Hi! I'm opening this thread to ask other sim players what they think about businesses owned by townies, if they do this in their game.

A great feature of The Sims 2 that makes it different from The Sims 4 is that businesses are owned by the sim who buys the community lot, while in The Sims 4 businesses are owned by the household. This makes it possible to open a business, set it up, hire employees, earn a few business ranks to increase the number of customers and then turn the owner into a townie through common custom objects, like the Sim Blender.
I love the idea of having townie owned businesses! It adds a layer of depth to your neighborhood, because townies are now people who run shops and venues around town instead of being "homeless wanderers". Community lots will have more personality, because you can choose uniforms for the employees so that they wear something specific instead of the classic cashier NPC apron. For example, you can have a townie-owned bakery where all the employees wear pink, or an exotic restaurant where waiters wear gorilla costumes! With Freetime and University installed, you can build a soccer stadium, age up a llama mascot NPC and a pair of cheerleaders, and turn them into the owner and employees of the stadium, so that they will be present when you visit it with your sims! Mascots and cheerleaders have special coding which makes them automously do sport cheers, so I guess they would retain this behaviour even after aging them to adult and turning them into townies. Imagine visiting this stadium and seeing the llama mascot and cheerleaders wandering around the lot and cheering while your sims play football!

You can even be more creative with townie-owned businesses. These lots don't even really need to be businesses: maybe you are turning them into businesses owned by townies with the sole purpose of having certain sims be there when you visit these lots. I'll explain what I mean: maybe you want your town cemetery to have a gravedigger. Okay, create the gravedigger in CAS, make them buy the cemetery and then turn them into a townie. Every time you visit the cemetery, this sim will be there. It's kinda like having custom NPCs that are always present on specific lots.
You want a supernatural drug dealer NPC in Downtown? Perfect! All you have to do is build an alleyway or an abandoned warehouse, generate a gipsy matchmaker and turn her into the owner of this community lot: if you visit this lot, the matchmaker will be there and you can buy potions from her! You can even age her down to adult and give her a makeover to make her look like a gangster, she will still be able to sell potions.

Ultimately, by creating this thread I want to explore the many possibilities of townie-owned businesses and the creative ways you can use this feature to create unique places with colourful characters. I'm tired of cashier NPCs with ugly green aprons! I want shops to be ran by townies with defined personalities.
What's your opinions on this subject? I'm very curious!

I don't know that I'd bother with turning Sims into official Townies, but I definitely agree on the notion of having businesses be owned so that you can better control what Sims there will be like... My hospital and ren faire lots both instantly spring to mind as places where if I ever actually got around to playing them, it'd make more sense to set up as owned businesses so I could have medical personnel and LARPers appear on those lots when they're visited, for instance. You're definitely right about the cashier NPC (and most others, for that matter) becoming pretty repetitive if they're the only ones to ever appear anywhere!

I have never thought of this but it's a really interesting concept I might try out in the future. I like the idea of having more fleshed-out townies instead of being simply random Sims created by the game to fill up the hood. For example, when I see townies spawn with the same last name I sometimes use SimPE to add familial links between them to have something of a backstory. In my game, socialite Amanda Carlson has a daughter this way.

I will say I did this in my old game on my old computer once I started making so many skyscrapers... I'd usually wind up only playing one household from each building (usually the penthouse since I had a whole elitism thing going in my downtown for a while), and it kind of killed two birds with one stone, since I could create "townies" in CAS and use them to make owned community lots a little more fleshed-out, as you put it, and then have them also fill some of the other apartment units, making those lots a little more interesting than just whatever NPC Apartment Townies the game generated to fill them too.

I have thought about making more owned businesses in my hood, though I never thought about making the owner a townie. I thought that would undo all the customization the business has. But the employees could be townies with no problems.

Anyway, yeah, it's been a dream of mine for a while now to set up hoods where no one buys things from the catalog but insteads goes to a local store. And I'd have varying inventory depending on the neighborhood/subhood and the surrounding aesthetics. Like my sims would go downtown to buy modern looking furniture and go to Pleasantview to buy antiques. Etc. But this takes so long to set up! I got a new job last year so I have precious little time to play anymore. At my old job, I had looooaaads of freetime. Now I actually have to, you know, work.

It also doesn't help that every few months I change my mind about what type of hood I want to play! I'm a serial hood restarter--I don't think I've ever gotten past gen 3 in a hood. And I used to get really upset by the build vs play vs hood planning dilemma. If I spent too much time building or hood planning (coming up with rules or ideas), I felt like I was wasting my time and not really playing. But then when I just played my households, I wanted new lots for these story ideas I had and eventually things would build up. So, I was like 'ok, I'll just redo this one part." But of course I always bit off more than I could chew so a lot or two turned into me rebuilding an entire neighborhood. And when I needed a break from that I'd go off and start another project! Add in some computer problems--my old one died and I finally got a new one working but Windows 10 does not like TS2 and there's pink soup or lag a lot when I really didn't have this problem with Win 7--and yeah, I'm still building.

Idk if that made sense to anyone but the short of it is that I've had to come to peace with the fact that building and hood planning is part of the fun for me and it's just going to take a long time to get a neighborhood set up the way I want. So this year, I'm trying to scale back my plans a bit. I'm going to do a smaller hood (I'm hoping to just stick with the Riverblossom main hood) and start with a few key stores and go from there.

The trouble is that the experience of shopping at an owned business from another household is so borked! Even with mods and simple businesses, it can take prohibitively long to accomplish simple tasks. Some weeks ago I sent a couple of girls to get their teen makeovers at a beauty salon owned by another sim, who had a gold badge, was assigned as stylist by a mod, had no employees, was in a good mood on his own lot, and had nothing on the lot except the stylist chair, a palm tree that produces coconuts, a grill, a powder room, and a photo booth. It was night and no other customers were showing up. They were there for hours and I finally had to make them over in the mirror because the playable flat-out refused to give them makeovers. He cleaned the restroom a dozen times, stripped the tree of coconuts, grilled food, and insulted his customers. And this is not an isolated incident. I seldom use employees because once you hire an employee the owner won't work at all when not controlled.

This isn't always true - my very first owned business was a beauty salon with sales, and once the owner and her husband found themselves unable to handle it they hired a playable teen who had a wonderful time, got all her register badges, and performed her job flawlessly, and though the owner did stop working once she was there, Lily reassigned Ruby appropriately and she became a good stylist as well as cashier - but it's sufficiently common that I'm not trusting a townie with a business, sorry.

This is a fantastic thing to experiment with as I am currently (again..) starting a new hood lol. I love having owned businesses, but hate running 99% of them. So thank you for sharing this idea because if it plays well, it will become my new favorite way of running a town.

It's definitely a worthy idea-I have a couple of businesses in Arundel that should have owners, but my playables all have jobs. Perhaps if I make some townies and somehow get them to buy the businesses, there will be a more lively town. But how does one do this if one has empty templates? Create some townies, move them into the house, buy the business and then clear them off the main neighborhood?

Just asking. I've never tried it, but I'm willing to.

FranH, yeah that's how I would do it if I didn't have townies. Though like I said before, I don't think you can make the owner a townie--I seem to remember that the business reverts to being a regular community lot. But I haven't tested that in a while.

So I was thinking of making a mogul sim, someone that I wouldn't ever play or just rarely play and have them own the businesses. And then use townies as employees. There are mods to reduce the amount of townies you need--auto register and auto restocking for example. And mods to keep these employees from showing up on your regular lots like using Inge's colored keys or prisoner tag with the Visitor Controller. That's if you don't want to play them, though. I was going that route so that I could set up the business, assign the proper roles, then never go there again. But for certain businesses/roles I was thinking about playing the owner, but maybe on a looser schedule than the other households.

Yes, to have townie-owned businesses you first have to create the owner, or move them in if they already exist. Before turning the owner into a townie, make sure you set up your community lot and earn a few business ranks: they determine how many visitors will come when you visit that lot with your sims, so if you're building a mall or a stadium you should try to get the business up in the ranks.
When you turn the owner into a townie nothing changes, the business will work as intended, because in The Sims 2 businesses are tied to the owner, NOT the household. That's why townie-owned businesses are possible.

As Zarathustra said, you would achieve the same result without turning the owner into a townie, but it depends on what you're trying to do. As I wrote in the starting post, townie-owned businesses can be a way of having "custom NPCs", sims that you probably don't intend to play normally as a household, but you want them to be in a specific community lot when you go there for the purpose of immersion: mascots and cheerleaders at the stadium, clowns at the local Luna park, a criminal gang at the abandoned warehouse downtown, a cult that worships a fat evil cow in a barn... These sims are not there to run a business, but you want them to always be present when you visit certain community lots. It can be even more helpful in historical neighborhoods where you don't have telephones, because if you're looking to befriend a townie you know where to go to find them, if you can't call them on a telephone.

Another interesting thing to do would be building a fire station and turning the firefighter NPC into the owner, so you have a way to befriend them (otherwise they only show up to extinguish fires and then go away, it's like they don't really live in the neighborhood), but I'm not sure if you can make them selectable and buy the fire station community lot WITHOUT making them part of the household, so that they don't lose their firefighter NPC status. I may have to try to do it in game and tell you. If it's possible, all these service NPCs (pizza guy, chinese food guy, mailman, police officer) could be owners of community lots so that you can find them around town instead of having to call them on the phone and see them for 5 seconds before they go away again.

Thank you both for the information-because I was always under the impression that the business was tied to the household itself, because the business owner was always the member of the household.
It sounds eminently doable-but one other question (and I probably know the answer)-if the townie runs the business, and the playable drops into it to purchase something, other playables will also come by and buy things without any prompting, right?
I'm counting on that for the other playables to buy things that are going to show up in their inventories so that I can discover what they bought and use it in their house hold.

I like to make a set of NPCs with relationships and set them familiar to a community lot (in some cases requires a mod to have more familiar NPCs), and remove them if they get preselected elsewhere. Then they are always found on this lot and it seems like they run it. I like to put custom clothes on them to make them look like a set and choose non-standard ages, such as a young adult restaurant server or register clerk.

I used to make a family with CAS, but found it a hassle to set NPC GUIDs onto them. Lately I make new characters of NPC template and set their relationships later.

@Khal Ulti These ideas are really great, going to use some of them for sure! I had a charity shop once owned by a sim I made into a townie, but I hadn't thought of the ideas for fire stations and cults that you have. Brilliant!

Thank you so much! I'm not sure townie-owned fire stations and police station can work, because firefighters and policemen will "loose their NPC status" if you add them to your household (or so I remember), so you would need to make them the owners without adding them to the household... Maybe by only making them selectable through Sim Blender, or maybe you can somehow sell the fire/police station to them from one of your playable sims? Someone needs to do some testing...

@FranH yes, townie-owned businesses work like normal businesses so other playable sims will show up to buy stuff or entertain themselves!

This is a really creative and useful idea. Thank you! I will try this out in my game.

I did it! I made a townie named "Jacob Townie", moved him into a house, made him buy a business, show up at the business, run it for a few minutes and then went home, where I made him into a real townie, disappeared off the home lot.
When I had a playable go into that business, Jacob was there, and others were coming in to buy.

My experiment was a success! The business I had Jacob buy is the coin trader. The next one will be the village grocer.
A very interesting experiment.
Thanks for the idea!

@simsfreq I'm very happy that you like this idea! My intention was letting people know that townie-owned businesses are possible and you can use them for multiple purposes.

@FranH yes! You've seen what I'm talking about :D

Can you enter the business lot to make changes once it is owned by a townie? What if you want to add things, or remodel? For playable-owned businesses, you have to take the sim to their business lot for this. If the owner is no longer playable…?

Good idea for people who don't like to actively play business. Would give a bit more character to the businesses then seeing the same NPC's (They can be defaulted, no need for ugly aprons).

I wouldn't play this way as I play integrated, meaning playables run everything. The only townies walking around are 'tourists' that I made who will eventually be playable and every playable household runs a business or two.

To edit a townie-owned business, you must make the owner playable again. Invite them over and make them part of the household through Sim Blender, do all the editing you want to the community lot and then turn them into a townie again. Hope this answers your question!

The only reason I've started to play this way, is the fact that because I cheat so terribly, the businesses hit the top level pretty quick, and the owners become filthy rich beyond their wildest dreams.
I want the playable to be ordinary in the wealth so they have something to aim for-this will solve the problem.

I love playing hard families the most. So if they are poor, had triplets or just lots of kids, or have a new businesses. I would never cheat levels or skills as I find that really boring. I am more likely to hire a manger and buy a new business to start over again. Even using the random roll method to make a family and adding random skills I find myself bored with them. I have to have sims strive to find a relationship, strive to raise kids, have those kids grow up to really feel any attachment to them. If there is no goals to work towards I get bored very fast.

I have added taxes to be paid once per round (4 days) Capped it at $10K and this pays for unowned community lots. Richer sims (have very few because again boring for me) I might have them donate a huge amount for say a library or a dorm or something and name it after them.

Maybe instead of getting rid of the bin families I could turn them into townies and have them run businesses instead, hmm. Now to think which business type would suit each family best…

Update on service and emergency NPCs: I did some testing and, sadly, if a sim is NOT part of the household, they can't use the phone to buy a business. This means firefighters, policemen etcetera cannot own businesses by making them selectable: they need to move in, and by moving them in they lose their NPC status, so another firefighter will spawn next time the fire truck arrives on a residential lot.
Does somebody know any workarounds? Can you turn a sim into a service NPC through SimPE, so that a townie can become a firefighter?

You need to add them back to the service sims household, and make sure their GUID is correct:
https://modthesims.info/showthread....097#post5015097

There was also some information on the SimPE forum, gone now and unfortunately not archived, but I copied it:


Not sure if there's a better list anywhere!