The current claim system is awful. For a PVP server maybe it's good, but under no circumstance on a PVE server should other players be allowed to steal anything from you, kill you, or do really anything that impacts your gaming experience. Since day 1 it has been nothing but game-impacting "bugs". I'm not going to get into all of them because this would be an entire page worth of complaints. These are not bugs like "oh this thing doesn't work sometime", these are bugs that cause you to basically start completely over. It's been exhausting and just when I finally had things going in the right direction, I log off for the night away from my base (went to get a crew from a freeport) and logged back in to see that someone stole my claim and destroyed everything I had built (which was a pretty good amount) and stole all the resources/gear that I had gathered over the last week or so. I can see how this would be okay on PVP servers or if I hadn't logged on the game for numerous days or more, but they stole my claim 5 hours after I had logged off and everything is gone now.
The claim system should be simple on PVE. If the player that claimed the land hasn't logged in for the last X amount of days, the claim goes away or can be taken. That's it. No exceptions. It's even super easy code, let me know, I'll write it for you.
Being able to take claims is important to the game as it will prevent a bunch of land being claimed up by people that no longer play the game, but you should not be able to steal claims from people who actively play.
Between this issue and many others, I'm putting down the game, at least for now. Maybe one day after these systems have been reworked and improved upon I will return.
I love the game itself in terms of concept and the big picture, truly amazing. I wish I could keep playing, but it's simply impossible to enjoy with the current issues. I know many others are dealing with this and leaving the game as well, I hope it's fixed soon.
