bear with me on this one…
when we start the game, we have nothing and start building. some people go a bit nuts and this can produce lag. next thing you know, the same person is building everywhere … just paving the earth with foundation blocks. this seems to lead to significant lag and load issues.
i’ve also learned there seems to be a load/lag problem with things that ‘tick’, like fish traps, mines, etc
as such, i’d like to propose a bit of a change.
the decay timer for a base would start off at a certain level, about half of max. to refresh it, the player would do the normal things… except, the base size would be capped as only so much can be refreshed this way. this would keep the base sizes limited and ‘encourage’ users to restrain themselves from spewing blocks everywhere.
next, if the player wanted a bigger base or just a longer decay timer, they would need to obtain a ‘seed of life’. this would be placed somewhere in the base and have an interface showing certain stats. it could show block count by type as well as placeables. there could be a limit to the number of seeds an individual player/clan can have thereby restricting the total number of large bases.
also, having a ‘seed of life’ would allow the base to have a single ‘ticking’ foundation, thereby dropping the number of ticking items and improving server load.
additionally, server admins could work with the ‘seed’ to dissolve a base if need be, making clean up a lot easier.
the seed could also be a target of purges, making that a bit more exciting (kind of a ‘capture the flag’ contest)
thoughts?