Hi all,

So I have the nodormieregen installed: I know it stops the game from respawning dormies. What I would like to do is tally up all the dormies in my college (which I can do wtih the teleporter) and slowly "use" all the dormies and graduate them from college( freshman-senior) so eventually all my dormies would be graduates and integrated into my neighborhood. Is this possible to do or is it a game "no-no" to use all the dormies in your college (and no new ones be spawned)? I know that eventually I'll run out of sims to populate the dorms and I'm okay with it.

As far as I know it is perfectly fine, except that if you read the readme for nodormieregen, if the game needs secret society members and you don't have any dormies, the hack will allow one to be made. So you are likely to get another one showing up each time one of your playables makes friends with three ex-dormie secret society members and gets initiated into the secret society. If, of course, that is, you've put a secret society in your college. If you don't have a secret society, then you won't need one for that.

I've played without dormies for quite a while and never had any issues resulting from it, except that of course starting without any dormies no one ever gets into the secret society.

Thanks so much! I'll leave the ss members be then! :lovestruc

You can see the very last link in my signature - there's a list of NPCs that are and aren't safe to play as or delete.

If you have added one university to your neighbourhood, you will have 50 dormies. If you add a second, you will get 50 more. What's more, the game uses the same set of templates each time so with a second university, you get duplicate students (appearance only). I'm not quite clear though whether this is entirely true of the pre-made universities since I don't use them. You can use empty templates to prevent this dormie spamming (only works with a new neighbourhood or new university). That's what I did with Redbrick and Metropolitan. Then, eventually, I made my own dormies. If you have no dormies at all (as I did), you just get empty rooms in the dorms. It gets a bit dull and lifeless after a bit which is why I made a set of 20 dormies.

Are you sure it's 50? I don't have any no dormie hacks and have maybe 20-30 non-playables in my Uni, all created by the game.

Yes, I've tested it a good number of times and it's 50 each time. I can post the notes I took at the time if you like. It *might* be different if you're adding the pre-made universities since I have never tested those as I don't play them (they add approx. 115 sims for each one which will include 24 professors and the playables plus NPCs. It's 98 in a custom hood with no playables).

You often only see a limited number of the students because of the way the game selects them for use in dorms. If you move a sim into an 8-bed dorm, for example, the game will use the first 7 students on its list (I think it goes by NID). Say you then move in another playable sim of your own. One dormie moves out. The thing is, it's that dormie who will be the first move in when the game next wants a student for a dorm room either because your first sim graduated or because you open up another dorm. The students are always re-used in the same order, it's not random. It means unless you have a lot of playable students sitting singly in dorms with extra space you never see the students at the end of the list (though you might see them on community lots). It does mean though that the game has the capacity to keep supplying students without having to generate new ones if you make many dormies playable. I forget what number of dormies you have to get down to to prompt the game to generate new ones. As well as the data for the numbers tests I did, I did, at one time, have a record of the physical archetypes it uses to make the students but I think that got deleted. Each set of 50 students looks the same (again, unless you use empty templates). Empty templates were originally invented because people got pissed off seeing the same set of sims time and again.

In other words, I'm sure I'm right and I have (or had) the data to prove it.

Since you brought up more than one university....I have the megahood from here that has all hoods including belladonna. Is it safe to add the other universities to the college? I know you can't add another shopping district to it...but what about universities when it comes to megahoods?

Sorry - don't do megahoods so I've no idea.

SayanAmanda, you will have to look at the thread associated with that neighborhood. If you'd used Tarlia's hoods it's perfectly safe to add universities, shopping districts, downtowns, and vacation destinations until your computer can't handle it anymore. I think you've already got three universities attached, and that neighborhood has an awful lot of sims, dead and alive (check your character file folder.). I'd hesitate to add more in any event unless you're certain your computer can handle it, even if the set-up itself can take another.

Do I remember correctly that you can only have 3 universities anyway? I know you can have as many shopping districts as you like.

SayanAmanda, for the future, it's a better idea to use the DIY uberhood from Tarlia, as HP's megahood has some corruption issues.

Oh I shudder to think how I would handle having to completely restart with a hood from scratch at this point with so much progress made. I'd have to be pretty bored but if the time comes I'll be sure to remember. Thanks :P

OK. I haven't tested it, so I'll defer my anecdote to your testing

I don't actually use dormies in dorms, as I only use my 5-person dorms which I always fill with my playables, so I was going off of the "college directory" which I don't think has 50 non-playables (now I want to check when I get home), but my college has gone from 47 playables to 2 (depending on the rotation) and I can't say I've noticed any new dormies in the directory. My college is just a renamed Sim State, though, so as you said, that might make a difference...

I think you can make secret society dormies playable as well, the game will spawn more even with nodormierespawn in. They're counted as essential so they will always be created, if you have a secret society lot.

If you don't want SS dormies you need to remove the SS lot, I don't know though how you would do this. Perhaps with the lot adjuster it's possible?

I play HP's Uber megahood (I started it before Talia's came out, and, well... I didn't want to start over) and I have all 3 colleges added.

I know - the thing is, if the students are not used they are also not initialised. I built 24 (or 26, can't remember exactly) students for Redbrick and Metropolitan (Little Carping has two universities). I run huge dorms in both campuses and have a big throughput of students (the Little Carping sims are a studious lot). I made the dormies a good while back. Even now, some of them have not initialised - I can see that in the sim files. That means they have never appeared in game and I think, if that is the case, that you won't see them in the directory. Some, btw, do appear as walkbys - but obviously, even with only 20 students or so, not all of them.

You can make them playable and the game will make new ones or, if you have the hack, convert existing sims (sshack - also Pescado). The only way I know of to avoid the secret society lot is not to place one. You can't do that with the default universities. Even so, I see SS students in Little Carping's universities. You see the uniform popping up here and there. It's just my sims never get abducted.

Does anyone know if I add the other 3 colleges and I have the no dormie mod whether they will have sims in them from the start? Also...does anyone have any downtown hoods that they've found somewhere that I could add as a 2nd downtown? I looked on the sims wiki and there were only like 2.

Yes the three default colleges come with dormies so they will have them. An empty one will come without sims or dormies.

If you add a second downtown it can cause problems; and it will be completely empty, even if it came with inhabitants. Another densely-populated OFB subhood is generally to be preferred.

I've got a custom downtown in the works, but players have reported bizarre crap with the latest edit so don't hold your breath.

So, one downtown, and multiple OFB subhoods (like bluewater village + a new template) is okay?

Yes Megahoods come with six or seven OFB subhoods.