There are currently four separate workbenches, each with their own influence radius, and each required for different building pieces. Anyone who's made a large project knows the hassle of placing and re-placing all those workbenches to and fro during construction. Plus, if you want to stop mobs from spawning inside your village walls, you need to leave unsightly workbenches lying around everywhere. Add stonecutters to that if you don't want maintaining your city walls to turn into a truly loathsome chore.
Enter a pylon item. It can be something lore-friendly and innocuous like a flag or a battle standard, and even have tiered, biome-specific, or placement styles. Small footprint and minimal obstruction. Their purpose would be to extend building radii of all construction benches to which they are connected, and confer the same mob spawning coverage as the workbench.
UI-wise, icons of the workbenches that will be connected can hover above the placement outline to illustrate which of the various benches will be covered. Placement should be restricted to within the influence radius of any construction bench (or connected pylon).
Balancing considerations: These items should be relatively inexpensive without being trivial, and have mid-game availability. (Maybe they're topped with a surtling core or crystal?) Minor stamina cost penalties can be implemented depending on the distance between you and the connected workbench you're utilizing. They should be relatively fragile and targeted with the same priority as a standard workbench. If that's too OP, restrictions on the number of chained pylons could easily be implemented, and can vary by tier.
Enter a pylon item. It can be something lore-friendly and innocuous like a flag or a battle standard, and even have tiered, biome-specific, or placement styles. Small footprint and minimal obstruction. Their purpose would be to extend building radii of all construction benches to which they are connected, and confer the same mob spawning coverage as the workbench.
UI-wise, icons of the workbenches that will be connected can hover above the placement outline to illustrate which of the various benches will be covered. Placement should be restricted to within the influence radius of any construction bench (or connected pylon).
Balancing considerations: These items should be relatively inexpensive without being trivial, and have mid-game availability. (Maybe they're topped with a surtling core or crystal?) Minor stamina cost penalties can be implemented depending on the distance between you and the connected workbench you're utilizing. They should be relatively fragile and targeted with the same priority as a standard workbench. If that's too OP, restrictions on the number of chained pylons could easily be implemented, and can vary by tier.