What i am really missing in The Sims 3 to be a true living world is the indoor autonomy in inactive households.
you all know what i mean? i've done an experiment to find out if inactive sims do stuff at their own when they are at home. i use nrass home opener, tagger and story progression with all modules for this experiment, with all expansionspacks in version 1.67.
i play a one man family and take a look on other households from the morning into the night, what is really happening behind the walls...

so i have bad and good news.

the bad news first: the autonomy of inactive familys is decreased, when their home!
they just standing around and do nothing. sometimes a sim read a book, is playing videogames, watching tv or is sleeping. so they just fulfill basic needs, but the rest of the time they are absolute idle, they dont interact with their environment at all, they act like they are in a rabbithole! i think this was done to decrease performance lags back when the game came out 2009, but for todays standards this is no problem anymore...

but the good news are:
when i look in the inactive family, they start doing autonomous things at their own, like an active family! They start to act like that, only when the Player is looking into their houses.
So there must be a way to tune this value to make all the neighborhood acting like an active family, even when im not looking in their houses, or not?!


i'm not into modding, and dont know where to start, so my question is:
does anyone know how to tune this, which value, a xml-file or is there even an existing mod for this? a solution? i'm looking sooo long for this!

sorry for my bad english. best regards!

Most, if not all, of these functions are governed by the NRAAS suite, so the most helpful information on the topic actually hails from over their way.
This thread as well as this one might shed some light on the situation.

The key information being:

• The game engine simply isn't designed to control every sim in a town at once, and there is a point where it will lose track of trying to do so.
• Inactives autonomy can sometimes drop their autonomy status, which you can fix with MasterController if this is affecting your town.

HomeOpener and StoryProgression are already the correct mods to do this and there are situations it will function the way you want. The game simply isn't designed to do this on an entire town of sims. No amount of modern hardware can change the fact that the game engine itself is from 2009.

And my own two cents... trying to force sims who aren't even rendered on your screen to be functioning like actives is a bit of overgaming the system. Functionally, there is no difference between them doing that and pretending that they do. A bit of suspension of disbelief is required sometimes. StoryProgression will still push them around town and they should come out of idle when you're nearby

The down side to what you ask for is that as the game has Sims do things, it will use more resources, which are already a premium, and cause more lag. One of the reasons for mods, like the one to limit taxis and buses.

Thank you both for your detailed response and for taking the time. I have to accept that the game was actually developed for the entertainment of the player and not as a scientific laboratory experiment to create an artificial universe But sometimes it really feels that way. I am fascinated by the dynamics of a virtual world with people, and I have too many expectations and often forget that it's just an old game running on outdated 32-bit technology. Nonetheless, the simulation is very complex, and with mods, it becomes even more complex and realistic. There's still nothing like it to this day. I love it and will continue playing it. Thank you