So I've been playing TS3 again recently and visiting community lots, I've noticed how much the other Sims there had unfulfilled needs. In one Sim day I've seen a Sim with her Hygiene in the red, a PlumBot shutting down due to low Energy, thereby trapping all other Sims in the building, a Sim about to pee himself and 3 Sims begging for food. I've also seen about a dozen routing failures, but that aside. Is there a way to have the game automatically keep those Sims' needs satisfied? What about disabling certain needs on community lots or forcing the Sims to fulfill them? If there's no mods for this, what are the options?

Thanks,
Pi

If you don't mind your townies being human robots you can make their needs static using Nraas's Story Progression.

I'm not going anywhere near Story Progression, so no thank you.

I think NRaas StoryProgression is actually doing a pretty good job of making people do whatever they should be doing, including stuff like go jogging if they need athletic skill or whatnot. Also *ahem* doing stuff like setting the house on fire so the firemen can get a promotion :P

If you don't want some form of SP, I think AwesomeMod also tends to do a decent job of directing them to take care of their basic needs even if you don't activate its story progression. Mind you, not to the extent that NRaas SP does it, but they do seem to get their queue stomped (i.e., an action pushed to the front of the queue) if they need to use the toilet or the bed or whatnot. I've been having 7 NPC roommates for a VERY long time, both at home and at college, and nobody starved or pissed themselves or anything yet. Hell even NPC pets only once got picked by the animal protection.

The only REAL caveat seems to be: wiring the house with speakers. Don't. If the house is wired with the stereo, even if you use a mod (or just the AwesomeMod setting) to exclude bedrooms, sims tend to not know that the bedrooms are soundproofed. So they may not be pushed to use the bed.

You can use a wall stereo to just hear the music everywhere, though, without actually counting as wiring the whole house, as far as the game is concerned.

And, oh, if you use AwesomeMod don't forget to use their config page in any case.

AwesomeMod bugs my game the hell out. My entire save went batshit insane when I tried it so no, that's not an option either.

I wonder if there's an option in MasterController to make the needs of townies decay at half the rate? Or does that already happen?

Nraas Relativity mod is what I use to alter the decay rate factors for my active sim. I think it does affect the entire town though.

I'd like to exclude my active household.

[removed wrong info]

/* goshhhh I've never suspected a few weeks a few months ago spended with S4 would have such disasterous consequences.

I thought that was only possible in TS4?

Been there, done that.