[NEEDS SAVES] Neighborhood Stories creating too many babies/adoptions

[iamoz96]

Turning off the options do not work to stop progressions. Even my played sims are vulnerable to some progressions. Extremely frustrating!

[JessicaMP2004]

The same thing is happening in my game, through the sims manager I counted more than 40 newborns in the families, sims are adopting and having children until I reach the limit of 8 sims. If it's not newborns, it's cats or dogs, houses with 1 sims and 7 more animals.

This became very annoying, even disabling in the stories the sims look like rats breeding. Active and non-active families around the world call several times in a row asking if they should have a baby, I always choose no, even the calls are becoming extremely tiring/boring.

My active families are also a mess with newborns going through the roof of the house because they don't stop breeding. My save is big,

I'm on the 10th generation of sims and everything I've done and organized is being destroyed by the exaggeration of the story progression, it wouldn't be a problem if this worked right, but like everything in the sims 4 this is one more thing that doesn't works well.

[Wndblwz]

Yup. Same here. I've deleted more families with crazy numbers of babies than I care to count.

[flauschtrud]

If you observe an excessive amount of babies and adoptions, do you also have deactivated the "move out" option in story progression?

I ask because I learned while modding that pregnancy and adoption only happen for Sims that live on a lot and I believe that the Sims that are chosen to move out are selected based on their household size and the number of beds in the house. So if you had allowed moving out they would probably not get that many kids.

I would not call that a workaround because I think it should always be possible to use the options as you desire, but it could be an explanation.

(I think there is an additional bug that has also been mentioned in this thread but is tracked here: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/OPEN-Can-t-disable-Neighbourhood-Stories/m-p/11365891#M209421 My comment only applies to the original problem of having excessive babies and adoptions)

[MysticalLex]

I'm having the same issue. I even have married couples moving a sec9nd wife in and having more kids and both woman are pregnant and the same time. I was so confused when I seen this! There are so many things going in each house. The Caliente house literally all moved a significant other in and then started having babies and I'm assuming they only stopped bc household limit was hit with the first 2 babies. It's honestly insane. 

[vyvexthorne]

What I'm seeing is tons of deaths, births and adoptions (of both babies and pets) but hardly any sims moving out or moving in together. I would personally rather see sims moving in together. (at least in unplayed houses.) Over time, you'll still just get a bunch of single townies moving in and filling up homes but not moving in together. Eventually all the homes are just filled with single sims and the established sim families remain at their homes seemingly trying to constantly keep their sim household count at 8.  

What actually would be nice would be if sim count in unplayed households would stick to the bed count in the home.  It's still disturbing as all get out to play the paranormal or decorator career paths and go over to houses filled to the brim with sims and discover they all live in a house that only has one or two beds.

[PipMenace]

This does seem to keep happening, but only in about half my saves. Haven't figured out what exactly the difference is yet...

[flauschtrud]

@PipMenace I'd assume the baby boom save is on aging off (or at least long lifespan) and you have disallowed moving out. Could this be the difference?

[PipMenace]

Hmm… I don’t think I’ve disallowed moving out in any of the saves (at least not globally; I have gone in a couple saves and turned off the werewolf pack’s move option, since they moved to Henford on Bagley in my first werewolf game, which was odd)

But maybe long lifespan? I’ll have to check tonight. Certainly I’ve been playing the first save pictured longer than the second, and with aging on, that’s why the babies have mostly grown up…

Edit:

Can confirm I have all neighborhood stories on. But there does seem to be a trend of the saves that have a lot of kids - all babies in some, a mix of toddlers, kids, & teens in others - having auto-age off for unplayed Sims. I'd be willing to believe it's just happening over time... except even my new save, that I've only played for a Sim week, is filling up with babies. Maybe there's something about having aging off that prevents it from registering recent births/adoptions to trigger a cool down period?

[PeterCorless]

I have found households with five or six kids. It felt nearly genocidal but i just started deleting them. But they kept coming back.

I would have no problem if it was one baby per family *at a time*. Like, check a household to see if it already has a baby. If so, then no more babies until baby hits toddler.