Regenerating Landscape

[Takeda]

Struggling to Google effectively to see if anyone else has had this .. but ..

We have mined extensively, to create underground bases. (Hosted survival).

On Mars, we dug down about 2km in order to have water without it appearing on the surface. Having returned to Earth, it appears everything we mined has filled in.

Filled in like we were never there.

An island I crashed into as my fuel was exhausted is now pristine.
A cave we cut under that island, into its centre, is now not there.
The mouth to our underground base (think Batcave in scale) - gone.

All the pipework is still there - docking connectors work, presumably everything else is more or less ok, but i'm guessing it's totally filled in as though the planet was spawned new, replacing our diggings.

Is this a thing? Can it be reversed?

[Dan2D3D]

Hi, that never happened to me but I know the Devs have added a "Reset Voxel" option for the Dedicated server that I never tried so I don't have much XP with that, I need to create a new world to do some testing with that and know more...

You may have a look in the Admin menu Alt+F10 to see the Voxel setup.

[Takeda]

Originally posted by Dan2D3D:

Hi, that never happened to me but I know the Devs have added a "Reset Voxel" option for the Dedicated server that I never tried so I don't have much XP with that, I need to create a new world to do some testing with that and know more...

You may have alook in the Admin menu Alt+F10 to see the Voxel setup.

Thanks for replaying so quickly - any idea what the key stroke or combination would be? And presumably it asks for a confirmation yeah?

[Dan2D3D]

The best would be to create a "Testing world" especially made to test the Voxel reset option, this way you will not mess up the original save for the time you gain XP.

[Dan2D3D]

I will add :

I create my world in Local Offline Creative mode, load to test if all good, save / exit to set that world Survival + Public mode and transfer the world save folder to the Dedicated server Saves folder.

= I never saw the Voxel reset doing so.

Edit
I mean -> create new in Creative mode the very first time + change to survival when all tested OK.

[Takeda]

Originally posted by Dan2D3D:

I will add :

I create my world in Local Offline Creative mode, load to test if all good, save / exit to set that world Survival + Public mode and transfer the world save folder to the Dedicated server Saves folder.

= I never saw the Voxel reset doing so.

Could it simply be a voxel reset based on proximity?

We're all currently on either Mars or the Moon .. so Earth has been idle for 3 or more days.

[Dan2D3D]

I don't know, to be honest, because I never tested that option and never had this problem following the steps I have shared.

[Rox]

Originally posted by Takeda:

Could it simply be a voxel reset based on proximity?

The normal default settings do not reset voxels at all, but can be set based on proximity to player built grids as well as players, is it possible you accidentally changed the setting? You need to look closely at the detail of settings in the hosting UI and/or the save files as downloaded from the host. If you have a backup that's a suitable age, you could probably just restore the planet voxel file to fix it.

The relevant settings look like this :

<VoxelTrashRemovalEnabled>true</VoxelTrashRemovalEnabled>
<VoxelPlayerDistanceThreshold>9000</VoxelPlayerDistanceThreshold>
<VoxelGridDistanceThreshold>9000</VoxelGridDistanceThreshold>
<VoxelAgeThreshold>60</VoxelAgeThreshold>

[Takeda]

Originally posted by Rox:

Originally posted by Takeda:

Could it simply be a voxel reset based on proximity?

The normal default settings do not reset voxels at all, but can be set based on proximity to player built grids as well as players, is it possible you accidentally changed the setting? You need to look closely at the detail of settings in the hosting UI and/or the save files as downloaded from the host. If you have a backup that's a suitable age, you could probably just restore the planet voxel file to fix it.

The relevant settings look like this :

<VoxelTrashRemovalEnabled>true</VoxelTrashRemovalEnabled>
<VoxelPlayerDistanceThreshold>9000</VoxelPlayerDistanceThreshold>
<VoxelGridDistanceThreshold>9000</VoxelGridDistanceThreshold>
<VoxelAgeThreshold>60</VoxelAgeThreshold>

Thanks Rox - these are the settings we have now changed - our age threshold was 24 .. however, our grid threshold was 5000 and the base itself was built around the edges of the cave.

So a capacious area to move in, possibly to print ships (we did do this with smaller electric ships as the printer was underwater) with cave wind turbines at the roof, and conveyors around the outskirts. The big cave connected across 1.5km or so to an island, the centre of which had been hollowed out (and my buddy had made a disco in there - don't ask).

All this is filled in, so apparently the grid proximity is ignored. My speculation is grid prox is a buffer to player prox only - no players for 24 hours and farewell to the excavations - grid or no grid. I believe the grid's block count is about 2000 if that gives an indication of scale.

I appreciate the advice about restoring a backup - at this juncture it would undo all the work on Mars - I think my best recourse is to leave the base buried (because it still works) and just dig out the disco, because it would be a shame to lose the work, no matter how insane it is ;)

[Rox]

Originally posted by Takeda:

I appreciate the advice about restoring a backup - at this juncture it would undo all the work on Mars...

No, you don't need to restore the whole save backup, just the earth planet voxel file.

If the grid distance was set at 5000 then no voxel within 5000 of any grid should have been reverted. I've not tested with the current version but I doubt there's any problem here or there would have been many screams to Keen about it on the Discord, and it would have been fixed pretty soon. I've not followed the game that closely in recent times though...

But note that in order to avoid reverting of large excavations you would need to have a block grid of some sort included, maybe just a row of blocks or conveyors to connect structures between the extremities.

[Takeda]

Originally posted by Rox:

Originally posted by Takeda:

I appreciate the advice about restoring a backup - at this juncture it would undo all the work on Mars...

No, you don't need to restore the whole save backup, just the earth planet voxel file.

If the grid distance was set at 5000 then no voxel within 5000 of any grid should have been reverted. I've not tested with the current version but I doubt there's any problem here or there would have been many screams to Keen about it on the Discord, and it would have been fixed pretty soon. I've not followed the game that closely in recent times though...

But note that in order to avoid reverting of large excavations you would need to have a block grid of some sort included, maybe just a row of blocks or conveyors to connect structures between the extremities.

Good to know about restoring just the Earth - but to reiterate my grid was massive across 1.5kms under the lake from a main production facility which included at least 3 full refineries, 3 full assemblers (4 modules each for all), a quantum reactor, an arc reactor, a projector, 3 cryos .. bah blah .. through to the island with 4 laser range finders, an exhaust stack and 30 LCDs all set to behave like a disco, with dead engineers placed like breakdancers and a sound block producing music.

I don't know what more of a grid I can have placed for it to obey the grid proximity rule :P