While I don't have the game, I can already see why respawning containers would be a bad thing, and hard to program in a way that would leave exploitation to a minimum. First off, if you designate certain containers to respawn then what stops people from building bases around these sustainable resources? And also, what happens if you are unaware the container respawns, stash away your tools and then bam; they're replaced by some food, or useless items? I suppose you could set a timer so that crates not accessed for a long time respawn loot, but that means you can essentially build item farms by accessing the crates at intervals which allow respawns to happen. And, I don't fancy the idea of having to constantly check crates in use to ensure they don't fall victim. Not to mention defining each criteria would take an age, and most likely be bugged (also detracting from time that could be spent implementing NPCs ;]) In all honesty soft resets seem like the best option at the moment. Perhaps the larger map will lead to longer sustainability, but until then... Oh, and one more thing. Project Zomboid doesn't seem like a game that would need more than maybe 10-20 people at a time, each belonging to a faction. Not with the current map size anyway.
