Deleting Maxis-made Sims from the bin

[staroverthebay]

Okay, I just created a brand-new 'hood, and I want to delete the Maxis-premade sims (The Roselands and the Critturs) from my Sim bin so that I don't have to deal with them. I haven't created any sims in CAS yet, though I did load a University for the 'hood. Thus, I haven't played any lots yet. So no relationships in the hood yet, that i know of at least.

Can I just delete those two "families" from the Sim Bin in Neighborhood View? Is this okay to do or will it cause a BFBVFS and a borking of borkings?

[Flamingo]

No relationships, no problem.

[Tigerlilley]

so if the sims in the sim bin have never been touched, theyre ok to delete the easy way?
Excellent.

[Moa]

I deleted Chester Gieke unplayed from the bin, only to discover later that he had dead relatives. No problems yet, but I expect it probably added a straw to the neighborhood's back. (I've got a lot of trash files from bad practices back when I was naive and thought that just because you could transfer binned families from one neighborhood to another within the game, this was a safe practice.)

Cyd, Porthos, and the Critturs, on the other hand, appear to have no dead relatives.

[Cons]

I wonder what happens if you delete them if you have them in another hood? What I'm saying is I played Veronaville and used everyone from the Bin....just because I was filling up houses. Then when I went back to Pleasantville, there they were again, so I deleted them (One hood is enough). So what happens then?
Why would you want these people in 3 or 4 different hoods anyway?

[jsalemi]

Why would you want these people in 3 or 4 different hoods anyway?

See this thread on how to keep them from showing up in every hood's sim bin: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4306.0.html

In answer to your other question, the game just copies the characters to each hood from a template (see above thread).  Once they're in a hood, they're distinct and isolated from any other hood, as each hood maintains its own character files.  So Cyd in Veronaville has no relationship to the Cyd siting in the sim bin in Strangetown or Pleasantview.  They're each distinct characters.

[Sivany]

I've got a lot of trash files from bad practices back when I was naive and thought that just because you could transfer binned families from one neighborhood to another within the game, this was a safe practice.

I know this is bad practice because I've heard people talking about it on here, but I have no idea why it's bad or what problems it can cause. Can anyone tell me or point me in the direction of some info? I did it with one of my neighbourhoods back when the sims 2 first came out and now I have disappearing characters in that neighbourhood. Could this be linked?

[jsalemi]

I know this is bad practice because I've heard people talking about it on here, but I have no idea why it's bad or what problems it can cause. Can anyone tell me or point me in the direction of some info? I did it with one of my neighbourhoods back when the sims 2 first came out and now I have disappearing characters in that neighbourhood. Could this be linked?

It's bad because it leaves all kinds of dangling links to sims they knew in their original neighborhood that don't exist in the new neighborhood.  The game tries to compensate by doing strange things like creating empty character files for those now-unknown sims, or moving the link to a sim in the new hood who may not be appropriate (i.e., someone now has a dog as their grandparent). And babies take over existing character files so they have LTWs and wants and fears when they become toddlers that they shouldn't have.  It all leads to a BFBVFS.

(Search on BFBVFS for more threads on the the hazards of moving sims to a different hood.)

[Moa]

FWIW, I made those mistakes about a year and a half ago, and the neighborhood is still going strong, with few minor glitches and no major glitches (or no major glitches not caused by things like external power failures). I imported one CAS grandmother from the Strangetown neighborhood, and moved some families out just after creating them and setting them down (I'd meant them for my cartoon Townsville neighborhood).

Even so, that created about 100 empty character files. I know that at one time Sims neighborhoods would start encountering problems around the 800-900 character mark. EA upped that limit with one of the expansion packs, but even so I figure there has to still be a limit. I'm bumping up toward the 1000 Sim mark now. It would be a very good thing to clear out those empty files, but the tutorials I've seen for doing so look complicated, and because the neighborhood is currently running smoothly, I've gone with the philosophy of don't fix what isn't broken (yet).