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This is one of the many compromises to gameplay we have to make, I guess.   Hmm. You are right. So no refund after destruction at all because the same principle applies to buildings, ships, siege engines?  To provide a refund,  - ships need to go back to the dock (done) - siege engines need to be manned (at least one unit) prior to destruction I believe we agree already on these two. There is no refund for buildings when they are at 100% (finished), ever. From the real world, I believe that old buildings (ruins) were often used as a quarry/resource for erecting new ones, hence I question the rule 100% built- 0% refund. The rule in game (0% built/100% back up to 100% built/0% back) certainly applies to the resources you had originally put aside to construct that building. After it has been built (100%) you spent 100% of resources, so destroying currently means losing all of it. Could refunding be exploited? Not really: You get a higher fraction back if deleting after finalizing it, but you had to invest the 100% before. The only cheat here is, that you benefited form the building's function (e.g. research a new technology) while it was working and still get a refund after its destruction. 

Since now I see your mod applies to "finished" buildings, I guess you are not considering that. Independently of Salvage working with "salvager(s)" to avoid the issues mentioned, got a better idea to deal with Self-Destruct: make a destruction queue, each structure getting sequentially destroyed by quickly draining their HP (giving a little time to each element for the queue to work). This solves the unsightly collapse issue, only gets noticeable the more buildings at a time one wants to destroy, doesn't involve other units ("arsonists"), adds absolutely no micro, and opens the possibility of eventually aborting the process before it starts or while it's under way (in that last case, one ending with a damaged structure because of the HP drain). Doing the same for units is a possibility, for them to die in fast succession instead of all at the exact same time, which, like the collapse issue, is quite goofy.

But automatically deleting the building for usable resources is exactly that, plus being automatic, plus getting resources back, plus the animation makes less sense. The only purpose of the "arsonist" (which was never intended to be a new unit, but a role present units take) is to avoid the simultaneous collapse of everything. Besides, you are defeating the purpose of how the game works. As mentioned: when you delete a building, "the amount of resources you get back depends on how much has been actually built. That is, if 35% of the structure has been built, one gets 65% of resources back, and so on". This implies "100% built means 0% of resources back". The present behaviour "makes perfect sense if one thinks of it as the resources having been set apart beforehand for construction, the resources already used being lost". If you want to press just delete and get resources back, you'd need to change how the whole thing already works, otherwise it makes no sense (if you get back, say, 30% with your method, if a structure is already 70% built and you want to destroy it, it'd be more rewarding to wait until it's completely built and then destroy it ). EDIT: Unless you are already considering all this, and what you get back is the unbuilt fraction and a fraction of the fraction already built, which would be the general rule (at present the fraction of the fraction already built is 0%, and you want to give it a value). There's another possibility in between all of this: do what you want to do, but require unit(s) to do it ("salvager(s)"), the action is just Salvage, could be quite fast (unrealistic since it should be like unbuilding it, but whatever), and not only avoids the collapse issue, but ends not being in contradiction with present implementations or "too simple and rewarding".   One assumes they got out just before destruction I guess, but sieges are completely weird in the game anyway (which I think needs fixing).  

@wowgetoffyourcellphoneTHIS IS PHANTASTIC! It is inspiring and providing an athmosphere well aligned with the situation.  Could you try and regenerate some of the game's title screen art with such images?

OK, that is exactly what the mod already does (only the animation remains "delete" and does not show selling the ship) Side note: The mod does not provide store-specific credit (which I believe is ok), i.e. when returning a ship, you are getting back a fraction of resources for general purpose. Store credit would mean you get a reduction for your next ship.  The remaining question is if a building needs to be garissoned with at least unit in order to allow deletion (mimicking arson). I still have doubts on that concept: burning down your building does definitely not give back much useable resources. Requiring a person to be in placed inside the building to be destroyed appears counter-intuitive to me (this is already strange with a manned tower or siege engine: the crew survives destruction, other than for a ship where they sink together).