I still think they could have easily supported the current voxel gen on already-discovered systems, while allowing full changes to undiscovered. Now that I’ve had time to see the method they used in Origins, I’m perplexed at the path they instead chose. Appending some tweaked planets onto existing systems seems much more unstable going forward. The new gen is underwhelming, looks like the old gen just stretched vertically. Frankly this approach seems like it had to have been more difficult to do.
The reason I keep harping on my particular suggested method is because it’s based on how so much of the world generation is already setup. So many of the procedural generation settings are already configured to have multiple subsets of choices. Models have dynamic lists of textures to choose from. Assets are composed of arbitrary sets of submodels to choose from. Biome categories have multiple subbiome sets to choose from (growing since Atlas Rises). Skies are an arbitrary-sized set of palettes (expanded in Origins to include biome-specific sets). On and on. It’s not like a software company dealing with a huge burden of maintaining deprecated systems. It’s literally how the procedural generation works in NMS.
The terrain gen has many categories of settings, but currently just uses a single global set. Exe modders like RayRod have commented on how there’s no real reason this needs to be the case. The actual formulas used appear to be the same as always, just with different settings. The Back To Foundations mod demonstrates how the older-style generation is still possible in the current game just by changing some values. Entirely new, wild things are possible this way as well. HG could certainly setup the old gen, current gen, and any future gen, as subsets like all those other parts of the procedural generation already do. By including a very tiny amount of data from their existing discovery database inside the actual game files, known/occupied planets/systems could be restricted to the current gen subset. New planets/sytems would have no such restriction, any subset could be chosen. A win-win for HG and both “don’t f with my base” & “burn it all down” players.
(apologies for the wall of text) 