This game used to be better, I was building my nice house and place. But suddenly a blank beacon appeared next to my house. BAAAM my place was taken over by someone who has higher prestige than mine and named my settlement as their own!. I tried to battle his prestige by putting lots of plots around my place and making so ugly gleam towers just to get more prestige points. But before all of this happens, I was so happy doing forging, and building my place bit by bit. Now after all I have built it went to nothing, I broke all of my buildings just to disconnect to that plots and make a plot firewall just to prevent him from taking over my place, but I was too late. I transferred to other places to start again,… but in the end, I felt bored, I realized that this game is just something unworthy to play in the long run. All of your hard work and wasted time will just turn to nothing, plus you are obligated to check your beacon each of of every 15 weeks or 4 weeks. I just realized that this game is not worth to play! my first review from 2014 was very positive but now ill put this to my re-edit my review on steam and put Negative !!! Devs don’t listen when you reported some beacons messing around your place, oh yes maybe because they bought plots too. So yeah the favors on them, not you who complains about them. In short, they don’t take action!
I can understand your frustration but if I were you I’d wait and see what the devs have planned with the new guild system and how settlements will integrate with that system. It may not seem like it right now but I do believe that they are listening to stories like this and trying their best to make a system that suits everyone. It’s just taking a bit of time.
yeah but also i noticed a lot of ghost settlements here and there. Less and less players are playing the game. It doesn’t matter to me because i play solo, but this issue happened to me now, my place is taken over by someone and named it their own. And after that i felt bored, i don’t know why but some of my friends too quit after this happened.
Come and join us - Chisel Knights. We have a massive town with massive protection against griefers. In addition to that every building in our town must be pre-designed, and we regularly refill fuel in people beacons to prevent them from disappearing 
If you want a re-start, you can join us.
We are Fireborn. Locate at Minorengle.
You can find us by a huge portal around [PS] Minorengle Gate or Aqua Angel I City - Minorengle Gate
I totally understand your feeling, we have a lot of nice members in current city, and we are welcome to everyone who want a new place to re-start 
Yeah guilds are supposed to help with griefers somehow so the issue is being handled. Also, a lot of people are migrating to big cities from their now-abandoned settlements so it’s not that everybody is quitting - many are just moving (myself included, have to get off Eu servers since I can’t connect to them in the evenings)
The issue with guilds is based on my read, your settlement can keep its name but you still end up merged. It sounds like you will be “your build” in the city of “grifters city”. I think we may have to push for protection zones if we want to prevent merging.
That is what my son and I did. Even though the merges with various settlements were taken care of and our settlement was given backs it name, we decided to leave anyhow. Didn’t want to change it happening again and it ruined it for us, me especially, on that planet.
Actually worked out better in some areas; we are on a planet that looks nicer, green! LOL A large enough settlement/city that we don’t have to worry about being taken over again and some very nice people have bases there.
I let my son make the final decision, partly as I didn’t want anyone here who stated we were welcome to feel I was rejecting their settlement and partly because it will be his “home” also.
He has already finished it, has his workshop set up and even set up a small shop in it. I’m still thinking of what I want to build, LOL Then it will take me a month maybe more to get it built.
We will miss our neighbor, she is very nice and offered some items if we wanted or needed them, but we have enough for now and my son prefers to get his own and I can find the food items on my own.
During the rush to get towns built for the 1.0’ers, I was looking for a spot relatively close to a town with quick jump portals, but yet far enough away to be left the eff alone. So I picked a spot on the edge of some woods with a beautiful clearing to watch the stars fall and planets from my front steps. Laid down a few plots to keep my space big enough for future building. A week later, there are these HUGE walls being set up around that little town. Looked far enough away so it didn’t bother me. Seemingly overnight, two houses were built touching the edge of my plots. I was like what the eff? Then the town got bigger and bigger. My beautiful view was gone with people buildings these subjectively ugly houses for prestige and random shops that was once a nice clearing. Even the woods were completely whacked down with houses and roads running all over…soon enough, I was sucked into the middle of a dying town named blacklight. The city walls ended up being no more than two plots from my black property walls. Yeah, I wasn’t too happy. But, my neighbors are super nice, so that made everything much much easier to breathe in.
In conclusion, I was pretty upset at first being an introvert, but the neighbors were a huge help in keeping things cool. Thst is part of the game though. Still kept my black property walls up though, hoping the other houses put their footings down in swampland…and built another house in the middle of absolutely no where on a distant planet. I’ve had the second one for weeks now, and not a single cent of footfall. Perfect!
The current settlement merge problem is kind of telling people don’t build your place big.
If you build it too big, once someone want to start a prestige war with you. It will kind of force you to involve the war.
If you have small house, you can simply find the other place to settle.
The current system really damage to the mid - large town, since its way too easy to take down warden in other city.
I believe most end game players have ability to force other town to start the prestige war.
It doesn’t make sense that you spend a lot of time in this game to build a beautiful place with your friends.
Someone just pop up one day and say, hey i only need to build the 5% area in your town, and this town becomes to my place. He can simply tell everyone this is his town and most people will buy it because he is the warden also he own’s the settlement name.
Sometimes the prestige war cost to much time to involve, for end game players 1m prestige in one night is possible. It somehow force other players to give up a lot of other contents to involve the war. At the end, most of victims will realize they don’t even have the chance to win the war, and feel they waste entire week for nothing.
Clearly its the “plot - cash shop” & “forge system” & “broken prestige” cause this issue keep happening.
All 3 features combine make the system used to be fine becomes nightmare for most players.
Before in the alpha we didn’t have a lot of this issue.
Also i am very curious about the Capital system design in current patch.
Capital suppose should be the most people live in one area ?
How come some ghost towns with only a few people spend a lot of money to buy the plots counts as capital ?
The planet I started on I no longer live on. Myself and 1 other person made ourselves a nice little hamlet away from every one. Then one day people wayyy accross the lake decided to build a bridge to us and use our prestige to make their town bigger. I opted out of the war and we destroyed everything we built in about two days(9ish hours). We no live in a different town where the people are nice and no one tries to force anything on us.
How much prestige would a base have to have to be seen as desirable? I know I had less than 10k, my son may have had more as he had all of the machinery and a small shop set up. But I doubt it would have been over 15k.
For people who want prestige without truly working for it, no amount is too small, it seems. Which is really frustrating. And since the algorithms that determine joining are only based on if a plot is filled or not, people can work their way through any protection mechanism to force-annex.
I personally, nor my son, care about prestige, we only cared about how we were treated in that area. I asked him and he said he had just over 30k, I didn’t realize it was so high.
Which frustrates me that others are so obsessed with having it and using whatever means they have to get more that they don’t care who they hurt in the process, such as the plot wars.
Hopefully the guilds will put a stop to that. I think those who use plots to take over settlements should be banned, but that is my personal opinion and I don’t expect it to be done.
I build on a T6 far away from people for this reason… I am plot happy and would end up taking over peoples bases by accident. I tend to try to stay away from everyone.
Beacon control is really starting to annoy me. Our settlement used to have 6 people in it but as people left the game it dwindled to just me and another person. As soon as the building between ours disappeared, beacon control went into “bordering two settlements” even though the nearest plot was 6 to 8 plots away. I didn’t mind so much until after a few weeks I realised I wasn’t getting any footfall coin. The other guy hasn’t been around for a long time so I plotted all the way to there plots. For 2 days I was back to being in a settlement and getting coin for foot fall. Then last night it suddenly goes back to “bordering two settlements” for absolutely no reason. Nothing’s changed since I plotted to the other persons small build. The nearest plot is well over 15 plots away. Just driving me crazy!
Most likely other players plots are despawning… which causes a gap… you need at least 3 plots touching each persons town, to avoid this error… It assumes you’re a road.
I wish it was plots despawning but nothing has changed in the last 3 days. I really wouldn’t mind (as I seem to be a settlement of 1 so I don’t care about the mayor title) but it stops you from earning footfall. Which as a solo player is a nice reward.
Why not try to retreat all plots from other towns and just make footfall off your own perstiege. I am around 500k, by just normal building myself and very little gleam. (Mostly stone)
Don’t think you’ve understood what I wrote. There was one building 6 to 8 plots away that when the building between disintegrated it caused the boarding issue. So I eventually plotted to that one house which fixed it. Then after 3 days it happened again with no changes. The only building closer than 15 plots is that one building which is plotted to. Other than the one that is 15 plots away there is a large settlement owned by one person maybe 50 odd plots further away.