Any of you played Total Annihilation before? Remember that whole nanolathe thingy? So here's what I'm thinking.

You see a ghost outline of the block you want to build. It can be manipulated in various ways, with the rotation point being ground level ahead of your feet. Perhaps numpad does the rotation, idk. When you click to build it, a ghostly wireframe of a different color manifests. As a builder heals it (nanolathes, if you want to continue the TA analogy) it becomes more solid but has a definite "not finished" quality. It takes much more damage than normal which counts against build progress. When it is finished, it is fully solid, no more glowy effects, etc.

Here's the catch, if the builder walks away from it it will slowly degenerate until it's back to a wireframe, and after a few seconds the wireframe will disappear as well.

When you go to spawn a new block it will default to the same position that you dropped the last one in, with some "recenter" button.

Useful for quick defensive building as there's no need to drag a block into position, and useful for quick offensive ramping as you just have to drop a wireframe and hop on in assuming you have the ability to. Needless to say a permanent ramp would be much preferable as a wireframe dies almost instantly without builder help.

__________________
Not in cruelty, \ not in wrath, \ the Reaper came today.\ An angel visited \ this gray path, \ and took the cube away.

That's the rough idea atm , but we call the wire frame a green print.

Also you rock because you know totala.