Reclaiming Neutral buildings

Lets say a t3 neutral portal is on the map

Should i destroy it first then send engies?
or should i reclaim right away?

Depends on how much time you have to grab it, destroying it will be most likely faster than reclaiming but will net just little bit less mass than if you were to properly reclaim it.

Imo not worth the hassle, just kill it and reclaim as it's gonna be faster this way.

If you destroy it with weapons that have only a small amount of overkill, you get almost as much mass (as if you had engineers reclaim it to death), and your units can get some veterancy. The veterancy is important for your ACU, not so much important for other units.

If you destroy it with a lot of overkill, like if you have 10 light arties blasting away it, it is like they that they will fire about 1 volley after it's dead, so about 10 shells would hit the wreckage. If you hold ctrl-shift you can get a sense of how much mass is lost as a result.

If you start blasting it with artillery, stop when it gets to 3% hp, and have your engineers reclaim it (taking away its HP until it dies then scooping the wreck) you get the best of both worlds, a fast kill plus all the mass.

But often your APM is more important than getting an extra 300 mass out of a wreck. If you're in a terrible mass stall, maybe the mass is more important. If you're having trouble spending all the mass, your APM is more important. So it's not like there's a simple answer about what is best. It's usually better to focus on the fundamentals like making sure your economy is in good order, making sure you are sending out raids, scouting, that you know how many enemy units are near your ACU, than it is to try to make small adjustments to get a little more reclaim a little faster.

Instead of trying to scoop the gateway reclaim 4 seconds faster, put your effort into making a transport to drop some tanks and engineers on the enemy side of the map, raid his mexes and scoop his reclaim. At least some of the time, let's say 1 out of 5 games, commit to being hyper-aggressive, to spend your extra APM on doing lots of raiding, instead of on trying to maximize efficiency, and see whether that pays off for you. That would lead to a lot more improvement than "I'm going to do the same thing I always do, but I'm going to try to be 2% more efficient this time."

No, OP, you gotta capture it then make SACUS! (Joking)

Depending on the situation, the adage "deny the enemy" might come into play. Even if you do overkill a bit, you get the reclaim first and the enemy doesn't.

You must deceive the enemy, sometimes your allies, but you must always deceive yourself!

i only start getting the mass when the building is wrecked?
If i start reclaiming and enemy T1 factory while the HP goes down im getting zero mass?

Just play the game and look at what is happening for once.

@thomashiatt There´s always tons of shit happening at once -.-