Some very good stuff here... Some great suggestions.... Some not so much lol....
I'm in total 100 percent agreement that something has to be done. What that something is I'm not 100 percent on that as well. I've been on RustEz servers with @Death for some years now... Back when he flew around like superman to save the day. Break walls, help with a build etc. I've been hooked ever since.
1. I think the communities cause massive amounts of render lag especially when flying over... Or just be that guy who happens to be near one spin around in a circle and watch your fps tank when looking towards said community..... but We love the little communities so asking ppl to break them up would maybe drive away the player base. So maybe it's the amount of entities with that given area?
2. PumpJack's and Quarries.. I thought only a certain amt. was allowed per player anyways? Though I agree with @Dicko A La Mode and was here before the quarries and remember the grind of the game when you couldn't find a single node for hours.... We complain about nodes.... Not enough etc etc.. But I loved it, I loved farming and the competition. Fast forward... I'm also the guy that works 60+ hours a week swing shift 12 hrs and quarries and pumpjacks were a blessing. I max both out first go of a wipe now.. So 1 each physically. I even went with generators this wipe to try and help with the turbine issue... Which is BTW one thing I would love to be craftable and get rid of turbines all together lol
3. Policing the players builds, picture count, rug count etc... Sighs... My opinion it would be very taxing on Admins and very time consuming. Don't even know if it would be physically possible for them to fly around checking bases everytime they log in. Consider this, offending base has x complaints. Admin is asked to check it.. Admin goes from room to room counting frames, entities etc. room1 8, room 2 13, I get a headache thinking about it... Plus again you would possibly drive off players... Favoritism would be a thing as mentioned. So... Mehhh don't think that's the way to go about it either... It would be a nightmare on both ends.
I hear people with massive bases complain on upkeep 30k per day etc. etc... So maybe a exponential upkeep increase would further discourage these huge monster bases? I dunno... I think as mentioned we are just pushing the absolute limits of what the game can do... It's still not optimized well even to this day. Better... But we can obvisouly push it to the max very quickly lol. Awesome topic! Glad I was pointed here as it's been a thorn for a very long time lol