Create a World Tips and Tricks: The Problem with Hybrid Lots

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If you try to get your sims to fish or swim on a lot and can’t because they complain about routing, read this article to find out why.

One day, I got this oh, so brilliant idea (not!): I decided to make a fishing spot incorporating a shoreline I had made in CAW. So what I did was I first dropped a few fishing spawners in the water, then placed a lot over the spawners that was half on land and half on water.

Several weeks later I playtested my world, and BAM!–I came across a routing problem that seemed to come out of nowhere. I would keep asking Gwen Glover to go fishing in the water and she’d stamp her feet and complain over and over again that she couldn’t fish, even though you could see the fish in the water as plain as day:

Yet when I asked her to fish from a spawner just a few feet away, she could navigate to it fine.

I couldn’t for the life of me understand why this was happening, why Gwen could fish from one set of spawners but not from another just a few feet away. Then it finally hit me, much to my dismay. Welcome to what I call a “hybrid lot.”

What’s a hybrid lot? It’s a lot that is placed half on land and half on water.

These types of lots come with a serious problem–the fishing breaks on them. Every time you direct your sims to fish, they stamp their feet and complain about routing. Why is that? Because when it comes to lots, sims can only fish from spawners that have been placed in water using the water tool in Build Mode. They can’t fish from water that you made in CAW.

Keep in mind that I’m talking strictly about lots. If you placed a bunch of spawners directly into the water itself in CAW, sims wouldn’t have a problem accessing them. It’s when you put spawners in the water inside of hybrid lots when you’ll have a problem. So if you’re thinking of creating lots like this where you hope the sims will fish from the water, just know that it won’t work. All that’ll happen is that when you try to get your sims to fish, they’ll complain that they can’t route to it.