So, I'm on the second draft of the populated version of Land Grant University (which doesn't mean I'm not taking comments on the infrastracture; it's a long way from all playtested yet, so I'm doubling up on the job and anybody who wants to download the empty version from the Creator Feedback thread and give me notes is welcome to do so). The first one got yanked because I didn't have the mod limiting professors in and, even though nobody had declared a major or seen one in person yet, a near-infinite number of professors spawned the moment the first batch of students returned from class. So now I've got Cyjon's "There can be only one" in, along with the other spawn-suppressors.

So now in Version 2 I've got ten playables and sixteen custom dormies, which I presumed would be enough to populate the Secret Society without every single dormie in the place being a member (don't want to make it too easy!) and also to prevent the problem of duplicates spawning on a lot when not enough inactive characters are available. Well, the first remains to be seen, but I've already had one instance of duplicate generation. So the first question is: What's the minimum number of dormies necessary to prevent duplicate spawning?

I don't think these duplicates cause corruption in and of themselves, though I do intend (if I don't have to throw away this draft) to keep track of who duplicates and summon them to memory-wipe them with the batbox last thing before going live. But I'd still rather not have them, and I would rather not bequeath the annoyance to players who like to suppress extra sims. But I also don't want to bloat the file size with dormies. I want a small number of recognizable dormies of my manufacture to remain consistent from player to player, but for each player also, if not suppressing, to get brand new dormies spawned with their own CC, defaults, and so on.

The second problem is one I find more worrying. One household, the Printer Sisters, is to be a band consisting of one Popularity, one Fortune, and one Romance sim, all with the Rock Goddess LTW. I know Rock God is a possible LTW for all these aspirations, because I've had sims of all these aspirations spawn with it, and have no mods affecting LTWs, except the ones fixing fulfillment problems with some of them. Yet when I moved in Daisy Wheels, the Popularity member, and tried to change her LTW from Hall of Famer by cycling through them with the batbox, Rock Goddess does not appear! I cycled through twice, to be sure.

This is not the first time I've had trouble getting a desired LTW that should have been possible through the batbox; but it's the first time I can't shrug and blame it on Drama Acres's extreme wonkiness. There shouldn't be any extreme wonkiness in a neighborhood made with care and only populated since yesterday! Is the problem with the box itself? Was Rock Goddess added to the available LTWs for Popularity with a later EP?

So what are my alternatives here?

I have no reason to believe that trying the batbox on a different lot with the same character would be effective. And it has to be the same character. The Printer Sisters (JoAnn Gutenberg, Dot Matrix, and Daisy Wheels) are a core part of the concept. Editing characters in a subhood that isn't part of a neighborhood in SimPE is tricky at best, impossible at worst. Is there another method of changing LTW of which I am unaware?

Are you familiar with Cyjon's mod that allows all sims to have any career as a LTW? I'm not sure if that would be ideal for a neighborhood you'll be sharing for download. It would fix the problem, though.

i suppose I could pop it in, change the LTW, and take it out again. It's a bit cumbersome, and it might not solve the problem, as the LTW should already be available -whatever's blocking it on the batbox might block it just as much with that mod + the batbox. So I think I'll bear it in mind and hope someone comes along with another suggestion.

Why not just set it in SimPE? Once set the game doesn't protest about it being wrong for that aspiration.

EA's universities have 50 dormies. But you don't need so many. I'd say look into your biggest dorm and count the claimable rooms. If you have 16 claimable rooms, you'll need at least 16 dormies, so you won't end up with empty rooms.
That's how we did it in Quadington University, too. The biggest dorm had 8 claimable rooms = 8 dormies.
As for the duplicates, I've also seen duplicates of EA's dormies in the past. I can't remember when it exactly was but it was a long time back. So I don't think this issue is specially related to Land Grant University. I think this issue was fixed in later EPs but I'm not sure. Maybe I'm wrong with this. Secret Society lots and members are a bit iffy.

And as for your second question, sorry to disappoint you but the Music career track came with Seasons, not with University. So the Rock God LTW is not available in a BG+Uni only game. But I think, the Slacker LTW would be similar to this. I can't remember the name of the LTW but it's for the Slacker career track. As for editing the neighborhood in SimPE, it says you have to load the 'primary' neighborhood in order to edit but you can ignore this warning. Because ATM, it's a subhood AND it's also a primary 'hood at the same time. That's why you're able to edit it anyway. The LTW can be changed in a sim's Wants and Fears record.

Crap, crap, crap. Now i have to rethink that whole household! But at least it means there's nothing wrong. I can still do the household, I'll just have to write the bios and household description differently, and choose non-professional LTWs for the characters, and say that rock godhood is the way they've always dreamed of meeting those goals. The players can change the LTWs if they feel like it. I can still have them in the desired majors, too. So that's all right.

Thanks!

Peni, as a "workaround", could you temporarily change Daisy's aspiration to Romance using SimPE, or the Sim Manipulator (or similar)? Then use the batbox to cycle through LTWs till you get Rock Goddess, and finally change her aspiration back to Popularity? I recall someone recommending that course of action to me when I wanted a Romance Sim to have a politics LTW, but in the end I just used Squinge's Any LTW mod, as the Maxis choice with my EP combination is just far too limited. Alternatively you might just temporarily install Squinge's mod to change the LTW and then remove it. We've found Maxis pre-mades (well Downtownies anyway) with "wrong" LTWs. My Ravi Bertino (Pleasure) (Patrick Teens the Tricou boy in the game files) originally had Criminal Mastermind as his LTW. (My game used to have the nicest gentlest Sims all wanting to be criminals!!)
[EDIT] My post crossed with Jawusa's. So you can't have Rock Goddess. But, if it suits you share a neighbourhood with some Sims having combinations of Aspirations and LTWs that would be impossible for a player to achieve in a vanilla game, then I think that should still be ok. After all Maxis shared neighbourhoods with Sims like that, and I don't think it causes corruption.

The problem is that the career isn't available at all to anyone who doesn't have Seasons. But it'll be okay. With the Uni instruments - guitar, bass, and drums - you can mimic a band by choosing the "perform" option, which causes them to put down a tip jar, and they can "join" each other to play together. So even without the career they can make their livings playing music. And of course while they're at Uni (which is all I'm responsible for) they can't be in a career at all. I've got a couple of lots set up as music venues with the relevant instruments placed, so the Printer Sisters will be able to perform, and the player can decide whether to keep the band together or not; and whether to put them into the music career if it's available in their setup.

I'm thinking "Make $100,000," "Have 20 Simultaneous Best Friends," and "20 Simultaneous Lovers" or "Woohoo 20 Different Sims" are LTWs that can explain the desire for the rock-and-roll lifestyle just fine.

Since my hood had no townies after I placed Brainiana as my uni it spawned 8. I didn't attempt for the SS and I'm not even sure if it's there since I've seen no blazers. 16 sounds more than enough to me.

Side note - I feel like the Musician career track is a very odd thing to come with Seasons.

"Sex, drugs, and rock & roll?"
"No. Fishing, gardening, and rock & roll."

The duplicates might be one of two things:

1. If you place a second university in your town, the game makes a second set of students which are made to the same template as the first set (assuming you don't have empty templates) so they look alike
2. The portal can glitch which causes it to call the same sim twice (or more) - this doesn't add to your game's population since it is calling the same sim and you see two (or more) copies

I made about 24 dormies for Little Carping's university. What happens with dorms is this:

1. You move a sim in (and claim a door)
2. The game starts to move in dormies for the other doors and ALWAYS takes them in the same order - I think creation order though I haven't actually investigated. This is a typical EAxis systemic thing - bit like the first born effect in that it has a list and always starts at the same place (unless that dormie is already flagged as in use)
3. If you move a sim into a second dorm, the game will supply more dormies from the same list, taking up where it left off with the first
4. If you move a second sim in, a dormie will (randomly) move out to make room. When you next move a sim into a dorm and need dormies for the other doors, or graduate a sim and leave an unclaimed door behind, the game will move in THAT SIM that moved out first

In Little Carping, as a result, I see the same dormies time after time and there are some I made I have never seen in play.

I imagine 16 dormies is more than enough but the total you would theoretically need perhaps would be the total number of rooms in dorms minus the number of playable dorms you have. That is to say, the dorms become active once you move in a sim but that sim takes up one door so it is the other doors in the dorm that need a dormie. Incidentally, if you have the noregen hacks in your game and empty templates, you will see no dormies at all unless you make them. That's why I made my dormies in the first place, I got bored of playing cavernous dorms with nobody in them.

Finally, if the game gets into a situation where it has to make a new dormie, it is always randomly generated. If you are seeing duplicates it's because of one of the two conditions above.

It must've been the portal glitch, because I not only have the spawning suppressors in, I made the dormies myself, mostly from clones of Drama Acres people, and the sim who appeared twice was Gerry Mander. If it's not based on the number of dormies I won't worry about it.

Even with suppressors in place, I'm up to 53 characters - the ten playables, the sixteen dormies, and the rest NPCs. I already have one llama, one cow mascot, one cheerleader, and one streaker! Which is my fault, because I want two of the playables to start as sophomores and I'm playing them through it. The game should be about done generating them, I hope. But after the way people embraced Sadie Wilkie in Widespot, I rather like the idea of a stable of consistent background characters. It's a shame the names will be rerandomized when the subhood's attached to a new neighborhood, as almost all of the dormies have pun names; but life is rough.

I hope you'll provide pictures of all the dormies with their original pun names when you share the 'hood?! When I use the Widespot subhood version I always change Sadie's name to keep her as Sadie Wilkie (but then I also always make her playable and I created parents and a younger sister for her in CAS, which I now add to every Widespot that I play!). I'd like to be able to play all the dormies with their "given" names as well :-)

I'm already daydreaming about playing this university attached to Widespot! :-D (with a cloned/recreated version of the County family also living in Widespot) :-D