Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

by MCA_der_Negus
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Original Post

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

[ Edited ]

@MCA_der_Negus  The most common source of lag in Starlight Shores is the performance limos that spawn for high-level performers in Showtime careers.  Overwatch will clean these up every night, but even one day's worth of extraneous limos can number in the tens of thousands, and that will drag down performance right away.  That's why I asked how many vehicles OW was removing—if you were seeing 20-30k each time, their presence during the day could easily account for the lag.

 

The solution would be to install NRaas Traffic, which prevents the spawning of these limos by default.

 

Another common issue is definitely an overstuffed world, either with sims or with objects, as in, residential lots with thousands of objects that the game has trouble rendering.  I'm not sure what constitutes too many sims in Starlight Shores—each town has a different number over which performance can start to drop—but you can check the number of residents with NRaas MasterController.  I doubt that anything close to 300 residents (not NPCs or Role sims, but sims who actually have homes there) would work well.  The command would be (click on City Hall) NRaas > MC > Demographics > Population.

 

Another thing you could do with MasterController is reset the entire town.  This would reset all sims and all lots, including any potential stuck or broken objects.  This is a helpful thing to do even in the absence of game issues; many players run one every six sim-weeks or so just for the health of their saves.  At the very least, it's worth trying to see if your existing save runs better after the cleanup.  The command is (City Hall) NRaas > MC > Town Options > Reset Everything, and it can take a few minutes to finish, depending on the speed of your hard drive and how many objects need to be reset.

 

Unlike many mods, MC doesn't change anything about how the game runs.  It just loads and waits for you to run a command, and the rest of the time, you wouldn't even know it was there other than when you saw the NRaas entries on object menus.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 11 of 22 (1,250 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

★★★★ Novice

@puzzlezaddict I'm back, I had to take a break from the game but I was also trying to fix it as always. When the cars are reset it's about 10 - 20 or even less. I disabled the limos and even the ambient taxis with NRaas Traffic and I reset the town and even that didn't work. It seems like the town/phone is cursed. I tried to look for how many Sims I have in the town. While looking through population I couldn't find any total numbers. I chose homeworld and lot and family, are these the correct one? 

Message 12 of 22 (1,206 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

@MCA_der_Negus  To see the overall population, click on City Hall and select NRaac > MC > Demographics > Population, then X out the filter.  This will give you a list of every sim in the world, broken down into a few different categories.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 13 of 22 (1,198 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

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@puzzlezaddict Is this the one? Is it normal that service is over 5000?

Message 14 of 22 (1,195 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

@MCA_der_Negus  That's the one, and no, it's entirely abnormal to have that many service sims.  You can find out what they are with NRaas > MC > Demographics > Jobs by Career > Type of Service, and check the same path but choose Type of Role while you're at it.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 15 of 22 (1,190 Views)
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Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

★★★★ Novice

@puzzlezaddict Ok here are the lists but It doesn't seem to be that many...

Message 16 of 22 (1,186 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

@MCA_der_Negus  You're right, the list of service sims is hardly overwhelming.  What about filtering by Type of Role, rather than Type of Service?  You should see listings like Proprietor (for clubs), or Stylist and Tattoo Artist if you have Ambitions.  And check (same path) > Type of Pet Pool as well; maybe your town is overrun with strays.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 17 of 22 (1,178 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

★★★★ Novice

@puzzlezaddict I checked that but it also doesn't seem to be a lot. I wonder where these 5000+ services are coming from.

Message 18 of 22 (1,174 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

@MCA_der_Negus  Sorry for the delay; I had to track down an old save with a discrepancy between the total number of service sims and the ones in the categories the game listed for you.  I'm not sure where those extra sims are coming from for you.  Some of them may be sims that have aged out of their assignment, e.g. babysitters or newspaper deliverers, but have not been flushed or reassigned.  Others may have been spawned as drivers for carpools.  There's a bug in Isla Paradiso where resort workers keep spawning behind the scenes, but I don't know if it's caused by the world or the presence of the resorts, or whether you even have IP installed.

 

At any rate, it's probably a good idea to just get rid of all those extra sims.  While they generally don't take up a lot of resources, 5,000 is too high, and it's possible the game is trying to push them to age up or perform a service that they can't, and that's weighing down your save.

 

The MasterController command you want Total Annihilation.  This flushes all a sim's data, as if they never existed in the game.  I had to experiment a bit to get a filter that would list all the service sims, not just the ones with a defined assignment (hence my needing to find an old save).  But this worked for me: (click on City Hall) NRaas > MC > Sim > Advanced > Total Annihilation > Town Family > Service.  To the right of "Service," you should see the number of sims; hopefully it says 5,000 and not 20-something.

 

Once you've selected Service and hit the check mark, the screen should list all 5k of the service sims.  Just click All at the top to select them all for deletion.  If there's a sim you like that's in the service pool, you'll want to move them into a home before running the command; of course they'll lose their service assignment, but at least they won't be deleted.  (To add a sim to another lot, NRaas > MC > Household > Add Sim, then select the sim(s) and the lot to which they'll be added.  MC will allow the command irrespective of money or other considerations.)  The alternative would be to select all the sims manually except for the one(s) you want to keep, which seems like a lot of work.

 

And, as always, try this on a spare copy of your save, in case it doesn't go well or you decide you did want to keep one of those service sims after all.  The TA command might take a little while to run on so many sims, but the action itself shouldn't harm your save.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 19 of 22 (3,166 Views)

Re: Phone Calls Are Stopping The Game

★★★★ Novice

@puzzlezaddict IT WORKED!!! It finally worked, I had this problem for months! The deletion progress took longer than I thought and after the process the game starts even a bit faster. The phones are now ringing immediately. I had one call that stopped the game for about 1 second but that's ok. I want to thank you for your patience and your help Standard smile

 

I now have 77 service sims and after two sims days they were 78. I have story progression off but is there a way to stop them from growing? Is 70+ too much? Is there something like a max number? Thank you again.

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