I don’t think it works if you allow scavenging - the system would need to keep the beacon around until all blocks have returned to their natural state. (Otherwise it’d be one hell of a way to dupe valuable things)
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Ah ok, so it aligns with @Stretchious’ closed regen suggestion from the other thread.
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this seems preposterous.
beacons should never expire. its why we build them.
it makes the whole idea of land control and territory obsolete and you may as well change the description of what the game should be like on the official website.
Im not saying they should be immortal. If you get into a war with someone and they destroy your stuff then thats that. But timed beacons… that just makes me think right off that ill never even bother with them. Ill just findd some super secluded area away from any and every player in order to protect my assets.
having to fuel a beacon every several weeks or month to protect aaaaaall my stuff and buildings seams to be a low price to security … And as long as the costs are low (but existing) I think a maximum time until they have to be fueled again is just fair and ok … Or do you want to have masses of dead places later? Or a half finished house of a neigbor next to yours (forever)? ^^
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The polls are quite missleading for someone that hasn´t been following the entire discussion.
When we talk about beacon “expiring” we refer to the beacons of inactive players that havn´t been playing for several months.
Not about giving beacons a finite lifespan.
So don´t worry, your beacons will be permanent as long as you are actively playing.
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oh god that a relief and yeah sorry for getting the wrong impression
i was like ‘NUUUUU’ only louder and longer.
thanks for the clarification
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In addition to what @Vastar said, your solution would not work because world regen would wipe your assets if they aren’t protected by a beacon.
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not sure what world regen is exactly. i saw it mentioned in a post with a neat gif of a progressively constructed mountain or something
That gif didn’t show what happened before. That mountain originally existed. Maybe not in the EXACT same way for every block, but close enough. Then the dev DELETED the whole thing. And the gif showed the mountain being built up again. World regen does exactly what it says. It regenerates the world. So if you go to a cave and dig some gems up, those gems will eventually come back (but not to the exact same spot). It means trees will regrow too. So you don’t have to always go further and further from “home” to find resources as the game ages.
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… it will be slow, begining after half a day or even longer after the last player was there and then rebuild the world … so we will have no flying treetops, 1-block-piles and dropholes in the ground … at least not in the big scale like on public Minecraft servers 
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I don’t think it’s mentioned yet:
A problem with expiring Beacons generates, when people are by circumstances not able to log into the game.
I can understand then, if someone says 1-2 month time for decay is too short.
A solution could be (as I already mentioned in the other topic): people can answer the notification email with “Please freeze my account within current status for x (3 - 6) month”. The first time he logs in again he starts from the status when he sent this email. The “freeze status” should be canceled then of course, so noone could abuse the system, if there is a need to collect something like fuel. Like this noone has to worry, if he cannot enter and somehow refuel his beacons. People are usually always able to read/answer an email. If not, then you definetly have serious other problems then the status of a computer game…
Second:
Maybe using the word tools here are not right. It could be change to “doing actions”. Meaning, no matter if I just move on the map, mine, sell items, craft something. Everything that needs kind of player activity could create “activity fuel” for your Beacons. Like this noone has to do certain things. He just have to be inside the game and do the stuff he likes to (standing arround should not be rewarded, else someone could just log into the game without really being active).
Of course each action should get depending on time you need for it or ressources u use up, different credibility.
i.e mining a block should give same as running 20 blocks far. This balancing factors are already mentioned.
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Con: Easy to abuse with dummy accounts to allow for different builds (aesthetic, infrastructure) to last forever.
Con: Incredibly hard to program and code, I think it’d be quite a resource (computer-wise) drain as well. Also, players could argue that them “standing around” like in their house or shop is roleplaying and shouldn’t be punished for engaging the game the way they want to.
Essentially, if I’m understanding this right, your argument here is that where a player gets Coins, they should also get Fuel? But I’ve already made the suggestion that Coins can be used as Fuel. I think that’d be far easier to program and for everyone to keep track of.
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Well, didn’t say it’s easy to program. But it’s the nicest way for kind of activity check in my opinion.
For a start lets ignore that the developers are humans and that engines only can do so much. Focus on gameplay, the developers can sort out all the solutions that will take too much work or which will slow the game too much.
Still seems too punishing to very casual players then, imo. Regardless, @Heurazio can add it to this list! 
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Perhaps when a user has been given sufficient notice that his beacon is about to expire, you could give an in-game notification to nearby players. That way they can scout the area and decide if they want to save the area in the beacon. If they do, maybe they could place a beacon next to the existing beacon to “link” the two. And if the player doesn’t come back to claim it, then it becomes absorbed by the player who linked it.
That way, cool landmarks could be saved by the community, but bad buildings would disappear.
I personally am not sure how I feel about a broadcast. It requires you to be on at a certain time and it’s weird, lore-wise, for some unspoken voice to say “hey, this beacon is about to expire”. I do agree, however, that there needs to be an interface so that even people who don’t own the beacon can see how much time is left. This encourages the explorer playstyle to roam, check on beacons, take notes/make maps of areas, etc.
Ah, yes. Good point. Perhaps just a tooltip that appears when a user looks at a beacon. That would indeed encourage exploration. 
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I thought about it a bit more. And I don’t think that it’s hard to programn at all.
You just need to measure time, what each action absorbs and rate it.
You can even limit the number of actions you rate to some core actions:
mining, running, attacking / killing a monster, buying / selling items, crafting something, placing a block.
Really don’t think it’s hard to handle at all.
Noone just “stands around” when they play. They chat, craft or sell something (things you can do standing). But you cannot tell me, someone is actively playing, by standing around.
Edit: sry, discussion. I get a minus point for this xD
Exactly. Each action. Even if you limited it to core things, some will be easier than others. So balancing, especially once progression is taken into account, would take weeks, if not months, to design and get perfect such that people don’t feel like they need to take a certain profession to acquire fuel faster.
You cannot tell someone how to play. Especially in a sandbox game. I know I have no intention of “standing around” but that doesn’t mean we should restrict that type of gameplay. 
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