How Can I Get Rid of Unplayed Excess Sims?

[Maria]

Pets and Seasons together added 90 extra character, including 54 strays!  I've tried so hard to keep my neighborhood under 500, and I had all the noregen hacks installed, but suddenly I had 90 ugly useless Maxis sims and their malformed pets clogging my favorite neighborhood.  I was so angry that I deleted a lot of the new character files directly from the Characters directory.  I kept the new cops, obedience trainers, and 3 of the 8 garden club members.  I deleted the Crittur, Ottomas, Ramaswami, and Roseland families.  There were three families of strays (all with the household name Smith), so I kept one dog from each family.  I never played any of these characters.  In fact, I installed the two packs, opened the neighborhood once, and then closed it and went on my deleting spree.  So nobody met these new characters and I thought there wouldn't be any memories to delete.

After that, of course, that neighborhood won't load any more *rolls eyes*.  I don't know why, I don't think it could be regenerating strays, since I have nostrayregen installed.  I'm restoring from backup right now.  How can I get rid of these unwanted families and strays without destroying my neighborhood again?

[SaraMK]

I was so angry that I deleted a lot of the new character files directly from the Characters directory. 

This pretty much kills a neighborhood. Deleting files out of the Characters folder does not fully delete sims, and their garbage will continue to clog up the neighborhood file, or possibly even corrupt it completely. Unless you planned to spend a lot of time fixing the mess in SimPE, you should not have deleted any of those character files.

You also did a bad thing when you kept one member of a family while deleting others. This should never be done. Or, not unless you know exactly how to fix the mess in SimPE.

After that, of course, that neighborhood won't load any more *rolls eyes*.  I don't know why, I don't think it could be regenerating strays, since I have nostrayregen installed.  I'm restoring from backup right now.  How can I get rid of these unwanted families and strays without destroying my neighborhood again?

Use my Empty Templates (found in Peasantry). You will never again get any unwanted sims in any of your neighborhoods, no matter how many subhoods you attach. You will still need all of Pescado's norespawn hacks, which are: notownieregen, nossrespawn, nostrayrespawn, nodormierespawn, and antiredundancy. Check for EP compatibility, of course.

[Maria]

Thank you Sara, I'll download those right now and then I'll reinstall the backup again.  I know it was stupid of me to delete all those characters, but the 54 strays frustrated me so much.  It's always horribly sad to see strays in real life and I was furious that Maxis was forcing them on me in a video game.  Thanks for helping me

[Sivany]

I came across this thread whilst looking for a way to delete strays from my neighbourhood. I know enough to not delete the character files directly and I currently use the LotDebugger and SimPE to delete unwanted townies but I don't know what to do about the strays. Since it's a neighbourhood I've been playing for a while I don't want to start over with clean templates so is there another way to delete them?

Could it be done in SimPE if I deleted everything associated with those strays including all memories, relationships, SCOR files and description? Or is there an easier way?

[miros]

You'd basically have to follow JMP's instructions on how to Delete A Sim.  Or you could drop satellites on them while they're visiting your lot.  Or you could move them into a playable family and let that family sit in the SimBin forever.

[Sivany]

Those last two suggestions don't get rid of the sim character files so they are still clogging up your neighbourhood folder if you do that. Also the lot debugger unfortunately doesn't get rid of strays so I'm stuck with them I think unless anyone can advise me on how to get rid of them safely?