Abandoned Faction Bases

[dv]

So, it's apparently the case that you cannot re-enter or re-settle an abandoned base.

This seems intentional, so... not a bug. But it raises the question, IMO, why can't you re-enter or re-settle your abandoned bases?

[ChJees]

My educated guess is that it would make the save files a LOT bigger than they already are since the format is saved in XML.
So each map itself would be 8MB to tack on the save file.

[Listen1]

My educated guess is that it would make the save files a LOT bigger than they already are since the format is saved in XML.
So each map itself would be 8MB to tack on the save file.

I believe that it can be compressed, but it may be true. The second reason is that it would be exploitable. You abandon the colony in face of a raid, walk during a day, then re-enter to find your base perfect.

[Seeker89]

It could be balanced... making the raiders take the base from you when you abandoned it. Making all items of worth "x" gone. People are quick when they want to sell something... My brother lost his car wheel once parking it in the wrong part of town.

[Calahan]

Here are some quotes from the Testers forum regarding this:

Q -  Cannot settle in old abandoned base.

This is by design. It says you will be unable to return to the tile after you abandon it.

As Marvin said, it's by design. The idea of abandoning is we won't be simulating the base or storing it, for technical reasons.

So my take is that it's primarily for either performance concerns (keeping in mind the current version of the game already has some memory issues, which likely wouldn't be helped by storing and tracking abandoned tile data), or issues relating to saving the data (ie. maybe even as basic as the size of the save file as already mentioned. As I doubt Tynan wants to see save files ballooning to hundreds of MB's).

Either way I personally wouldn't expect this feature to be added anytime soon (I do not know if it can be, or has been, added via mods or not).

[Forfor]

1:
Pretty sure I read somewhere that it has been added via mods.

2:
I'd personally love to see it added as an option rather than removed wholesale. Implementation would actually be quite simple: instead of storing the whole thing in the main save file he could store the map data separately, and key it to that location in that game/world/seed. When the game is loaded, it would then not be loading all the past level data, just the data for any currently active locations. This could also allow for migratory settling where you roam between a few places, without having to simulate the entire map for all of them at the same time, aka the current implementation of multiple bases.

[dv]

Here are some quotes from the Testers forum regarding this:

Q -  Cannot settle in old abandoned base.

This is by design. It says you will be unable to return to the tile after you abandon it.

As Marvin said, it's by design. The idea of abandoning is we won't be simulating the base or storing it, for technical reasons.

So my take is that it's primarily for either performance concerns (keeping in mind the current version of the game already has some memory issues, which likely wouldn't be helped by storing and tracking abandoned tile data), or issues relating to saving the data (ie. maybe even as basic as the size of the save file as already mentioned. As I doubt Tynan wants to see save files ballooning to hundreds of MB's).

Either way I personally wouldn't expect this feature to be added anytime soon (I do not know if it can be, or has been, added via mods or not).

Ah, I see.

Well, maybe some future version. It would be nice to be able to do, for narrative and closure reasons.

[shentino]

What if the abandoned base simply had its map nuked entirely and reverted back into raw terrain that could be resettled with a new map generated from scratch?

Basically...when you abandon a base, it gets erased entirely.  The associated map is deleted.  Otherwise the whole globe gets littered by ruins that can never be reclaimed.

[Hans Lemurson]

Mine the plot next door for all its metal, abandon, re-settle.  All the minerals are back!

[shentino]

Someone on reddit did point out a serious problem.

Abandon a base next door, and that exit of your map gets plugged and caravans can't leave that part.

As for "infinite resettle and re-mine", I'd like to point out that maps aren't just freeforalls you can just mine.  There's wild animals to deal with.  Furthermore, mineable resources are HEAVY and it's expensive to move them back home.

If "infinite mining" turns out to be an exploit I suppose that we could just put a timeout on it so that abandoned faction bases decay into raw terrain again after say a decade.

I also would like to point out that defeated enemy faction bases do NOT become abandoned when the 24 hour reform timer runs out.

EVE online for example respawns moons and I see no problem with nuking a map and letting a new one be generated in its place.

I also agree that maps should be stored separately and referenced by the world file.

At the very least, abandoned bases should be deletable with dev tools and the associated maps should be subject to deletion or garbage collection.