Terraforming? Please Explain Why

I am not a technically minded individual though those that are are gods in my book.

Anyhow, I don't understand the concept of terraformablity from a technical standpoint, although I can do a decent job in practice.

I get that it is the number of meters up or down land can be shaped. I also understand that this works via coorinance on the Z axis. What I don't get is how land with different terraformablity differs in terms of the servers at LL. What makes +4/-4, +100/-100, and +40/-40 differnent?

Can someone explain this to me? How is terraformablity constructed in a server?

-Joy Iddinja

Terraforming limits are artificial limits placed on terraforming by LL, in order to maintain at least some general consistency in the overall land on the mainland. When LL creates each sim, they design it with terraforming that makes gently sloping hills and mountains and streams and whatnot, and then they save this default terrain into all of the simulators. This saving process is called "baking" the terrain.

When you use the "revert" terraform operation, you're reverting the land back to this baked default terrain configuration. Terraform limits make it so that each piece of your land must be within, for example, +/- 4 meters from the way the baked terrain looks.

On a private island, you can terraform within +/- 100m from the baked terrain, which is more of a technical limit (although not a hard one) that prevents terrain from looking too jagged due to the way the data is stored internally. In order to get the most flexibility in your terrain on a private island, you should first flatten the terrain uniformly, then raise all of it to exactly 100m, and then bake that. That allows every point on your land to be anywhere in the range of 0m to 200m.

I think the restriction of +/-4m on the mainland has nothing to do with technical difficulties, but the possibility of someone taking a 16sqm lot and raising it 100 meters to advertise.

If your neighbors could make sheer cliffs that block your land, there would be lots more problems with mainland than there already are. Think about the possibilities. Not a pretty picture at all.

Of course, I'm still a newb, but I think it would spell disaster.

i used to live in a +-100 meters sim long time ago, it wasn't pretty to see, from one dya to another you could have your land into a "pit" as your neightbor decided to raise land of 30 meters on his plot

This really helped me grasp what I was contemplating on. I couldn't solidify the thoughs till I read these replies. Like a word on the tip of your tougue that won't form on your lips and drives you crazy. This helped alot! Thank you all!