I recently upgraded my Bootcamped Mac to 8GB of RAM, and so I'm having a second shot at Story Progression (my first attempt ages ago resulted in a bit too much lag due to unsuitable settings and not enough RAM).

I'm still tweaking SP's settings, but at the previous recommendation of the NRaas team, I'm opting for the overall speed set to Snail, to make things manageable for my computer hardware specs.

I'm still deciding how to best handle the Immigration settings, and I'd like to know if immigrants will be pulled into town as residents even with the Immigration Pressure Gauge set to '0'. And if so, will those immigrants draw their genetics from the Sim Bin, or will they end up with EA standard 'pudding face'.

If the Immigration Gauge is set to 0, then there is no SP Immigration to be had at all because the entire Immigration system is shut down. If you want some immigration but not as much as a new household moving in every other day, then the Gauge has to be set at a number that is around as high as the pressure reports you would be getting. You might try setting the Gauge to a usually impossible to reach value like 200 and see what kind of pressure report failures you get for a few sim days. If you are getting pressure reports around 30 or 40 for example, then try something around 35 for a Gauge setting. If you want a more steady stream of newcomers than that, then try 20 or 25 (or lower).

If you want to populate a town right now and not wait for slow, steady trickles, then that is what Rapid Immigration is for.

The sims who arrive by way of SP Immigration each come from up to three sources depending on your settings.

On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRaas > SP > General Options > Options:Lots > Options:Immigration/Emigration >
Chance of Bin Offspring (this is the chance that a sim from the household bin will be used as a genetic parent)
Chance of Random Offspring (this is the chance that a random sim will be formed and used as a genetic parent, then discarded; this is the "EA way")

The difference between 100 and the sum of the above two sources brings us to the third, which is the chance that a sim already in town will be used as a genetic parent of the newly arriving one(s).

Note that SP Immigration uses the Household Bin for sim genetics unless that option is locked out with a 0 for the first choice above. The CAS Sim Bin is not used at all.

Ahhhh I see. Even with the Gauge set to 0, I was thinking that immigrants might still be pulled in as residents by way of NRaas SP, if only just to fulfil basic requirements, such as sourcing bosses for rabbithole careers, or to provide romantic interests for Sims. I can't quite recall whereabouts online I'd read that, but maybe I misunderstood, so I'm glad I confirmed.

Whoops, I meant to say 'Household Bin' (in Edit Town mode), not the Sim bin in CAS mode. I've actually been saving a bunch of Sims to the Household Bin for the sole purpose of having a diverse gene pool to draw from for future immigration, because I plan to set the Chance of Bin Offspring to 100, and the Chance of Random Offspring to 0.

I forgot to mention that I've capped the maximum amount of residents to 100 as opposed to the default 150, so if I just fill the town up now via Rapid Immigration, it might take less toll on my game than having a constant trickle of immigrants accompanied with pop up notifications. But before I do that, I'll have a play around with the Gauge using the figures you suggested, and see where it takes me.

Once again, thanks for your help!

You're welcome, whoever you are (noting the sudden name change).

On the required bosses and co-workers, if there aren't enough employable resident sims in town and SP immigration doesn't produce some right away, then homeless NPCs will spawn to take up those slots. That's not really immigration, they behave more like commuters. And, very annoying, they often disappear on me if/when I switch active households so befriending them sometimes becomes a waste of time. But I try not to let too many such homeless sims accumulate per world.

On the romantic interests, not having enough of those will certainly drive up the Immigration Pressure score if the whole engine isn't shut down by way of the Gauge being set to 0, or lack of suitable housing among other reasons, but in that case you don't get homeless potential romantic partners showing up. Just some lonely sims in town to deal with.

Ahaha, 'Senorita Ugly' is the name of the Sim featured in my current profile picture. I use this Sim for all my test games, so it kinda seemed fitting to change my name to hers on this forum

On the topic of homeless NPCs spawning to take up jobs, do you mean to say this happens using EA standard SP? Or when the NRaas SP Gauge is set to 0? Or both? And what is it you do to avoid accumulating homeless Sims? Some kind of clean up via SP?

I believe it's the game itself that spawns those homeless co-workers and bosses as they are needed, not SP or EA's progression. Many careers have relationships with bosses and co-workers (teammates, etc.) as career metrics and those won't be possible to advance if there is only one sim in such a career whether that sim is actively played or otherwise.

What to do with these homeless sims once we get some is up to player preference. I have no problems maintaining a reasonable number of such homeless sims in my worlds, meaning less than 25 or so for most but maybe more in some cases. Others don't care how many they see or don't want any at all. They might move some of these sims into households/their own houses themselves if they like them, I do that occasionally, and then that career doesn't need homeless co-workers anymore. Or they might foster immigration or bring sims of their own into town manually by way of Edit Town to be in those career slots and then TA the unnecessary homeless ones or unemploy them and let the game/SP figure out what to do with them.

You can get a quick reading on how many homeless sims you have in a world using MasterController. On City Hall or an in-game computer, NRass > MC > Demographics > Population > "X" to dismiss the filter.

SP has a Manage Homeless function under General Options > Options:Households > Manage Homeless that will try to take care of these sims for you by moving some into existing households and removing others who appear to be unassigned (doesn't always get this right) from the game. I prefer to have that one on False because, for me, it does too many unexpected and unwanted things with my small homeless populations. The totally unnecessary Showtime street performers I tend to get rid of or not have more than one of each kind, depending on the world that is spawning them.

Overwatch also has a Cleanup the Homeless function that kicks in during its overnight run and is only supposed to target totally unassigned homeless sims, but for the same reasons and to prevent the endless spawning and removal of homeless sims that the game seems to think it does need, I keep that one on False as well.

Note that the service pool is not part of any of this nor subject to such cleanups as those NPCs are always homeless and have specific functions when they are called upon to carry them out. They do not add much (or any) overhead to the game just by being around. These sims don't progress either, although they might age if you allow them to. Many of us use Register to control our Role/Service Sims and the SP General Options > Options:Households > Move Role Sims into Service Household setting on True will stop the mod from trying to do unwanted things with our homeless Role Sims in the same manner by making them part of the same special virtual "household" as the Service Sims.

On installing SP, all the homeless got kicked out of town, so I might just step back and let SP do its thing for a while, monitor demographics via MC, and then take steps when/if the homeless population outweighs the resident population.

That's all the questions I have (this time round). Thanks so much for taking the time to provide such a thorough rundown, I appreciate it!

(Also forgot to mention that I recently installed Register, but I haven't tweaked the settings. I installed it mostly because I didn't want to see inactive townies staffing the cash registers, and Register's default settings seem to do exactly that.)

It's kind of funny the different relationships we players have with our homeless sims. I get some teasing from my colleagues here, but I tend to coddle and want to protect some of them, while some I wish would stop generating already. Others here will say "Eww, no homeless sims go away (and spit on the ground while saying this, I imagine). There's already around a dozen in different worlds I've fallen in love with myself, some EA pre-mades but mostly those freshly spawned by the game or Register, and I've moved them into permanent households myself and given them some slight makeovers as needed. Two of them in particular I've made a very happy couple, they live with one my sim couples for now until the progress a bit further, and then will have a house of their own, They are best friends with my sims, their eventual kids will play with my sims' kids, etc. and I only randomly stumbled across them working different role giving objects in Uni World.

Anyway, the important thing is that we have fun with whichever methods of management we prefer to use. Again, you're welcome!

Haha, generally speaking I have no issues with homeless Sims, and quite often they can be a source of unexpected amusement (I remember one incident where two of the staff at my resort in Bridgeport randomly decided to get hitched under the wedding arch). I just can't stand immigrants with pudding face - editing them via CAS is just a pain. It's quite funny though, because EA seem to have quite a few unique Sims in their homeless pool in some towns - the mixologists in Bridgeport and the baristas in UL both a case in point. But then, eventually these Sims disappear from their assignments and get replaced by randomly generated Sims. And then I lose track of which homeless Sim is assigned where. Ah well, such is Sim life!