Occasionally I have a sim who is completely obsessive about some act, to the point that's all they want to do.

For example, on Hidden Springs I had to remove the sprinklers from the garden lest my sim spend 24hrs/day playing in them. Literally. Two seconds without an assigned task she runs, not walks, to the blasted sprinkler. Mid-winter, 3AM, 17degF outside, a foot of snow on the ground, she's out there in her bathing suite frolicking in the sprinkler ....and in a couple of minutes I'm getting notices of impending frostbite.

It's not an issue with fun, her mood is elated, all needs bars are solid green. Her house has a pool, sauna, exercise room, TV, stereo, computer, chemistry lab ...she ignores them all unless specifically told to use one. Her obsession is such I can click to cancel the sprinkler icon and it reappears before I can assign another task.

My sim on another world is similarly obsessed with their computer. A nanosecond with nothing else to do and they make a beeline to "chat with someone". I took away their laptop and gave them an old desktop, kept in inventory; I take it out when they need to use it.


Is there any way to curtail this? My other sims may have a preference for something but tend to make use of everything in the house (though seemingly the favorite food of all sims is a snow cone).

Does the sprinkler Sim have childish trait? I haven't played my Harley Quinn recently, but she has the childish trait, and loves playing in the sprinkler. The chatting may also be pushed by a social trait.

There are some crazy things with Sims. My bots are always in the swimming pool, and I have done similar as you, by removing the pool, because she was also the nanny bot, and had neglected her duties!

Tuning mods can curtail the obsessiveness. There are many out there, alot og good ones over at https://simsasylum.com/tfm/?_fromLogin=1 you do need to have an account there, but it is a lovely place. You can also use retuner over at NRass https://www.nraas.net/community/, but there is a bit of a learning curve with that one.

None of my sims are childish (I cover that very well by myself ...a friend says I'm seventy going on seven), nor do I see any traits that would account for their obsessions. I tweak the sims in my household (rarely more than a couple, I don't have kids) for traits supporting their occupations and life wishes; "childish", "mean spirited", "hopeless romantic", "absent minded" are among those I try to avoid as they make the game irritating.

I have Retuner, downloaded for a specific tweak and followed instructions for that; otherwise left it alone.

It would be adjusting the I believe the fun advertisement of certain objects. They tend to be way over the top. There are some member Retuner settings on this page https://www.nraas.net/community/Mem...etuner-Settings . I usually check there first, then ask if I don't find it over at the forum there.

Nraas Retuner is really a great mod. It has so much configurations and is very useful to stop autonomous actions to interrupt your gameplay. The Retuner setting from Nraas site, that @Mandelyn shared, are the right thing to do with these sims obssesions.

Thanks to you both, some interesting data there, and I see several more things I will tweak now; and remember why I first installed Retuner - to eliminate those blasted alien abductions. (When I played a decade ago perhaps 3-4 of my sims were abducted, once each; when I returned a couple of months ago my first new character was abducted three times in her first two weeks in town. Ridiculous. If you've been abducted once are you now going to run out in the street in the middle of the night to "investigate" every "anomaly". And besides, we all know no one is ever abducted in town, it's always some hillbilly living alone out in the woods.)

But my return to the game has been rife with oddities not experienced previously, and I suspect a common cause.

- obsessive sims
- increased abductions
- increased burglars (who steal toilets! ...and nitwit police who will walk right past the burglar and apologize to you for not catching them, while said burglar walks to their car and drives away)
- incessant wishes by my sims to play hopscotch with someone (I've nothing against whimsy, but why would a local surgeon want to play hopscotch with the proprietor of the consignment shop, or the mad scientist want to hopscotch with a politician)
- random sims running through my yard or, even worse, swimming in my pool (in Hidden Springs our newspaper is delivered by a girl who invariably throws in the paper in the bushes, changes into her swimsuit, runs around the house to the pool, stares at it for a minute, changes clothes, runs back to the street, gets on her bike and rides away; in Sunlit Tides at least once a week there is someone, always adult, swimming in my pool, in a few minutes they climb out, change clothes, and run off down the street)

The only significant difference from my game ten years ago is I now have Generations installed.

It's possible that Generations introduced changes to some autonomous actions to make the gameplay feel more alive and filled with activity. However, strangers entering your home lot without being invited is not normal, and there might be a problem with the configuration of the lot. Check if the main entrance of the house is "Set as Front Door" and ensure that the placement arrows of all exterior doors point outside. If the house has a fence, the gate must also face the street, and the mailbox should be located outside the fenced area.

"random sims running through my yard or, even worse, swimming in my pool (in Hidden Springs our newspaper is delivered by a girl who invariably throws in the paper in the bushes, changes into her swimsuit, runs around the house to the pool, stares at it for a minute, changes clothes, runs back to the street, gets on her bike and rides away; in Sunlit Tides at least once a week there is someone, always adult, swimming in my pool, in a few minutes they climb out, change clothes, and run off down the street)"

That needs to be recorded LOL