So, the hack that makes townies and NPCs be apartment residents, we all know that one, right?

Anyone else ever had the apartment manager get drafted to be an apartment resident?

Adriana Fairchild lives in Emerald Heights, in the other unit in the building that Coca and Cola Panowski (and infant twins Pepper and Sprite) live in. It doesn't seem to have broken either the manager or resident function, exactly, but poor Adriana keeps saying that she's done for the day but then she can't walk off the lot when she tries, nor can she go in her own apartment. I finally force error on her and delete her, and she comes back to do the managerial tasks the next morning.

It's actually been over a year since I played The Sims 2. It's just, I've got all these other games that I need to play, and the 4 minute launch time feels like a big commitment. Ironically, the game would launch faster if I had an older computer.

I've finally got to the point where the children being born in my neighborhood right now actually have third cousins, which means that they might start having chemistry with each other, and perhaps pair up...

It still feels kid of icky but I am going to let it happen because I don't want to have to check every single time if these sims share great-great-grandparents or not. *sigh*

I'm trying to decide if I want to incorporate sim bin sims into my hood. On the one hand, I have no animosity towards these sims. I quite like the Newsons, Julian could make for a good restaurant owner, and sometimes I find it fun to play the Ottomas family. On the other hand, after watching April Black's video and seeing all the assurances from other knowledgeable players that deleting sims from the bin isn't as harmful as had been presented, I'm tempted to just make a clean slate. Sometimes, I do find the sim bin sims can sort of overtake my playing if I use them. My hood is at the point that it makes sense to introduce a few more families. I just used the NPC and Townie creator to spawn in a few new adult townies, but I also want some new blood to potentially hire for or own businesses. If I'm going to delete them, I'd like to do it before one of them slips through the cracks and is met by my current hood residents. Hmmmmm.

Same! (I always delete them too, but this is more because I don't play my hoods very long. I think it's best to just install an empty template if you don't want them. Though I can honestly say I've never experienced ill effects by deleting them when I first start the hood. Ymmv, though.)

My rule of thumb is the story. You're right @Devon Aster; bin sims can be overwhelming, but there's no rule that says it's all or nothing. I usually try to eliminate any families I'm playing in another hood. So if I add the Newsons to Pleasantview, I don't add them again in Strangetown, etc. Helps keep me from being bored with a family. And then I look at what the hood needs. So I'm looking to start a Riverblossom-Desiderata hood. It'll be slower paced and traditional, so families are a good fit. Plus there's a real lack of kids and teens in Riverblossom. Adding Desiderata Valley sims helps with that (which is one of the reasons why I chose it, the other being that I never play it and so using those sims will be a new experience). But then adding the Gavigans and the Travellers could help with that too--but does that make sense for the hood I have in mind? Possibly. I don't see the Travellers happy in the rural community I'm designing but you know what? The Ottomases would fit right in. Similarly, I don't really need more couples like the Picasos and the Ramaswamis; I need more single sims... And so on.

Once I think about backstory--who's moving where and why--and doing a little lose outlining for the hood's future (who's hanging out with who and what they might get up to), then I'm better able to decide which sims stay and which go.

@Phantomknight , yup that makes sense! I was thinking I needed more kids and teens, so the Newson and Ottomas families are good fodder for that. I also need some sims that would do good for building up businesses, which is why I thought of Julian Cooke. I'm in the same boat of not really needing couples. Either single adults, or families with ready to go kids/teens to fill out friend groups for the ones I already have, are what I'm mostly looking for. There are some ideas for original sims I have but they won't be enough, I think. Plus, it can get kinda tiring coming up with all the stories! It's nice to have a bit of a shortcut.

I do have the empty templates, I just forgot to put them back in after I poked at having an uberhood with all the sims.

You don't have to take templates in and out. Rename the stealth neighborhoods, and they won't load. Then if you decide you want a neighborhood with the Ottomai, you can re-rename the Seasons stealth hood, make the hood, and then change the name again before you make a hood without them.

So close, so far... Hoping to complete my custom hood sooner rather than later. Some things I cannot control - eg. how many hours per day our government switches off our electricity, which has been between 4 and 10 hours a day lately (sessions of 2 hours each) - and I have a pc, not a laptop, and it is immensely frustrating at this time. I am far behind my original deadline - but at least I can see the end is in sight now.

Oh no @JustPetro How frustrating for you, I hope you get it finished!

....why is the government switching off the electricity. That seems dangerous.

Disabling the templates is risky IME - I tend to swap in and out folders and I can easily forget that this neighbourhood doesn't yet have any stealth hoods and needs to be loaded in a stealth-hood-free environment only. So I tend to keep a folder with empty, cleaned, original stealth hoods, and just swap them out when I know I want to make a brand new hood. I always let my new fully custom hoods attach empty stealth hoods, as a kind of vaccination against them accidentally gaining a new one. Since I somehow managed to attach Magic to my main hood twice and ended up with too many AL townies, I am really keen to avoid this!

There is one electricity provider ( a state-owned enterprise, or, as we call it, an SOE), and it has problems with upkeeping, maintenance, as well as a whole bunch of reasons which I do not want to discuss on this forum - it is called load shedding in South Africa and we had had it since 2007 - but it has been getting progressively worse. We had no load shedding on Christmas day - and I am reasonably sure it may have been the only day this year.

We have an app which tells us our load shedding schedule and warns us an hour before the next session starts! It is what it is for now, though, and we make plans to live with it. I have spent more money on camping gear this year - lights, small stove, whatever - than I have done in years.

I needed to share my frustration with fellow simmers today

Thank you, @simsample!

Unfortunately, I think it would work out the same for me. Either I forget to swap out templates or I forget to disable them

Too many reasons to go into here- Wikipedia has a good article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South...n_energy_crisis

Yes, and even that article does not tell the full story

On the positive side, 10 to 12 lots left to build, and my hood will be done. (Not an exact number, I am still considering an apartment lot or 2, but may decide to upload those separately).

As for the upload itself, I have taken some pics and made some lists too, so I hope there will not be too much admin left either

And then, I am going to play for a year (between load shedding sessions), because I miss those damn sims!

I stayed up way too late last night editing a career I downloaded to make a business owner career to my own specifications. Probably should have made my own from scratch, instead of bastardizing someone else's, but it had most of what I needed already set up. Now, I can manually promote sims as I see fit and they can reap the benefit (or penalty) of the Hard Worker trait. And also they won't bug me about wanting to get a job. Why oh why, though, did I spend so long with level titles and descriptions when I'm the only one who's going to see them???

A little peek at my hood in progress for all of you - thanks for the support!

@Devon Aster I do stuff like this, I'm the only one who is ever going to see some of the things I do in my game but I still spend ages on the detail! It's fun though, right?

@Justpetro I love that, especially the way you did the flower decals to make the colours on the hills.

Why do I feel like I build more useless lots than actually useful ones?

Elaborate, please? What kind of lots are you building? What do you mean by useless / useful?

All the hugs. At least your government tells you, my in-laws live in Cameroon and theirs just goes down when it goes down. Same with their water. So frustrating to have it unreliable.

Be safe, ok?

A stadium has no actual use other than being decorative. A lot like a restaurant though serves some purpose. Recently I feel like I've been building mostly decorative lots that won't do much of anything really.

If I'm building that kind of thing, I put some items there which make sense and are useful...skill items, food, functional CC etc.
For a stadium I might have a pool, sporting equipment (soccer etc), merch shop with postcards or souvenirs... some reason for my sims to spend time there.

@Yvelotic2001 that's ok and part of the fun, too! Personally, I think buildings like that are useful for story-telling purposes. As a nod to BACC or an integrated hood-style of play, I'd like to do something similar in my hoods and have a related building, functional or decorative, for each career. So for example, the stadium would be necessary so that sims in the hood can work in the athletic career track.

And even if I didn't have a gameplay reason, adding little details like that make the neighborhood feel alive and seem bigger/bustling.

You can also play around with the secondary elements of a lot... when I was making my stadium lots, I knew the main room was mostly just for looks (though I did make a point of ensuring that the playing field/concert venue was accessible and so were most of the chairs), so I also was sure to include a few things in the concourse like diners and shops so that Sims who visited would actually have something to do.

There's also absolutely nothing wrong with lots for decoration and not really for use in your gameplay too though- I've made more than a few of those as well!