This has been an issue for me for the longest time Players keep building their bases directly next to a cortiumspawn, what then happens is that base blocks the Cortium from spawning making it impossible for other Players to gather that Cortium .. and gets bad when you are in a situation of having limited territory were you can´t farm much and have to drive around longer relative to how many other ANTs there are ... it gets WORSE when people want to do the Mining Elysium mission cause the damn mininglaser then spawns at the same goddamn postion multiple times in a row in deep enemy territory where you have NO chance to hold the damn thing for even a second ..... like imagine you have 20 seconds left to hold the mininglaser ... and can´t simply do it because the laser spawns in a unreachable uncontestable area ... this simply sucks and you know people will be always butts and exploit stuff not caring about others ... MAKE CORTIUMNOTES PERMANENT and generate mineable cortium over time or put a no buildzone around it ... put a no buildzone around the mininglaserspawns or make it despawn/destroy the PMB build on its place ...
Agreed, the disabling cortium respawn thing is an old relic from when PMBs were super important for alert wins, and when bases were invincible. I think the idea was to make "starve it to death!" an option for taking out a super tough base, If you couldn't kill it directly you could kill any ants trying to feed it. so the devs didn't want bases to have a cortium farm safe inside. But those days are long gone, PMBs don't really have a purpose anymore, and they are so easy to destroy with pocket OS and cortium bomb. I see no reason why cortium shouldn't just be allowed to respawn now, Add a very small 10m no build zone around the cortium (just in case someone puts a spawn tube right next to a tiny cortium vein and the vein respawns as a GIANT one, they'd now have a spawn tube inside of an invincible one way shield.) Tldr: Agreed we should let people build their base around cortium, and let the cortium respawn
I don't think this was ever an intended feature, just an accident that never got fixed. Probably the least resource intensive way to fix it would be to add a scattering of "reserve" cortium drops that only spring up if a normal one is blocked. The issue I take with the no-build zone is that someone might actually want to build on that spot. The issue with permanent crystals which grow at a fixed rate is that the number of players who want to build is variable. The current system of respawn speed being based on consumption speed means the cortium generation is throttled to match consumption, which is a good thing. It means that a few players building in an area don't make it impossible for others to build. All that said, I'm going to be a total cynic here and say don't expect construction to get any love any time soon. It obviously isn't a priority.