Just because it's very recent and someone else was stating that (s)he sometimes hates PG, sooo maybe this makes it up a bit
I really enjoyed watching the clip.Official Elite Dangerous Livestream: How to Make a Real World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Et5Ivi_yIg
Background infos on this:
Howdy folks.
I wanted to try and explain a little more about our system to hopefully lay some concerns to rest. For a plate-based tectonic system on a planet, a large enough temperature gradient is required to have a phase difference between a relatively thin crust and the deeper innards. That temperature gradient can be driven by things such as gravitational compression on a large enough body, or gravitational stress from orbiting a much larger body closely.
So yes, smaller terrestrial worlds, unless under rather specific conditions, will likely have crustal plates too thick for a tectonic mask to make sense. However, tectonic interactions is not the only way in which surface features can be formed.
Asteroidal impacts can create shockwaves across an entire planet's surface, deforming the crust in interesting patterns. The formation of a planet from the cataclysmic merging of two planetoids would liquify most of the material, but there is the chance for old solid outcrops to survive or influence the shape of the resulting body. Gravitational stressed can be enough to drive volcanism which forms mountain ranges on a surface. An event in a planet's past might alter its orbit from the previously stressful one to a wider/eccentric one, solidifying the new features. Impacts can cause rifts, ridges, and hill ranges as well as the expected crater.
To get back on topic, our 'tectonic mask' system takes into account various factors from Stellar Forge, such as:
expected gravitational stress / sibling and parent orbits
gravitational compression heating
material of the planet
size of the planet
tidal locking state
expected core, mantle, and crust temperatures
viscosity of mantle
deformability of the materials
age of the system
expected frequency and magnitude of meteorite collisions
nearby sources of regular debris
and more
The system creates masks for areas of potential crustal deformation activity. Those areas may reflect the shapes and activities of tectonic plates if it's sensible for that particular planet.
It may reflect other shapes if the sources of those deformations isn't bona fide tectonic activity. The same system is used for large and small planets, and adapts as it needs to.
We ended up calling it the 'tectonic mask' because it's short, snappy, and places the same kind of visual features (even if what physically would have generated them might have been different).
TL;DR "tectonics mask" is a shorthand way we've been describing all the regions of crustal major deformation from a variety of sources.
(p.s. similar thing with the limestone material on an oceanless planet question. Limestone is a short, relatable name for development compared to "calcium carbonate rich analogues" )