Not sure if there is a way to have a server look for structures in this shape or not to instantly destroy or if a GM has to manually destroy them.
griefing comes in two forms: people going around breaking stuff, people building stupid pointless stuff- the former is far more frequent, since it's a lot easier. Often a "greifer" will pour lava or set fire to things.
Normally, on a "vanilla" minecraft server, fixing it can be expensive both in time as well as resources. Plugins for servers (such as bukkit, which is the most popular plugin-based server; the bukkit team are actually part of Mojang now (the company that makes Minecraft). Plugins perform several useful functions for operators and administrators of a server.
1. Find out who REALLY broke something or griefed. griefers will sometimes point fingers at other players, so it becomes he-said she said unless there were witnesses. Many servers use a plugin called "logblock" which keeps a record of who put what block where. In the case of Minecraft, this is very helpful because it also serves as proof that somebody is a griefer. This is also useful on servers that frown on stealing, since you can see and prove that somebody took things.
2. in addition to the above, changes can be rolled back. So if a griefer sets fire to a house, or pours lava on a persons farm, or what-have-you, a operator just has to enter a command to revert all changes made by the griefer, and everything is fixed.
Other plugins are available which make gameplay changes, or add a leveling system (mcMMO) which means that you gain levels at various tasks which gives you a few abilities and enhancements over time. As an example, a high "mining" level allows you to break blocks slightly faster and sometimes get double from a block; but it also gives you the ability to use "Super Breaker" which let's you break any block instantly for a limited time, which is incredibly useful on obsidian, which typically takes a very long time to mine. Higher levels means better "perks" and they last longer or have more effect.
Overall I have to say it's the game I play the most out of all the games I have, so for me that 15 dollars has really gone far. I also got to watch it go from Alpha, to Beta, and finally to release, and it is still getting very cool updates. Even the tiniest change can garner huge possibilities, especially when dealing with redstone mechanics for controlling mechanisms. Some cool stuff I've built:
-An "automatic" cactus farm. Cactus grow on sand and will grow up to three blocks high. Cactus can be cooked to make a green dye for wool, so I have a cactus farm near my 'dye workshop' where I've organized all my flowers, dyes, and so forth, which can be useful for building pixel art.
Normally, you would harvest cactus just by breaking it yourself; the problem with this is it can take a while, and if piece breaks and hits another cactus block it will be destroyed. My solution was to make some riggings underneath the floor. The cactus grows on the sand, but underneath each block of sand is a piston. I have all the pistons connected to a single switch, so by turning it on, I lift the sand up one block. blocks like cactus, wheat, pumpkins, melons, etc. that grow will "break" when you move them, so the cactus all breaks, and I just walk and pick it all up and replant it
. I did something similar for my melon and pumpkin farm, I basically just walk down a corridor which causes me to walk over buttons that control a set of pistons. I'd take some screenshots for you but I don't have my desktop computer at the moment.
One of my favourite creations is my "grass" farm.
"Grass" or wild grass was added in Beta 1.5, and grows on... well, grass. You can grow it yourself with bone-meal, which you get from bones which you get from skeletons. using bone meal on grass grows grass and flowers in a given radius.
However, another interesting thing is that if grass, or flowers are on a block with a light level that is too low, they will "pop" out of the ground and become pickups the next time the block is updated (which happens when something nearby changes).
So, I made a grass machine, which is a box with a grass floor that has a small winding pathway that prevents any light from getting inside. It has lights inside so the grass (on the blocks themselves) stays around when I'm not using it. However, when I press a switch, it activates a clock mechanism underneath that continuously toggles a bunch of redstone wire underneath the floor, and shuts the lights off. So, when I go inside and place bone meal, because the redstone is immediately beneath it is constantly updating and instantly I get the seeds and flowers from the placed grass.
Oh I also made a "skeleton cannon" which is probably the most amusing thing I made.
sometimes you can encounter "dungeons" underground, which are just small cubes with a monster spawner inside- a spawner is a special block that, well, spawns a given monster. I found a skeleton dungeon close to the surface, and built a contraption around it. the skeletons spawn inside, but immediately fall into a water stream that takes them to a passageway; they are then guided up a tube with a blocked off exit. I wait near the spawner until there are literally hundreds of skeletons, and then press another button and open the blocked doorway, and the skeletons go FLYING out of it. I made changes so they got sent into a hole where they fell and took enough damage that I could punch them without an item and be able to finish them off.
I also tried to do the same thing with a two cave spider spawners (cave spiders, nasty things, their spawners appear in abandoned mineshafts). They are
supposed to be forced through a spiralling glass tube that eventually merge together and sends them down a chute where they land on a fencepost, leaving them with 1 health where I could stand and punch them to finish them off (so I can get the experience points for enchanting). It doesn't seem to work properly and I haven't been back there for quite some time.
I
think I looked at those two structures in
this video, but I'm not sure. Most of it is me wandering about a cave mining and killing the monsters I encounter.
Other interesting things that can be built include "mob grinders" which is where you build a giant box that is pitch-dark inside allowing monsters to spawn, and then force them into a water stream where they meet some sort of grisly fate. and you can collect their drops. One particularly interesting one I saw was one that was engineered so spiders wouldn't spawn because it didn't have any 2x2 area, which spiders need; the system would guide the monsters (skeletons, zombies, and creepers) down a chute and water stream, and was actually able to separate them by taking advantage of their unique behaviours.
Zombies, for example, will try to attack any villagers they see, so the system had a opening where zombies would see a villager, leave the normal stream, and then be forced down a different stream for only zombies. Creepers are afraid of ocelots, so by putting an ocelot near said villager and a route on the opposite side, the creepers will run down that chute and can be forced down another path, and then all that is left in the original chute are the skeletons. I thought it was a very clever use of the behaviours of the monsters. I didn't even know creepers ran away from ocelots, for one thing. It's seeing the everyday stuff being used as core mechanics for unconventional "machines" that I think is pretty cool, too.
