Build mode

[Mazzle Dazzle]

After trying out different things, I feel like building needs to be streamlined to make it viable for competitive multiplayer play. Given this game is voxel based I believe a large portion of players want the ability to create and share lots in multiplayer games rapidly. Right now if you try to build, you are screwing yourself by wasting an hour plus of time. Meanwhile someone could zone or buy properties in that time to get 25k plus a game hour as well as tons of rep.
As such I think we need a build mode.
Some tools I've seen in other games that made a build mode tolerable and some suggestions personally:
Flight- you can't attack or be attacked, you fly around the lot you are working on and can place and remove blocks. - This is currently only possible using cheats which doesn't work in multiplayer. It also has collision which it shouldn't for "build mode".
Block placement depth and width- possible right now using echo block placement and fill command but inconvenient a cheat with no cost associated with it -should be able to chose a x,y,z parameter to place a range of blocks. This would make roofs/walls/floors trivial. example - current block +10, y,+10. This would create a 10 by 10 flat floor or roof piece.
Clear lot edge definition- display the edge of the lot you are working on with a huge transparent wall so you don't accidentally work your way into another lot. If you want to remove the wall you can merge the lots.
Prebuild- as part of the build mode, I think we shouldn't be charged until we commit our build. What I mean by this is you build everything you want and press a button to commit the changes and then it charges you for all the blocks you placed. This also solves the problem of removing blocks as you were never charged in the first place.

Anyway that's all I had. I love the game but all I ever see is default buildings, I believe this is because the current system is hard to use. With these changes, I'm pretty sure everyone would at least have 1 custom shack/building and not quit the architect quest out of frustration.

[Romløk]

What I did was do my designing in a single-player "build" map with infinite moneys, where using cheats (eg. /fly) doesn't matter. You can save buildings as "templates" in single-player mode, then use those online like you would build any other prefab building.

[Mazzle Dazzle]

Originally posted by Romløk:

What I did was do my designing in a single-player "build" map with infinite moneys, where using cheats (eg. /fly) doesn't matter. You can save buildings as "templates" in single-player mode, then use those online like you would build any other prefab building.

I'm aware of that fact but the custom build architect missions don't work in that regard which renders that whole segment of missions pointless in multiplayer. You can trick the game by using a base flag to convert it back to a custom building lot, but that is a glitch, not a feature.
You either need to be able to use home templates for the architect missions or need to have a build mode so it's feasible to do those quest competitively. If you allow templates than it offers an incentive for everyone to have their own templates which certainly will make multiplayer more interesting, but is kind of unfair. I think requiring a new custom building and having a build mode is better mechanically as each game is unique and you carry nothing but your knowledge with you. You can use templates for uniqueness but you gain no advantage for doing so. That would inspire constant content generation if you chose to do those missions and make it more feasible to do so in a multiplayer centric mode. I'm sure if it was easy or a priority it would alread be there. I'm just stating suggestions that ultimately would make the game significantly more enjoyable for builders not using scripts.