Sometimes it takes a while for lots to load, either household or visiting a community lot. Sometimes I'd like to go and get a drink or use the bathroom while I'm waiting. Whenever I do so, when I return I find that my Sims have gone and done silly things like setting themselves on fire or flirting with someone else in front of their spouses.

Is there a hack that automatically pauses a lot when it first loads up?

I've never seen one. All you can do is keep your finger over the "P" button and slam that puppy as soon as the pixels load onto the screen. I never leave my lots running while I'm not right there. They're more than capable of ruining their and your lives..

Does your lot not stay paused if you pause if just before saving? That's what I do and it's still paused when I next load it.

On residential lots, yes. Not community.

You can't save a community lot while a pixel is visiting it unless they own it. If they do own it, pushing pause should work as well.

If it doesn't, there's something wrong.

In my big hood, where I don't care about a Sim, I will send them to a community lot (which will fill up with Sims, due to a mod). I've never seen a Sim start a fire (is that really possible?!) or die, but lots of other things can happen. OK, you have discovered the love of your life (in my world, that means marriage and fidelity. You were just looking for romance? Too bad). You made a few enemies-for-life (don't complain to ME when the bugs make you sick!). Due to a "special" mod, everyone was having sex, and the sales people are all naked, and I randomly click "yes" to the mod's question "Shall we make a baby", without looking to see who is pregnant. SURPRISE!

In my game, BV hotel lots never save paused even when I do pause before saving (maybe because the game thinks of them as community lots?). This is REALLY irritating! If anybody ever made a mod to fix that, I would love to know about it.

@grammapat - I'm pretty sure fires can't occur on community lots.

And @RoxEllen1965, the one time I was playing with the weather manipulator on a BV hotel lot and summoned a rain of fire (I just wanted to see how my Sims reacted to it), nothing caught fire, which supports your idea of the game treating them like community lots.

I've had annoying sims on community lots die and once a sim was eaten by cowplant on the Secret Society lot. Good thing cowplants aren't real or I'd have some in my front yard for annoying neighbors. (: