Why?
The remnants of buildings help to create a story generated by the player and its interaction with the world. Arriving at a distant outpost that had fallen should feel like it. It gives a feeling of a living world where actions bring consequences, like seeing all your hard work being destroyed instead of arriving at an empty place like nothing ever was there(coz remnants dissolved). Seeing destroyed buildings, trying to pinpoint where defences got a beach and why. What can be automated better.In the case of a half-destroyed base, it makes even more sense to leave remnants. You see parts of your designs instead of random buildings standing on sand (or a random pavement field). Of course, you will have ghosts after reaching bots, but it's not even close to feeling immersive, and I would even want a hotkey to turn them off/on visually.
I remember stumbling upon that wood-powered outpost in the last tutorial mission. Seeing holes in the walls. Some turrets were still up, and some dead bugs were scattered around. I could see what happened there. I could see a story instead of random buildings. And even though i was already hundreds of hours into the game (just wanted to check out tutorials they came out). That scenery gave me a new feeling I never knew I needed, so I started using mods. However, I think many role-play gamers might miss out on this simple but effective story generator by never thinking about it in the first place. And these points are even more valid when you think about expansion and how long it takes to move between planets to reach any "breach aftermath". Personally, I keep bug husks relatively low to prevent a mess but destroyed building remnants do look nice and immersive, especially after hours of making building decisions, one of which was not to rebuild an old part of your factory. So that part remains like a museum.
What?
So, I want to bring up a few points for a discussion:1. Bringing buildings' remnants lifespan much higher or integrating the setting into a base game to make multiplayer sessions a bit simpler.
2. Think about what other already-there mechanics might have missed that actually help with the feeling of the world having a story.
PS. Screenshots are from the tutorials, scenarios by GreenFlag, and my personal playthroughs.
