[ARCHIVED] Autonomous Family Meal Causes Random Sims to Enter Home Uninvited [ Edited ]

[simvasion]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
What is your current game version number? 1.63.134.1020
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All except Tiny Living
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? You'll have to play a household for a while, maybe a family of multiple sims for better chances. You're waiting for them to do an autonomous action. I believe it triggers on hunger, so make sure their hunger bar is not full all the time.
What happens when the bug occurs? When sims get hungry, they have the chance to run an autonomous hidden action available on the fridge (it's not something you can click for yourself) - called Run Family Meal Situation. It starts a situation event where the sim will cook a family meal, then call over people to eat. When this happens, random sims can enter your home as dinner guests summoned by the situation. It does not filter them to check if they're part of the household or already invited in - it can pick any sim in the instance e.g. stall vendors on the other side of the neighbourhood.
What do you expect to see? I expect the filter for the guests to account for family members, sims who have been explicitly invited over or roommates and not every available sim in the entire instance picked from at random.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No

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I believe this is a base game interaction and base game issue.

The game uses a blank filter for the situation job "job_guest_eater_family_meal" that is run during the situation "situation_family_meal".

I believe this is the root cause of many of the other bug threads reported here about random uninivited sims entering your home without prior permission (but not all cases of those e.g. the goofball/erratic sims entering apartments uninvited is intended behaviour).

For about a year now I've been running a modded version of the situation job "job_guest_eater_family_meal" where I switched out the blank filter for the game's default "filter_in_travel_group" which tests for sims that live in your household (and maybe sims that are hanging out with you?). It seems to work pretty well, as I haven't had any random uninvited sims barging in to my homes.

Edit By Crinrict: Added Tag to Title

[crinrict · Accepted solution]

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Sims who would invite themselves over and make themselves a little too welcome have relearned their manners and should now knock.

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With this fix in  Patch 1.103.250/1.84, I'm going to archive this thread.

If you have any invasion issues still, please create a new thread. 

[Retrorocketman]

This is indeed a thing. I started playing a family with a child today, and this exact thing soon started happening. I couldn't work out what was causing it until I noticed in the offending sim's information that the situation_family_meal was running. I went in and modded it as you did, and the behavior stopped. Your post saved me some figuring out; thought that might be the cause, and you confirmed it.

PS-This post might be a little old, and only one person posted on it, but most people aren't going to know what the heck is causing this, so it should be addressed.

[hebbycakes]

Hi, I'm having this exact issue right now in 2021, and it's driving me bonkers. How do I go about modding it so that I don't have to worry about it anymore? I don't want to lose my saves to this thing.

[dslepenk]

I am having this issue too and it is driving me crazy! Random sims come inside my house and stand at my fridge. It is SO annoying. 

[crinrict · Accepted solution]

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Sims who would invite themselves over and make themselves a little too welcome have relearned their manners and should now knock.

---

With this fix in  Patch 1.103.250/1.84, I'm going to archive this thread.

If you have any invasion issues still, please create a new thread.