walk by either.

[jrd]

Curious -- that is valid if you haven't removed the templates. It is not spawning, but import from the base game folder's N001.
My drivers look and are named quite differently.

Anyway they're never supposed to be interacted with. It won't mess up your game, but the Sims won't work normally so they're best ignored. Best to clone them with SimPE as normal Sims if you want their genes!

[C.S.]

Anyway they're never supposed to be interacted with. It won't mess up your game, but the Sims won't work normally so they're best ignored.

One-sided interaction is messed up IMHO. Pisses me off just to see them appear in the phone book with one of the OFB perks where a business owner can call anyone in a neighbourhood.

[miramis]

That ticked me off too, what was the sense in doing that?  I told them so in a bug report too, but they have never done anything about it.  The dev responsible for that should be ashamed of him/herself for handling it in such a lazy way.  I know nothing about programming, but even I can tell that!  I mean really, what is the point in them giving a 'perk' to make us know everyone, only we can't interact with them.  I could do the same thing with debug and the mailbox for goodness sake.

[SimsDiva]

Did I inadvertently cause this crap to happen by trying to make them mutual friends while she wasn't there, and/or because he was in the process of going to work?

The first 3 carpool drivers spawned are always Amber Hiatt, Celeste Rossi and David Thompson. Same names, same faces every time I re-install or re-start a neighbourhood. Your game is messed up because carpool drivers can't be interacted with in the first place and making your playable sims acquainted with them is a bad thing AFAIK.

I've never come across carpool drivers doing a walk by either.

Mystery solved!  Thanks Curious.    I wonder how it is that a carpool driver was part of the welcome wagon?  I just assumed they were all neighbors as usual.

In any case... sounds like it was a good thing I deleted her thumbnail from his relationships panel and got rid of the friendship.