Not necessarily a useful thing to say, but:
In the case of Fallout 76 for example the reason given by the devs/community managers for allowing lower camp-budget cost large prefabs and the like is to alleviate strain on what has to be rendered client side and kept tabs on by the server. Only having one large object to render in, calculate lighting effects and incoming damage for. Though, that is for thát game and i have no technical know-how on the workings for either Conan Exiles or any online game with seemingly similar features but different engines and such.
So, TLDR; “i see those guys doing it, why not these guys”, basically. More of a question along with how i perceive the situation currently, than an actual suggestion for improvement.
Warning, incoming wall of text:
To add, my current experience which more or less lead me to creating this post, is the performance drops i’m experiencing after having built a large swath of foundations and 3 gates (on a private server) on the water on Riversend starting somewhat near the waterfall (at the circle of swords) near up to where the apparition drowns with a chest at the bottom, using the full breadth of the river. This is still with large foundations gaps, having filled roughly half of it out.
‘Near’ in this case meaning at least 20ish foundations in length away.
I’m already noticing frequent stutterings and the occasional rubber banding where on my finished build near Sepermeru i have with the works, decorations, lighting, thralls, every bench type/stations, utility items and all i seem to be having no issues.
The regular build i have fills up the empty body of water for about 75%+ in The Oasis of Nekhet that has a kneeling Relic Hunter Slavetaker overlooking it. The finished build is much less deep, requiring significantly less foundations (though it is a circular build) and has a lot more different (world and player-made) objects and entities crammed within rendering range in more or less a single large circle w/ up to max. 13 high walls+roofings above water. Where my work in progress largely has foundations at least twice as deep, and is long enough to not all be rendered smoothly in one go when standing on one end of the stretch of foundations.
So the way i experienced it, is that just having a large amount of foundations at the moment is already affecting performance in that location significantly. Though i wouldn’t know whether or not clustered building blocks would really make much of a difference, even in this specific case. Or perhaps if even just that specific part of the map may be more demanding when it comes to performance with the Unnamed City structures/towers and weather effects in the area.
My apologies for the half-baked measurements and wall of text, i can’t hop on to make a semi-accurate estimate of foundation length, breadth and depth or make screenshots at the moment.
Also, i understand if you don’t read it all past the warning lol. I just felt like clarification was in order on my end as to my personal reason for creating this post.
This is on an (mostly) empty private server on Xbox Series X, if that is an important to add detail.