For the record the system I have in place is not constantly running every frame or anything I'm just wondering if there's any possibility of simplifying the code a bit in Godot, the borders do expand though along with the colliders to handle the game logic if the radius increases. As for shaders I wasn't aware there would be a way of pulling off this effect without a mesh, the reason being is I wanted the influence circle to take into account the height of the terrain and hug it forming the clean borders you see in the topic.
I'd love to learn about any other potential options if there are any but I have done a LOT of research on this topic and this is unfortunately the best method I've found for achieving the effect, at least in 3D. I'm surprised how little border effects are discussed these days given how awesome they can make games look. I'm also a big fan of the elite dangerous influence map.
