Just one caveat on my “yes” vote for this feature:
Thanks for taking the time to make visual references in your points. 
I’m torn, but think I agree with those saying the prestige system isn’t encouraging creative builds and this is linked to that. It’s just too easy to spam gleam to grow your prestige.
Would It not be more simplistic to code the plots to check for player placed blocks within a beaconed collumn? This way we could just claim a border around our settlement and It would not be merged Into another settlement.
My 2 cents on this is rather a simple feature. A beacon owner can chose (in the infancy of their beacon) if they want their beacon to be “public” or “private”. A public beacon would allow you to connect with others and create collaborative beacons when someone connects to your beacon. A private beacon would make it so there will always be a 1 wild plot “barrier” around your plots that no one can take. Also make it if a public beacon is already connected to other beacons, it cannot change to private. I think this will to a huge part fix the issue of people encroaching on other peoples builds and taking away settlements. I do like that the reserved plot goes infinitely up and down. I think that is well done. However to that effect, I think that we should be able to appoint a co-owner for beacons, so that people can share their reserved plots with friends. Can have a max of 1 co-owner, and the “leader” of the beacon is whichever has used the most plots.
I think the permissions group would do more good when we add guild permissions (which I eventually know will be a thing in due time).
Just a thought. Overall I give the idea a thumbs up. A lot of people have territory issues.
One feature to make things easier for settlement builders would be to let players who own protected plots to make these UNPROTECTED on a plot by plot basis. That way if another player wanted to build in that plot in the same settlement and the owner of the protected plot wanted to allow them, he could just un-protect the plot(s) in question rather than have to go changing permissions.
Gleam is BY FAR not the best way to increase prestige. Just because it glows, doesn’t = prestige. It’s in fact one of the lower average items. Also corruption blocks actually loose prestige. The harder you work on making a block, the more its worth. You don’t work on gleam hardly at all. So spamming blocks doesn’t win prestige. Also the work you put into blocks like chisel ratios and other factors = more prestige. Truly the more a player actually builds with hard crafted items, RIGHTLY so he gets more prestige. WAY over the guy who spammed a wall of gleam.
I keep seeing players thinking its a gleam game. Come look at my plot in blacklight and tell me how I have that ratio of prestige to plots. It’s not gleam.
I want this feature. I love the idea and that of voting for “mayor” with your prestige too. Excited to see it!!!
I really hope this feature is implemented. I live in a settlement with real life friends and we were completely by ourselves with no one else that close to us, as we wanted to be alone and not bothered. Well yesterday I was looking at the settlement menu and saw some guy was number 4 and I asked my friend who that was and he didnt know, well come to find out this troll plotted against us and had already started erecting a gleam tower. Within an hour he took the number 1 spot, changed our settlement name, went into the trade menu with one of us to show how much gleam he had probably to try to discourage us from fighting him with prestige. There’s no reasoning with him and he says hes going to build a portal network right there. He is clearly unwanted so I’m 100% for this idea. We’ve had some feedback on what to try to do to fight this so hopefully something works but until then we can only hope this feature gets put into the game.
I like this idea, but honestly the reason I like it most is the added permission, and the option to turn it off. Without those features this should not be implemented. That said, since you guys already said those were features, I am 100% on board with this. I would like the protection zone be communicated to players clearly as well though. Like a outpost gets 2 plots around it, a hamlet gets 3, village 5 (for example). This in combination with the prestige re-balance could make life very interesting. I look forward to the guild system as well. 
The problem is with refined gleam it is worth 10 points of prestige. Gleam is easy to obtain and with 1 step in the crafting process you INCREASE the number of blocks you can place over what you mined.
Now compare that say to refined copper which is 40 points of prestige. You need 360 copper (and spark) to mass craft 50 compact copper. Then 36 compact coppers to mass craft 50 refined copper. So out of 360 copper you get about 69 placeable blocks worth 40 each = 2760 points.
Now 36 gleam when refined gives you 50 refined gleam. So with 360 gleam you get 500 placeable blocks for 5000 points.
With each placeable block you can further increase the prestige if you chisel them.
Which is the easiest to obtain and which has the highest value? The gleam!
If two perimeters are touching but the claimed plots are still, lets way, 4 plots away from each other, would it still merge into a single settlement?
What do the guild system features look like?
Maybe the protection could increase as the number of plots used goes up? This way a city would get the chance to expand, or a town would be able to expand into a cit without fear of being plotted out of territory they want.
One plot per settlement level on your as a buffer to max at 3 or 4 gets my vote. That way it protects you but doesn’t get out of hand.
I like a max of 3.
but it doesnt make effort to refine the compacted copper or iron and machine it then. u get nearly 2 mass crafts of machined copper/iron from 360 with only some fuel use which gives 20 prestige more per block with a total of nearly 2000 prestige more. u get so much iron as mining byproduct, but gleam only occasionally when u dont farm specifically for it
i wanna understand this
can i still merge with my neighbours to a settlement with protection areas up?
as far as i was understanding u can only get in contact with other settlements when either u or ur neighbour gives plot permission. Will we have extended settlement merging distance? will we merge when we have common protection claims? or is merging now permission-only?
But if you wanted to prestige bomb someone and didn’t already have stockpiles from mining then getting enough gleam to refine is far easier than finding enough copper or iron.
And it is trivial to refine the gleam compared to refining the copper etc
i sell some machined iron in my shop for 7c … a 50 prestige block. Come get some if u like 
the iron wall protects against prestige bombs
would sell some machined gold /silver, too, on demand