Space in haven is divided into multiple category's. Each one have its own size and controls different aspects of game mechanics. I will in short explain each type and give examples of what each one does.
Tiles
The most basic type that people are most familiar with is the tile. Each tile have one simple info connected to it. Tiles can be paved, plowed, cave, water, shallow water, void and so on. These tiles have different characteristics and control the curio types that spawn on them and how players or animals can move through them. Some can be terraformed like grass, moor, heath, void (mining) and others can be used to plant on while others are permanent and fixed.
This is a list of all tiles and there IDs:
The most interesting tiles are the grass / heath / moor and forest tiles. These control 80% of the surface of haven and are able to be terraformed by players. To convert grass into moor you simply need to plow the grass tiles. By random a grass tile can convert to moor when the plowed tile decays out of plowed form. Same applies to heath. A moor tile can be converted into heath by plowing and letting the plowed tiles decay.
These heath and moor tiles can spread across grassland over an extended period of time. The process is very slow and the method of spreading is done by having any heath or moor tile randomly spreading either sideways or diagonally. While moor can spread across grass tiles heath can spread on both grass and moor.
This moor tile can spread over the grass tiles adjacent to it. Eventually when the plowed tiles decay back to grass the heath can spread into these tiles as well. Its unknown if they can spread into plowed prior to having the plowed tiles decay.
Dirt tiles have very strange property's. They can be made by using the adventure menu action "stump to dirt", found naturally forming by the name of mudflats or generate when animals eat grass/moor/heath when they are starving. Oddly all these 3 types have the same ID and look identical but server side all these 3 are different. The naturally formed ones can generate curios and be dug for clay while the other player / animal generated ones only look like mudflats. The ones generated by starving animals seam to behave like plowed tiles as in decay over time randomly back to the original tile type. The player generated ones cant spontaneously decay back to the original tile type but they can decay into other types of tiles if adjacent tiles are of the form of grass / heath / moor and even forest tiles. The process is extremely slow, slower then other types of spread so its difficult to spot.
An important thing to note is that objects do not control tiles other then trees meaning grass / heath / moor / forest can spread underneath ridges or objects over time. Trees can also terraform tiles into forest tiles, but more on this later.
Subtiles
I don't know what the correct name for it is. But for the sake of simplicity I call them subtiles as they are smaller then tiles.
There exists 11x11 subtiles in each tile as illustrated in this picture.
Ignore the hand drawing, I noticed I accidentally made to many lines in one direction. Its meant to be 11x11 subtiles.
Subtiles build up havens actual coordinate system. Everything existing in haven is located in a coordinate based on these subtiles meaning players, buildings, objects, animals or items on the ground. Even player or animal movement is based on these subtiles.
Its unknown why subtiles are divided into 11 x 11 instead of 10x10 but its suspected to have some relation to the isometric view. Another thing to note is that tiles have there center position at the coordinate (5,5) based on subtiles. Other then determining the actual position of objects they play a role in hit boxes and pathing mechanics. W6 wall jumping had issues with cliffs because of flawed hit boxes of different cliffs and the mechanics behind pathing mechanics. The same pathing mechanics exists in this world meaning that you can jump corners of hitboxes. I will explain more in detail how pathing mechanics work, how the corner jumping is possible and other details regarding supports and tile coverage later on.
Map Grid
Map grids are 100x100 tiles. The server updates each client with an area of 100x100 tiles each time any tile is updated. These map grids contain all the information of individual tiles and generate the different environments of haven. They can be seen on the mini map as illustrated on this image.
Key features of map grid updates are that any player can update any map grid they are viewing in a 3x3 area around the center grid they are standing inside of. This means a player can update any tile they are standing inside of and 1 grid in each direction. But updates only happen if they are viewed by the player either by directly watching them in the world or by watching them on the minimap. If your not viewing the specific grids they wont update. Neither will grids update if your not adjacent to them.
As seen on this picture grids 2 and 3 are loaded. Grid 1 is to far from the player and therefore its not possible to load. Grid 4 on the right side is not viewed by the player. Nore is it viewed in the world so it will stay unloaded till you scroll over and view it.
Grids can be force updated by having any form of player terraforming be done. This means the actions found in the adventure menu as seen in this image.
Oddly the terraforming done server side, meaning animal terraforming by eating or grass / heath / more / forest / dirt spreading doesn't cause any updates. This is a server side bug that have existed for a very long time. The only way to receive any updates is to force update any tile in a grid to get the updated tiles from the server. You can simply plow or pave any tile inside a grid to get a fresh update of tiles. This is also why you suddenly get a tun of previously plowed tiles turning grass when you start plowing. This bug only appears if the area your interacting with have been loaded for a period of time as well so you should always get fresh updated tiles if your the first person to log into your base. But if you have been logged in a period of time you will notice this bug when you start farming.
Super Grids
A super grid is simply 50 x 50 map grids. The server terrain generation is done on the basis of super grids and then placed side by side to generate the world. There exists 7 x 7 super grids in the current haven W7. Nothing significant can be said about super grids other then noting that they behave as terraforming border lines. This means water generation never crosses super grids creating odd terrain cutoffs. A super grid line therefore is most ideal for making roads that stretches across the world.
Server Grids
As with subtiles I don't know the exact word for these types of grids. I call them server grids as they control a tun of hidden features server side. Very little have been known about these server grids up till now. They control terraforming, view distances, beehives and many other features.
This is an image of server grids
Server grids are exactly 100x100 subtiles. there exists 11x11 server grids per map grid and each grid is approximately 9.09 x 9.09 tiles large. They are fixed across the server similar to map grids and fit inside map grids similar to subtiles fit inside regular tiles.
The first notable thing to note about server grids is the object loading mechanics controlling view distance. Any player loads 9x9 grids around the center grid. This means all objects the player views exists inside the view box of 9x9 grids. If any object moves outside the view box they instantly are removed from the view of the player. Similarly if the player moves into any of the adjacent grids objects around the player is updated accordingly to the 9x9 view grid mechanic described.
Server grids also control beehive mechanics. Any beehive placed in the center server grid only exerts its beehive radius on 3x3 grids. Its center server grid and its adjacent server grids around the beehive. Animals similar to beehives only check for food and grass tiles inside the 3x3 server grid range. Trees also exert there terraforming dominance in the 3x3 range. In some rare instances there exists a bug where map grids somehow prevents the 3x3 range to reduce to 2x3 but its unclear how it happens and most often its in the corners of map grids this bug shows up.
Another key feature about server grid is the later described well repositioning mechanic. Server grids places limitation to how far wells can move. Server grids are also the ones responsible for making animals like bears despawn when they run away in combat. In short if an animal moves into a unloaded server grid it will despawn instantly. Even if your right behind the animal you will notice its gone. Therefore its vital to make sure animals run into loaded server grids and plan accordingly when hunting animals.
The most vital feature about server grids are the terraforming mechanics.
Terraforming
All trees have a chance to terraform one tile per stage change. This means that a tree can terraform a randomly selected tile when it grows a stage. Each tree is either broad-leaf trees or coniferous tree as can be viewed in this link. This means that a coniferous tree, like a fir tree, can terraform a single tile from grass, heath, more or broad-leaf to a coniferous tile. But there are limitations to how far away tiles can terraform. A tree can only terraform a tile in the server grid its been planted inside of. The random tile selection can also select an already terraformed coniferous tile, paved, water or other types of non-terraforming tiles making it so nothing happens.
Whats been described above have been a common technique to describe how tiles can be terraformed. But what is unknown is how the server behaves behind the seens. After very careful observations it was discovered that the server code assigns each server grid to a specific server grid type. Each type of server grid then behaves as a specific type of forest grid making it possible to auto terraform. This image is taken of an area previously covered with grass and after planting two set of trees it auto terraformed into these coniferous patches.
The coniferous tiles can clearly be seen to cover a server grid perfectly on this image. The tiles converted over time similar to how more and heath spread on grass as described above. On the next image you can see how 8 grids around the center grid have a fir tree planted inside each surrounding grid. The center grid then have become a full coniferous grid activating the auto terraforming of coniferous tiles. As described above it means each coniferous tile spread similar to how moor spreads. Another key feature to note is how the center grid doesn't have a tree planted inside of. This means you don't need to plant a tree in the center grid to turn it into a coniferous terraforming grid.
On this next image it proves you need 8 out of 8 grids surrounding a server grid to have a coniferous tree before it can turn into a coniferous grid. Even if the center grid have a tree inside it or not it doesn't matter as long as the surrounding grids have at least one coniferous tree planted inside of it.
On this last image it describes how trees can set the state of a grid. If a grid is set to coniferous it will force the surrounding grids to neutral. Neutral grids or regular coniferous grids does nothing. Its only when a server grid have 8 coniferous grids surrounding it that it starts to terraform tiles from grass to coniferous. A specific grid can be set to coniferous if it's got a coniferous tree planted inside it. Note that server grid borders can sometimes be tricky and have odd overlapping tiles. Being observant the overlaps can be spotted in the south parts where the forest tiles meat the grass tiles on the image below.
A brief summery of the terraforming mechanic is illustrated in the image below.
A white grid is basically a grid where no trees are present. Over time grass will spread randomly on the tiles inside the grid until all tiles are grass. A Yellow or neutral grid basically locks a grid and prevents grass from growing on it. The same will happen to regular broad-leaf or coniferous tiles. Only when there are 8 coniferous grids surrounding a single server grid the active terraforming starts. This will make the center grid slowly over time auto terraform tiles inside that grid to turn into coniferous tiles. The broad-leaf works similarly but there is an additional requirement to turn a broad-leaf grid into an active grid. There needs to exist more then one type of broad-leaf tree in one of the 8 surrounding grids. Simply planting a single type of broad-leaf tree wont activate the active broad-leaf grid. You need more then one type of broad-leaf tree to activate broad-leaf grid terraforming.
Once a grid have become active it might take up to a month before 90% are fully terraformed. Clearly if not a single broad-leaf tile or coniferous tile is not present it makes it impossible for these tiles to spread. It is a small additional requirement that can easily be fulfilled by planting a single tree in the center grid to single tile terraform a few tiles. Then these single terraformed tiles can spread over time.
Pathing Mechanics
A player paths through subtiles when it moves. The server calculates each move action and determines if the next tile is blocked or free. If it's free the player instantly takes the next position and continuously keeps moving forward until it reaches the destination. Its unclear exactly how the server rounds the calculations when determining what position the player will move to throughout the path the player takes before it reaches the end destination. What is known is that the player basically teleports between each move. There are no checks done between each move as in check if the path is free or not. The only check that is done is if the players position is free each time a move action is made.
A players speed determines how far each small jump is. At the slowest speed the maximum number of subtiles are used before the destination is reached. Naturally at maximum speed there are larger skips between subtile when moveing from point to point. The reason it is possible to jump through objects is because the player skips some subtiles making it possible to teleport short distances. In other words at the lowest speed each subtile is traversed through while at maximum speed the player skips some subtiles and teleports between them.
This causes a lot of issues when trying to position through narrow gaps. A player sprinting at maximum speed will find it impossible to position against a wall or corner. When trying to walk towards a wall the server stops the player and causes the player to stand still while there is still a small but significant gap between the player and the wall. In these instances its best to go to lower speed and let the server calculate the smaller subtiles letting the player get closer to the edge. It is also possible to jump corners at the edge or walls or even jump through objects when sprinting. Banners are the perfect example. The small hit box of a banner makes it possible to jump through it. A player can simply position up against the banner with the lowest speed then go to full speed and sprint through the banner as if it wasn't there.
These were the bugs used by players in W6 to jump through ridges. Its also the reason why its impossible to walk into a mansion. At the maximum speed your unable to enter a mansion as you skip to far and land on the other side of the door instead of trying to enter it. There are other strange calculations made when trying to access containers. Some instances when your trying to access a container, that is blocked by objects all around, you might notice its not possible to access it. If you try and access it from a corner you might find its not possible but if you move a bit off and try again your suddenly able to access it. This is because of the same reasons described above where the player skips subtiles during the pathing.
Node Mechanics
I was going to do some actual math and figure out more in detail how node sizes were based on quality but I never got around and I don't think I ever will. In short I will instead describe the things that I know about nodes.
All nodes are based on a quality and each one is based of one of the following.
Stone, feldspar, sand or clay - clay quality
Soil or curios - soil quality
Fish or mussels - fish quality
Water - water quality
Hardness - rock hardness in mining
Ore quality, stone quality - ore quality in mining
What is not commonly known is where all nodes peek out. All knows peek out on the cross hair of 4 map grids as shown on this image.
This means the soil, water, clay or fish node will be highest at the center of the 4 map grids. The peek is in fact in the exact fixed center. Even if its not possible to dig at the center of the tile it is possible to take water from the exact center and its only at the exact fixed center where the node is at its highest. Nodes also diminish the farther from the center you go in a circular similar to beehives. What I never got around to figure out is how the quality drops per distance moved or how quality and distance is determined, but I guess it doesn't really matter.
Nodes reduce in quality each time water, soil, clay or fish is taken from the system. The mechanic behind nodes also work on the basis that if a lower quality is taken out the slower the node drops in quality and more can be taken out. A lower survival alt can be therefore used to dig nodes for quantity as in fish nodes or clay nodes. This is the same reason higher quality fish nodes are valued by players as they rather not have there mussel node reduced in quality by someone fishing in it.
The node recovery rate is about 1Q per 8 hours and can random differ with about +/-2hs. This means a node quality of Q13 at its peek takes 24h in real hours to fully recover if its dug down to zero.
Tile Coverage
Beehives cover there beehive affect over a 150 subtile radius. Supports similarly cover a radius of 100 subtiles. The center of a tile or at the coordinates (5,5) needs to be covered for the tile to be recognized as being covered. Its also wise to place both beehives and supports on the center of a tile, the (5,5) coordinate or the regular spot that is non shifted when building objects, as that will make it possible for the coverage to extend over the maximum number of tiles.
Bonfires cover a radius of 200 subtiles and troughs for animals similarly have a 200 radius. But both troughs and bonfires affect objects that moves so they don't need to cover tiles in particular.
Well Repositioning
The well repositioning was fixed right at the time of writing this post so it's unnecessary to go into more details regarding this particular bug. All that can be said is that you could build a well shifted from the original center point. After bashing the new offset well, the well spot moved to the new location of where the offset well was bashed. This made it possible to shift and bash again and again move the well spot up to 9 tiles. There was a hard limitation to how far you could move the well as wells didn't cross server grids.
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