Wasn't sure how to title this one. I've been racking my brain for a solution to the problem of having tree chopper events in town or events that include making build free to everyone on a residence. Tree choppers would be awesome but for the fact that once you make build free to everyone, people can remove anything that they want. This means that if you put beacons up for haste, you run the risk of losing your beacons. So my idea is to add a single type of block that can have a toggle on/off for build. I know this is probably impossible, but maybe there's a chance that it is possible. The idea is this: you have an event that takes place above y60. For example, tree choppers. People come during the event and build is turned on. Everyone chops trees and chats and has fun. There are active beacons below ground. Now, in the past people would dig down and steal the beacons. This ruins a perfectly good time. But the host can make a layer of glass at y58 and then turn off build for glass after completing the build set up. Dirt goes above that except where the beacons are activated and a glass tower can extend up to y255, if you like so that player's can't mess with the beam and trees can't grow into the beam. After Build For Glass is in off mode, all glass blocks are protected. Including to the host. This would be for plain glass only, to keep it simple. you can add a color below the protected layer if you really need a fancy beam. I know this is probably a little confusing and poorly written. I'm not sure I have to capacity to write it better yet, but maybe others can clarify in the comments what I am going for. nltimv might have something to say about this.
Beacons have their own flag so they are always protected Always protected Solid block with build flag on: Furnace Always protected transparent with build flag on : Cauldron or Hopper
There has been talk about allowing us to set up sub-regions. No idea how much progress has been made on that part, but it could most definitely solve these issues. So, for example, you'd set up a specific region as "build for all" while other regions remain protected.
We've been waiting for that for over a year, while the system should have been implemented a few days after Aikar posted about it, in January 2016. I've kinda lost hope for that.
Sub zones will fix all the issues that you have. May sound sound easy to say add every block but it's trickier than it sounds. I would say wait for sub zones.
