So after much discussion and debate, dragon, fatso, john, busterlef and I thought it would be a good idea to allow the implementation of either world anchors or dimensional anchors for small town settings.
This idea was primarily brought up by the fact that cross-chunk machinery such as pipes, wires, red alloy etc all seem to fail or leak when they encounter an unloaded chunk. Thus, the only possible way of ensuring a working system is to be present in the area at all times in order to keep the chunks loaded. Dragon’s reactor exploded last week because the coolant system was in an unloaded chunk so the reactor wasn’t receiving any ice although everything was set up properly.
The idea is that, although a large amount of loaded chunks will lag the server, in a town setting, with multiple players where the chunks are likely to be loaded most of the time, a world anchor or dimensional anchor would ensure all machinery and systems continue to function with only a very small additional demand on the server.
Chunk errors are game breaking and this is a viable solution.
An admin or perhaps OP would be able to place the anchors assuming the players who requested it had created a town of maybe 3-4 people. The details can be debated, but I hope the general idea is taken into consideration.