I'm wondering how many characters (sims, not households) people like to have in their Neighborhoods.

20-25 seems too small, not enough variety, gets boring. Advantage is fast loading.

40-50 seems to work well, but I wonder if it could be bigger.

I know it is against the Golden Rule to move households around, but I did it a lot.
Worst part is end up with hundreds of 'Packaged Ghosts' that increase loading time.
Once I tried dumping everyone into one Mega Hood and it was a disaster.
Took forever to load and crashed after playing 2-3 households.

At moment I have 1 Big 50+, one Medium 50 and one small 25.
Also, one very small I use as 'Construction/Test'.
All my sims are made from cc or scratch.

My biggest is 36

My 10-year-old ubermegahood has 1,341 sims. Part of the reason I don't really play it anymore. It's just too hard to manage, but when I was playing it regularly I could name every one of my sims and knew all their back stories and future plans.

Wow! A Record?

What about loading time? Or crashing?
What Neighborhood Map(s) did you use?

You mean total, or just the playables? My neighborhood has a little over a thousand character files in it, but only 217 of them are/were playables.

My old Pleasantview/storyhood had 1006 character files. That's including all the random NPCs/townies/etc. Characters I actually had made and played with was roughly 250-ish, though some were only played with once or twice.

I think I started the hood in 2007-ish, and it went through a few short stories and contests first, before it ended up as my main story location. It went through two computers (the other two didn't want to properly run the hood, with crashes or pink-flashing). I think it had the last successful run around 2016 (my computer started having some issues sometime after that, and my new laptop flatly refused to load lots in it, though I admit I haven't tested it out after fixing the pink-flash issues).

My new version has an empty character folder so far (with empty templates/stealth hoods/etc.) as I haven't moved anyone in yet. Planning for it to be a bit lighter on the machine, and a whole lot fewer unnecessary townies/NPCs/etc.

All the characters I referred to are Playable, Fully Active.
250 is a lot.

Some Hoods have some Me-made townies, no more than a dozen or so.
I got more confident in erasing Packaged Sims (townies, NPC) from a Hood in PackCleanInstaller.
Would like to be able to erase Packaged Ghosts, got hundreds of them.

Had problems in my Mega-Hood with Pink Flashing, never really did Fix it.
Just made it smaller until it went away.
Did not figure out how to install the 4gb_patch.

Clean Installer doesn't do anything to your neighborhoods or erase anything from them.

Sure seems like it does.
Can view and take away Packaged Sims (townies,NPC).

SimsPackInstaller:
Browse
This PC
EA Games
Neighborhoods
(Pick N___)
Characters
OK
...and do what you want.

I haven't taken out anyone in a Uniform or with a Job.
Can't take out Packaged Ghosts.

Loads fairly quick, no longer than 5-10 mins. I remember from turning the game on to actually being able to play a family use to take 45 minutes or longer but I have a laptop now specifically for playing Sims 2 so that cut down a lot of the loading time. It doesn't particularly crash, but it can definitely go quite slow on large lots or during parties.

The map is Belladonna cove with all the other maxis-made hoods as sub-hoods. I have no townie regen mods and most of my townies have since became playable.

My Mega-Hood took over 1/2 hour to load.
Mentioned the play limit and Purple Flashing.

I have an Arcade with quite a few cc Arcade Video Games.
The sims crowd around them, but the action is almost frame-by-frame.

My biggest Hood now is 'Sim City'.
I also like working with 'Belladonna Cove', well laid out.
'Madison Heights' is another favorite.

Clean Installer is for installing and to some degree manage the contents of Sims2Pack files (removing unwanted CC before installing, for instance). You can also delete files from your Downloads folder with it, but it's not meant to be used for other files than CC, and it has no capabilities when it comes to safe deletion of characters in the Characters folder. The only thing it can do is to delete the actual file (you might as well put the files in the trash bin and empty it - that's essentially what Clean Installer does when deleting files).

All the references left after deleting the sim are still going to be left in your game, but in a broken state towards other sims (family ties, memories, relations, etc.). Deleting files from the Character folder can cause problems in the neighborhood if you don't do it correctly, especially if they're characters other sims have interacted with a lot.

Tutorials on how to do it properly, a few ways:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/s...pic,6205.0.html
https://www.tumblr.com/shockmeamaze...a-character-and

When I started playing Sims2 I deleted or moved Sims or Households very often.
Later on, I heard how much trouble that can cause, and it did pile up what I found out are Packaged Ghosts.
Glitches did happen and Mistakes were made, but my PC Died anyway.
So, I took what I had saved and put it back together, errors and all.

Now I File Save Households before they meet anyone, so I can start fresh anywhere.
If I delete or move a Sim, townie or NPC I do it with as few memories as possible.
Some Hoods have sims that on their 3rd or 4th location, others are all New, Fresh.
In other words, Moving and Deleting sims is just the way I Play the Game.
If making things Smoother and more Fun Now may cause something Later, so be it.
I've lost track of how many computers I've gone through, picking through pieces is part of it.
Not Recommended for Everyone.

This is a great question! I make and play fully custom hoods so been struggling with the right number of households for my hoods too, this is what has worked for me so far.

I made my first hood Hope Heights after my mega hood of 150 families crashed. It crashed because I moved in occupied homes and added too many families. Hope heights has 50 families with three generations so a total of about 400 playable sims. This hood takes about 10-12 minutes to load. I still play it.

However as I had hundreds of families of varying backgrounds and roles to play, I created additional hoods when hope heights overflowed. I have six types of families: traditional, supernatural, galactic fleet, alien, recurring, and academy. I move in 4 families of each type , except traditional which is the most common so I create 15-20 of these per hood. Together this makes about 30-40 families, about 300 playable sims allowing for 3-4 generations. Loading time is about 8-12 minutes each hood. I still remember the names of my characters and backstories, and take notes in their bio for details I may easily forget. With hundreds of families, the more I play them the better I remember the intricate details of their past and current storyline, as I base their hood role on their astrological type and see how their type causes them to make different decisions.

Since I have maxed out population space in my hoods for three generations i kill off any bin family members i dont plan to play, the remaining become vampires, marry into supernatural families, or have alien hybrid children. Also all families besides recurring and traditional have limits of how many children they can have as I would rather keep the remaining hood space for families who will have multiple generations. Supernatural families dont need as many future generations as they live longer than my traditional families. Alien families also have limited children.

Hood size is always a guessing game in my opinion. In my experience,though, knowing the type of hood you want to play (mine is sci if fantasy) , how many generations, couples you want to make, and story roles you want helps in determining the initial number of households. Super interesting question, as custom hoods are right up my alley. I hope my input helped some!