Do you know how the decay timer works? I’m asking, because the game doesn’t teach you about it at all, and it’s actually more complicated than people assume. I wrote a fairly long and boring explanation, so feel free to read it if you want.
Yeah, that sounds like decay, but what’s weird is that you say you lost everything after only 4 days. Were you logged out inside your base? Or were you logged out somewhere in the open world, away from home?
The map is finite. It’s not a procedurally generated infinite world like Minecraft. Imagine what would happen if there was no decay timer: for every player who quit playing on a non-PVP server without cleaning up their stuff (which no one does, let’s face it) you would get a bunch of permanently indestructible buildings, forever. Sooner or later, you run out of space to build.
Unless you’re playing in single-player or on an actively moderated private server, decay timer is necessary.
If you have only one base, a few minutes a week should suffice. Unfortunately, “shit happens”, so I try to log in at least twice a week to at least refresh my stuff.
If they made the decay timer longer, then people could get away with refreshing only once a week.