If I want SP to use my own sims from the family bin, do I need this option to be true or false?

I got it from waywardmachine:
Equal Chance to All Bin Sims

• When disabled, the system randomly chooses a bin household, and then randomly chooses a sim from that household as an immigrant genetic donor
• Default: True
• Hidden by: "Immigration Gauge" <= 0

English is not my native language and the wording confuses me some. If that is what the option does when disabled, what does it do when enabled?

I would leave the above option on the default of true. That will give all the sims in your bin the same chance of being chosen as a donor.

The option I believe you want is this one:-
Chance of Bin Offspring

• Determines the percent chance the genetic parent of a new immigrant will be a sim from the "Edit Town" Family Library
• Note that importing library files is a performance intensive operation. Be aware that the game may lag when an immigration occurs.
• Default: 50
• Hidden by: "Immigration Gauge" <= 0

The default is 50% so as you want SP to only use your sims from the bin, change this to 100.

I think it may also help to change the following setting to 0% as well:-
Chance of Random Offspring

• Determines the percent chance the genetic parent of a new immigrant will be a sim created via EA random generation
• Default: 10
• Hidden by: "Immigration Gauge" <= 0

I've never been entirely clear on what that setting does as I never use the Bin as a source of immigration genetics. But I believe that when on False, it will tend to keep using the same randomly selected genetic donor repeatedly. Thus to get more variation on the incoming immigrants one would want True as Sarah_Sims says.

Thanks very much guys. I understand now

igazor wrote: ↑

February 17th, 2019, 8:46 am

I've never been entirely clear on what that setting does as I never use the Bin as a source of immigration genetics. But I believe that when on False, it will tend to keep using the same randomly selected genetic donor repeatedly. Thus to get more variation on the incoming immigrants one would want True as Sarah_Sims says.

I interpret the description differently. Mind you, I don't know how the code actually works, but taking the description literally suggests that when Equal Chance to All Bin Sims is set to false then...well lets consider an example. Say you only have 2 households in your bin. Household 1 has a single sim. Household 2 has 5 sims. With Equal Chance to All Bin Sims set to false SP would first "randomly choose a bin household." Sounds to me like a 50% chance between both households. Then SP would " randomly chooses a sim from that household." So, if SP chose Household 1 there would be a 100% chance of choosing the only sim in that household, so 50% overall chance of that sim being chosen. But if Household 2 is chosen, then the game would move on to to the next step and randomly choose between the 5 sims in that household. This implies each sim in Household 2 then has a 20% chance of being chosen, for an overall chance of 10% for each sim in Household 2. If I'm reading the description correctly, then the single sim has a 50% chance of being chosen by SP for immigration genetics and the sims in Household 2 each have a 10% chance.

With this interpretation in mind for this example, setting Equal Chance to All Bin Sims to true would mean each of those 6 sims would have an equal ~16.7% of being chosen.

The question in my mind then is why would you set Equal Chance to All Bin Sims to false? Consider another example which just popped into my head as I wrote this post. Say you have 10 families in your bin. Each household has a mom, and dad, and 2-6 children. There's not going to be a lot of genetic diversity between each of the children and between the children and the parents. If you look at each household as an individual pool of genetics to use, maybe you'll get more diversity overall if SP selects households first instead of giving an equal chance to each sim? Dunno, haven't had my coffee yet and really thought that out.

I have 13 households with 8 sims each set up to use for SP immigration genetics. I used CC and EA sims and deliberately chose a wide variety of looks. So I keep Equal Chance to All Bin Sims to true. Then I use Immigration Disallow Bin by House to deselect other households I might have in the bin (caveat here that a discussion on Chatterbox long ago led me to believe that this setting isn't honored by SP).

TreyNutz,
There isn't a suitable "React to Post" icon to apply to your post above, so I had to reply and use this smiley instead.

I am now very confused. Like igazor, I've never used immigration from the bin but that's how I've always interpreted that setting. Hmmm...I think we need some clarification on this. Hopefully, Chain will weigh in soon.

TreyNutz's interpretation makes more sense logically than mine does. If we wanted less genetic variation among our sims rather than more, then there would be other ways to arrange that such as theoretically by denying SP bin access to all but one or two households full of already related sims or by removing the ones not to be used from the bin entirely.

I'm trying to understand this same question from the OP and well as the responses and I'm still confused.
I don't really get it either and it seems I'm still getting occasional sims with names from my bin, but they don't necessarily resemble my bin sims. So far I have not seen any actual bin sim directly put in my game. (though this did occur a few times pre-mods) And the names I mention seeing are not common names, so it's not a coincidence. For instance; I have a family called the Knowitall's and that name came up once with a service sim, (or was it a role sim?) but the sim is very overweight and blonde and the Knowitall family is fit, attractive and a multi-ethnic family.
So I will assume names are a different function altogether? Either way, my bin sims (and there are many) are fairly diverse in ethnicity and looks. Some are very attractive, and others are right up there with poor Tay Bayless, including the actual Bayless family. (sorry for the dig Igazor, but, "bless his heart!" ) I'd be okay if the game sampled random bin sims for genetics, but I don't want any doppelgangers.

JohnL83 - Whether using EA's genetics or SP's Advanced Genetics option by way of the SP Population module, the clone effect can still happen. SP's tends to make it less likely. But I believe newly immigrated sims are meant to have two parents (genetic donors, not real parents). If one of them is overweight or has a certain look but the other one does not, the new sim is not necessarily going to resemble the one they picked up their surname from all that closely.

As for the Knowitalls and their friends the Herpaderpenplotzenburgers (yes, I can tell when names like this get re-used as well), did you have any sims already in-game at the time with that surname? And was SP's Population module with the option to Replace Service Sims with Immigrants in play -- if not, this is EA doing the genetics and name selection for Service/Role Sims, not SP.