The No Man's Land expanding and destroying all structures that aren't compliant with the zone is a huge negative for me. I mean, I love the concept and the dynamic it adds to the game, but in the early stages especially, that's a bit unreasonable since you can't control where your resources are generated. I don't know if it is possible... but if instead of expanding just the zone, what about adding an actual piece of physical land with the zone tile so the map itself expands with the zone so existing structures don't get destroyed, but it also means that with the additional piece of land you have to go back and ensure all connections to neighboring territories are up to date.

Your idea of adding a new piece of physical land is really neat! But I don't think it can be done with the existing mod API unfortunately.

I've added a mod setting to enable or disable the expansion. It's definitely a very different game with the expansion on or off.

Another option would be to split the world into 3 surfaces, a left surface and right surface that never change, and a third no man's land surface that could grow. Using similar techniques from Factorissimo to belt and pipe stuff between the sides and the no man's land, and then could grow the no man's land over time without having to destrory stuff on each side's land.

On the other hand, the need to avoid building too close to no man's land and having to pick up and place down again can encourage interesting play styles, including rushing construction bots to be able to quickly move stuff away from the border. :D