I'm in the process of setting up a new 'hood, and I want it to be (almost) self sufficient - i.e. no townies, no 20k handouts, very few sims working career jobs where the pay comes from nowhere, and lots of sims running small businesses or doing other stuff to earn money.

Also no buying stuff from the Buy catalogue or selling it throught the Buy catalogue (all furniture must either be bought from the second-hand store or ordered from the furniture merchants, who pay for stuff to be imported and then sell it to the sim who ordered it when it arrives 1 day later, unwanted stuff can be sold privately, given away as a gift or sold to the second-hand store) and if a sim/family wishes to do any building work they must hire a builder to do the actual work as well as paying for the materials, and it's not instantaneous.

I am also hoping to figure out how to make npc's like the police and burglars look like my playables - I think that someone mentioned doing that in another thread, but I have no idea how to go about it! Any advice would be appreciated :-)

So, I know that some other people play self-sufficient 'hoods, or have done in the past, and I was wondering how you guys did it? Was there anything you particularly enjoyed about it, or disliked, or anything that was very difficult/impossible to do the way you had intended to do it? Any suggestions, advice etc would be welcome! :-)

You can easily make NPCs look like selected playables by using SimPE's simsurgery. I would think the danger there would be establishing relationships with these dopplegangers. I don't believe Sims gain the acquaintance of police or firefighters without a social interaction, but they do automatically know the burglar, so you might want to look for a hack that could prevent that.

One problem with OFB-owned businesses in a neighborhood without townies and without wealthy Sims (though if this is your megahood, there should be some wealthy Sims, yes?) is that it's difficult to make a living. Especially if the Sim went into debt to buy the business.

If I understand the method you're describing, I would find it awkward to constantly switch to the furniture merchant's household in order to stock the exact items desired in the store. When I ran a similar hood (not so much self-sufficient as "no magic catalog purchases"), I would make Sims go to a furniture store or an electronics store to purchase an item of the type they needed in their home, which served as a placeholder for ordering the item for delivery. They could then take "delivery" the next day (and sell the unwanted item from their inventory, since they were paying the catalog price).

Just to add to this: I think Sims will also get furious with the police officer if they get scolded (e.g. false alarm) and thus another automatic acquaintance. But I might be wrong.

It's not actually my megahood, it's a 'hood that I'm putting together using clean templates and loads of extracted Maxis premades. There will be some rich families though - the Goths, the DeBateaus, Malcolm Landgraab IV and various others will all be living there, and will be pretty rich. There will be a few sims with career track jobs too, who are employed by the 'world government' as Business Tycoons, Mad Scientists and maybe other things too in the future. And, as I've been adjusting their starting funds accordingly, sims won't be going into debt to buy their businesses - most of them will just run a small market stall, at least to start with.

I hadn't thought about the people meeting the burglar thing. It's mainly the burglar I want to do, at least to start with, so I'll have to look for a hack for that. **EDIT** And possibly the police - thanks MSD! Is it still possible for sims to get false alarms if they use a burglar alarm to summon the police and never phone them up? I don't think I've ever seen one, so I'm not sure....

Well, I plan to play one-day rotations (I have the attention span of a gnat, seriously!), so what I'd do is play the furniture stockists last in the rotation, and keep track of what other sims had "ordered" when I played them, then buy everything when I played the stockist (and adjust their funds for delivery etc). Then when I next played the families that had ordered furniture I'd teleport the stockist in with the item in his inventory, make him selectable to put the item in the house, and then have the buyer transfer money to him. That way it'd take a day for stuff to be delivered, and then the stockist would actually come round and deliver it to the customer rather than running a store/market stall. I also plan to have the stockist run a small second-hand furniture store, so have to figure out how to do that too....

I do this but I just use SimPE to wipe the memories and adjust the relationships. I don't find it's a particularly problem actually since the NPCs are just decorative (in a sense) anyway. I keep track of when the repairman fixes the sink and then send a payment to the 'actual' repairman with Pescado's money order. Keeping track of the money is probably the most fiddly part of playing this type of game. You can take faulty equipment to the repairman's shop for repair but I don't usually take the plumbing - seems wrong somehow.

Nice idea about a builder.

Just a question?
Why do you have to have exactly every specific item in the shop for the sims to buy?

Couldnt you just make..say a furniture shop and then all the furniture that isnt stocked would be "ordered" for the sim from the shop, that also deliver the item (this would be the buy catalog). At least this is how it works here, thats how I bought some furniture. Why would sims be different? It would be a bit silly for the smaller things, but since electronics and such isnt very many items anyway (and you cant sell all of them either) wouldnt it be a tactic for larger items that actually is common to have delivered from the shops in real life.

Running businesses without townies would be very difficult to be profitable, in my opinion. Of course, I have never tried it because I really enjoy making my custom townies. Unless your sims live on a remote and isolated planet or island that is closed off to visitors and travelers, it doesn't seem realistic to not have a few townies.

I have been working on my own version of a self-sufficient neighborhood. For the second time. Although this hood does feel like it is progressing much much slower. Probably because I attached my custom hood to Pleasantview this time. So I have had to play those sims, give them makeovers, and get them moved into custom houses.

As far as the shops go, I decided my sims would buy _most_ of their stuff from the shops instead of the buy catalog. Very cheap stuff isn't worth a visit to a shop and isn't worth taking up space at any of my shops. With the exception of a few plants, I try not to sell anything below $50 in my shops. Most importantly, sims don't get to buy everything that is in the buy catalog because I only allow my sims to sell what I want them to have, for the most part. I picked out tables I liked, making sure I had cheap, mid-range and expensive choices. And that is what the shop sells. (By cheap here, I mean on the low end of profitable - my shops don't sell those $10 end tables I seem to have downloaded many of.)

Because I want a variety of furnishings for my sims, I have quite a few furniture shops. My bed store sells end tables. But I also sell end tables at other shops because the styles of end tables I liked for my decor styles is plentiful. Probably the one and only item in the buy catalog I feel I have a good range of items. On the other hand, I did not find many candles and lamps that fit my style, so that shop sells other things to be profitable. (Most candles fall into the under $10 category.)

And then there are things I sell everywhere, like rugs, plants w/planters, and paintings. Some shops even sell a few curtains because I hate using the design tool to change the colors of stuff after my sims have already paid a higher price in the shops. Making them available in different shops means that the curtains on display are WYSIWYG.

What I learned in the past, is that after most of my shops have been running a while, and need to expand, I can offer some of the less expensive, very cheap stuff in some of my stores. My nurseries have always been profitable even though they have more cheap stuff (plants) on the shelves, than any other store.

I really like visiting my community lots and shops, so I haven't bothered doing the teleport option. If there is something a sim really needs/wants, I keep a list of those things. Then, when I play that shop, the owner can call that sim at the shop and invite them. Or, I just take the sim to go do some shopping, sometimes for other sims in other households, buying stuff that will be given as gifts if they know that sim.

My system isn't perfect, but it works well enough for me. One of the things that always bothered me is the build mode content. I wanted my sims to have cheap windows or very few windows, then buy them later - which meant a lot of money going to nowhere. I don't have townies with a bunch of useless stuff in their inventories. Several households make goods for the farmers and fish for the fisher. Mainly because if something happens to one of those families, there is no worry that the hood will be out of food because another family can take over that business.

But it can be slow going as there is a lot of stuff I don't allow my sims to buy because those shops aren't operational yet. And I am trying to take note of the details better this time around. The Pleasantview pre-made sims really throw a curve in my play because they have a lot of stuff that isn't allowed in my hood that I am getting rid of a bit at a time, so it fits my story better and so I don't have to constantly use cheats when I play them. It would be easier and faster for me to use kaching, familyfunds, and motherlode, but to add to the "criminal" facets of the hood, I let them "earn" money with the counterfeiting machine and hacked money trees. With my last hood, with no pre-made sims to fiddle with, I had a bunch of shops open much sooner. It was really a thrill to send new families/households to the business lots to buy their stuff for their new house that was totally empty. And more realistic for my story that sims sold everything/nearly everything they owned to move to a new place.

This time around, I do let my sims sell old stuff by deleting them just because their inventories get too full otherwise. Giving them away to other sims, or needy sims just didn't work as I wanted, so my sims still had a ton of old and useless stuff in inventory. That makes loading their inventories very very slow.

I use MATY's money order a lot, but what bothers me is that the money a sim gets from a money order isn't considered income - for those sims that have wants to earn money. So, although my royal family is getting money from "taxes" and don't need to work, the money order money isn't seen as income. At least, not that I notice. And I do have plans for the criminal elements in my hood, but don't know how to make it work to get money from other sims that is income and keep my hood self-sufficient. I have Christanluv's wallet I forget to use, but don't know if I will have the same problem of passing around money that isn't considered income. I hate having a bunch of different hacks just to deal with passing money between sims in the game.

Also getting new shops up and running is slow. I cheated a lot in my last hood to get my sims the money needed to open new shops. Although I cheated in ways that fit the story to overcome limits with the game. This time, most sims have a bunch of cheap stuff in their houses, or if I get a decorating bug, they get nice stuff and that money spent doesn't benefit the hood, or shop owner, because I don't have that shop yet. SimPE doesn't work for me, so I can only use available mods to adjust various things in my game.

There are no townies in my hood, never have been. I use an integrated economy, use very few maxis careers, and it runs just fine.

I just wanted to add my tidbit of information. I have finally came up with a system in regards to shops that works. My goal was to figure out a way to have shops but not sell to townies. (I just can't figure out how to create a hood without townies) I use OneNotes to keep detailed records of everything. I created a page that I call shops. On the page I list what items are in each shop. To keep it simple I have shops divided into buy categories. Anyways, so the sim buys from the buy catalog then sends 50% of the purchase price to the shop owner by cheque. Then when playing the shop owner, he goes to work, yes, he has a job in the business career field. All money earned at the end of the year is deducted from the household funds. This way he goes to work 5 days a week just like as if he was managing his shop but no townies can ever get on the property to buy. As well, the playables never appear and buy stuff they don't need. It's not a perfect solution for play I guess but it does keep the town self sufficient.

Here is the list of roles I create to start with...
Farmer / Fisher / Cook - one household (When starting out every family doesn't need to buy a stove or learn how to cook because they buy their meals) TRADE
Store owner - the most basic necessities required for a sim to take care of needs. BUSINESS
Clothes Maker - I have a rule that every life stage requires at least one new outfit, some are even up to 3 outfits. Thus this is a necessary job. TRADE

- My rule at the start is that there is no electricity or buildings until the city can afford the workers. I really enjoy making the hood gather funds before paying for jobs.
Hydro Worker CAREER
Carpenter / Builder CAREER

Any cold, struck by lightning, fire or pregnancy could lead to death until
Doctor CAREER

Some more roles that are helpful...
Repairman - is teleported in to unclog toilets, repair showers, etc. they charge a fee per service that the sim pays by cheque (high mechanical) TRADE

All land purchases, residential or commercial, the money goes into the hood fund. Taxes, property taxes, fees (marriage license, business license, pet license, and so many more) as well as interest on loans, etc all goes into the hood fund for paying payroll for hood jobs and building community lots.

I am in love with this play style but it takes a lot of effort moving money around and keeping records.