instead of deconstructing things structures will be markable as surplus and automatically removed when their points are needed elsewhere.
this is just about perfect. just in case it's not already planned anyway, i'd like to suggest this addition: the list of surplus structures considered for removal should be sorted and filtered. an example: if i build a tesla generator, the first thing that would be removed would be another tesla generator, if one is marked as obsolete/surplus. turrets would come next in the sorting. a reactor or defense computer would never be removed (thus filtered out of the list), as this doesn't make any sense. the last spawn can't be removed this way either, only by building another spawn. maybe, but this might be a matter of taste, do the same for the armoury. people could still destroy their own structures by brute force, but such an action is quite visible and obvious to others, unlike an overmind suddenly popping out of existence because it was marked as surplus by someone who meanwhile is a basilisk.
for the sake of completeness, but not required reading at all (except for the terminally bored), some notes i took reading through other posts here:
> sometimes you HAVE to free up points for something
> someone wants to build somewhere else
absolutely true. but you can still do that under my simplistic boo-boo-point system. all it does is promote teamwork, e.g. you should always inform your team before you move a reactor or an overmind, and the auto-vote just is another incentive for doing that.
the rule of thumb here is: don't do things against the will of your team. recently i spectated on ATCS; one guy wanted to move the human base into the middle of the map, but couldn't even get a reactor up, because no one covered him. his teammates were either unaware of what was going on, or unwilling to support the plan. even if he had played like a pro, he would still have been perceived as a griefer by everyone else.
thus, consensus is important. if a builder accidentially triggers a kick-vote, it can just be ignored. you'd only have to vote "no" if some lamer voted "yes" without a good reason, to cancel that "yes" out. now if i, say, removed a turret to build a second spawn, i would only get kicked for that if more than half of my teammates were conspiring to unfairly boot me. not a big deal.
> and you see some guy run up to your armory and
> start deconning maybe there could be some way
> for people to stop that.. that ISN'T voting
this sounds like a very neat idea for a someday/maybe wishlist. don't put the decision making process in the HUD, but play it out right there in the space of the map -- i like that. however, as Paradox said, the easiest way to decon is still the painsaw.
> Maybe allow decon of some building, and force
> moving of important building (reactor, last
> telnode, last armoury, ...)
that's a very good suggestion. i hadn't thought of this yet: make a distinction between just a telenode and the last telenode. you could also treat a defense computer differently, depending on whether tesla generators are present.
> Maybe allow them to deconstruct things if they have been playing on the team for atleast 5 to 10 minutes
this means that in the first 5 to 10 minutes of a new map, either no one at all can deconstruct, or you make an exception for that and griefers who just connected can still wreck a game. this solution hinders bona fide necessary deconstruction and still has huge loopholes for griefers. i think it's poorly thought out.
> Another idea might be to make it take time to
> deconstruct structures the same way it takes
> time to construct them.
this wouldn't help in the least. i'm not going into details now, as this post is quite long already, but as long as no one comes up with an idea about how this delay could help more than annoy, it's not a good suggestion.
> The moving idea is fairly good but there are
> cases in which it will cause a team to loose [sic].
not really. it's true that you first have to go to the current building and then to the site of the new instance, in order to move it. but that's exactly as it already is now, thus 'the moving idea' wouldn't cause anything.
furthermore, you have to be aware that the 'reverse moving idea' is just a safeguard against a move being foiled by the enemy team. currently, this is an integral part of the game: they can attack your new, not-yet-finished reactor, but you can also attack their new overmind; it's all fair. if you are a defensive player, and it is more important to you that your base is up than that the enemy base is going down, it's understandable that you would like it to be more difficult to decon a reactor without a new one already being built. but if that was changed, gameplay would be quite a bit different, everything would have to be rebalanced again, and it would have to do nothing with laming or griefing. yes, it is a bit complicated and unintuitive, and it also doesn't change much for experienced players. for two experienced builders moving something together, it's a matter of the new structure being built one second earlier or later, with respect to the deconstruction of the old building.