Hi JRose96,
As Damselx1 mentioned above, having a large concentration of lights in an area can cause a build up in lag. Coupled with other things - premade control consoles in your chosen base, already in place lights, torches, candles, woodframe windows and growing trees - in the one area this can then lead to crashes and eventually what you witnessed, the console becoming too overloaded and crashing quickly. Around 30 lights is the cut off point from what I've seen in the past. 10 in the one room / area will start the lag build up.
After porting the toggle lights, the team then changed their spread so light fall would not overlap as much as this seemed to cause the lag build up. Unfortunately this can still occur in the game and understandably with less light emmited players might try to add more lights to a room or base. I'm glad you were able to get back into your game, and understand how something like this can be disheartening for a group. It may be worth checking numbers or items, and making sure your host has cleared the cache or the Playstation since removing the lights to make sure there isn't something there causing players to be kicked. If people are being kicked in a particular area then that area might need to be checked for too many items causing a build up.
The console version was released as a complete version of alpha 14.7 with splitscreen added in. The PC version is still in Alpha. The PC team are adding items and continuing to develop the Alpha version. Items are added, items are taken away and items that stay are tested, adjusted and tweaked for a good while. Once the PC team are happy something is considered ready for porting, it is then passed to the console team. The Console team aim to add as much as they possibly can from the PC version. Unfortunately in some cases, like the lights, or the speed of the minibike for example, things need to be dialed back to fit within the parameters of the console systems. Slyenthunder wrote a good article on the system differences which will probably explain better than I can -
https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?62391-When-Will-the-Console-Version-Have-_______ - I think it's the 4th post down that downs a hardware table.
PC also do have their fair share of issues their team are working through. While not ideal one of the positives to come from this is if issues are spotted on both versions, then the teams can share a solution to the problem. Console has helped PC with issues in the past, and vice versa.
If you believed you've cleared a reasonable amount of items, and there seems to be no reason for the crashing to keep occurring, it may be worth sending your save onto us and we may be able to see what is causing it and help you prevent further issues or reduce the crashing.
I really do appreciate you taking the time to come back and explain what happened with your save and what is currently occurring despite your crew moving on from the save, as I said I understand how disheartening something like this can be for players, frustrating too.
Clare