Thin build exclusion zone along the river so good can grow naturally.

[Scotty]

Kinda annoying how there is no area for food to grow long the rivers due to the many huge farm bases crowding the entire river length. It would be nice if the river and 4 meters each side had build exclusion so food can grow naturally be available. and you can actually walk the river length unimpeeded. It would not effect water pumps and pipes unless you're very bad at farm design lol, if so call me. Lets beautify our rivers! 

Edited July 26 by Scotty

[Theodore Baggins]

The difficulty I see this creating is it eliminates options for bridges and creative builds that incorporate the water. And I can see many farmers getting frustrated by the change—optimizing farms is difficult and taking care of bugs in watering is already a game of whackamole. 

However, the opportunity is that it would eliminate the possibility of blocking waterways for boats, and I agree, it would be nice to actually be able to get food and seeds by going to a river. 

[Scotty]

I just realized this would mean you cant put pumps in the river, im an idiot  Forget this suggestion. Pls delete admin.

[Theodore Baggins]

I think it's a good suggestion - it just might not work out. There are actually precedents for this idea! Originally you could build on roads, and admins had to manually enforce the rules until Facepunch added their own restrictions. That was in addition to the still-existing need for admins to make sure builders don't block waterways for boats. The second I can think of is that it took Facepunch a while to add water restrictions to where you could place oil refineries and windmills. I remember being bummed about the oil refinery restrictions because it limited ocean builds. However, both those examples are from when Rust was in Alpha, I believe.

Depending on how the Facepunch code is written, it may not be as difficult as you think to add a check for building too close to something classified as a "river" similarly to how close you can build to a road or monument. Or if that category doesn't exist, fresh water could also work (which would also stop people from walling off the one part of a pond that you can drink from). That would solve building structures, but there are also other examples of where different "deployables" are limited. Case in point being refineries, but also the more complex code around limiting fish trap placement while also allowing tin can alarms in monuments.

So you could add a restriction to building around rivers, similar to roads, but then allow fish traps and pumps to be exceptions to that rule. That's all in theory, though - I do not have much more than previous experience to draw from!

attached are some pictures of shenanigans

[Scotty]

Oh if they could add it so certain items could be placed even with the exclusion zone that would be perfect. I never even considered that. Great idea.

[Darktweets]

Making it so that small water collectors or large water collectors had an increased storage supply or rate of collection might remove the need for water pumps or needs to build near rivers, thereby making it easier to build in desert/mountain/other locations, which would then allow for the thin non-build borders along rivers. 

Of course, with the new rivers that will run the length of the maps, this could also prove to be problematic.