At the suggestion of PleasantSims, I downloaded clean 'hood templates from here: https://meetmetotheriver.tumblr.com...clean+templates
Now, the thing about those templates is that most or all of the townies and service NPCs were removed from them. (At least some of their old template maps also had their townies removed.) Since I want townies and service NPCs in my neighborhoods, I've been trying to re-add them into the neighborhood.package file via SimPe. So far, I've been able to do so without causing corruption (at least according to HoodChecker), but there's a problem. None of the transferred Sims have any memories, and I can't give them any (clicking the Create button does nothing at all). I don't know if that's necessarily something to worry about, given that they're townies\NPCs, but I can't help but feel like it's a sign there's something I'm missing.

Since I lack the experience (and confidence) to replicate what meetme2theriver did with the files, I would like to ask how to copy a townie and\or service NPC into another town and still have them be able to carry out their original role, if it's possible. (I feel I should note that I have backups of meetme2theriver's template files and the original game files.)

Service NPC's will be generated as needed. There are lots of ways to either create custom townies, or have "the usual suspects" put back in your game...but I'm not the best at explaining anything

I think the easiest way would be to create the number of service NPCs and townies you want with the Townie Gun, and then SimSurgery them all to look like the old Service NPCs. It'd take time, but still would most likely take less than adding them all manually in. If you don't want the usual suspects, and just want NPCs and townies in general, the game will generate them as needed, and you can also batch generate townies by shift+clicking on the mailbox in testingcheats, or just add in a townie pool from MTS or Tumblr.

I'm really curious as to how you have been doing that so far.
Frequently while working with a test neighbourhood the game will generate a 'keeper', a sim I'd really like in my main neighbourhood. To do that I simply copy the sim's character file to my main neighbourhood, renaming the file to suit. As soon as the neighbourhood is open the sim is added to it albeit with all zero person data. I open a family that has a sim with similar person data (age and gender are critical) that I want the new sim to have and use the neighbour teleporter CJH_NeighbourTeleporter.zip with the Lost Soul filter On to add the sim to the family. The 'Give (sim name) my Personality' option will fill in all of the blank person data then there is several options for the new sim to tweak their personality so they are not all rubber stamp copies. Also if their memory contains no woohoo memories there's an option to 'Give Me CAS Memories' which will blank out and give the sim the default starting out memories. The sim can choose 'Become a Townie' or 'Become a Service Sim' which set which family to place the sim into on release.

The neighbour teleporter is white flat disk found in General / Miscellaneous for §50 in the catalogue.

I'm so sorry to intrude Chris, but I have a question. I have a Sim (a townie, atm) that I'd like to be a police officer. After I summon him with your teleporter and select "become a service Sim", who can I select which kind of NPC should he turn into? Or did I completely misunderstand the purpose of the interaction? :D

I extracted their character file, Sim DNA, and Wants & Fears and added them into the neighborhood.package file I'm using. But, like I said, they don't have memories and I can't add any.
Update: nevermind, they gain memories after I start up the game.

Can you elaborate? Would you mind sharing more about your project? I'm following your discussion, and this is very interesting. Did they gain the default CAS memories, then, after you started the game? After you start the game this way, are you able to add memories normally again in SimPE? Also, it sounds like you extracted more than the character file, DNA, Wants.... I would have thought everything for that sim was included in the character file. Is that incorrect? I'd love to hear more if you don't mind sharing.

Question for you and Chris, both. It sounds like you are both using these methods as a shortcut to what people do when they clone a sim and rinse it through Bodyshop to "move" it, because this doesn't seem, from what you are saying, to move memories and personalities. Is that correct? Or is this fundamentally different somehow? I'm going to try it myself, but if Chris's teleporter can copy a set of memories from one sim to another, that's a huge time saver I'd like to use. Am I misunderstanding that?

@Sunrader To start, I have two windows of Sim PE open, one with the neighborhood.package file I want to edit (file 2) and the other with the corresponding original neighborhood.package file (file 1). Then I extract the character file, wants & fears, and DNA of the Sim I want to copy from file 1 into a separate folder (and look up their page on the Sims wiki beforehand in case they have a glitch or something). Then I add the data into file 2, save it, and delete the data from the separate folder. If I want to add them to a family tree, I have to close Sim PE and reopen it. Occasionally, I'll make backups of file 2 so that I won't have to start all over again if something goes wrong.
I don't think they gained the default CAS memories after starting the game (I don't know what those look like), but they did gain some kind of hobby memory and I was then able to add memories as normal in Sim PE. At first I added in just the character file, but eventually (I don't remember the exact situation) Sim PE started saying they were incomplete, up to removing their portraits and giving them red icons. That stopped happening after I started including the other files.

I saw the Bodyshop method, but I wasn't sure if it would work for re-adding townies and service NPCs. Nor can I tell if Chris' method would be what I'm looking for.

Incidentally, what a Sim's Score file? It doesn't seem to be essential, but...

Also, I should probably mention that my version of SimPE is 0.73.44.37511

First, you should not copy the wants and fears from one neighbourhood file to another. The neighbour IDs in the new 'hood will be different sims to the old and where the old had adult humans the new could be pets or children causing the sim to have an inappropriate want history with a pet or child and roll inappropriate wants.

My main neighbourhood has 1,888 sims so any copied from any other 'hood will have a Sim Description (SDCS) with an instance value that has already been used so the instance value has to be changed before adding it into my main 'hood. Doing that also requires changing the sim's Nid to suit, in older versions of SimPE that had to be done with a hex editor but version 0.75.68.14 or above give you access to the Nid, called Neighbour Instance. Sometimes I will copy the Sim Description and DNA from the other hood but as my 'hood is quite big it takes a lot to save changes in SimPE so it is quicker and easier for me to do it in game. I don’t copy the memories, that’d be no good anyway as they’d get the same ‘gave birth to’ or ‘got married to’ etc. as the donor sim. the ‘Give me CAS Memories’ on the neighbour teleporter gives them the default starting memories and resets their current wants to suit their aspiration.

For Service sims they must have been made as service sims, you can't start with a normal sim, change the NPC type and have the sim be that NPC type. It is the original GUID that determines the NPC type. The game uses that value to locate the template the sim was made from and runs the behaviours from the template not from the sim's character file. That is actually a very good thing because sims made in base game run exactly the same as sims made in M&G even though they don't have the same behaves or constants. For a service sim to be used the sim must be in the service sim family, the game only 'looks' in that family when choosing one to use.

I wouldn't call doing it this way a shortcut, I have always considered the sim surgery cloning, rebuild in Bodyshop etc. a ridiculously long and complicated way of copying a sim from one ‘hood to another.

Even if I'm copying the Sim to a slightly different version of the same neighborhood?

Thanks for the additional info.

I've been experimenting with this and I managed to move all the townies and service NPCs of Veronaville back into MeetMe's new Veronaville using a different method.

You guys can tell me if it's crazy, but it seems to work so far. I haven't played the hood, yet, but it looks ok in SimPE and loads.

So, what I did was I had already created a clean environment so that I can create subhoods. Usually, I disable the N001 template in the installation files so the townies don't generate in every new hood, but, instead, I renumbered the template for the vanilla Veronaville as N001 and put it there. Then I created a new hood in my clean environment and that empty hood generated with the Verona townies and service NPCs in it. Then I changed it to a subhood and simply added it and then deleted it from MeetMe's fixed Verona. All townies and NPCs were moved, apparently intact, to MeetMe's main hood. Very simple. The only issue is that the townie names are randomized when we do that, which we all know. It would be simplest to just change the names back, and be done, I think, but I have an idea for a work around that I'm experimenting with now. In any case, for play purposes, I'd be happy with this method and it's fairly quick. As far as I can tell, it should work to make a shareable hood with the correct names if the sharer doesn't mind renaming.

Anyone see issues with this method?

Aside:
I have considered another method, just for play purposes: I could leave the Empty-except-for-Townies&NPCs-Veronaville as the main hood and attach MeetMe's Verona as subhood and play that way so they aren't randomized and play the subhood assuming they'd show up in it, moving them in if I wanted, but that's very inelegant. :P

I guess it depends on how different, if the neighbourhood has mostly the same sims with the same Nids then not many wants and fears will be wrong.

I have successfully, safely, cleanly, and relatively quickly and easily added the original townies and NPCs back into MeetMe's Veronaville (available on my simblr) so wanted to document here that my method mentioned above works. In the end, I just used SimPE to change back the names of the townies and NPCs that had been randomized through adding/deleting the subhood, changing the names both in CTSS and in OBJD.

I have also been toying with an idea of a way to avoid the randomization and I've now tested this as far as the process and checking the status of sims in SimPE and everything works fine. I simply change the FAMI for the groups of townies and NPC in the subhood before adding/deleting to a main hood, then change them back once they are in the hood. I see no issues with it so far. If anyone would like to play test it, I can provide a prepared subhood for testing, but the idea and process is so simple, I'd simply recommend trying it if you want to move in a lot of townies/NPCs and don't want to have to fix their names afterwards.