Ah-hah!! #4 would be why my plumbots get abducted but not my sims! I wondered about that why the aliens were only abducting them.

Dgdhsjs I am so sorry, I never came back to update this.

To answer sittingbear's question, those were the only mods. At that time, I only played with NRAAS mods.

And then, many thanks to chain! In every situation that I could recall, at least one of those things you listed was in some way involved.

There were still a handful of times I couldn't get the abduction to work but once I knew about these, I had at least some luck in making it happen.

it was frequently a user directed action because I was having trouble with my Sim wanting to go off and do other things (probably shoulda changed autonomy to low to test this but that didn't occur to me at the time).

Never did figure out why the aliens were freezing at the front door though xP

I realize I'm reviving a very old question, and I hope that's okay. I just wanted to be sure I thanked folks and gave the updated information in case anyone else ever needed it. Even though there isn't much in my reply that might be helpful xP