I know this probably should be filed under "Stupid Questions for New Players", but bear with me. Right now I have 6 Sims and 2 Pets living on a lot. The wife (who has the Fertility Treatment) goes into labour and only gives birth to 1 child. I'm trying to understand why it's not twins.

One of the Sims has an Imaginary Friend roaming the lot, and there's also a Butler. Does either of these count towards the household maximum? I'm wondering if I changed something in NRaaS settings that limits the number of children the wife can have?

My experience was when you have more than 8, the oldest ones become unplayable but they're still in your household. If you boot some of the younger ones out, then you can play the older ones again.

The NRaas mod that governs trying for baby and births in an overstuffed household is Woohooer. It's probably not intended, but I have heard of players having trouble getting multiple births once over the EA limit of 8. Yes, IFs count and I think the Butler does also (not as sure about that), so you have 7 or 8 already on the non-pet side and 9 or 10 on the total which are both at the EA limits.

One way to work around this is to use MC's Add Sim to add some of the sims to another household or one of their own before the birth and bring them back in the same way afterwards. That is, provided you have MC > Settings > Allow More than Eight Sims per House set to True.

PortraitPanel (or AwesomeMod for those so inclined) takes care of not being able to select some of the household members. The way without either mod is to use the space bar to toggle between vertical "pages" of sims portrait panels, but that gets cumbersome pretty quickly even with only 9 human sims in play. I've never had any trouble selecting and controlling any members of very large households. Whether the sims do what I tell them to might be another story.

Also not a great idea if your game performance isn't anything to write home about in the first place.

Just to add, butlers don't count, they are handled like a permanent guest and IFs only count if they had been given the potion that makes them real and been turned into a full Sim. If that IF is still only visible to the child who owns it, then the Sim version of that IF is counted either as an out-of-towner or a homeless Sim (I'm not too sure anymore about which one).

Does that go for other NPC roles as well, because they're not full Sims? Like for example Mrs. Crumplebottom in TS2, she wouldn't have counted right?

I think we are confusing two things here. OP, the way I understand it, means maximum number of Sims allowed in a household, not maximum number of Sims allowed to be present on a lot or, respectively, how many Sims can visit a lot. That number, as far as I know, is determined somewhere in the core files, is flexible and is dependant on your computer's hardware rating, from low (?) to uber. The maximum number of Sims allowed in a household, on the other hand, is hard-coded, regardless of your machine's rating.

But mods can still lift that restriction, right? Because I know I've seen more than 8 Sims in a household. As far as Sims present on the lot goes, I think that's 25-30.

Mods can increase the number of sims allowed in a household, but there are little ramifications through the game that still behave as if the other limit was in place. For example, I have Master Controller to set 15 (I think) allowed in the household, but I can't find a way to get somebody abducted for more alien babies if there are more than 8 in the household, so I either have to cheat that baby or wait till I move the young adults out. (prudence has convinced me of the latter course)

At least with Master Controller in place, the household affiliation of the pre-real Imaginary Friend is inconsistent. For some purposes they are in one of the Homeless households and for other purposes they are in the household of the child whose Imginary Friend they are. They don't count for the limit on the household till they turn real, but when you look for them in the various menus they sometimes show up in that household, and yet when you check their status they might be in one or the other (possibly depending which Master Controller menu you use to check their status?).

I don't think people were expected to be quite as involved with Imaginary Friend play as I have become...

Just to clarify, I mean maximum number of Sims living in the household. In my case:
The 6 controllable Sims living on my lot were Father, Mother, Brother, Cousin, Toddler, Toddler. Also 2 controllable Pets of Dog and Horse. 6+2=8 The Butler and ImaginaryFriend were Uncontrollable Sims and not part of the household

I tried reloading a few times and the pregnant Mother only gave birth to 1 taco-baby, even with the Fertility Treatment. 7+2=9 But she had no problem getting pregnant again and giving birth to another child, so I did that. 8+2=10 Same result really, just weird how the game locked out the twins option.


@GrijzePilion: ugh, I know. Issuing commands is such a pain in the cloaca. I only wanted to max out the Sims because I realized I'm halfway through my Legacy Challenge and I've only finished 17 LTWs out of a possible 86. :p

IIRC reloading to change the birth outcome only works if done before the last bump. Otherwise it's totally locked. Was it the case? I lost 2 hours of play because of that not too long ago as my last save was too close to the birth moment and reloading wouldn't change the gender. I had to reload an older save that was more or so 24 hours before the birth time.