I want to play a deserted town, you know, like playing Will Smith in "I Am Legend".

My idea was, I stock up the cemetery with plenty of dead people, and have a single sim. who grows life fruit and catches death fish and bakes it up into Ambrosia, and one by one brings them back to life.

So, I found an empty world on The Sims 3 website (most of them are empty), shut off EA story progression, and started playing my Will Smith. But houses started to fill up anyway.

Start over and this time I erased the places that need a sim to man the cash registers and such... Same problem...

Not so stupid question:
Where are these sims coming from?

Stupid question:
There's no way to play an almost empty world, is there? It's not what the game is designed to do.

No, no. I'm pretty sure there is. One of Twallan's mods can do it. I think Nrass' Story Progression - basically a version of EA's that gives you complete control - has an option to completely halt immigration that only Trump could dream of.

Well, you'll still have some generated NPCs like paparazzi (which you can remove), mixologists and food booth attendants (which you can remove), postmen (non-removable), party dancers (I don't think you can remove those either), repairmen and pizza delivery people (not sure if generated when needed or there all the time), babysitters (not sure if these are generated if there aren't any kids around) and coworkers, if your Sim is employed. You can also get rid of strays, but I think those are still generated, you just don't see them.

But these are generally kept in the NPC household which, judging by where Sims run off to, is accessed via teleportation from a random public lot (seriously, NPCs just enter the lot and vanish, it's magic!).

How many Sims were moved into empty houses?
I know only three types of Sims that have to be residents under EA rules*: stylists, consignment clerks and WA cash register staff (book merchant, food merchant, nectar merchant, general goods merchant and relic merchant).
All of these can be prevented from moving in with NRaas Register by disallowing resident assignment.

(* Come to think of it, it may be that staff from later EPs need to be residents too, like barista bar or UL nerd shop staff. I don't know because I have never played without NRaas Register anymore since I got it and have it always set to use homeless as role Sims)

ETA: What you can also do to prevent any random move-ins is to delete the fridges in the houses you want to remain empty.

I expected the postperson because I forgot how to delete mailboxes... pretty sure it's a testing cheats enabled thing.
Yeah, food booth people - I have to delete the seasons style park because even without food booths, there were no less than six food booth people there. Looked like a top hat convention. Did you know that if they're just standing around without a booth, you can still buy food from them? Who knew?


NRAAS SP, huh?


Well, it it's the only way to destroy the world so Will Smith can save it.... I'll give it a go.

Here is a warning before this issue strikes and you return to say it's not documented enough or something. If you only have one resident (your active sim) in the entire world no matter how you arrange it, eventually sooner or later the game will try to calculate who its next chess opponent should be -- even if your sim has no real interest in playing chess. And it will go off the deep end when it can't find any candidates to even consider. You may need a second resident if/when this happens.

What I don't know is if a playable ghost with its own household would suffice, but that might be more in tune with your intended storyline than a family of regular non-occult sims.

It was very easy to make a town in CAW with nothing but a cemetery, a library and a few empty houses. The problem was getting the Ambrosia book into the game without a bookstore. Easiest way was to use NRAAS porter - buy a ambrosia book, then pack 'em up in porter with the dead people.

As for killing the people you want to revive: using NRAAS MC cheats, Advanced->Force Kill and then pick "Starvation". Why? Cuz as ghost they're hungry. Simply bring the headstone and plant it on your lot. The ghost come out at night and will raid your refrigerator, which has your ambrosia in it. (Level 7 fishing and gardening, Level 10 cooking). Pick any other death and they're not so hungry.

Well, it turns out that the default for NRAAS SP is no immigration. Yeah, there's the paper delivery child and the mail person which I expected. I canceled the newspaper but I don't remember how to delete mail boxes. I just ignore the mail person, except for bills, which creates a need for a money supply.

So far, a couple game weeks into it, I've only encountered one other living sim, which I think came with another mod. I don't know now, he's dead. I used MC to add him to the cemetery.

As for the NRAAS SP settings, I think I spent a day with the NRAAS SP "Interactions" on one side of the screen and the NRAAS settings in the game on the other and that's on me and I'm not complaining. Not sure what the "age disgrace" caste was about, it didn't seem to do anything. I'm pretty sure that it kept everyone out, as "online dating" had no one in it. Great!

I'm doing a "Supernatural" version so I'm using "Vial of Bliss" 3 times a day to keep away the loneliness, otherwise too lonely to do anything and game over. I made Will Smith a witch so has an endless supply of apples to make vial of bliss. Not sure how to do it when I'm doing a "science" game; the Green Thumb trait gives the Sim the ability to chat with potatoes, that would work. I think gather space rocks and use a telescope and snare an alien for a friend, or build a plumbot. Or take all the dead people out and spread them around the house or extra lot, and chat with the ghosts at night.

Yeah, pretty sure if I play this with a science theme it would be with a goal of a completely mechanical populated town.. Cylon Town.

Just gotta make plumbots that look like the 13 humanioid Cylons. Just need a picture of #7.