I agree wholeheartedly that admin response is not a good substitute for something that can and should be handled by a game mechanic, but the existing game mechanic is not up to the task, either.
I once proposed an idea about a new system that could act as a counterbalance for building, but that discussion got auto-locked after a while.
If there’s interest in discussing a system like that again, I can open a new thread, so that we don’t end up derailing this thread.