Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-29577004-20180325163825/@comment-26172435-20180325173316

This has been suggested and discussed before but didn't lead to endorsement back then. Couldn't find the reference.

It will require a lot of cpu ticking and additional storage and memory capacity for each chunk. It may even be technically so complicated that just the work involved may make this unfeasible. Your addition to let less players respawn in structures can be done imo, and it will require assigning some 'usage time' tag to the central NPC respawner in the structure, if it has one.

In my view such mechanics would not really work for servers, and not for single player worlds either. Imagine on a world, chunks are generated as a player explore them, some for permanent usage, but most just while passing by. Then consider a player passing by along the same route, but much later. Then decay sets in as soon as the chunks are reloaded because of this proposed mechanism, making the area less attractive for habitation, while it should at that moment be just as attractive for the new guy as for the guy passing by some time ago. That just doesn't seem to be justifiable. And it doesn't make much sense either actually. One could even argue that structures that have been in loaded chunks longer, should decay faster while making chances of NPCs spawning higher as the area is actually habitated by players. So I got some counter-intuition alarm bell ringing here.

And indeed, food decay has already been suggested and noticed, and simplified as much as possible. That already proves 'not simple', but technically should be simpler than the structural decay you propose, and require much less cpu and memory capacity. One of the issues such mechanics have to deal with is the time tagging, and with structures, many players passing by may be involved. Haven't fully thought this through yet, but these are my first thoughts.