I've been having a strange problem in my game recently. I'm not sure when it started, but at some point my sims started bringing home strange "co-workers." The "co-worker" they bring home NEVER works in the same field as them--and now even NPCs are being brought home as well (so far the University cafeteria worker and the Repo Man have both come home as my sim's coworkers.) At first I thought this was a harmless glitch but surely the Repo Man is not an NPC that you should be interacting with? Has anybody had this problem and been able to fix it?

I am sorry to say but any hood that this is happing in and even maybe you program for Sims 2 is corrupt.

I'm at a loss for how such a thing could happen, although I know corruption CAN just pop out of seemingly nowhere. I've never done anything that I know can cause corruption but for such a specific issue I thought maybe a mod could fix it (or prevent it from happening again?) Either way is there any way to test whether its just the hood that became corrupted vs. the entire game? I'd rather not do a full reinstall if it isn't necessary.

Do you have freetime? Cause to me it sounds like they are bringing hobby friends home which you can find mods that fix that.

I do (I guess I should have mentioned I have the Ultimate Collection) and that was what I originally suspected was causing the issue. I found a mod that supposedly fixes a glitch where sims bring home the SAME hobby friend every day but I don't think that mod will fix my particular issue.

If you're still enjoying playing your 'hood, and it's still playable, don't give up on it, even if it is corrupt. If it's a Maxis 'hood the it will be corrupt, because the developers did lots of VBTs (Very Bad Things!) during development and playtesting. If you don't have them already, download and install nounlinkondelete, nocorruptdeath and creaturefixes from MATY. These are really essential fixes to keep your game healthy. FFS Lot Debugger (ffsdebugger, commonly called the Batbox) from the same site is invaluable for fixing things that have gone wrong. And finally, if you don't use it already, download and install mootilda's HoodChecker. Sadly mootilda is no longer with us to support it, but there are plenty of people here who I know will do their best to help you. The HoodChecker can't detect or fix every form of corruption, but it's by far the best tool we have. The first tome you run it you will probably get pages if errors. Save the report of the errors, back up your game, and run the HoodChecker again with the Remove option. You will find it fixes most of the errors. In short to keep playing the 'hood:
1) Install the MATY fixes.
2) Make and keep plenty of backups.
3) Run the HoodChecker frequently.
There are no guarantees, but, doing ot this way, if your 'hood does become unplayable, you.ve probably got a recent backup from which you can keep playing. Some of the best hoods around are known to be corrupt.

You may also want to find the file objects.package and make it read-only, that may prevent some corruption that could force you to reinstall the whole game. Unfortunately, I don't know where you would find the proper version of the file in the Ultimate Collection (in other versions it's the file in the folder for your most recent expansion pack but I don't know anything about the Ultimate Collection, sorry).

The "Repo Man" is not a Sim but is an object and for them bringing home co-workers and it is the "Repo Man" this is major corruption of the object package. Repo Man is one of the universal Sims and to me it is game corruption and not just hood corruption.

Yes you can kept on playing the hoods as they are but sooner or later you will lose the hood.

No he isn't - he's a sim like the Social Worker in that the sim files are in the neighbourhood but he doesn't have a name just a title (Repo Man). That is not a game-destroying corruption though it might be a sign the neighbourhood is corrupted. It will be fixed by deleting the neighbourhood.

I already have/have done all of these things And the hood is actually the cleaned up hoods by meetme2theriver. I do use the hoodchecker, often (borderline obsessively at times) just to keep things stable. I've definitely had errors before but nothing game breaking. The game itself is definitely still playable its just the first time I've seen a symptom in this hood that I've found worrisome so I was interested to see if there was a mod that prevented sims that don't meet the correct criteria from being brought home from work with your sim. Something like that could help prevent a situation from getting worse or happening in the future.

If children and toddler have wants like 'Go to Date with...' or LT wishes, then your neighborhood is corrupt but when nobody has those wants as kids or todds, then you're fine.

By the way, you CAN remove the corruption from the neighborhood. There's a way to do that. You can even keep the lots if you want. There's a way to remove sim references from previously occupied sims.

A dangerous sim, but not a universal. You certainly don't want him as a date drop or coming home like that, just like the SW. I think there is a mod that gives you a pop up and asks if so and so can come home before materializing, that could work, but I don't know it's name.

Is there a list of sims some place that are universal. I don't mean the Wiki corruption page as that has them all together, but just a lit of Universals.

http://modthesims.info/d/135090

Good onja wert, that's the one. It does say you still get the relationship points which is a pity, but they won't materialize on your lot at least.

The wiki lists the universal/object NPCs in a subsection of this article.



that's ONE symptom of corruption. It's not the only possible symptom. The wiki page I linked also contains a list of symptoms, but even those may not be all the possible symptoms.

Also, it appears that that mod has unfortunately not been updated since Bon Voyage.

There's also Pescado's nofraternization from the Director's Cut: http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s.../topic,8.0.html.

The description says: "Sims will only bring co-workers home from the same job level that they are currently on. It stops sims from dragging home co-workers of grossly different job level. With OFB, it now also makes sure that sims are actually working in the same business, and not simply sharing the "Employee" track. Last but not least, it adds the feature that friends from work and school being dragged home will be suppressed if the sim already has after-work assignments queued."

I don't know if it would help in this case, but it might stop your Sim from bringing home people they shouldn't.

Universals (21)
Toddler New Year
Father Time
Santa Klaus
Hula Zombie
Pollination Technician
Grim Reaper
Therapist
Mrs Crumplebottom
Stinky Skunk
Witchdoctor
Bigfoot Bigfoot
Ideal Plantsim
Rod Humble
Genie
Spectral Assistant
Good Witch Cat
Unknowns 5 (I think - Bird, Penguin, Remote Control Car, Robot, Template Dog)

That's in a custom hood on a fresh load, all EPs/SPs. That's what you can see in SimPE on hood creation but before you load the hood. At that point, there will be NO files in your characters folder.

What is the bird? The caged pet? Also I didn't realize the good witch cat was one of them. What about the evil witch cat?

Thank you!! This is pretty much EXACTLY what I was looking for. I knew something like this existed I just had no idea where I had seen it. It was bothering me that random sims that weren't even in the same career field were following my sims home--- let alone the Repo Man.

The mod has been updated, so it does have a cancel option (like twojeffs' school mod) where if you hit cancel, the Sim won't come home and you won't get a relationship boost.

I thought the cat became like a pet if a witch acquired one. Hopefully that's only a template.

Yes ... the witch cat/spectral assistants concern me. You mean play them outside of how they're supposed to be played, right?

My witch does have a spectral cat. It appears and disappears. I do NOT use the mind control mirror on the cat in any way. I let the cat do its thing, doing only the functions the wiki states. Perhaps it's affected when I max motives in a household, but that's about it. That would be safe, correct?

When you mean "add to the family", you mean you try to keep it permanently in there like a regular dog or cat, which usually means messin' around with it. And by "playing as", you mean trying to control it like a normal pet. Am I correct? And of course, you don't employ any mod or cheat that would breed the cat, assign it a gender or give it a career.

I think that might be an important note to new players as well. We're talking about using the spectral cat in a way the game did not intend. At least I hope so!

If so, this differs from almost all the other VBTs in that you can include it in your family, as long as you do it correctly. I would shudder at the idea of anyone wanting the original Mrs. C in their household! I suppose the bird is similar as well. And you can certainly keep a remote-control car in your household, but you cannot delete it, I believe. I think you can put it in inventory, but that's about it.

(For reference: http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Spectral_cat)

Why can't you delete the remote control car? I know it's an NPC, but deleting it off a lot shouldn't hurt, it's not deleted from the game.

I've never had a spectral cat (so many sim things I haven't done; I must do some of them). So it isn't added to the family like a normal cat? Does it appear in the relationship panel/can you make friends with it?

The RC car, you can delete, the only guidance I've seen about it is making sure you don't save while a sim is using it. If the lot resets before you next load it, the NPC will jump out and be standing in the car, or something? I've never seen this happen but apparently it can.

Obviously if you see *NPC - Remote Control Car appear on something like the teleporter, don't make it selectable or do anything with it. That could corrupt something.

What I don't know - does it create one NPC for each placed car, ie, should you avoid placing more than one on each lot?