Making abandoned claims interesting.

[SANICHEGEHOGE]

If a paved tile has not had a player within five tiles of it for some certain amount of time, the tile gets growth of plants and eventually gets destroyed. If a player walks over any tile within 5 tiles of overgrowth on stone tile, the overgrowth dies. Maybe a rare curio that requires high per * exp in old almost decayed paved tiles.
Buildings may have overgrowth if the hp on building is below 75% and has not had a player within 2 tiles of it. Buildings below 25% hp may start to visually cave in on the outside (roof fallen in), and on the inside it is similar to a cave in, but with planks or something instead of boulders. If furniture gets hit by rubble it immediately gets destroyed.
With plowed tiles, its the same as paved tiles. If there is a crop there that is not harvested for 2 weeks, it becomes a new item called "Moldy Mush". The crop itself visually would just be tinted yellowish. Moldy Mush at q10 gives 1200 lp/h with 4 mental weight. Functions as high tier curio for anybody who stumbles across ruins. To negate botting, it decays after 1 hour of harvesting. The actual moldy crop decays after 3 hours of becoming moldy to make hitting even more difficult. Another possibility would be to make it an only 50 or 25% chance to even get moldy mush.

[2d0x]

If I get you right:

Buildings may have overgrowth if the hp on building is below 75% and has not had a player within 2 tiles of it. Buildings below 25% hp may start to visually cave in on the outside (roof fallen in), and on the inside it is similar to a cave in, but with planks or something instead of boulders. If furniture gets hit by rubble it immediately gets destroyed.

I hardly like the idea of destroying the building on an active claim. Or is it inactive?

...If there is a crop there that is not harvested for 2 weeks, it becomes a new item called "Moldy Mush"... Moldy Mush at q10 gives 1200 lp/h with 4 mental weight... To negate botting, it decays after 1 hour of harvesting...

In this case, it will simply be a collection of curiosities as necessary.

...The actual moldy crop decays after 3 hours of becoming moldy to make hitting even more difficult...

In this case, the chance of finding in ruins is close to zero. Artificial cultivation only (a pseudo-random curiosity). I have nothing against the idea, but it's unlikely:

...Functions as high tier curio for anybody who stumbles across ruins...

However, I could misread translate and interpret...

[SANICHEGEHOGE]

No I meant that abandoned claims decay over time

[2d0x]

No I meant that abandoned claims decay over time

Then it's just an extra animation of aging buildings; entourage. I agree, aesthetically, but I don't presume to judge about expediency.
I just prefer that developers take the time to add new buildings, not the aesthetics of the old ones. Obviously, they can not do everything at once: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=57961

[Granger]

Decay needs to be turned from 'only while map tile is loaded' to a deterministic version where the server applies the decay that would have happened to a map tile, but wasn't applied as it wasn't active, the moment the tile is loaded (keeping in mind that the saved up decay dosn't happen now but did in the 'past', so items spreading from containers should disappear in case the containers popped 'a long time ago').

Currently it is extremely annoying to pass by an abandoned structure for weeks (or months) every now and then but still find it standing as the area is mainly idle...

[jorb]

Agree that we could do a lot more with decaying settlements, in terms of overgrowth, slowly cracking paving, and hauntings of various types of fell beasts.