I might make another for this tournament @Atrik  

That's why what I propose is simply reversing what's already there. You could leave fields and think of it as "transplanting": avoid unnecessary extra rules. Peace time and ownership rules are also incoherent: you can build while attacked, you can Self-Destroy while owning over 50%, and you can gather resources while being attacked. It's again hyper-realism when similar processes are already abstracted, which doesn't make it intuitive.   The building should build down (reverse of build up), and the workers animation could be that of gathering wood, stone or metal: looks different and it's appropriate.   I think you'll need an icon for Salvage different from Self-Destruct, otherwise you fall into making salvaging too simple and rewarding by merging both concepts, as previously mentioned. The panel needs reworking anyway since important icons like Capture are not being shown, which is an abysmal design mistake. In the meantime, further down I'll mention a possible solution not to have both icons in the panel.   I know, the parenthesis was there to have only relevance when combined with the parenthesis in "I agree doing so should be part of the game (with those big engines being extremely slow in return)", since I agree with this only for the big engines.   I see, but one has to check for that weird condition, greatly harming players' attention, and adding micro if one wants to move things around just in case. I have an idea to solve both this and deal with the two icons: if you want to select units and buildings, you have to do it quite on purpose, since a drag selection ignores buildings. Considering this, and that for now it's not ideal to take button space with both Salvage and Self-Destruct, I'd do things like this: -if you select either ships and a Dock, or siege engines and an Arsenal, the button that appears is Salvage. When pressing it, the units would move to garrison in the selected building to be salvaged (which should be queued and each could take the same as their production time, to reverse that process, or at most accelerated by a certain factor, but this is just adding rules). -if you select workers and any structure, the button that appears is Salvage. When pressed, what happens is what was previously described regarding animations (which should take the same as building time, to reverse that process, or at most accelerated by a certain factor, but this is just adding rules). -for any other kind of selection, the button that appears is Self-Destruct. This should work as now (no rewards), except that I'd make it take a time depending on HP (1000/s drain, or building/production time accelerated by a certain factor, which in this case is indeed necessary), and I'd queue buildings and units independently to avoid its abuse (from AI mostly, apparently). All this minimalistically does what you basically want to do, removing the visual checking of an arbitrary radius for Salvage to work, by instead selecting who does what where, and if elements are not correctly specified, then the default action is the less rewarding Self-Destruct. Only one button would show up at a time.   All as mentioned: draining times should be variable, cancellation by attacks doesn't seem coherent with present rules, and not queuing is not reversing the process, while not queuing in Self-Destruct would not solve the collapse issue mentioned, of course.

Hi, someone was asking me this and I can't really remember if there was an existing 0AD map ... is there anything that resembles a setup like SA with the Bab al-Mandab and Hormuz straits.  Something you can run w/ naval merchants, etc. with a big more scale.  I think they just wanted to use it as a history/logistics classroom tool for a group, nothing extremely detailed, etc.  Thanks.  

@ThalattaThanks for you comprehensive review! My point is that I try to not substantially modify fundamentals in game mechanics just add a slight touch of more complexity. Salvaging allows getting resources in an emergency via a separate path (not trading, not gathering which might both not be possible in a situation). I'd prefer "salvage rate" so in the end it amounts to "salvage rate × condition = refund". It is a bit complex but I believe we should keep the ability to fine tune. Here we have rules we can turn on and off and also adjust some parameters ("when not sure make it configurable" ) I wanted to have configurable options so there might be a reason why certain types of buildings are excempt (chnged it to exclude fields but not exclude wall segments and towers anymore). So the mechanics is there and it can be configured to exclude what ever building we want - or none. The building shall be recovered only in peace times, i.e. it is not under attack and hasn't recently (15s, configurable). I wanted to make really sure it s not being attacked and not being taken over and is not partially "owned " by someone else, hence the multiplicity of rules. Destruction must be carried out by someone nearby (presence of a unit in 20m, configurable) I also thought about your proposal to let workers destruct (unproduce) a builidng (same animation like construct), but I consider this confusing to see exactly the same animation taking down as building up ("in the heat of the game...").  Absolutely - good point! Will remove that. Walls segments and towers are back in. Same rules as for all builidngs apply. I wanted to avoid adding another icon that might clutter the user interface. Let me experiment if we can "auto-salvage" ships and sieges. (click delete icon (means slavaging) and the ship or siege goes back to the nearest dock or depot where it is dismantled).   No, its all of them. At the moment, buildings that don't satisfy the condition (unit nearby) are destroyed exactly like before, but no refund.  Destroying with refund takes 10s (draining their health condition until they collapse - and only then there is a refund. The process will be cancelled by any attack). But they are not queued - so if you slect a group of builidngs, hit delete and have a unit nearby each, it takes 10s. I suggest modifying the general delete mechanics to take a few seconds both for structures - and also for units. Let me test if that works.