02-11-2020, 03:13 AM
One other observation - recycling technology is extremely advanced in OA, and likely was so fairly early in the timeline, seeing as being wasteful of resources during the Technocalypse or the earliest colonization missions was courting extinction. If a group of people no longer want to use or maintain a structure, they may simply break it down for raw materials and build something else (see the snipped "Saying goodbye to Outrun Habitat" in creative writing for an example). Thus, even if a particular system is abandoned, the archaelogical record may be fairly truncated/skewed towards only the most recent artifacts and structures (assuming you're considering only physical evidence and not records of various kinds).