I'm wondering how many characters (sims, not households) people like to have in their Neighborhoods.

20-25 seems too small, not enough variety, gets boring. Advantage is fast loading.

40-50 seems to work well, but I wonder if it could be bigger.

I know it is against the Golden Rule to move households around, but I did it a lot.
Worst part is end up with hundreds of 'Packaged Ghosts' that increase loading time.
Once I tried dumping everyone into one Mega Hood and it was a disaster.
Took forever to load and crashed after playing 2-3 households.

At moment I have 1 Big 50+, one Medium 50 and one small 25.
Also, one very small I use as 'Construction/Test'.
All my sims are made from cc or scratch.

My biggest is 36

My 10-year-old ubermegahood has 1,341 sims. Part of the reason I don't really play it anymore. It's just too hard to manage, but when I was playing it regularly I could name every one of my sims and knew all their back stories and future plans.

Wow! A Record?

What about loading time? Or crashing?
What Neighborhood Map(s) did you use?

You mean total, or just the playables? My neighborhood has a little over a thousand character files in it, but only 217 of them are/were playables.

My old Pleasantview/storyhood had 1006 character files. That's including all the random NPCs/townies/etc. Characters I actually had made and played with was roughly 250-ish, though some were only played with once or twice.

I think I started the hood in 2007-ish, and it went through a few short stories and contests first, before it ended up as my main story location. It went through two computers (the other two didn't want to properly run the hood, with crashes or pink-flashing). I think it had the last successful run around 2016 (my computer started having some issues sometime after that, and my new laptop flatly refused to load lots in it, though I admit I haven't tested it out after fixing the pink-flash issues).

My new version has an empty character folder so far (with empty templates/stealth hoods/etc.) as I haven't moved anyone in yet. Planning for it to be a bit lighter on the machine, and a whole lot fewer unnecessary townies/NPCs/etc.

All the characters I referred to are Playable, Fully Active.
250 is a lot.

Some Hoods have some Me-made townies, no more than a dozen or so.
I got more confident in erasing Packaged Sims (townies, NPC) from a Hood in PackCleanInstaller.
Would like to be able to erase Packaged Ghosts, got hundreds of them.

Had problems in my Mega-Hood with Pink Flashing, never really did Fix it.
Just made it smaller until it went away.
Did not figure out how to install the 4gb_patch.

Clean Installer doesn't do anything to your neighborhoods or erase anything from them.

Sure seems like it does.
Can view and take away Packaged Sims (townies,NPC).

SimsPackInstaller:
Browse
This PC
EA Games
Neighborhoods
(Pick N___)
Characters
OK
...and do what you want.

I haven't taken out anyone in a Uniform or with a Job.
Can't take out Packaged Ghosts.

Loads fairly quick, no longer than 5-10 mins. I remember from turning the game on to actually being able to play a family use to take 45 minutes or longer but I have a laptop now specifically for playing Sims 2 so that cut down a lot of the loading time. It doesn't particularly crash, but it can definitely go quite slow on large lots or during parties.

The map is Belladonna cove with all the other maxis-made hoods as sub-hoods. I have no townie regen mods and most of my townies have since became playable.

My Mega-Hood took over 1/2 hour to load.
Mentioned the play limit and Purple Flashing.

I have an Arcade with quite a few cc Arcade Video Games.
The sims crowd around them, but the action is almost frame-by-frame.

My biggest Hood now is 'Sim City'.
I also like working with 'Belladonna Cove', well laid out.
'Madison Heights' is another favorite.

Clean Installer is for installing and to some degree manage the contents of Sims2Pack files (removing unwanted CC before installing, for instance). You can also delete files from your Downloads folder with it, but it's not meant to be used for other files than CC, and it has no capabilities when it comes to safe deletion of characters in the Characters folder. The only thing it can do is to delete the actual file (you might as well put the files in the trash bin and empty it - that's essentially what Clean Installer does when deleting files. It does not clean "package" files in any way).

All the references left after deleting the sim are still going to be left in your game, but in a broken state towards other sims (family ties, memories, relations, etc.). Deleting files from the Character folder can cause problems in the neighborhood if you don't do it correctly, especially if they're characters other sims have interacted with a lot.

Tutorials on how to do it properly, a few ways:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,6205.0.html
https://www.tumblr.com/shockmeamaze...a-character-and

When I started playing Sims2 I deleted or moved Sims or Households very often.
Later on, I heard how much trouble that can cause, and it did pile up what I found out are Packaged Ghosts.
Glitches did happen and Mistakes were made, but my PC Died anyway.
So, I took what I had saved and put it back together, errors and all.

Now I File Save Households before they meet anyone, so I can start fresh anywhere.
If I delete or move a Sim, townie or NPC I do it with as few memories as possible.
Some Hoods have sims that on their 3rd or 4th location, others are all New, Fresh.
In other words, Moving and Deleting sims is just the way I Play the Game.
If making things Smoother and more Fun Now may cause something Later, so be it.
I've lost track of how many computers I've gone through, picking through pieces is part of it.
Not Recommended for Everyone.

This is a great question! I make and play fully custom hoods so been struggling with the right number of households for my hoods too, this is what has worked for me so far.

I made my first hood Hope Heights after my mega hood of 150 families crashed. It crashed because I moved in occupied homes and added too many families. Hope heights has 50 families with three generations so a total of about 400 playable sims. This hood takes about 10-12 minutes to load. I still play it.

However as I had hundreds of families of varying backgrounds and roles to play, I created additional hoods when hope heights overflowed. I have six types of families: traditional, supernatural, galactic fleet, alien, recurring, and academy. I move in 4 families of each type , except traditional which is the most common so I create 15-20 of these per hood. Together this makes about 30-40 families, about 300 playable sims allowing for 3-4 generations. Loading time is about 8-12 minutes each hood. I still remember the names of my characters and backstories, and take notes in their bio for details I may easily forget. With hundreds of families, the more I play them the better I remember the intricate details of their past and current storyline, as I base their hood role on their astrological type and see how their type causes them to make different decisions.

Since I have maxed out population space in my hoods for three generations i kill off any bin family members i dont plan to play, the remaining become vampires, marry into supernatural families, or have alien hybrid children. Also all families besides recurring and traditional have limits of how many children they can have as I would rather keep the remaining hood space for families who will have multiple generations. Supernatural families dont need as many future generations as they live longer than my traditional families. Alien families also have limited children.

Hood size is always a guessing game in my opinion. In my experience,though, knowing the type of hood you want to play (mine is sci if fantasy) , how many generations, couples you want to make, and story roles you want helps in determining the initial number of households. Super interesting question, as custom hoods are right up my alley. I hope my input helped some!

You can also just delete character files using your file browser, but either way that's not recommended since it causes corruption. Clean Installer is not a magical tool that you can use for file deletion, you don't need any special tool to do that.

Looks like this Topic has wound down.

This is what I seem to have Gathered:

I WAY underestimated how many Sims people are playing. Over 1000 was mind-blowing.

Number of Sims seems in direct proportion to Loading Time.

Number of Sims and Lot Size and/or Complication affect playing quality.

Even against Corruption Warnings some players Delete/Kill or Move Sims/Households regularly.
(I have done this for a while)

Deleting or Moving Sims builds up huge numbers of what I called 'Packaged Ghost's,
Which very much Increases Loading Time and Likelihood of Crashing.

I regret so much of the chat was sidetracked by discussing 'CleanPackInstaller'.

Started TS2 as soon as it came out, whenever that was, some 22 years ago. Went into it ignorant of all the this-n-thats until I discovered this forum & some others. I chose Veronaville, renamed it to V-ville and really wasn't concerned with all of the prepackaged in-the-box sims. I just wanted to play my own sims, so I made about 4 core families and started playing.

Right away, there were problems, so the internet came in handy. (Remember the internet? Yeah, It was great while it lasted!)

My initial problems were probably the same as some, such as with ghosts & other npcs, such as umpteen npcs that did just one function.

I discovered SimPE, and rooted out every pre-packaged character but a few. I saved Bella Goth & her kid, 2 of the Capps & 2 of the Montys, so yepper, I got rid of the extensive ghost network tied to those families and ab-so-lute-ly every last ding-dang npc except for one of each. In the end, SimPE erased from existence about 400 unwanted pre-packaged unwanted sims.

Man, my game took off like a top and flew.

When you delete unwanted sims with SimPe, you root out ev-ver-ry thing - memories, family ties - the whole ball-o-wax. When they are gone, they are truly gone & the game runs so much better.

Over the years, my game moved to about 6 different gaming pcs & laptops. Not fun backing all that up when one has maybe 80 gigs of custom content, but it's worth it if you dig your game. It's also no fun putting all of that back onto a new pc & trying to remember the correct install order. Have to re-educate yourself everytime.

However, all the space that was ate up by unwanted sims was free, so I was able to fill it with my own sim families, which grew to a large number. I use to know that number, but haven't played the game in about 5 years. It's never been on the pc I'm using. It's weird since it was a habit for 2 decades. I do keep the backups ready though, even though I finally got into TS3 2 years ago, and even started collecting TS4 just in case I decided to try it. I want to like TS3, but it won't let me like it since it crashes like crazy.

My TS2 Vville game eventually became bloated with families that went several generations deep, about 6 on average. I think the safe number for sims for a game was suppose to be like 400 before it started going bad, but I had over 1000.

The game took over an hour to load.

I knew it inside & out, every sim, as well as all the details & caveats a simmer should know. But my hood became too thick.

So I made a fresh hood in about 2016. Never did that before, but I made sure it was better than the old Vville. It was. All of the right mods, etc.

I had meticulous back-ups of the sims from my custom hood, so I began porting them into the new hood. Just the newest generations, and maybe some core older sims, such as my sim-self.

One problem with the old hood was I could no longer play my sim-self. Something about her became corrupt. I used SimPE to fix her once, and got a few more years of play out of her, but then she got to where she could no longer come onto a lot without bringing down the game. Immediate crash-ola. Crash-o-rama.

Maybe she knew too many sims? Had too many relatives? No idea.

With the new hood carrying on the legacy of the old one with the final generation of the old hood, I played another couple years. By then, I had everything down to a science. How to build the best most optimal house designed for multi-generational families, and all the rest.

The game became dull, boring and predictable. I was really addicted to game genetics & astrology matching. I was all about mixing sims, pairing sims. But even that became predictable since I perfected my gameplay.

The last pc with TS2 blew up, literally - with smoke & everything. So I just never reinstalled it again on my new pc. Never did that. Put TS3 on a spare pc & it was one problem after the other, crash crash crash. So I stopped.

But I miss it.

May get into again. That's why I'm here. Thinking about it.

Good luck to any new TS2 simmers. It's a fun game if you know its bugs & can conquer them with knowledge. The TS2 forums are gold. They are your friend. This one is the granddaddy.

Have fun. Happy simming from a dodgy old simmer.
~S

My Test of Time hood has around 1300 living sims in it. Occassionly plays it as the hood works fine and no problem with loading it, but now working on a medieval hood inspired by Warwickshire challenge. Still working on tgecharacters but i plan to have roughly 20 households but knowing myself it will be alot more because i love big hoods

I also have a premade Uberhood with 800 sims but now im on heavy on historical hoods, so its saved on my laptop somewhere :D