Definitely an improvement, but I can see a vouple of pretty common situations coming to that might cause some problems.
In an area where someone mined a bunch of dirt, I fall in and mine to place a block to make steps to get out. Regen delayed 4 hour then 15 min for the block I placed.
Mining underground, I mine a tunnel through a chunk that is regening, regen delayed 4 hours then 15x36 for the blocks to regen.
I think those 2 cases will come up often enough that some area will take forever to regen, if at all.
I might have missed it, will resources still only regen once a chunk has been fully regenerated?
I agree, the fact that regen starts again and does not reset the timer is good. . I am guessing unless if someone does something in the chunk like mine a block then it resets to 4 hours.
I do understand the attempt to balance and I can understand the frustration if you have built something having it disappear in one day if the beacon expires. But I will note that in 1.0 you did extend the beacon fuel times to address some of these issues. As for the clay example. . You are correct, I can find a couple of sources for clay, but the result is now there will be several places constantly dug up instead of one. I was not just collecting clay I was getting all the soil, so it was probably a lot in a few chunks (several hundred at least in each chunk).
The world is basically a cuboid, 2000+ per 2000+ per 255 blocks, which in turn is cut into 16x16x256 chunks. They are probably processed (checked if they should regenerate) sequentially, have their stats saved somewhere. Anyway… for world regen purposes I think we can safely assumed, those chunks won’t be dissected into smaller parts, because it would incur whole engine rewrite. It is only my assumption, of course, but there are many things that indicate that. So I believe we won’t see major change when it comes what part at once is being regenerated when it comes to chunk size, because that would meant wipe, and totally new planets.
@olliepurkiss I’d really like to know this too. After the game patch happens, do surface resources and/or ore respawn immediately after the 4 hour timer? or will they still not respawn until the entire chunk is done it’s block regeneration?
I assume the 2 chunk distance includes if you are standing on another planet that a portal links to in that area? So a portal on a plot is linked to another portal on a plot and if it is within 2 chunks of the regen area it will pause if they run by on that other planet?
I’d also really love to know about the ability to delink portal connections from regeneration. Is this possible @olliepurkiss?
Big win here! I am happy that you all brought in some features to help slow that down.
Does “regen” take anything into consideration on prestige of the block? Or is it just some random selection on with block will regen in the chunk?
Please remember that a chunk goes from mantel to top building area.
That’s a good question, and one that @lucadeltodecso would have to answer.
No, the prestige is not considered. The algorithm regenerates blocks in an order based on how far they are are from the original surface(s) of the world. So tall constructions will regenerate from the top down, and big holes will regenerate from the bottom up.
I don’t think that resources should Regen in high traffic areas the point is to explore…not walk through a portal and stand in on spot wacking 8 dessert swords with 5 other people
Find a good spot, find low traffic, break blocks while you harvest and Bam the next day it all regens. Seems ideal to me
The world will regenerate in reverse distance-to-original-surface (air/block boundary), but the distance metric is skewed such that trees and other “prefabs” will regenerate after the ground does, and does indeed go in reverse so that trees and other prefabs will regenerate “out” of the ground upwards after the ground has fully regenerated.
I actually like the mechanic that ressources are only regenerated after the chunk is fully up again. Like @Tagris said this encourages exploration and flexible behavior of the players to find the best spots for them. As long as we have (will have) enough planets to spread the whole community on this will lead to a more varriating experience then “hop through a portal, drop down and dig into the ground so that nothing kills you on your way” ^^. On this way people will have to face the dangers on the surface and later underground (hunters!!! ^^) before they get to a really good spot.
And as a last point it will lead to more portals, even if locked behind guild doors, which lead to locations worthy of mining/gathering and “Wandering” outposts because after a region got famous it slowly becomes the time to look for the next fortune
Now we just need to have the xp for chisteling outside of beacons removed so that those powergamer madmen stop to ruin our wonderful planets and sabotage the surface regeneration ^^
I’m all for this, but I just happened to put a base somewhere that other people are now crowding around, so suddenly, all the places I go for resources are mined out and chopped up… I feel like I need to move my base…
And with no way to summon a meteor whenever I want, I can’t really afford a conduit upkeep.
Not really looking to explore much. What it does do for me is now I will have stripped mined more places for resources like clay versus just one that will regen in a day. Now if I clear 2000 -3000 blocks of dirt to get clay and peat, It could take well over 24 hours to regenerate. Therefore I will find a few spots to strip mine, so I can rotate between them to have at least one regenerated when I go to it. So now we get more places with the landscape kind of torn up not less.
You can just warp to another area using coins. You get more coins daily and can get 1000s easily for selling things at market that you gather.
I made 20k just selling fiberious leaves. If I gathered 200 leaves I would sell 50 of them. Easily made up the cost of warping and with profit. Very sustainable.
So find an area that is low traffic and save a few locations. And know that once you find that area, as other players do too, you may need to explore again
In fairness to the developers and @olliepurkiss these changes were needed on many levels. The “timing” part of it is something that can be adjusted and balanced if they made them too long.
Do consider that in the real world when we make changes it takes nature some time to revert. So huge changes in this game resulting in a bit slower replacement makes sense. Personally for those strip mining or things like that, I am happy to see that it might take longer for things to come back…
Also, with the amount of planets that are out there and the resources present on those planets it isn’t too much of a convenience to farm over various locations. This game is about moving around and not stepping out of your door 1 step to get everything you need.
If possible it will be great if trees who’s trunk is in a plotted square and deleted wont he regenerated.
this will solve the issue with tree tops regenerating over city’s streets
the point is to explore…not walk through a portal and stand in on spot wacking 8 dessert swords with 5 other people 
(trees aren’t special, they’re considered part of the generated world)