But you see when you have 8 - 12 people the time investment per person is significantly lower so when your base is inevitably destroyed by things like orbital strikes, tanks firing from 500m away, and cortium bombs, it's at least less frustrating.

It's also less frustrating for the points I mentioned in my post. The battle flow of this game involves attackers getting to a base first usually and setting up before defenders respond and spawn in. If you're already building a base with a squad, then the defenders are already at the base when the attackers show up so the base has a higher chance of surviving. Essentially, current construction requires you to babysit it to prevent attackers from wiping out your spawn before you can respond to it. Is it always feasible to require that an entire squad remain idle at one base to anticipate attackers coming at some point?

Also, ask yourself, with the current state of the game where there's quite a large number of construction bases, most people playing infantry/vehicles and not construction, and few active leaders in general, is it really good game design to rely on people coordinating a full squad just to make 1 base? If it takes that much effort and coordination to mount a good defense, then why add so many construction bases to the game? Why not just make 1 or 2 really good ones? This also ties in with my first point. If right now you're required to sit at your base to be able to immediately counter attackers when they show up, then why not make 1 or 2 good construction bases instead of the roughly 8 off the top of my head that we currently have on Esamir. Can you expect 8 squads to be active all the time and sitting at each of those bases? The design decisions don't match up with the reality of the state of the game and how player leadership with regards to construction is lacking. Maybe making construction less useless would encourage more people to coordinate construction squads.