Settlements touch on a LOT of tables and a LOT of the games mechanics, so the slow demise and removal of settlements is important. We still sit at around 250 +/- at the moment we have 257.
This last year we added Settlement Events, these were primarily designed to remove inactive and uncared for settlements. This has been see (by us Devs) to work well and clears up where players leave or a settlement is left untouched by absent owners for months on end.
Those who are playing and looking after their settlements have very little to worry about
By far and large the Number ONE reason settlements are removed is a lack of paying their bills. This is because once you kick into negative credits you will suffer greatly with morale losses from your staff.
Those settlements where players 'Leave' the game or are removed from 365 days of inactivity, these are handed over to the Official Receiver (you can see that when visiting a Settlement) and the based is stripped of its assets.
Over 10 to 14 days it will then slowly drop in morale and once it reaches the -25% mark it will trigger my attention.
The actual removal process is now a 29 part check and process. But even before that the Settlement will show signs of issues, moral drop (viable when docked) stores beginning to close and finally a Docking lock.
At the that last stage if you have Items stored in the local CS or secure store on the settlement you can use the 'Settlement Reclaim' option from the Player Bio screen. Dock where you WANT to items to go to and use this option. It will list settlements that are locked and where you have items stored. (Both Resources and Secure store items). You can then reclaim these and they will be dragged to the current location.
Note: It won't remove Extractors or Factories or Malls or Emporiums etc... This is up to you to keep an eye on and remove PRIOR to that point..
But... But....
Worry not all is not lost
When the settlement eventually falls low enough to reach my desk and be set for removal the removal code will check for active / deployed Extractors, Factories and Malls.
In each case it will only return the 'Items' and not any resources that 'may have' been stored within them.
Emporiums are dealt with slightly differently. The emporium on the dead / defunct settlement is removed and your items are placed in safe storage. You are refunded the Emporium License and you can then contact me with the NEW name of your emporium in private and I will make sure they are added to your new emporium.
Emporium removal / deal with items is a recent change to the way sets are wrapped up and will only take affect from today. The other parts are historical. Today simply saw the code cleaned up and some issues that have crept in over the years rectified.
Coops