Ok, where do I start?
Maybe it is a bit tricky to compare different games or even different mods.
What works for one does not neccessarily have to work for the other.
I know that Discovery has a clan base feature and that back when we developed the one for CF we clearly decided to do stuff differently both in the way how the base is constructed and also how it is maintained. We have a very modular approach and I think this is a strength of our implementation.
This being said... the server side code as a result also is VERY different and making adjustments now is extremely difficult and time consuming. Only Huor who created the original code can do that and I am not really keen to ask him for even more work to do (especially since I requested his help in a different area just recently).
But lets talk about the stuff we currently have.
In order for clan bases to work every system in the game needs to be prepared. Every system already needs to have a dummy base before a clan base can be constructed. This base never is used unless a clan starts the building process. For player bases you literally have to multiply the amount of dummy bases by X and with +150 systens in CF we would end with hundreds or thousands of these preprepared dummy bases.
On top of that each of these bases would require to have interiors.... NPCS.... market settings and adjustments for the dynamic economy.
That is the underlying efffort that needs to be done before even a base can be constructed.
Maintaining the stuff is even worse.
Right now I have a payment system in place that allows me to see which clan has payed for which system and can pretty much check if a clan system still is a clan system based on that.
For payed player bases (if i understand it correctly) I would also have to figure out which player has payed for the base... link the payment somehow to the player account on the server (which I dont knoow how to do) and have a controlling mechanism to figure out which players are no longer paying.
That is an adminstrative mightmare.
On top of all of that there is a bug bugging me ever since the clan bases were introduced.
The server sometimes is mixing up the names and ids of the bases... we have this problem for years and never figured out why it happens. Its a bug we never fixed... therefore I wrote a script which automatically checks clan bases for errors and tries to correct them after they happen.
This seems to be working... but the configuration once again has to be done manually, right after a clan base was constructed. So with player bases the same error mitigation has to be done aswell for every player base. I guess that is going to be even more effort and I would not be able to guarantee that when there are 100 player bases that everything still works as intented.
I still favor clan bases over player bases because of the technical reasons explained above.
And maybe we should try to focus a bit more on how to get more players to the server again... and how to keep them busy with the help of clans.
Originally the clan bases were only be meant to be a foundation for an even bigger gameplay system on the server which unfortunately never was introduced due to a lack of players and the amout of coding effort.
But since we already talk about this topic...
Clans were meant to be able to conquer and extend their territories in CF.
The clan base was the foundation for that from which clans were meant to work for system influence by supporting other systems with supply deliveries.
There is a commodity in the game "supply goods" which pretty much at this point serves no purpose. It can be bought at clan bases and was meant to be delivered to other systems. The server was meant to log this trade and clans which gained a certain amount of influence via these trades would gain ownership over further systems.
At least that was the idea... a competitive long term gameplay loop for clans.
