And what exactly did he want to determine decay? That’s right, claim flags! So that’d make decay useless at clearing away empty raided bases with someone else’s claim flag there.
Unless it’s metal, I don’t see the point when you could build a bigger base in the time it’d take for you to get enough materials to retake your old base, and even then the cost of repairing and refurnishing it might not even be worth it in the end.