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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 6th May 2018 at 11:39 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future
Default Story Progression Settings
Hi all! So I hope I have come to the right place. I love love LOVE the story progression mod, however it is such a tank that it eventually mucks up my game. What I mean is that it moves in SO many new sims to the neighborhood, it changes SO much, that after like 5-10 in game weeks (this is a guess as one of my sims went from baby to teen so I am assuming the timeline) The game begins to chop and have intermittent lags/freezing about every one in game hour. Since then I have started a new game in a new world, with SP turned OFF, there is no problem at all. But the sims are not doing anything and I am just stuck with crappy EAxis Story Progression. My question is; is there a way to tone down the amount of stuff that SP does? Like have it affect only 1/5 families, or not move new sims in? Or just turn down the amount of stuff it does? I don't want every. single. sim. getting new jobs and marriages and divorces and kids, just a few out of the whole load. The mod is truly great, but needs to be toned down. I know there are "Speed" settings that make everything happen slower, which works for part of the problem, but the biggest problem is that the mod moves in like 300 sims to the world and is just a little out of control. The settings menu is anything BUT user friendly, and I don't want to screw anything up. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!
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Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 7th May 2018 at 1:57 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
I'm not sure what is the default setting of SP, but I have immigration disabled so this does not happen. Then I export my saving and just load it whenever I play a new game.

However, I also know that the game doesn't import 300 sims into your world even with immigration on since there is a default max resident at 150, unless you manually disabled it.

There are a lot of functions in the SP, just the base module, read the manual and tune it to the way you like. Then save/export the settings so you don't have to do it again.

-----

Some suggestions:
- leave the max resident cap at 150 or raise max to 200, do not go over 200 (general --> sim --> max res)
- modify the immigration, set immigration gauge to 0 (general --> lot --> immigration)
- change the story notification to only your blood relatives and/or friends
- modify each category speed to your liking. I left most at default, but some which I didn't think is important, I would slow it down by increasing the speed interval. (remember increasing it slows it down)
- In town setting, set the "base" number of children to slow down population growth.


Is there a way for me to make it so that the game leaves a certain number of houses in the world empty?
Mad Poster
#5 Old 7th May 2018 at 9:21 AM Last edited by igazor : 7th May 2018 at 7:23 PM.
A few things to add here, if I may.

-- The above solutions to protect particular residential lots from becoming occupied are very creative, but all you really have to do is, on the vacant lots, turn off progression on their Lot Options menus. Or you could change the lot types to (Player) Ownable -- you may have to change it to Commercial first and then back to Residential - Ownable to get the change to stick. But if you really want to be certain that no inactive sims will move in of their own accord, pull out the refrigerators. Sims will never move into a lot on their own that has no fridge.

-- The way to get an accurate reading on the Resident population is to use MasterController. On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter. The important number is Residents, the ones counted as Service and Homeless won't be pushed by the mod to progress in quite the same ways, in the case of Service Sims not at all, and they won't be taking up housing space. The Register mod can be used to better control Role Sims and where they come from or how they are assigned.

-- No, even when switched on SP's immigration does not move 300 sims into a world at once unless you specifically instruct it to using Rapid Immigration. Instead, it checks current pressure conditions (job slots needing filled, lots available, not enough sims having babies in town, etc.) against the set Immigration Gauge (0 is totally off) and immigrates at most one household in per sim day/cycle. On default settings, there is no SP Immigration because the Gauge is already set to 0.

-- However, if you have SP's Manage the Homeless switched on, what it might be doing in addition to allowing existing Residents to move and spread out more is shoving homeless Role Sims and others who have appeared by external forces like the game itself (e.g., street performers and homeless co-workers) into otherwise available housing slots. I never liked this function of SP myself and prefer to manage my own small homeless populations, thus keep this and Overwatch's Clean Up counterpart switched off. Given that, the only times homeless sims already in the game should be moving into houses would be if you make them Residents yourself or if they get pregnant or impregnate another sim.

-- The rampant partnering up and baby making can all be slowed way down with SP mod settings, many of which have already been mentioned. Note though that regardless of how many kids a sim "wants" to have, the mod will still react pretty violently (okay, forcefully) on a world that it thinks is in danger of becoming unpopulated or way under-populated in future generations, relative to its max population (this is Residents only) setting. I've even had the mod complain to me that it can't find anyone to impregnate and something should be done about that, even though I could see that there was no danger of that world becoming a ghost town and probably I just had the max Residents setting too high at that time. That and the cooldown between pregnancies might have been a bit too high (General Options > Options:Pregnancy > Cooldown Between Pregnancies), also effective in slowing down rapid population growth. Things can unexpectedly be deemed out of balance though, especially if you are playing a small(ish) world and have the max residents set to something high like the default 150 or 200.

-- Point taken on the layout of the SP options menus. But all of this is pretty well-documented by way of the FAQ pages and the master Interactions pages on the NRaas site. We are also available there on our message boards, Chatterbox being the main one for general use, should further assistance be required.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#6 Old 8th May 2018 at 8:09 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
A few things to add here, if I may.

-- The above solutions to protect particular residential lots from becoming occupied are very creative, but all you really have to do is, on the vacant lots, turn off progression on their Lot Options menus. Or you could change the lot types to (Player) Ownable -- you may have to change it to Commercial first and then back to Residential - Ownable to get the change to stick. But if you really want to be certain that no inactive sims will move in of their own accord, pull out the refrigerators. Sims will never move into a lot on their own that has no fridge.

-- The way to get an accurate reading on the Resident population is to use MasterController. On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter. The important number is Residents, the ones counted as Service and Homeless won't be pushed by the mod to progress in quite the same ways, in the case of Service Sims not at all, and they won't be taking up housing space. The Register mod can be used to better control Role Sims and where they come from or how they are assigned.

-- No, even when switched on SP's immigration does not move 300 sims into a world at once unless you specifically instruct it to using Rapid Immigration. Instead, it checks current pressure conditions (job slots needing filled, lots available, not enough sims having babies in town, etc.) against the set Immigration Gauge (0 is totally off) and immigrates at most one household in per sim day/cycle. On default settings, there is no SP Immigration because the Gauge is already set to 0.

-- However, if you have SP's Manage the Homeless switched on, what it might be doing in addition to allowing existing Residents to move and spread out more is shoving homeless Role Sims and others who have appeared by external forces like the game itself (e.g., street performers and homeless co-workers) into otherwise available housing slots. I never liked this function of SP myself and prefer to manage my own small homeless populations, thus keep this and Overwatch's Clean Up counterpart switched off. Given that, the only times homeless sims already in the game should be moving into houses would be if you make them Residents yourself or if they get pregnant or impregnate another sim.

-- The rampant partnering up and baby making can all be slowed way down with SP mod settings, many of which have already been mentioned. Note though that regardless of how many kids a sim "wants" to have, the mod will still react pretty violently (okay, forcefully) on a world that it thinks is in danger of becoming unpopulated or way under-populated in future generations, relative to its max population (this is Residents only) setting. I've even had the mod complain to me that it can't find anyone to impregnate and something should be done about that, even though I could see that there was no danger of that world becoming a ghost town and probably I just had the max Residents setting too high at that time. That and the cooldown between pregnancies might have been a bit too high (General Options > Options:Pregnancy > Cooldown Between Pregnancies), also effective in slowing down rapid population growth. Things can unexpectedly be deemed out of balance though, especially if you are playing a small(ish) world and have the max residents set to something high like the default 150 or 200.

-- Point taken on the layout of the SP options menus. But all of this is pretty well-documented by way of the FAQ pages and the master Interactions pages on the NRaas site. We are also available there on our message boards, Chatterbox being the main one for general use, should further assistance be required.


You are right in the fact that the immigration was not set to work. So for some reason in my other world, They all reproduced and spawned like crazy. It got to the point where I had a ridiculous amount of sims living in the world. I am telling you that it was literally nearly 300 sims in Twinbrook. That being said, I have adjusted all of the cool down times and speeds of everything, and lowered my residential cap to 100. I am hoping this should solve my issue? I did navigate to the FAQ section on NRAAS' website and while it was mostly helpful, sometimes it is easier to talk to a person on a forum, as for me at least the menus can be just a bit confusing because some of the options aren't explained as to what they do (which I know is just a part of modding the game as you can't have full explanations for everything). So to someone who is extremely familiar with the SP mod, do you have any other suggestions for me as to what settings in any of the other mods I could do to keep my population about the same as it is when you first start a game? I just want the sims to move and marry and have kids in a reasonable matter of time.

Thank you for your help
Top Secret Researcher
#7 Old 8th May 2018 at 8:35 PM
https://simsarahsarah.tumblr.com/nraassettings
This website has some settings already set up for quite a few mods. I would read through the pages and adjust the settings to your liking. It's helped me a ton as she plays kind of the same way that I like (mod newbie here). It can be a real chore to set up everything to work how you would like and finding this help saved me hours of work.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#8 Old 8th May 2018 at 11:17 PM
Quote: Originally posted by KatyFernlily
https://simsarahsarah.tumblr.com/nraassettings
This website has some settings already set up for quite a few mods. I would read through the pages and adjust the settings to your liking. It's helped me a ton as she plays kind of the same way that I like (mod newbie here). It can be a real chore to set up everything to work how you would like and finding this help saved me hours of work.


This is a great idea, my only concern is how fast it works. Can you tell me how fast sims reproduce and get married with her settings?
Mad Poster
#9 Old 8th May 2018 at 11:21 PM Last edited by igazor : 8th May 2018 at 11:55 PM.
Quote: Originally posted by Ponyboy
You are right in the fact that the immigration was not set to work. So for some reason in my other world, They all reproduced and spawned like crazy. It got to the point where I had a ridiculous amount of sims living in the world. I am telling you that it was literally nearly 300 sims in Twinbrook. That being said, I have adjusted all of the cool down times and speeds of everything, and lowered my residential cap to 100. I am hoping this should solve my issue? I did navigate to the FAQ section on NRAAS' website and while it was mostly helpful, sometimes it is easier to talk to a person on a forum, as for me at least the menus can be just a bit confusing because some of the options aren't explained as to what they do (which I know is just a part of modding the game as you can't have full explanations for everything). So to someone who is extremely familiar with the SP mod, do you have any other suggestions for me as to what settings in any of the other mods I could do to keep my population about the same as it is when you first start a game? I just want the sims to move and marry and have kids in a reasonable matter of time.

Thank you for your help

I do believe you, no reason not to, but am having trouble even imagining Twinbrook with that many Resident sims in play. My instance of that world within my own ongoing game is totally stuffed, over-stuffed in fact, at just over 160. But part of that is due to my reluctance to want to build housing over swampland, so that becomes a personal choice thing. I have some work to do to unscramble that world myself the next time I rotate active play into it.


Quote: Originally posted by KatyFernlily
https://simsarahsarah.tumblr.com/nraassettings
This website has some settings already set up for quite a few mods. I would read through the pages and adjust the settings to your liking. It's helped me a ton as she plays kind of the same way that I like (mod newbie here). It can be a real chore to set up everything to work how you would like and finding this help saved me hours of work.

Not sure that I agree with all of Sarah's settings there, but that's only in the sense that they do not entirely match up with the age span lengths I use or my exact style of play. Sarah is one of my colleagues over at NRaas though, so to say that she knows what she is doing with the mods and her games would be an understatement. I am sure that she would be delighted to answer questions anyone may have of her own suggested mod settings, or anything else, either here, on her own blog, or at NRaas where she can also easily be found. But let's give her a formal paging just to be sure.
@Sarah_Sims
Test Subject
Original Poster
#10 Old 8th May 2018 at 11:34 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
I do believe you, no reason not to, but am having trouble even imagining Twinbrook with that many Resident sims in play. My instance of that world within my own ongoing game is totally stuffed, over-stuffed in fact, at just over 160. But part of that is due to my reluctance to want to build housing over swampland, so that becomes a personal choice thing. I have some work to do to unscramble that world myself the next time I rotate active play into it.



Not sure that I agree with all of Sarah's settings there, but that's only in the sense that they do not entirely match up with the age span lengths I use or my exact style of play. Sarah is one of my colleagues over at NRaas though, so to say that she knows what she is doing with the mods and her games would be an understatement. I am sure that she would be delighted to answer questions anyone may have of her own suggested mod settings, or anything else, either here, on her own blog, or at Nraas where she can also easily be found. But let's give her a formal paging just to be sure.
@Sarah_Sims


Thank you. What are your go to reccomendations for people who want to use SP but don’t have the best computer and want to avoid lag? Any settings that should be turned down the most?

ETA: what don’t you “agree” with in Sarah’s settings? Besides the age difference? I have my lifespan on default
Test Subject
Original Poster
#12 Old 9th May 2018 at 12:59 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
This is why I suggested changing the lot type idea b/c that one is 100% guaranteed to work. If you do not want certain residential lots populated, then they simply serve as background deco. Change their lot type to either "no visitors allowed" or better yet, "hidden tombs" will prevent them from being populated since they are not residential anymore. You can always change them back when you want to populate them.

In theory, if your world has 50 residential lots, you like the world but really want a 25 res lot world, then turn 25 of the lots you don't want populated into hidden tombs. Then your world technically only has 25 res lots. The best part is, in the map view you will not have any empty lot icons or any icons, those houses will not have map tags.

Any method in changing settings in the SP mod, etc.. etc... are all "suppose" to work, but mods are not always dependable depending on circumstances and other mod conflicts. The older version of SP mod that I use to use for the longest time simply refuses to stop immigration no matter how many options I've manipulated. The reason I found out later was in between the time the mod was activated, the EA SP will populate those houses through immigration. This may only be 1-2 seconds, but enough time that random families get immigrated into the world. This problem went away after I got a better computer and a newer SP.

Since we don't really know the set up of your system, you can try any of the methods mentioned here. But the lot changing method is 100%.


The lot changing method isn’t really what I’m looking for though. I don’t want to micromanage each house that is moved into. I just want sims moving around while leaving a few random houses empty. The whole goal for this is less of leaving lots empty and more for lowering the amount of sims that are reproduced and married.
Top Secret Researcher
#14 Old 9th May 2018 at 8:56 PM
I just gave Sarah's website as kind of a tutorial of sorts - just to get you or others new to mods started, like it did me. That's all. I have changed the settings that I wanted to, but as I said, it was a great help to get me started. There are a jillion possiblities with Story Progression mod.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#15 Old 9th May 2018 at 11:50 PM
Quote: Originally posted by KatyFernlily
I just gave Sarah's website as kind of a tutorial of sorts - just to get you or others new to mods started, like it did me. That's all. I have changed the settings that I wanted to, but as I said, it was a great help to get me started. There are a jillion possiblities with Story Progression mod.


Do you use castes? Should I? They confuse the heck out of me so I don’t really screw with them but if they’ll be helpful I’ll give it a shot. If I upload my settings will you take a look and tell me if they look good? This is for anyone to answer as well. Maybe @igazor or @nitromon could look too?
Test Subject
Original Poster
#17 Old 10th May 2018 at 1:03 AM
Quote: Originally posted by nitromon
No, I don't use castes b/c yes, they're confusing as hell. lol



Are you willing to look at my settings and let me know if they look alright?
Mad Poster
#18 Old 10th May 2018 at 1:06 AM Last edited by igazor : 10th May 2018 at 1:25 AM.
A caste is merely a group of sims. Manual ones are defined by putting sims into the castes by name. Automatic ones, like the pre-built ones that come with SP, are defined by criteria. What it is the castes actually accomplish by way of allowances and restrictions can be as simple or as complicated as the player would like it to be.

There are many ways to accomplish essentially the same things with a mod as complex as SP. I'm sorry, the feedback from other players here is great. But if you would like further assistance from us directly on ways to configure the mod, with or without creating or adjusting castes, I think it would better to seek it at NRaas.
Lab Assistant
#19 Old 11th May 2018 at 3:17 PM
Quote: Originally posted by igazor
Not sure that I agree with all of Sarah's settings there, but that's only in the sense that they do not entirely match up with the age span lengths I use or my exact style of play. Sarah is one of my colleagues over at NRaas though, so to say that she knows what she is doing with the mods and her games would be an understatement. I am sure that she would be delighted to answer questions anyone may have of her own suggested mod settings, or anything else, either here, on her own blog, or at NRaas where she can also easily be found. But let's give her a formal paging just to be sure.
@Sarah_Sims

@igazor: Hello!
Yes, of course, I'm happy to answer questions anyone has about my settings and I agree, they don't suit your style of gameplay at all.

@Ponyboy: I'm not sure how much help I can be, except to say that KatyFernlily had the right idea of using my settings as a guide only. They are not meant to be used as is unless you want to play your game exactly the same way I do, which is very slowly with thirty sim-days being one sim-year. This means my sims can live up to 2,400 sim-days and that also affects the settings in other areas of the game, like the length of pregnancy, for example. Of course, all these details are available on my tumblr linked above.

@KatyFernlily: Thanks for the mention! I'm glad my settings helped you!
Top Secret Researcher
#20 Old 12th May 2018 at 9:35 PM
You are welcome Sarah - I love your website! It's really helped me alot - as in I had no idea what I was doing till I found all your help!

P.S. I have not used the "caste" system as yet. I need to do more research and study Sarah's information on the caste system. It sounds very interesting. Shoot, I still can't figure out the weather in the game let alone all that
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