pve Possible solution to PvE land claim system

[Dazlarus 8]

I have been thinking about possible solutions to the problem that exists on the PvE servers of no places to claim land to build a base. I think the best solution would be implementing a land claim limit on PvE servers to prevent massive map claims that exist in the game now according to my personal experience and the dynamic map available on this website. This would require breaking the land claim system into 2 pieces, a personal/individual land claim, and a company land claim.

A potential limit would be a single land claim for an individual's claim. Individual land claims would be for the players who want to play the single player experience that was available in ARK: SE but not available in ATLAS. Moving your base from one location to another on the map as you complete your personal goals would abandon your old base automatically to free up territory for new players as you venture further and further from the freeports and allow PvE to actually be non-competitive. The major downside for these types of claims is that you would not be eligible for taxation and other company exclusive features. Personal land claims should be very small. Large enough that if you claim on the coastline you have enough space to build a medium sized building and a shipyard. 

For company land claims I think you would have to use a formula to determine what the cap should be. The formula I came up with would be a company gets 5 company land claims as a base number and then they can gain an additional land claim for every 5 members of the company who are active (more of my thoughts on active players later). Company land claims should be larger than personal claims and have access to all features of the land claim mechanic including taxation and welcome messages as well as upcoming features that are yet to be added. This would allow groups of players to build ports, shipyards, personal and public buildings, and otherwise facilitate whatever emergent gameplay that is associated with large groups of players working together. 

Contesting land claims would work similar to how it does now with some tweaks to be more conducive to the more laid-back nature of PvE players. When you log out as the owner of a personal land claim it would start an inactive counter to track if you are an active player or not. I would suggest a 24-48 hour timer and if the player does not log back in before the timer counts down that land claim becomes available for someone to contest it which starts another timer so that if the player does not log in within the contested time frame the land claim is handed over to the squatter. The next time you log in you would wake up on your boat or at a free port with a popup message that explains that your land claim was taken while you were offline. Company land claims would not have the inactive timer but would have a longer contested timer. This would encourage smaller groups that are in the same time zone to play out of personal land claims for the offline protection while missing out on the company features and encourage joining a larger company. 

The inactive timer that I described above could be included on every player when they log off and cause companies to have 2 population numbers, the active population and total population of their company. The active population would determine the maximum land claims. Depending on how the devs want to take it they could have the land claims ranked by which one was visited most recently by a company member and remove the land claims from the bottom of the list (which would indicate least used). The other option could be leaving it up to company leaders to determine the rankings of land claims so that home ports and the like can be artificially elevated in the rankings and have new claims added to the bottom of the list. 

Obviously, these are my personal suggestions and refinement would be appreciated by other members of the PvE ATLAS community. ATLAS is a very promising game and a solid start for an early access title. With refinement and rebalance the game could easily become one of the greats. 

PS. I am fairly new to ATLAS with only about 5 hours played so far but am clocking over 800 hours in ARK: SE so I feel like I can make suggestions from an informed standpoint. I have so far enjoyed my time with the game with more than half of my time spent outside the free port zone floating along in my raft. I have visited 4 zones so far and I am fairly certain one of them was a zone where claims could not be made and included insanely high-level animals which caused me to turn back and keep sailing. All other zones have had islands that are completely claimed by various companies but are mostly undisturbed with high tax rates on them all. After having this experience I surfed Reddit and the Steam discussion forums and have found that many have given up on the game until the land claim system is better refined and fair for new players starting off in the PvE servers. Overall I am very happy with the changes that have been made to the fundamental gameplay from ARK: SE and will be looking forward to seeing more advances as this game matures.